phillip

i'm the mad bomber what bombs at midnight baby

2006-01-25T22:21:00.000-08:00

Oh trusty <ul> tag. I like it so much because it mimicks how I talk. Here we go:

I went snowboarding for the first time in Whistler, BC, where the 2010 Olympics will be, and planted my ass firmly and repeatedly in that famous snow. The following weekend I went again in America, and with home field advantage, I learned how to link my turns. As it turns out, snow can be good for something. But it's nice that it's all gone by the time we get back home.
After being rejected by Amazon, Ben got a job with Google. They're going to pay him more money and he'll live and work in Zurich. I'm all, "I'm sure Switzerland's great and all, but can you snowboard there?" A European vacation is sounding pretty good for late 2007. Since my crew is about to scatter (which actually brings Foul Andy to my hill) there's an excessive Spring Break trip planned for Cabo San Lucas. I've been saving for Mexico for nine months, so technically this is a planned expense.
New apartment. Moving day is Saturday. Since real mail spammers don't harvest addresses from the internet, here's my new address: 105 Harvard Ave E Apt A1, Seattle, WA 98102. I am moving roughly two blocks. Probably the least significant move of my entire life.
Still seeing the girl from the last post. She's independent and doesn't cause problems, but she puts up with me when I show neither of those qualities. She doesn't talk much, so I'm learning how to dominate conversations. Girl friends get frustrated that I don't say much about her. Even my mom thinks it's strange I don't mention her. But the truth is (and I believe the internet reflects this) all my girl stories are bad for the girl. The exceptions are those stories that take place entirely within the confines of sex and do not involve me actually saying anything.
I'm living a good engineer's life. Last week I made some repairs and cooling upgrades to my computer, the one that's so loud sometimes I can't sleep with it on. The engineer part? The repair involved electrical tape and soldered paperclips, and the upgrade require a spring clip made from a coat hanger. It's probably true that my great engineering superpower is not building great things but getting damn near anything to run. If we lived in a time before the internet, before steel and modern construction, you can bet I'm not the ambitious go-getter who would have invented the shuttlecock. People like me stood in the back and said "I agree it's an interesting proof of concept, but for the price of your horseless carriage, I could just as easily buy four more horses."

Yo voy! I'm going to bed. Two more nights before the move. I'm fucked.

went kapcha on your ass

2006-01-25T22:19:00.000-08:00

Try and auto-comment-spam my ass now bitch.

pity party's over

2005-12-21T01:03:00.000-08:00

i slept with her

cash moves everything around me

2005-12-12T20:42:00.000-08:00

haven't blogged in awhile, don't have funny stories. if you like funny, just skip this shit.

i bought a bed worth two months' rent and immediately switched back to sleeping flat on my back. all this time i thought i was sleeping on my stomach out of insecurity. no, turns out i needed a new mattress. gave the old bed to my new neighbor, who just moved into old crazy's apartment, which meant i didn't have to pay to have it taken away, and i made a new friend who feels like he's eternally indebted to me for my shitty old mattress. hey, turns out it's really easy to make friends when you're rich. who knew?

aeon flux was total shit. there's some twirling, some one-piece futuristic costumes and sets, and a story...where do i start with the story? someone bought the rights to the characters and set them in a completely random story with literally zero similarity to any story that ever appeared in the original series. i never thought i'd ask this, but why couldn't this movie be more like beavis and butthead do america?

speaking of doing america, big ups to ed and pals as they do new orleans again. pour some yankee money into flood town and blow some shit up. i'm gonna do it urban and cold this year, but hopefully i can still get a black eye out of the night.

speaking of falling in love, i narrowly escaped a brush with a relationship this week. man, that was a close call! can you imagine? me being all lame and not going out because i'm too busy having sex? good thing she just got out of a relationship because really, i don't need the complications. or some chick throwing her perfect body at me all the time, like what am i gonna do with that? do you know how awkward it is when i'm trying to have a conversation and i put my arm around your waist and i accidentally stop speaking? call me when you've got a little beer belly, ok sugar?

or how about you call me when you're ready to date somebody again. i'm not going anywhere. k, i'm out, pool with the boys. let's. get. krunk.

some beach

2005-12-03T16:44:00.000-08:00

seventy percent of the world's population lives within a hundred miles of the ocean. that means most people are a couple hours' drive from the beach. forty-five percent of valencians (the city, not the region. the region can fuck itself) go to the beach once a month or more. even if you have to work all week, on saturday you just grab a towel and bus it down to the beach. even though their sand is kind of smelly and dirty, it works the same way all over the world: you lay down for an hour, then you get too hot so you get in the water, put more sunscreen on (unless you're brown or black, you lucky thing) and do it all again.

fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck i hate winter. even in seattle, where it's not so bad. best skiing on the continent, sure, great. but please let's be honest with ourselves. beaches are better than mountains. california is better than washington and everybody knows it. too many people in california? that's because it's great there! chicago, seriously, that's not a real beach, but way to make do with what you have.

my aunt sharon bought a plane ticket to tampa when she was my age and just didn't get on the plane home. she sent for her things and married a pilot. she's picked up a barely noticeable cuban accent from twenty-five years of teaching in florida schools.

in conclusion, i like the beach.

-phillip

clear a path

2005-11-17T22:09:00.000-08:00

muchachos y muchachas:

i'm coming back for christmas. i'll be in springfield about 9:00 on the 23rd, and i have to be back at o'hare by the morning of the 29th. which means probably no stop in champaign. that means somebody in springfield has to have sex with me. i'm 6'1, rich, sexxy, disease free, and i swear to god i'll be driving a van with a wheelchair lift in it. you heard right! i have a van!

here's a bit of trivia you'll probably enjoy: i haven't had sex in sangamon county since 2002.

so let's make it happen! i mean it. this can be my christmas present from the town. designate one girl to take one for the team, and the whole town gets by with not buying me a present. it's like sacrificing a virgin so i spare your town for another year. fear godphilla, king of monsters!

linus wong is mine

2005-11-14T23:23:00.000-08:00

something keeps reminding me of the hippie who stole matt's power drill in the spring.

i've started carrying treats in my pocket because i'm sick of city dogs being unimpressed by me.

i smoked out a 75-year-old man named ed. twice. he always carries a pipe and a doctor's note saying it's for his glaucoma.

sam's coming to visit a week from tomorrow, and he's requested that i not take him to bars. melissa thinks he and his girl probably already had a conversation about it.

i don't know what i'm trying to pull here, i can't write. i'm furious and i hate this city sometimes.

poor guy

2005-10-12T00:25:00.000-07:00

i told christine a story last night and she asked me if it was true. "i know you like to embellish," she said. but she only knows that because i tell her so, not because she ever caught me doing it. tonight's story is true only in the sense that i tell it as i experienced it, and you would be justified in suspecting that the rest is entirely false.

tommy is my neighbor, which lately only increases our difficulties. i don't dare tell him when we really first met, or that i still have his skull. it's not my style really. sure i like skulls and all, but this one's all electric acid trip, and he printed it out on his inkjet. if the original is a watercolor like he says, tommy has a gift. a real gift with skulls. and demons, and s&m chicks, and hearts and flames, but that's pretty much it. he told me what separates himself from da vinci, really, is not drawing ability, but imagination. if da vinci had been limited to skulls and tits, he'd have done tattoos too.

but that was way back in august, when it was still warm out. he's wearing long sleeves now, otherwise i'd recognize him. maybe not by the skulls covering his arms, but by the hepatitis sores covering the skulls. i don't know how tommy got hepatitis, but i think i can explain why he's having a hard time establishing a client base in seattle. maybe he should try chicago. the sores might give him good cred out there. seattle isn't interested in street cred. maybe i'll suggest chicago. one thing's for sure, tommy needs to get out of seattle.

"we need to talk." i said ok, and i put down my book and followed him out to the balcony. i didn't remember him, but here i was treating him with the same indifferent neutrality as before. that's just how i am with strangers these days. if you stop me on the street i'll give you a cigarette and five minutes of undivided attention. he looked sketchy, so odds are decent he wants money, or he has something crazy to say, or...well something tells me he's a neighbor and he seems uncomfortable like he doesn't want to talk to me, so maybe it's about noise or some other neighborly complaint. "i need to know if you're tapping my phone, cause if you are just tell me." relief hits me. if this had been about my music, i'm sure we would have had an awkward argument and then we'd be weird around each other in the halls or out on the street. but i'm completely innocent of any phone-tapping, so i have the luxury of being completely honest in this conversation. i don't even have a phone. the previous occupant spliced cable into my apartment, but i don't hook it up to my tv, and my internet is shared wirelessly with my neighbor. i wonder if the cable has something to do with this. i heard the splicing was causing my downstairs neighbor to not get his HBO. "oh, are you in 203, the one with the fucked up HBO?" he is. well, this gets even easier. i can fully appreciate his situation, since i don't get HBO either. "well the guy who stole the cable could easily have spliced the phone line too. you should bug the landlord to get the whole damn thing fixed." he agrees. we both know no amount of hounding will get these things fixed. satisfied, i'm ready to go back to my dinner and my book, but tommy is still upset. "i told L___ about this and he's like, 'you're crazy tommy, nobody's bugging your phone. and then i dumped out this pile of microphones i pulled from the lights, and he still says 'what you want me to do? this doesn't prove anything. so, like, i don't even know what to think. i don't feel safe here. my intercom has been rewired into a microphone. fucking microphones everywhere, and the phone wires are goin straight to your apartment. i made L___ show me the wires in the basement, and it said '303'. so, like, i hate to ask you, you seem like a normal guy and all, but can i take a look, just to see?"

