Monday

Nice Isn't Just a City in France

“Are you doing resolutions this year?” was the question.

Hadn’t planned to do any retarded resolutions this year. Generally, I believe that New Year resolutions are for losers given that “new year’s day” is just another day and that wild promises made are sore promises broken. Just hoping that something will happen because you resolve for it to happen (or pray for it) doesn't magically make things happen. Year after year you're still gonna be fat, you'll still smoke, and you somehow manage to keep your shitty job. Resolve that!

But, uh, I guess I’ve made a couple of the resolutions before – but it was just, you know, a joke ('06); weird anti-resolutions and such ('05). I mean, c’mon, who believes this shit anyhow? I was being "bloggy."
[2006]

[2005]
Well I did get a cat. Max, Max, Max…. He’s one bad ass feline motherfucker. I did make some records, made some books, etc. I did…do some, er, stuff (got laid off, visited a lot of hospitals, etc.). I'm more famous than ever before (and that's bittersweet, of course). So, there is some fulfillment for past resolutions.

OK I do have one resolution. Here’s my resolution. Seriously (wait for it). I’ve actually thought this through on more than one occasion while driving around in the car. Here it is: “Be nicer to people.”

I know what you’re thinking. What?! He’s gone fuckin' nuts! Kind? Ty? What? I know, it’s like 1+1= chocolate turnip airplanes.

Let me explain: I do not mean I'm gonna go out of my way to meet and greet and help and listen to people I don’t know. Nope. That’s lame as hell. What I mean is I might try to not to go out of my way to actually let people annoy me (active annoyance rejection & prevention - AARP).

What I mean is to actively ignore people more. To let the lame mopes exist peacefully. Now this doesn’t mean we should stop turning off their phones and TeeVees (‘cuz that shit's just fun as hell). It means living happy and free in my own George W. Bush* isolation bubble.

Now how is that “nice” you might want to know. Well I stay out of their hair by not allowing them into mine. We'll see how that works

So if you don’t like my resolution, you can fuck off...I mean you can simply just live in your small world of consumerism and prefabrication. And I'll live in my own customized world.

So, whatever. Here we go. It's a new year.

* Remember, Bush has "resolve" and is always "resolute."

Non-Apology Apology

"Am I sorry I tried?" she said. "Yes and no. Yes, because it accomplished little except to throw away the rest of my life. ... And, no, I'm not sorry I tried, because at the time it seemed a correct expression of my anger."

- Sara Jane Moore, 77
[clicky]

(Another) The Last Fallen Soldier


New Year's Eve 2K7


Saturday

Music 2007

Nothing really changed for me since this late October post: [clicky]. Add Jay-Z's newest "joint," and that pretty much wraps it. Ween was good. White Stripes were good. Fiery Furnaces came close to shifting paradigms. Jay and Kanye were very polished. Yawn, right?

What the hell? 2007 was pretty weak in big music. There wasn't even much in little music that moved me. Person Pitch won the Pitchfork derby (good). And, Burial topped Metacritic (good) where nothing from the past two years even cracked the all-time top-10 (not good). Like I said, what the hell?

Me? I think I made two albums this year; maybe an album and an half. Was Free Milk Seminar '06 or '07? Maybe 2007. I know that OSSOFG was this autumn, that I remember. But that remains incomplete. At least until inspiration drives it onward. Right now it's a collection of songs. But, it'll mature...Panda Bear (and Priceless Banter) saw to that.

I guess we'll see what leap year brings.

Or, to clarify, we'll see what we bring to the leap year. Clear?

Kittens


Friday

Max


Max Noah Hardaway is a member of a syndicate of other flamboyantly rich, jive-talking cats, including AKKOLADE, Bensington Butters, and Ray Smuckles. They spend their time on theme parties, weekend retreats and plotting to sabotage the other members' images.

