Monday, May 24, 2010

sweat stains are a dime a dozen

as i was preparing a newly purchased hat for wear, i couldn't help but think of trot nixon, who famously wore a hideous looking hat and even kept it folder in his back pocket while he wore his batting helmet to hit. besides their glamorous jobs and high salaries, baseball players are privileged in other ways that ordinary americans can hardly fathom.

chief among these perks is their access to sticky substances that can be used to stain, darken, or gum up a baseball cap. resin, pine tar, dirt, and any number of contaminants permeate the baseball field, which allows adventurers like trot nixon to sail off into the furthest seas of breaking in hats. let us remember trot nixon, and greatly worn hats all over.

Friday, May 14, 2010

i hate surprises

i'm surprised by things all the time. i just don't like surprises that relate to my inability to afford things. i hate surprises that relate to things getting worse, especially when it's taken me forever to accept the existing state of awfulness. it's like those weird surprises like when my shampoo smells like the wrong flavor of dessert for no apparent reason, or my computer is taking over two minutes to connect to a wireless network instead of a mere thirty to forty-five seconds.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

once and dunce

thanks to the impending disappearance of a certain streaming music site, i have thrown all care aside and begun a wild pattern of streaming albums for the first and only time. so far, i have focused on the past, verifying facts such as the talents of allison krauss or kruder and dorfmeister. i have also listened to:

the new josh ritter album
this was good, enjoyable, seemed to refer back to a few surprisingly classic songs/stories, and i wouldn't imagine buying it. the fact is that i have things like a grizzly bear album languishing in the forgotten reaches of my music collection. there are also exciting shiny toys like the latest neko case, which i haven't gotten around to. i can't buy things that are merely good.

white rabbits
i actually listened to a couple of their albums back a month or two ago. i was highly impressed with that first listen. nevertheless, i remain unable to purchase things just because they are highly impressive.

the hold steady - boys and girls in america
fun album; the sort of music i wouldn't mind acquiring through marriage. is that like a secret benefit of getting hitched? ok, honestly, secretly i don't care if i marry someone with impressive musical taste. that's a secret, right? because people have probably forgotten that and assumed the opposite even if i've told them. but anyway, i respect and enjoy the hold steady. i've seen them live; they were excellent; it was a great memory. thanks to rhett miller for opening, since i wouldn't have gone otherwise.

Monday, May 03, 2010

it's an alligator problem

finally finally have it all figured out. shoes, t-shirts, cardboard shapes, everything that disappears or shows up half eaten.

i just need to call an exterminator.

Sunday, May 02, 2010

time for a swim

as summer is approaching and the heat and humidity are already causing air conditioners to engage, i am surprisingly unprepared for the change in the season. it's not so much the weather itself as the overall arrival of something new. i do not think i was overwhelmingly caught up in the status quo, but perhaps i would simply prefer to be wearing jeans and sweaters for a while longer.
overall, i do not think that this is destined to be a particularly notable summer one way or the other. i have plenty of work to occupy the few months off, especially if i want to avoid having a thesis crisis next year. i have even started reading a little more outside of class. yesterday i spent some time trying out a few books, the most interesting of which was james frey's novel about los angeles. he has a strange distaste for periods and semicolons, but overall it was engrossing and a little disturbing. there is an odd juxtaposition between the main text and brief historical interludes, which sometimes appear nearly every other page and leave a shocking amount of white space. it's the sort of thing normally placed only at the beginning of chapters. the book itself is hefty enough that i do not kniw whether i will finish it, but it was far superior to the other random novels i had investigated earlier in the day.