well tommy is more than justifying the time i'm spending with him. "of course you can!" and i was better than my word. i gave him the grand tour. we looked at the wires to my intercom. i showed him the phone jacks i knew about. i showed him behind the entertainment center and the desk, to prove nothing was hooked up to anything besides a socket. we looked in the kitchen, in my living room closet, everywhere. i'm delighted, because i have nothing to hide. when tommy sees the weed on my desk, he even cracks a joke. "well, i guess you're not a cop." it's not really a joke. the weed is strong evidence that i'm not a cop, and he seems to feel a little better. he explains how he found microphones in the lights. he shows me the extra wire running to my intercom, disconnected for now, but there, just in case. i am incredulous, but polite. he shows me where he pulled out some sort of phone line in the hallway. my intercom hasn't worked for a while.

when i took my garbage to the dumpsters behind the building later, tommy was at the door when i came back in. i gave a friendly "hey." he's probably not even the tenth person to see the inside of my apartment, and i think that qualifies us as friends. "man, everywhere i go, there you are. like you're following me." i give a dumb laugh, because it was a dumb joke. he gets mad. i get mad back when i realize he was serious. i'm covering up a faint sense of relief. there's a possibility this guy could be a problem. but he doesn't make dumb jokes, and i like that. after assuring tommy a second time that i'm not a cop, he gets over the initial shock of seeing me again so randomly. he tells me about the manager, the neighbors, what he hears, what he knows, what he suspects. i get so much dirt. in the end he advises me not to have lots of friends over and not to do lots of drugs. this place isn't right, he says. just watch your ass.

when the pigeons land on my windowsil to get out of the rain i act like it's the most natural thing in the world, trying to buy time to get my camera before they get spooked. i just nod and thank tommy for the advice. he's my new favorite neighbor, and i don't want him to get spooked.

dear blog

2005-09-20T21:44:00.000-07:00

i have a desk now! and all my clothes came! including

$0.65 kona gold tshirt from san francisco
channahon peewee football league tshirt that some girl thought was great on unofficial this year until i admitted to buying it in a thrift store, at which point she rolled her eyes and said "oh god, whatever". i'm not bitter, and i hope she fulfills her dream of fucking a genuine peewee football player.
ten white tshirts. welcome to the return of laser guns, a big fonzie 'eyyyy', and not looking like a homo
nike warmups that a bird crapped on the day i brought them back to illinois
i just went back and looked at the pile to remember what else
some oversized tshirts and love-making boxers (one pair has metallic red license plates sporting phrases like 4 A HUG and KISS ME. the state? STATE OF LOVE. oh, seriously.) thank you, high school.
ten dollars from my dad to cover the cost of picking up the boxes at the UPS store. it melts my heart because we both know how unnecessary it is
pot holders. my parents have taken to sending me everything they don't want from their kitchen. my mom admitted once to giving me things she knew she'd have to replace, so she could justify buying new ones. i will have to ask them to please stop sending me old kitchen items, as i'm now forced to use the same box they shipped my care package in to take half of it down the hill to goodwill
Our Game: a history of baseball. And a book on mutual funds by John Bogle. These will be sold. Still no sign of my prized hundred-year-old sexual psychology book, or its outlandish appendix B, a scandalous letter by Ben Franklin which i did not make up. when i tell you the story though, you become one of probably no more than a hundred people in the world who know that ben franklin once encouraged a young man to put baskets over old women's heads and fuck them.
a stack of CDs from my dear departed Trunks. these will be chucked at poor people after my iPod arrives this weekend.
packing peanuts. because i needed more ground into my carpet.
more journal articles from grad school. sometimes i burn them a little before throwing them away. bet me i don't.
climbing chalk. "white gold" brand. i thought it was a clueless name until i saw the tagline: "the first high is always free". i don't know which sucks more, natural high people or coke heads. there's some kind of suck/blow joke in there somewhere. bonus points if you figure out how to make it work.
AND
the anti-diarrheal tablets dad insisted i buy for spain. he worries about me when i travel. i guess the image of me robbed, lost, hurt, unable to get home, AND shitting my pants was too much to bear.

the rest is a snippet of a conversation with british matt, who is funnier than everyone else i know put together:

"so, i just went to the amazon talk. there were a couple of quite clearly non-tech girls there. you should've come and been all like 'yeah, it's pretty good I guess. I mean its a job, right?' then we coulda got on the piss."

struck dumb...here's a quote

2005-09-01T21:50:00.000-07:00

It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not at all what we men wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don't know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for these internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the post mortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tatooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.
-Lt. Col. Mervin Willett Gonin DSO
(and that dickhead banksy's manifesto)

electric age

2005-08-29T01:48:00.000-07:00

this is my five-year plan:

work
travel
???
???
profit

i'd like to thank south park for the business advice.

this weekend i bought six books:

some toni morrison book from 1998
a book justifying the spanish empire
narrative of the life of frederick douglas
the bluest eye
an alice walker collection, including the color purple, meridian, and some short stories
and an old bound copy of gulliver's travels

treasures! i paid $11. matt bought a tv. $800. he said "with all that money you're spending on books you could buy yourself a tv." i already have a tv. i watched black cat, white cat on it tonight and it made me want to be in love. but i am going to need a bigger bookshelf. somehow i bought a second copy of sula and an old abridged copy of black boy, before the part about communists was restored. they'll make good presents, or i can sell them. ooh, that's how i'll make space! sell all those old logic textbooks! logic, as you might have guessed, has no place in the five year plan.

caught on film

2005-07-27T21:33:00.000-07:00

matt just sent me evidence that clearly shows us being rocked at this concert. see me? top row, second picture from the left. asian honeys in front. i'm wearing a beater, beat red, clearly rocking out. that's matt and his sister louise in front of me. yeah, i know i called fifteen-year-olds "honeys". you should be used to me anyway. seattle's fine. sort of a functioning madness. so it goes. peace, i gotta write my thesis. it's due tomorrow, then i promise i'll get better stories and write down the ones i have and i'll be a better friend to you.

phil

timmy

2005-07-08T14:57:00.000-07:00

I started emptying the scraps of paper out of my bag left over from vacation, cause there were a few people from the northwest i wanna get in touch with. i look at most of the names and think "aw, i remember this one. we sure had fun. i should write more emails." but there's two names in there written on the back of a crêperie i never went to (so it could be literally any crêperie) and i don't recognize either of them. but one of them lists a website, and it turns out he's a musician in seattle. cool, right? i almost wrote him until i found his photos page. you should check it out yourself, because it contains the sissiest image ever recorded by man. top-left, take a look. yes, that's a rainbow on his cheek, and you're right, it is streaked with tears. i seriously don't recognize this guy, and i don't know what i was doing hanging out with such a total pussy.

oh

2005-07-08T02:41:00.000-07:00

right, i forgot the original reason i wanted to write a post. i got a new email address: phillipao@gmail.com. this should work no matter whether i'm going to school or working or giving up both to go screwing around in south america.

2005-07-08T01:21:00.000-07:00

arienne and sara

photos

2005-07-08T01:04:00.000-07:00

holy shit i just found out all the photos i wanted from granada and toledo were already on my computer. i just couldn't see them before. pictures are so important to remembering experiences, and i feel like i've just recovered one of the best weeks of my life. there's one of me posing with a pair of quebecoise. lemme see if i can make blogger put it up. ok, it's up. you should see it below this post. nice, eh? they're very pretty, as well as intelligent, independent, and open-minded. and we got to hang out for one night in granada. you can just sense that some people are good for you. and you can't stop to think about what great friends you could have been if only you had more than just one night because there are too many people, and if you're moving fast enough to see good ones like this, you're moving too fast to keep them around and i think that's the hardest part about traveling. the hardest part is opening yourself up to one person after another and having to leave them all, and there's no question of whether you'll see them again because you won't, so you don't say anything about how the situation makes you feel because we all know how poor we are in time. if someone brings it up, it just hangs in the air and makes everyone uncomfortable, because we were trying not to think about it so you do the only polite thing and take a picture and you all smile how you want to be remembered, not how you feel at the time because all you feel is rushed and sad but you can tell how we feel anyway. it's in the existence of the picture, not in its content. it's how late we were and how we were running to the bus station already, and how we totally forgot or ignored all that when we saw them sitting here and threw off our packs and took a picture.

there was a nice group of us in barcelona that had to break up because ilonka and june had to go home to holland, and ollie and i walked them to their bus stop and helped them carry their bags, and they really wanted mcdonalds before they left, and ollie bitched about it to no end (for good reason) and he was extra bitter-sounding because he's british. and ilonka told him he was going to miss them, and of course he denied it and she said "if you weren't going to miss us, then why walk us to the bus stop and eat shitty food with us instead of getting decent food and going to the beach?" and ollie couldn't say anything he just got a sheepish look on his face and that's how we all knew he was going to miss them.