Analogy (makes sense to few)

Ray: Blue Devils
Roast Beef: SCV

Dogs: Blue Devils
Cats : SCV

Raiders: Blue Devils
49ers: SCV

Giants: Blue Devils
A's: SCV

Apples: Blue Devils
Oranges: SCV

Microsoft: Blue Devils
Apple: SCV

Yankees: Blue Devils
Red Sox: SCV

Cowboys: Blue Devils
Patriots: SCV

BMW: Blue Devils
VW: SCV

David Cross: Blue Devils
Patton Oswalt: SCV

Starbucks: Blue Devils
Seattle's Best: SCV

Giant Foods: Blue Devils
Whole Foods: SCV

USC: Blue Devils
UCLA: SCV

Nike: Blue Devils
Adidas: SCV

Hillary: Blue Devils
Obama: SCV

Lakelands: Blue Devils
Kentlands: SCV

FYI.

[clicky]

Not Enough Carver (NY'er Shit)

It's too bad that I hadn't read enough Raymond Carver in my life, but we move forward:
[Clicky] for NY'er article about artist and editor.

[Clicky] for NY'er story reprint of Carver's Beginners.

Also of note from 12.24.07 issue, Sasha reviews the Led Zeppelin concert [clicky].
Whatever, huh?

Thursday

Where Were You?

Just pumped us some Exxon® gas and was standing in the McDonalds® just outside of Gibson, PA (off Interstate 81). Looked up at the CNN® stream with disdain (because I hate the TeeVee in public places) when I realized that Benazir Bhutto was just killed.

Dang!

Scene: I was the weird guy staring at the TeeVee in near tears because he wasn't surprised but horribly disappointed; in everything. Alone, arms flopped to the sides. Commerce happening all around. I was that guy. Sad.

Damn it all. Damn it all to hell.
"Daddy, what's wrong?" said the kid.

"It's hard to lose an election when the opposition is dead," I said.

"That's not nice." She said it in heartfelt consolation.

"Are you O.K.?" she wondered.

"Yep. I have you." That's what I said. And, I meant it too.
Damn it all. Damn it all to hell.

Lisle, NY (Arcade)

Wednesday

Chris Says...

"I am writing to you from my new twenty-two inch monitor. (Is it unnecessary to mention that it is flat panel any more?) I've got Gordon Ramsay's "The F-Word" playing in a YouTube screen to the right of this text editor. I feel like I'm "blogging" at a rich friend's house. It may take a while for me to take the word "blog" out of quotes, since it's such a stultifying neologism (or is it a portmanteau?)."

- Chris [clicky]

B & Her Family (Cousins!)

A Drive With Hank





Balls

Monday

Untitled

Ithaca, NY (3)



Blessings & Curses of Clintonism

"Lost in all this is the fact that, back in the day, Clinton and his New Democrats were themselves the outsiders taking on the ruling interest groups of the Democratic establishment the analog to bloggers and MoveOn.org activists, albeit from a different ideological direction. And it took no small amount of courage, at the end of the Reagan era, to argue inside the Democratic Party that the liberal orthodoxies of the New Deal and the Great Society, as well as the culture of the antiwar and civil rights movements, had become excessive and inflexible. Not only were Democratic attitudes toward government electorally problematic, Clinton argued; they were just plain wrong for the time."

"There is, however, a rich paradox in the strategy that Obama and Edwards are employing in their quest to dislodge Clinton from her perch atop the field. The plain fact is that, for all their condemnation of Bill Clinton’s governing philosophy, both Obama and Edwards — and just about every other Democratic candidate in the field, with the possible exception of Dennis Kucinich, who seems to have been teleported straight from 1972 — spend a fair amount of time imitating him. So thorough was Clinton’s influence on Democratic politics, so transformative were his rhetoric and his theory of the electorate, that Democrats don’t even seem to realize anymore the extent to which they owe him their political identities."

- Matt Bai, "The Clinton Referendum,"
New York Times Magazine
, December 23, 2007
[disclosure: Matt Bai is the little brother of good family friend]

Ithaca, NY (2)





No Need to Fret ('cuz the future is bad ass)