sorry if you wanted to say goodbye to me and i didn't give you the chance. please don't take offense. i've just had to say a few too many goodbyes lately.

fuck the south

2005-07-04T00:40:00.000-07:00

read fuckthesouth.com and come back when you finish. i'll give you a minute.

ok, what did you think? tell me if you get the chance, but here's my reaction. this guy really got me mad.

i'd ignore the site entirely if this wasn't exactly the kind of attitude i get from suburban chicago kids who pass blanket judgments on everyone south of I-80. george bush is aesthetically a texan, but his politics are northeastern old money. the faceless multinational nasties, war-mongering carpetbaggers, and blissfully unaware consumers who support them from the safety of their SUVs are mostly concentrated in the northeast (and chicago). (and california). my point is this: no, i don't think you can blame religious conservatives in the red states for "what's wrong with this country." the american animal is way more complex than that.

you know what i like about the america i see today? i like that it's becoming latin. and it's happening independently from and in some cases in spite of what's going on in the national consciousness. i like that we helped make mexicans so poor, and they're responding by showing up on our doorstep.

i'm self-conscious to post something that makes it obvious what i've been reading and who i've been speaking to, but here it is and it's honest.

northwest siiide

2005-07-04T00:04:00.000-07:00

i'm out here now. seattle. my weeklong tour of the country was great. spent a final two days with matt and ben (my champaign boys) and roy and andy (my chicago boys) and christine (my girl, through it all) in chicago. matt and i met up with his little sister louise and spent four days in san diego. hell of a town. we almost went to mexico for a night, but that's fine, because by god i'm going next year and who knows for how long. louise is a nice girl, less crazy than her stupid brother but just as fun and definitely better looking in a bikini. i got one night with jessica and bonk in LA and was made to realize that the more i travel (or is it simply the more i experience?), the more important old friends become. and now i'm here. rental car, temporary apartment, one week until work starts. i'll keep living out of a backpack for as long as it takes, but the big bed is mine for a month. i have my own kitchen. closets. free internet, laundry. i haven't been this alone in nearly four months. tomorrow is the fourth of july. i'll probably check into the hostel down the street and make some friends to drink and blow shit up with. have you ever seen a truer sign of addiction to human contact? something about it isn't right. maybe something about avoiding myself. some sort of insecurity maybe, maybe the same thing that makes me dislike sleeping alone. on the other hand, i'm happy for the opportunity to get some writing done finally.

a night in barcelona

2005-06-17T07:57:00.000-07:00

my time in spain was incredible. the most memorable month of my life. and my life is going to go a lot differently now because of it. but i can tell you about that later. the most important thing for me to do in these precious first few days back is to record what happened. i've been telling my stories over and over, and now they're ready to be written down. let's start with one of my favorite barcelona stories: the night i slept in the street. this story is good because it sets up a much better story for later.

so i'd found a group of really chill kids in barcelona and was getting together with them for sight seeing, drinking, eating, everything. but our circumstances were not good. we were being big tourists, hanging out at one of barcelona's sketchier tourist traps, a place called travel bar. travel bar organizes a pub crawl literally every three nights. if you sign up early, you go for 10 euros (how do you do a euro symbol on a US keyboard?). most people pay 15 though. for 10, you don't do too badly. for 15, you're getting ripped off. 100 people go, they buy overpriced drinks at all the bars, and travel bar gets kickbacks from the bars in addition to the price of your ticket. so we knew it was a scam, but it's a huge party and everyone everyone gets some.

the night ended at a club in barceloneta (on the waterfront, 20-minute walk from our hostels), and i had my first non-white makeout: an asian girl who was probably american because i know her friends were. that part of the story is fun, but it's not the important part. the problem was that the club started clearing out at 3:30. my hostel was locked from 3 to 7. fuck! i thought we were gonna be out until dawn and go to the beach for a while. nope! but an irish guy named mike offered to stay out with me as long as i wanted, despite the fact that he was with his new girl, a badass chick from portland named malaika. we must have walked for an hour and a half, but eventually romance took its toll and they had to leave. i understand. they only had three or four days together and they were mad for each other, and this might have been the one night they ever got to spend together. so we split up and agreed to meet the next morning. i had to find somewhere safe to hang out for two hours. and if you've ever been to barcelona, you know that being a drunk tourist there at 5am just isn't safe. i turned my black tshirt inside out to hide the english words written on it, pulled out my knife to feel mean, and started literally stalking through the alleys, staring at everyone i saw, trying to give them the impression that robbing me wouldn't be easy. i had two hours to look tough before i could sleep.

but that's a tough place. the nigerian hookers mob you and a dozen hands grope you trying to pick your pockets. you won't even see the purse snatchers. the very fact that you're alone and on the street makes you a target. two hours is a long time. i had to find a safe place without people. and i found one. the one perfect place in barcelona: a small plaza with a church and a history museum. clean, with a couple stoops in the shadows, and the best part: only one entrance. i checked all the shadows for other sleepers and found none. i put my head on my knees, my back to the wall, and slept on and off until dawn. the next day found me pretty tired. i went back to the hostel about 7:30 and crashed for a few hours, then met up with my friends to go to a museum. if i can find a way to post pictures easily, i'll show you some from that following day.

i was happy to have made it through the night safely, but when i saw mike and malaika the next day, i felt so lucky. on their one romantic night alone, their first chance to be together with no one else around, they got mugged. less than five minutes after we split up, and junkie pushed mike, smashed a wine bottle, and held it to his chest. he only spoke enough english to say "money". but mike didn't have any. the guy was shaking, because he knew he only had a few seconds before someone else came by. mike showed him his empty wallet, and the junkie was satisfied that he didn't have any. but noticing a camera strap hanging from mike's pocket, he settled for that. "camera". the exchange was done. the junkie ran away. he never went after malaika or her bag. just a camera. he could sell it on the streets or at a pawn shop for maybe 20 or 30 euros and that would be food and a fix for the day.

they say you can buy anything on the streets in those two hours before dawn. but how do you buy from a guy who'd rather just stab you for your money than give you a camera for it? maybe it's better to get your camera from best buy. or steal it from someone a little less dangerous. maybe a tourist.

españa

2005-06-05T06:34:00.000-07:00

i miss writing. i have a stack of postcards i bought in barcelona and haven´t written a single one. spain is amazing. three weeks is not enough time. there are people out here spending years travelling around the world, and i´m spending a piddling three weeks in three or four cities in spain. it´s reaching the point where i´ve met too many incredible people and become overwhelmed. i´m struck by the unfairness of having to meet them all for two days and then leave them forever. the problem is that i´m getting a new appreciation for how large the world is, and now my mind needs to expand to take it all in.

somehow my trip to japan made me see how large the world was and scared me, making me appreciate where i came from a bit more. but here, i can live. there´s a whole world of people out here too big for one place. i can´t let myself get settled in seattle. don´t be surprised if i stay there one year and move on. more to come later. it´s my last night in valéncia.

turtles!

2005-05-19T01:56:00.000-07:00

a good story is the best way i know to capture an idea. in science i've learned that if you really understand a concept you should be able to demonstrate it with an example. so it is even with people. if you want to say something about people, say it about one person. and if you want to say something about one person, tell a story that makes him real. even if the story is not.

will was my old roommate. we lived together in carbondale for two years, and i learned to love him. he was a backwoods boy from southern illinois. his family traced their heritage as far back as kentucky, as if they'd just sprung up from the hills. he's my favorite example of a country boy. ignorant as hell, he'd never even seen a black person until he got to carbondale. but willy was an open book. by the time i met him he knew half of campus. he had friends of every race and nationality, and they loved him because his mind was open to everyone.

does will believe in god? i could never tell. to him, church was more of a tradition. his family was protestant in catholic country, and they'd always been outcasts because of it. for will, even tiny carbondale was a haven of tolerance. i can only imagine how starved he'd been for friends back home. when he meets someone new, he's as eager to know them as a puppy. a few cautious city folk never learn to trust his forthrightness. for the rest, within five minutes they realize they've found a gem.

i've only seen two things that get him mad. one is snobbish disdain. a lot of people confuse his ignorance for stupidity. ultimately it's their loss and their mistake, and he knows it. but the other thing is something by which will cannot abide: cruelty. will doesn't have a malicious bone in his body. you might expect a little more viciousness from someone who's killed as many animals as willy, but you'd be wrong. he's fed me more squirrels than i can count, but if i'd shot so much as one turkey out of season, he'd be the first to turn me in. he used to buy baby ducks and hide them in our dorm room until he could go home for the weekend to release them in his pond. but god help you if you wantonly mistreat any animal.

one day will and i were out running. some people were walking their dogs without a leash. the dogs saw geese and went crashing through a pond after them. the geese were annoyed and flew away, so the dogs tried to catch some turtles sunning themselves on a log. will watched in horror. he started muttering: "goddamn dogs." "i fucking hate that. use a fucking leash." "goddammit phil, i can't believe that!" and suddenly he bolted. i didn't catch him for two miles. he stopped long enough for me to catch up, and then he started swearing again and sprinted another two miles without me.

will's limitless energy fascinated me, and i made it my mission to find out how he was capable of things psyching himself up like that. the next time we were at the gym, i was grilling him about it. how was he able to lift so much, so many times? he couldn't say. so i waited until he was laying on the bench and observed him. he closed his eyes for a second, relaxed, opened them, and belted out a set faster than most men do a pushup. the next time he layed down, i asked him what he thought about there with his eyes closed. he ignored me for a second, popped his eyes open, and just as he started his set, he shouted his answer: "turtles!"

i told that story to a group of friends who knew will, and they laughed so hard they cried. every time will came up in conversation, someone would yell "turtles!" the story was told again and again. soon everyone knew it and all agreed that it captured will perfectly. my dilemma was that it wasn't true. i made up the end for a laugh, because the real story had a boring ending and would have required explanation. but the fake story got out of hand, and i didn't have the heart to tell them all it was fictional. years later i was drunk and told dan i made the story up. it broke his heart. he yelled at me for telling him it was a lie. i learned then that there had been nothing wrong with making up the story. it had given us all a way of explaining our friend to strangers. the story helped new people understand him. that it was part lie was unimportant. there had become more reality attached to the fictional story than to the original mundane events.

there's a saying that captures what i learned from that story. i don't remember where i heard this. it goes, "always tell the truth, but tell it how it's meant to be told." big fish makes the same point: sometimes the truth is better told falsely.

what do you want?

2005-05-19T01:37:00.000-07:00

i met someone in a bar a few weeks ago and told her i'm going to work at amazon. it was small talk. usually when i tell a stranger i'm into computers it's with an almost apologetic air. we were at a table of artists and a small indian physicist with a mullet. he was trying to convince them that students aren't very poor. i was shamed by his ignorance and was probably unusually quick with the apology. so quick that it caught the girl off guard. and i got to hear the question usually considered outside the scope of an engineer's imagination: "what do you really want to do?" my past responses have been negative. i want to escape the rat race. not work with computers anymore. everyone knows a self-loathing engineer. he realizes he's whoring his time and mind away but isn't brave enough to break away from his cash cow.

this time i had an answer. i want to write.

murderous nature

2005-05-18T02:07:00.000-07:00

did i tell you the story of the junkie who stole from my house? a day doesn't go by that i don't wish i'd kicked his ass the night i found him. i'm not exaggerating. i stood in the shower for five minutes yesterday imagining punching him in the face. tonight i saw him in a bar and didn't do anything. coover got me in to the bar past close cause she works there, and it was more important to me that i talk to her alone for a half hour than whatever it was i was going to do to this kid. he had a group with him. likely they wouldn't have done anything to defend him, but the bar would've called the cops. i'll never get the chance to beat him to my heart's content because i hate him too much to ever be satisfied. what sucks is that i'll always carry that with me.

okakura kakuzo tells an old story in his famous Book of Tea: a teacher is walking with his student when a rabbit sees the student and runs away. the teacher asks, "why did the rabbit run away?" the student responds, "because he's afraid of me." but the teacher replies, "no, he's afraid of your murderous nature."

violence is something foreign to me, but i want to understand it better. last year i spent several months trying to get someone - anyone - to fight me, but they wouldn't do it. they all said it was because i was more athletic than they were, but ray gave a slightly different response. ray insisted that i was a boxer, because i'd been in one boxing match a month prior. i insisted that i didn't know what i was doing and hadn't had any training. he conceded the possibility that i was unskilled but continued to fight all his friends but me. after a while it became clear that no one would fight me, not because they were afraid of me, but because they were afraid i was too violent for a friendly boxing match. the story of how i came to be viewed that way is almost over now, and i think i'm ready to start telling it.

if you hunt in this area too long, the game will become scarce

2005-05-16T17:33:00.000-07:00

graduation came and went. there were parties every night of the week, and each one had a heavy air of finality. people here are dramatic about their relationships and are fond of eulogizing even the most casual acquaintance. it's superficial and unnecessary but it feels bad anyway and i can't wait for it to be over. matt and ben are gone, and as frustrating as they ever were they were my best friends. i could give two shits about the rest of this city and everyone else in it right now.

writing about it didn't make it feel any better. i need to get out of the house and see who's still here. i leave for barcelona in a week.

the man with the golden tooth

2005-05-10T03:00:00.000-07:00

i think the story of goldentooth has finally come to a close, so it's time to talk about him. goldentooth stands about 6'5", maybe 240 lbs. not fat, just a big human being. he has long greasy hair and a gold front tooth. he's scottish, which has led someone to nickname him "shrek", the scottish ogre. goldentooth studies animal behavior and lives in an abandoned frat house. matt and i speculated that he probably learns most about animal behavior catching bats in the attic of his home. he cleans up occasionally but never stops slouching. he can always be seen standing at the bar talking to some woman or another. the british illini girls affectionately call him "goldie". their affection carries with it an understanding that no one in their right mind would ever succumb to his charms. i met a girl once who claimed that goldentooth tried to undress her in public. he recalled, upon meeting her, what she had been wearing the last time he'd seen her. she had indeed worn the outfit as he claimed, two weeks earlier, but hadn't yet met him. having thoroughly impressed her with his good memory, he suggested that she take off her shawl so he could get a better look at her halter top and be sure to remember it as well. she physically resisted the undressing and actually found herself struggling with the ogre for a moment. he relented though; he's really a harmless creature. persistent though...

he once wrote my friend a poem, having met her only once in a crowd. she stole the poem for me from his room, but he caught her and blocked her in. being quick-witted, she forced him to copy down the poem so she could keep it always. he did so and let her go, and when he saw her present me with the poem triumphantly (stick with me. i swear to god this is all true) he said, "you're a vicious cow, annie." it was, of course, horrible. something about his thoughts being as a flock of birds. something about a bucket of water meaning very little to the morning dew. wouldn't you know, but this ogre plays the bagpipes too. i listened to him play outside his house one time, and another scottish guy said it reminded him of home. surely people don't just stand outside playing bagpipes, i said incredulously. no, he said it's common to see them on street corners, where here we would see saxophones. so, to clarify, i asked, did goldentooth remind him of a homeless person? he replied that he was only just resisting the temptation to throw goldie some change.

the best thing about goldentooth is that he exists, even though he seems too fictional to be real. as hard as you think it is to talk to someone famous or extremely good-looking, try talking to someone you've been giggling about, scheming ways to make him your henchman. i was actually nervous to meet him the first time because we'd been speculating that we could get him to perform tasks for us by offering him a bucket of fish heads.

here's how it will go:

me: "goldentooth, fetch me an axe!"

GT: "yesh, bossh"

he might be able to fight for us, too. the rumor is that he lost his tooth in a fight with several frat boys.

you can only imagine my delight when a friend of mine drunkenly made out with him. you can further imagine my delight on telling her these stories. and dragging her to his party. and the look on her face when she saw him playing the bagpipes.

"goldentooth, our guests are bored. play something lively!"

"but bossh, i'm tired"

"for the love of god, goldentooth, if you talk back to me one more time, there will be no fish heads for a week."

"yesh bossh"

can i just turn in my blog for a thesis? otherwise i'm not graduating

2005-04-19T00:12:00.001-07:00

my favorite pair of pants finally got too tore up to wear outside without looking like a hippie. duf and i were changing his spark plugs and it was damn hot and i was tired of looking like a hippie, so i turned them into shorts without even taking them off. thanks for the knife, santa. now i get to wear my favorite jeans again, and i get to wear them all summer, and i still won't wash them because jean shorts are lame, but cutoffs are trailer park, and i OWN t-park style.

well not everybody understands fashion like i do. i'm out tonight rocking my pants with a white t-shirt, and as i'm climbing into my car this indian girl walks up to me, saying "holy shit" and smiling and staring at me. i told her she had me confused with somebody else. then i notice how she's dressed. jean shorts. something's written on her shirt. she snapped to her senses and asked me, "oh, were you on the barcrawl?" huh? what bar crawl? and she busted out laughing. "oh my god you're not. you're just wearing them. it's the 'students against jean shorts' bar crawl." i shit you not. she warned me not to go to clyborne's or i'd get my ass kicked. more likely i would've made about a hundred friends and they would've bought me drinks.

i've got news for you, bitches. everything comes back eventually. all it takes is one rock star to get the cool kids wearing it, and one movie star to piss off the cool kids and get all the other kids wearing it. like trucker hats and white belts. i've seen cali girls in cutoff highwaters. i swear to god you'll all do this when your ripped jeans start falling apart. and if you weren't lucky enough to have shitty jeans, you'll pay abercrombie to do it for you. i'll be john the baptist of kitschy college fashion. and i'm so damn smug about it. somebody punch me.

one night, two posts. blog heaven

2005-04-19T00:12:00.000-07:00

i've told this story to every person i've seen in the last three days. might as well put it on the internet. it's about how gross and creepy ben is and how women should never give him their phone numbers.

ben met a girl at murphy's thursday night and got her number at closing time as she was leaving. five minutes later he walked out and we lost track of him, thinking he'd gone home with her. he hadn't. he just left us, walked out of the bar, and called his new number. he said "hey this is ben. you want to come over and make out?" the girl declined and said that was an inappropriate thing to say. he said "no, i think it's very appropriate. you should do it." she told him no but said to call her the next day and they'd hang out. which makes her patient, cool, and desperate, which is exactly what ben needs.

of course he didn't call her the next day. he waited until about midnight when he was drunk and suggested somebody else call her and say something inappropriate. matt said he didn't know the girl, so why the hell not. but he was going to pretend to be ben. deal. matt called the number and left a message. didn't even fake a german accent. he said "hi this is ben again. i was hoping you'd come over and i could make your labia sing." great! so then everybody's laughing at matt and ben feels mad brave and wants to leave a funny message too and he calls and says "hey, this is ben. sorry, that wasn't me earlier, that was matt joking around. so i was hoping you'd come over and i could make your ass boil."

ben hung up and smiled all smug feeling clever, and matt and i stared at him mortified, slackjawed. he had obviously crossed the line, and we told him so. "oh come on, i was just having some fun." we had to explain to him that not only had he been vaguely threatening and explicitly creepy, he had also implicated matt. the girl had been with the british illini girls (not true, but don't tell him), who we drink with almost every night. (they hadn't heard, actually. i told them the story last night.) we even convinced him she might call the cops if he didn't apologize. he did, the next morning, when she finally picked up. which only took four tries.

like i said, i told everybody this story. later that night i saw the new kid in our research group, and after he reminded me what his name was, i told him the whole thing, then immediately forgot i'd done it because there was a dog running around with a cigarette in its mouth (sad) and the cops came (funny).

the next night ben and i went to our adviser's house for a party (weird) and deepak (real-life genius, pretty much guaranteed to be famous in ten years, doesn't get out much) met us at the door and asked if it was true that ben asked a girl to come over and make out with him. we said yes, it's true, but however he heard the story, thank god he didn't know the whole thing. oh, but he did. and so did everyone else. adam had remembered every detail and relayed it faithfully to our whole group. even hannaneh knew. sweet quiet iranian hannaneh was giggling. i wouldn't even say "pee" in front of her, let alone "labia". that's when ben turned to me and said, in all seriousness, "phil, i don't know how or when, but i'm going to get you for this." and you know what? he never will. because i own him now. my very own german.

the hpv

2005-04-13T11:55:00.000-07:00

people are still surprised when i bring this up in conversation, despite its being over a week old, so i'll link to it here. merck's new HPV vaccine "gardasil" just passed its phase II trials. for some reason it's just for women, which is disappointing, but c'est la vie. this drug protects against the two strains of the HPV that cause cervical cancer and the two that cause genital warts. supposedly in this trial the experimental group showed a 90% reduction in cervical cancer rates, and i think there were zero instances of genital warts. it's entering phase III trials soon and they hope to sell it in about two years. glaxosmithkline should have a vaccine coming out at about the same time that doesn't protect against warts.

if you know anyone who's died of cervical cancer or anyone suffering with genital warts, you'll be as excited as i am to see this happen. there are an estimated 1 million new HPV infections a year in america alone. these drugs could lead to the eradication of those two illnesses in a generation. in rich countries, that is. the third world is still fucked. the WTO is doing everything it can to guarantee drug companies aren't vicimized by poor people with diseases.

speaking in the native tongue

2005-04-13T01:00:00.000-07:00

i just started richard wright's autobiography, black boy. i just finished huck finn, and wright felt like a great follow-up. his native son essentially taught white people that black men weren't all placid and servile uncle toms and nigger jims. he also has a lot to say about manhood, and it gets tangled up in my head and makes me confused.

on the one hand, i'm 23 and it's springtime in college and i want ass. and the big lesson i've learned in this place is the best way to get some without hurting anyone is to drink a lot, fuck strangers, and lie all you want as long as it's not about your intentions. but it feels really empty. and the drunken conversations, the acquaintances and drinking buddies and familiar conversations, our piercings, baseball, the chief, what's your major, where's your accent from. if a night doesn't end in fucking, it ends bored, drunk, and frustrated. i felt like i wasted my undergrad years. i didn't waste these two years, but i'm disappointed again. this town was boring and dry. worse than that it was cold and disinterested. so businesslike. even sex was like a product, faceless and without personality or style.

so goodbye champaign and goodbye midwest. they say things are better out west. i'll let you know.

bye

2005-03-31T15:00:00.000-08:00

if you haven't heard yet, mitch hedberg died yesterday. i just found out. i could give two shits about terri schiavo, but i'm really upset about mitch. of course i'm embarassed to care so much, but there it is, i'm upset. i don't feel like doing any more work today, just spending the rest of the day toasting a dead comedian. if you want to read the story, google it. i don't do links. this is not that kind of blog. bye mitch.

you're not a dog, are you tommy?

2005-03-30T00:02:00.000-08:00

having returned safely to illinois, i immediately set out on a seven-day bender. saw constantine the first night and stayed up until four...reading sin city. the worst part about that comic is the way it portrays women. the classic stereotype: hot, ready, sometimes badass but dependent on men nevertheless. then i come home and here's champaign in the springtime, driving the stereotype home.

i guess i'm ready to talk about trying to kiss maureen, now that i've outed society for being sexist and making me into the pig i am. maureen has a boyfriend whom i know and like. we have never had feelings for each other. but we drink together. and just before spring break, we were drunk at 4 or so, and i tried to kiss her. whoops! she made the mistake of putting an arm around me and looking me in the eye or something. you know how you look a dog dead in the eye and it gets freaked out and has to bark? (or bite you and be put to sleep. sorry zoe) well, if a human being is looked in the eye just the right way, and he's drunk, and perhaps no better than a dog to begin with, he may forget that you have a boyfriend, whom he knows and likes, and that's it. thirty minutes later we were alone on her couch, we had another moment, and i moved in to kiss. she turned away in the nick of time, and not to be discouraged by disinterest, i went for the neck. tenacity! she did arch her back, and i didn't stop, but she again came to her senses and stood up. and honest to god i had her sit on my lap for five minutes, and we talked it out, and good sense prevailed, and i tried to get her to let me sleep in her bed since now i was sensible and safe, and good sense prevailed again, and i slept on the couch. she said everything was cool and not to worry about it, but we agreed she'd be mighty upset in the morning.

i've feared for nearly two weeks. i left the bar with her alone tonight (it's tuesday. 5:00 somewhere. i'm taking my leisure time very seriously) and finally got a chance to apologize. apologies are a luxury unknown to the average remorseful dog. she said it was water under the bridge, and we had an easy chat on the bus ride home.

so here's the comprehension question straight out of a fifth-grade CAT test: has there ever been a time when you and a platonic friend of the opposite sex made out, fucked, or otherwise aired your mutual attraction, and how did it turn out? did it bring you closer or make your friendship more awkward? you don't have to post. i know it's an awfully personal question. just think about it.

a streetcar named phillip

2005-03-26T00:01:00.000-08:00

yesterday i explored by myself. got to know downtown san francisco and the BART. practice for spain. today emily and i went thrift shopping in the mission, people watching in the haight, and playing around in the presidio. i bought too many books to take back, so i gave emily one entitled "the sexual life", published in 1904 and dedicated to the author's mother. in the haight we bought pizza, and a hippie i'd been checking out asked for a bite. i'd turned down a lot needier people for spare change, of which i have plenty, but i gave her a bite of my pizza because it was a totally unexpected and ballsy request. my pizza was gooey and delicious. she took a huge bite and put her pierced lips all over it. (as a side note, i think most americans' germophobia is more suited to AIDS patients than healthy adults and is probably related to our puritan past.) then she said thank you and walked away. there was no real generosity in my compliance, and i don't think there was any real need in her request.

so san francisco has got me thinking about taboos again. drugs, voluntary homelessness, fetishism. sf is full of that, and they seem fine with it. and the midwest has such a problem with all of it. i know i'm going to have a great time when i go back home to illinois though. it's springtime there, and the symbolism of the end of my last midwestern winter is on my mind. maybe i can enjoy it there more knowing that seattle is just a few months away.

noe valley

2005-03-24T10:16:00.000-08:00

i'm staying with emily and grady in san francisco. they're great hosts, and they've helped me find places to go, things to do, they put me up, and except when emily has to work, i get all her time. noe valley is a big family neighborhood. everyone here is about ten years older than us. also, twenty years younger than us, if you count those as people and not just delicious meals. so the nightlife here is nonexistent. but the mission district is only a few blocks away, and i have the next two days to explore it. so, here goes...

the weather is rainy, i wish you were here

2005-03-23T00:53:00.000-08:00

i'm in palo alto, and this is what i can tell you: it's really quiet, it rains all the time, and the hotels are really far away from the stanfords. it's possible that my experiences are more a result of bad luck than a lameness innate to ca, but, you know, fair warning, don't come here, it sucks.

if you do come, though, go to the happy donut on el camino. the donuts here are as good as mel-o-cream, plus they're open 24 hours. that means fresh donuts at 2am!!! how can people gush about krispy kreme (NYSE: KKD)? god what a stupid name. why doesn't mel-o-cream or some other good local place get a regional franchise going? i'll tell you why! because krispy kreme are marketing geniuses and have branded their joe-average glazed donuts as the greatest thing since sliced bread. dave thomas was a ruthless cunt and could have killed their brand if he hadn't blown his brains out. *sigh*

matt's plane gets in town tomorrow and we might stay thursday night in a sorority house in santa barbara. i'm still serious about this two girlfriends idea. i'm not going to cheat on them, and i'll be honest with them and treat them right and beat people up for them. i saw a McCafe here, attached to a mcdonalds. i'd been wandering up and down el camino for an hour by that time and would have settled for anything, but apparently that kind of desperation didn't drive in enough customers. there was a sign: "the mccafe test in this market has ended". surprising, that californians would shun a company that openly refers to their neighborhoods as markets.

lonely phillip

2005-03-22T23:15:00.000-08:00

eyal and i were going to go drinking last night after the AAAi submission website closed at midnight. but the considerate AAAI allowed submissions until 3am pacific time or later, so my friends kept submitting, and eyal had to stay at the happy donut to help them. hannaneh went 40 hours without sleep, all of them working. by the end it was a blessing when the website closed. bless you, AAAI. we celebrated at denny's instead of a bar, and that was basically the end of college. maybe it was the moons-over-my-hammy, but it was a bit of an anti-climax. the real problem is i got interested in what i'm doing. a long time ago i had to stop believing so i wouldn't be frustrated all the time - just go on auto-pilot, do what i'm told, and get the degree. i didn't believe we'd get into AAAI, but i put myself under the gun anyway, because the project deserved that. by last week, i'd given up class, work, weekends, friends, exercise, and real food. and i still don't know how it happened, but somewhere in there i took the reins, and by the time i got here the whole project had crystallized. how do i explain this? i'll have an unnoticed thesis, a small paper ready to publish in november, and a project to be published next year that'll get me some respect. but it doesn't take away the feeling of disappointment right now that i didn't produce something great when it really counted.

if you're going somewhere, take the bus

2005-03-15T06:35:00.000-08:00

i just found out the bus that goes to my work runs a block from my house. laziness, ho! so we took the bus back from swimming this morning. when you've been crawling along at less than a mile an hour, a bus feels like you're in a fucking stock car with your feet out the window.

friday night we went cosmic bowling. they call it cosmic so they can charge $8 for a pitcher. the bartender was cosmically rude, but i'd be bitter too if i was 50 and had to serve miller light to guys in neon green shoes on a friday night. i won the first game but self-destructed like rick ankiel when someone pointed out that not only was there a speedometer, but i had been rolling the fastest. i rolled about a 75 and i think i rolled so fast the speedometer broke in the 8th frame.

then i found out that this guy pete was mike roller's roommate freshman year. pete's a grad student with graying hair who likes baseball and bands and lived in paris, texas for a while. i had a crush on his girlfriend before, but now it's a whole couple crush.

back to work! the AAAI deadline is a week from today and after that i'll explore frisco for a couple days and after that i'm gonna try to have two girlfriends at the same time.

getting up

2005-03-08T23:16:00.000-08:00

i got up before 7am three times this week. you're probably saying holy shit right now. i don't even start in on the lap of luxury (watching sports center in my underwear) until 10 at least. but i'm getting in shape for running season. that means (a) start swimming, (b) stop eating so much, and (c) don't bother running, stretching, or buying the inserts i need! yes, 1km of lap swimming in two weeks is certain to prepare me for the kentucky derby (half) marathon. this is the marathon that gives you two free passes to churchill downs just for participating! you have to use them a week before the derby, but i bet it'll be electric there without all those horses and people to distract us...from that electricity.

yes, 6:30am, three times. 1km. that's 500m a day. you do the math...that's 1000m total, into two days...carry the two...that's only two days! why was i up so early the third day if not to swim? why, drinking! oh yes, friday was unofficial st. patrick's day at the U of I. the famous local holiday invented because some drunken paddies felt cheated one year when the real st. patrick's fell on spring break. and on many (most?) lucky years, the real day is not actually during spring break, so we celebrate twice! the best thing about unofficial is that the university continues to function, even though half the campus starts drinking before 10am. a couple years ago unofficial somehow coincided with engineering open house. every 17-year-old engineer considering a promising career in nerddom at Illinois had to (got to? no, these are engineers) had to wade through a sea of drunks to get to their programming contests and poster presentations. classes continue, and many people go...drunk. they say in some of the bigger lecture halls you'll see a few diehards in the back still drinking through class.

sadly, my class was at 12:30, so i skipped it. it's usually very easy to make a 12:30 class on a friday, but not when you've been drinking since 8 (it would have been 7, but we had to settle for breakfast until the bars opened). andy and british matt had to give a presentation at 9:45, which means they'd been guzzling green beer for an hour and a half. there's a bunch of old jokes about a priest drinking vodka at the pulpit to stay relaxed. this was probably similar, but more pathetic than funny. neeta and my new friend pete showed up to carry the torch, and we played our first hand of cards at about 10:00 with a group of strangers who'd known somebody or other. matt and andy showed up, somewhat sobered up, and we switched bars for some lunch at 11:30. having been in a bar over three hours, i was astonished to walk outside to warm sunlight, the most beautiful day yet this year, and hordes of people in the streets. at the lunch bar i saw two Carries: current carrie (caroline) and last year accident carrie, who buzzed her hair with a #4 guard a few weeks after we made out and jacked her face on something, and then had a friendly fistfight with lexi a month later, which is a great story for another time.

lunch made me feel sick and exhausted. matt found some girls to take our pitcher, and i napped on neeta's bed while she and matt watched harold and kumar. when matt found me 30 minutes later i was in the fetal position hugging a pillow. drunk and adorable. sour kraut ben had shown up, which spellt the end of a nice morning. andy and pete had left to spend the afternoon in meetings, half drunk, smelling of booze, and sporting over-21 wrist bands. we returned to lunch bar (legends) without neeta, now having acquired maureen, by all (three of) her friends who haven't slept with matt, and a nice guy named sam. and we played cards and drank more horrible green beer uneventfully until dinner. the streets at this point are still full of people, mostly now those who have only been out since their classes ended, the first wave having long since gone home to bed. i saw tessa working at jimmy john's. she came in drunk because they needed her, the rush was so bad. they sent her home later because she threw up. full of pitas, we went to yet another bar, and feeling that it was now dark outside and we'd been drinking all day, if we were going to make it really feel like night time, we should switch to whiskey. at this point the day starts accelerating because i remember less of it. we left that bar for murphy's at 10:00. what better place to spend the last four hours of unofficial? here the jack and cokes were the same price we'd been paying, but they were now doubles. i met a hot welsh girl. mo's friend showed up, upon whom she quite plainly had a big girl crush. at some point there were shots. andy and pete came back, this time with more fun: boston ben. boston ben is way more fun than german ben, but sadly not as tall. his lack of stature and confidence stop him from impressing girls (actually just the confidence) but not from trying. he struck out a few times but left with a sweet girl we all liked, whose name must have been kate, since that's what was on the back of her shirt.

and the night ended in lexi's room high atop the dirtiest house in urbana, our group whittle down to me, ben, matt, and maureen. finally settling down to pbr and rum straight from the bottle. liquor lost the power to affect us. i fell victim to dana, a sad sad girl who never gets tired of talking about how messed up her boyfriend is. she tried to tell matt about astrology, and he responded by reading her palm and telling her it was in her stars to be gullible. me, i just disappoeared when she went to the bathroom.

and that's how it all ended. no sex, no adventures, just 21 hours of alcohol. and i wonder why i'm getting stupider.

lame roommates

2005-03-01T07:28:00.000-08:00

My roommates' joke hardcore band is playing the courtyard tonight. I'm not mentioning the name, because they'll google for it tomorrow and find my blog, and that is not acceptable. The plan was to go back to springfield to do my taxes tonight, but I forgot about this. So if you wanna see me, I'll probly be in town thursday night.

the trick to a successful joke band is to find a good drummer. this is the trick to any successful band. a choady kid someone knew joined the band as rhythm guitar or something. someone made a derogatory comment about god during practice and he took offense. he asked if they could do the same show without the blasphemy. so we invented a joke on the way to schnucks that matt'll use as stage banter:

jesus, santa, and the easter bunny walk into a bar. santa offers to buy a round of shots. how many shot glasses does the bartender bring? anyone? guesses?

none! bartenders don't serve imaginary people.

kid doesn't know about the joke yet. tonight he'll have his little moment in the garden of gethsemane and decide his soul is more important than this dumb band. his first night as a fake rock star will be his last, and his bible study group will applaud his decision. hopefully they'll pray for this stupid band to get hit by lightning. i'll be praying that god lets me see it.

todd

2005-02-26T20:18:00.000-08:00

another thing about last night. to understand why it's special, you have to understand our landlord todd. we've seen him trying to do yard work drunk at 2am. he works in his dad's chiropractic clinic, and he lives in the house next door. when something breaks, he has to call his aged dad to come over and fix it. he's super nice and has a ponytail and a bulldog named otis. we've never seen todd smoke, and he never talks about it, but clearly the man smokes a lot of pot. he's the definition of the lovable fuckup stoner. well, frank said he talked to the taller of the two no-makeout girls from my last post. she said she lives two doors down (on the other side of todd). hey, she's our neighbor! so they swapped todd stories. she knows otis. we've seen him drunk. she has smoked with todd. mother of god, she smoked with our landlord. wait for it...wait for it...boner!

so she told frank to stop by anytime. i think we should bring a present. any suggestions? what kind of gift says "be our friends"?

knobstacle course

2005-02-26T10:47:00.000-08:00

This blog is turning into all weekend recaps all the time. Meh. Last night we threw a party. They've been in a steady decline for the past year or so, culminating in our all-time biggest failure party in december, at which we (a) lost money (b) broke an amp, a speaker, and my cd player (c) had several things stolen (d) didn't have any fun. Last night's party was way better, and here's how I know: pretty strangers were (a) flashing (b) dancing in their bras (c) not stealing anything. Two tall girls almost made out, but at the last minute they ended up being sisters. Dan and his friends came to visit from Carbondale, and I introduced him to a hot girl with mad piercings and a boyfriend, and then they made out. Hot Sara(h?) did her usual bit of walking around the party absently, accepting shots and making friends with dozens of unworthy hipsters, leaving a trail of boners. Her boyfriend is gonna have a heart attack at 30. The papers will say it was drugs, but we'll know better, you and me.

A waste pipe blew a hole in the morning, and we spent the rest of the day getting the landlord to fix it and cleaning up the gross dishwater that covered our basement floor. I soaked it up with a bag of sackcrete. So to get to the kegs you had to pass through a concrete-and-dishwater moat. When we throw a party we cover the living room in plastic, and we close off the rest of the house so all you can get to is the living room, the basement, and a bathroom, so you can track concrete wherever you want. Student patrol showed up and gave Bert a written warning that we were too loud. They must have a stack of those sheets in the pockets of their reflective vests. Da-da-da student patrooool! No cops though.

I did a great job of inviting people, and they did a great job of showing up. Yes, right down to the last three girls I've slept with. ohhhhhh. Trouble. Hateful ex had nasty words for me and is still here (go away). Haven't-called-her-since-we-had-sex showed up (because i called her finally) and we had a hug and i was supposed to find her and her friends free cups and i failed and got drunk. And current girl stuck with me the whole night and was blissfully unaware of the others. British Matt calls a night like that a "knobstacle course", and I made it through. Neeta came despite having thrown up earlier and talked about how much tension it caused to make out with her roommates. Phil hears this as if it were explicit instructions: "if you get me drunk and give me a hot stranger, I'll make out with her (and you)." i told her the two girls not making out were sisters, and she didn't see why that should stop them. neeta doesn't have sisters, which explains how she could be serious about something like that. but jesus, still, the very suggestion.

rambling post, hope you enjoyed, i'm going running.

goodnight dirtballs

2005-02-20T23:45:00.000-08:00

BLOOMINGTON, IL - another weekend recap! mine's good because i'm the only one ballsy enough to give you dirt (read: be indiscreet). more on that later. friday night ended with an anti-climactic run-in with the saddest soul in urbana: Backpack. this is the kid who pretended to drink turpentine at our last party and made off with a dewalt drill, possibly two shitty speakers, and bert's copy of 1984 i had sitting next to the toilet (in his backpack. ere go, nickname). my two months of tracking him down led nowhere, and natalie spots him at a random party in the hippiest party i've ever had the pleasure of ruining. i got in his face for an hour, took his money ($6 is all i get for a $250 drill and a book i was in the middle of), and left when caroline asked me to leave. no drill, no ass-kicking, no restitution, no apology; just a pathetic snot-nosed hippie and a strange lesson about victimization and the futility of revenge....uncomfortable silence....saturday!

laura's birthday was great. i debated at the store whether to bring merlot or cabernet sauvignon, and whether to get the big bottle so everyone could have some, or to get the smaller one because big bottles look so cheap. from that moment it just got classier. melissa was too drunk to say hi. she slapped my ass and dipped into the bathroom with laura to tell secrets. we spent the walk to the bar scheming how to get her into *****'s *****, **** **** **** ***, with an occasional warning that i wasn't being smooth enough. the men spent the night in man fashion, buying rounds for each other, making friends with another group of guys over our mutual determination to save the president from french terrorists, armed only with giant plastic guns and a jack and coke. those crafty french snuck at least 200 special ops ninjas onto air force one, but they were no match for me and ed. k didn't look comfortable until he found a stool next to a doorway, a seasoned doorman who might never readjust to civilian life. then we let a bear mauling a woman on tv (in slow motion! three times!) distract us from our offensive linemen duties. a third-string safety found a hole and got his hands on our quarterback. this was the sack of his career. we didn't even give him a hard time. we were so stunned by his skater shoes, sagging pants with red bvd's, jack-the-pumpkin-king beanie, and no kidding absent front teeth that all we could do was record it on cell phone cameras. none of us are sure how we let him take her home. anyway, ***** has herpes and syphillis now thanks to us. cheers!

i spent the rest of the weekend with sambo, but not before checking out this pierce brosnan lookalike's friend's party. we got there just in time to see the place clearing out. one of the "hosts" was showing us the door by sticking his tongue out and miming how he would masturbate on us if we didn't get out fast enough. shoo had just enough time to capture the experience by taking a picture of the stolen heineken banner with holes cut in it to allow for the mounting of $10 speakers. instant mtv grind dance party. i understand guys: it's not rape if you earned it by throwing the krunkest party ever.

thank you ISU, for making me feel as decent and wholesome as the potato salad at a st. alfonsus pot luck.

are you there god? it's me, phillip. step the fuck off my brother.

2005-02-10T09:18:00.000-08:00

Got a call from turd-face brother Sam last night. He left me a message last month that was thirty seconds of him pissing. That's the kind of phone call I like - the kind that at worst makes me want to beat him up. The last night kind is the kind I don't like - the kind where he has good news.

Sam called to tell me that he's seriously talking about marrying his girl Libby. It's not the first time. Before I met her I used to yell at him when he'd talk about shit like that. Then she charmed the shit out of me and Mom convinced him to have a little patience with the marriage stuff, so we were cool. Now he tells me he talked to Libby's pastor (he says the guy's sort of a father figure to her). He told the guy, "I wanna marry Libby, but we're probably gonna wait 2 1/2 years." The pastor responds, "No way, if God wants you to get married, don't wait. Do it as soon as you can!" And then he whips out a notebook and starts calculating how soon they can do it. And from this discussion, Sam's again talking about putting off school a trimester to get married to the girl he's only been dating two months.

I know part of the problem is I hate marriage and I hate evangelists because of how close I came to both. But even if I'd been a heathen from birth, it would be hard to see my brother get mixed up in all this stuff. Having religion is a good thing, and Sam needs it more than anybody. But he's trusting and he believes if a pastor tells him to do something, that pastor heard it directly from God, like the blues brothers. And just between you and me, I think Sam's rushing into marriage for the sex. For serious, he's not having any more sex before marriage. Not even kissing, not even groping. Not even cuddling. So he's actually trying to get married sooner for all the sex. Creepy.

So while I'm trying to understand the most basic notions of decency and modesty (and why everyone seems to think they're so goddamn great. really, i just don't understand), Sam has totally switched sides on me. He's even encouraging me to try abstinence. As if! Why can't there be a religion that encourages you to be honest with your many sexual partners, call them the next day, use a condom and birth control, and keep a well-trimmed bush? Why does Jesus have to say that the only way to deal with sex is to not have any?

happy ash wensday

2005-02-09T11:51:00.000-08:00

Mardi Gras has come and gone, and I didn't get flashed even once. For those of you who didn't flash: now is the time for dignity and restraint, not last week.

Mardi Gras was like Christmas, like Melissa said. Ed and I begged for a rubber chicken from every float. Instead we got beads from guys who felt sorry for us. Mostly they were throwing at Jessie and missed. Someone hit me in the face with penis beads and Jessie caught them. I was fine with not getting the beads, but spare me the fleischpeitsche to the face. My friends wanted to see the French Quarter, so we went on Saturday night after endymian, and it was the lamest, grossest, most crowded college-y thing I've ever seen. Add to that the sad lack of breasts, and you can understand why I liked the parades so much better. The parades promised me beads and high school cheerleaders (if they're wearing short skirts and doing dances that involve shaking something, somehow it feels acceptable to take their picture and flirt with them) and the parades delivered in spades. Plus I got some dubloons from the KKK. Who knew?!

Thanks, NOLA, for the great time. You made me feel a lot better about people. Somehow you make it OK to drink on the streets and in front of little kids. I didn't have a problem with that to begin with, but the North is more uptight. And speaking of uptight, somehow I was in the middle of the biggest titfest in the world, and I didn't see any flesh. Weird, right? But I don't blame New Orleans. The big easy wanted to show me. It showed me on new year's. I was just in the wrong places at the wrong times.

But Illinois, it was your responsibility to pick up the slack on Fat Tuesday. We went to the normal hangouts (Murphys), where everyone was decked out in three sets of beads and a coat. We brought a dozen of the lame beads from the parades and easily topped the rest of the bar. But the best I got was "I think the beads are tops, but I'm not gonna show you my tits for them" from some british girl. Maybe you thought you were slutty when you got dressed tonight, but I just proved you wrong. Mikey's new fun girlfriend wanted to take our beads to the slutty bars and make some deals, but instead we went to the after-party for the Wilco show. Great decision. That involved one guy in eye makeup who looked like he worked sound for someone who knew someone important and wanted you to know it, and a hundred kids in matching t-shirts who'd worked the show. We got one girl to work up the courage to flash Natalie (in a corner so nobody else could see) for beads, and to hear her do it you'd think she just had her first orgy with farm animals.

Purple is the color of sexual frustration, and I saw a whole town decked out in it last night.

pheromones

2005-01-30T23:30:00.000-08:00

melissa and shoo have been talking about their scary workouts for the last month. i haven't been scared of a gym for two years or so, but if you remember me 40 lbs ago, you can bet i know a little about being intimidated. i definitely remember benching about 105 lbs without a spot one day and getting the bar stuck on my chest. i had to roll the thing down my chest, across my stomach, over my junk, and onto my knees before i could get up. free weights don't come with instructions, and they never will, because meatheads like watching ordinary people struggle. a weak or confused guy is the object of the regulars' unspoken scorn, but a woman is always safe. if a guy sees a woman struggling, he offers her pointers. it makes his balls feel big when he guides her arms up to show her the proper form for a military press. hotter girls sometimes make a game out of struggling on the free weights to get men to fawn over them. but those are the brave girls. usually there's a clear separation of the sexes: men on our weights, women and their boyfriends on the machines. if a man has to wait for a girl to finish with a bench, it's a territorial invasion. that's just what i think though. is it the same for you?

three weeks ago all our weights and cardio equipment were moved to a new area and combined. we don't even have a room. it's just one end of a gymnasium. from our squat racks and pec decks, we look right and see basketball games, and left to see stairclimbers, tvs, and asses. someone had the foresight to group treadmills, weights, and machines into their own contiguous areas, but there are no boundaries. they invade our turf with their distracting short shorts and inappropriate irreverence for the seriousness of our rituals. we invade theirs with lewd stares and lewder talk. machines have even been arranged to give the most sexual exercises a modicum of privacy. the inner thigh machines that look like stirrups in an obgyn office are probably the worst. they have to face the wall, so close to it that there's no room to walk in front on your way to the cable crossovers. we're slowly learning to tolerate each other, but the shift has everyone on edge - and turned on.

it always reminds me of that song, worked up so sexual. i guess you guys don't know indie loser dance-rock songs. download that one, by the faint. it's about strippers.

v-day (the born romantic)

2005-01-28T16:07:00.000-08:00

you remember jenny? when my brother met her, he took me aside and whispered, "hey phil, she's got nice gazongas" and he hit me on the arm, like "attaboy". i broke up with her on valentine's day last year.

there was a longer post where this one is now, but when i wrote it i realized how much it still bothers me. when you hear the story, it doesn't sound quite so bad, but then you hear more, and it sounds a lot worse. i'll tell you in person sometime.

old roommates

2005-01-18T23:29:00.000-08:00

shoo is sad he doesn't come home to three day old tv dinners. looking back, i've had some filthy places and a lot of roommates. here they are:

tom
francisco
jude and sato
andy and sato
will and absent matt
will and jay
will and darrel (they fought over how many different animals they killed)
will (now willy) and tony
emily o, lisa, toomey, and emily w
frank, matt, rory, and bert

and if everything goes my way, next year it'll be just me, dan, the dog, and you fuckers sleeping on my couch. some of you will try to sleep in my bed, but the dog will get upset. he likes you, but don't fuck with him.

homesick

2005-01-17T23:08:00.000-08:00

this one's a weekend recap. you won't know the names, so let's make it a game. you try to guess which of these people are hippies.

friday was murphy's with british matt. frank came out because his sworn enemy demian was coming over to our house. matt's friend maureen brought out some friends, and they brought their boyfriends. i was charming and polite. an ethnomusicology major dug it. i told her where i'm from and she said it's better down here than a lot of suburban kids think. i said shit yeah, and told her about some rosalies-type places at the edge of town. she told me how underappreciated the local jazz/funk scene is.

back to maureen's place for beers. the jazz girl wanted to smoke. the prettiest girl's boyfriend passed out. frank and i said it didn't make sense, but i bet you five bucks to a stale donut he makes her breakfast in the morning and she doesn't have to worry about him sleeping around.

saturday was remarkably similar, but with more germans. sunday i went to bloomington and took sam and his new girl of two months out to dinner. he wants to marry her. so do i. but he needs to stop talking about it.

matt and anna were having a shot contest when i got back. matt almost lost on oatmeal, but somehow it was saltwater that did him in. anna took it all like a champ, so i made her house sweetheart.

now the payoff: which of these people are hippies?

happy new year

2005-01-13T13:23:00.000-08:00

The fashion is to be both racy and cryptic.

Last year I spent new year's eve in urbana with Dan and Jenny and Dan's friend Jesse. When you spend a year drinking nothing but cold duck and forties, you have to end the year with something special. So we each drank two bottles of cold duck, it being a holiday.

This year Ed and Phil and I went to new orleans. Farah and Shoo both backed out, on account of having shrivelly little balls. This year's theme was burning yourself. We mixed fireworks and lighter fluid with beer and liquor to get started, and I burned my face a little. Then it was off to city park for the christmas tree bonfire. There were house parties on every block, and the street was choked with people lighting off all kinds of fireworks. The smoke was so thick that at 11:45 when the bonfire was lit, we could barely see its 30-foot flames from two blocks away. Nick told us beforehand that he heard there might be naked hippies there dancing around the fire, like burning man or something. As it turns out, he was talking about us. There was someone there with bongos, and there were a few people prancing around the fire, but most of them were with us. This lead to a discussion later about whether it was more gay to skip or to prance. People were throwing bottle rockets into the fire, so the whole crowd was actually being attacked by the fire. As the fire died down and we drained our champagne, Ed decided we either weren't in enough danger or didn't look enough like hippies. So he took off his shirt and ran through the fire. Then Philly got pressured into it. Guess who was next? No, you're way off! It was me! Then the girls took their turns. Allana ran through in her sandals and got second-degree burns. Riley and I carried her back to her car. As this story comes to a close, you might find yourself wondering "why the hell would you get into a car with someone who couldn't even walk on her own?". Well, I thought it was blisters and not booze that made her a gimp. As it turned out, I was wrong. She drove toward Bourbon Street (I say "toward" loosely, meaning only that Bourbon street was our destination, not that we were really headed in that direction) like a bat out of hell. She ran up on a curb going fifty, lost control, started laughing and lost even more control, blew a stop sign, and ramped a curb to go flying into a park. And did she stop? No, it didn't even phase her. She went tearing through the park and got back out onto the street. I jumped out and yelled at her. Riley said "oh, no, she's fine. does this all the time." I took this to mean that I had met a man who, like a lemur, had absolutely no survival instinct. I did get her to stop driving, but that meant we didn't make it to bourbon street. I'm the only one who remembers the drive that night, so it seems fitting that I should write it down here to remember it.

That night Ed got slapped in the face, and I got punched. He deserved it. I didn't. But I sure had a cool shiner the next day when we finally went to bourbon street and saw breasteses and girls making out.

On the drive back home we fell in love with top 40 country music. I've had the stereo in my pickup tuned to WIXY 100.3 today's top country ever since.

you're awesome

2004-12-21T00:56:00.000-08:00

this summer i was down in carbondale helping dan's brother joe move to a new place, because joe and kate had a baby and the shack they were in was no place for a family. it was, however, a nice place for meth, and as we were loading shit into a truck, this guy pulls up in a camaro and yells out "this place for sale?"
joe tells him no, it's for rent. for $200 a month, this dream home could be yours.
"really? hey candy!" he's yelling at a woman in the camaro. "it's only 200 a month!" back to us: "i always drive by this place and i always tell candy i says, 'candy, one day you and me gonna live in that place'"
keep in mind this place has a 7-foot ceiling and wood shingles for siding. now the guy wants to take a look around. joe stops him:
"the baby's asleep in there. maybe you should set up an appointment with the landlord."
"oh, right."
uncomfortable silence. we have a lot left to move and it's time for old boy to leave, but we can't stop staring. i can only count four teeth in his entire mouth.
"i'm from aurora originally"
aw, shit
"you know where aurora is?"
no, dipshit. no idea. oh, wayne's world? ok then.
"used to be in a band up there. three bean salad. we called it three bean salad cause it was my three buddies. and me, i did the sound"
girls, if you take one thing from this story, please, always remember to wear sexy underwear no matter what. you never know where you'll be when you meet the roady from three bean salad.
more uncomfortable silence.
"lost all my teeth"
oh? in the war?
"we was backstage one night after a show and this drunk guy comes running up to me and he says 'dude, you're awesome!' and then he punched me in the face"

next time i come down to so ill, i'm bringing gift certificates to planned parenthood.

you can't say that on television

2004-12-13T23:04:00.000-08:00

i don't like hippies, and that's a fact. as it turns out, i'm genetically predisposed to hate them. i was at a party with ben and jana, who are germans, when jana stopped me:

jana: "did you find any hippies?"
hippy: "why are you looking for hippies? are you going to persecute them?"
jana: "no, we're german. we're going to execute them"
ben: "and send them on a train to a work camp in utah"
jana: "and they'll finally have to take a shower"

i haven't seen jana since, so it's possible that hell just swallowed her up that night.

...and shut your mouth

2004-11-30T01:17:00.000-08:00

my brother said the prayer at thanksgiving:
"...lord, we don't mind the terrible weather you brought us today. in fact, it's actually a blessing"

my aunt:
"yes, jesus"

my brother again:
"thank you jesus"

my dad and i were both half-drunk on boxed wine. he laughed. i punched him.