Guitarnapping

I had to say goodbye to my acoustic guitar today. It wasn't mine to begin with, though neither is it the person's whom I returned it to. A French guy named Cyril brought it to the hostel a bit less than a year ago and when he wasn't able to take it with him upon departure, left in his Spanish friend Alex's care. When Alex temporarily returned to Spain, he left it in the exquisitely carved hands of a Russian Jew named Mark. By pure coincidence, whatever Gibbs might say, that happened to be me. Alex came back a month or so ago and I've avoided broaching the subject of his guitar, figuring if he wanted it back he'd have to demand it from me explicitly. Yesterday he did just that so I begged a day's time to bid my farewells and recorded a couple songs today: Genetics and Strings. Hopefully at least one of them will offend someone. If not, I'm going to have to start looking for more radical viewpoints to write from. Like a vegan's or crack addict's...or a vegan crack addict's.

I also wrote another song today, about dieting. It's in first person from the point of view of a girl whose boyfriend is forcing her to lose weight by giving up sweets. With my affection for sugar, I have to classify that in the horror genre, PG-13 at the least.

The Trilene Knot...


image borrowed from animatedknots.com

...is the knot of the day. After this one there are only two left to learn before this trial is over. Medieval people had it right: there should be a healthy variety of torture devices at one's disposal. I'm psyched for my future suffering already, just let this one be over.

The Great Depression

Today I came within an inch of damnation. A day after posting on Craigslist, I was surprised and delighted to see that someone was interested in my quality services as a tutor. Not just interested, they wanted me to tutor their currently mediocre but soon to be genius offspring, every day of the week. One or two more such customers, I thought to myself amidst a fit of giggles, and I'd never need a job again. I went to sleep blissfully ignorant of the storm gathering in my Inbox.

I woke up this morning, and found four more wonderful emails from wonderful people with wonderfully thick children. This is where I should have pricked up my ears. Instead, I pranced around the room, threw handfuls of credit cards into the air, and only then got to reading.

Woe was me. At first glance, the emails spoke of normal people who wanted to send me baskets full of checks. But things tended quickly to the creepy. The writing had obviously missed out on some grammar and spellchecking. At the same time, the people all claimed to be from England - a little-known country that chiefly exports clones of Henry Higgins - the Naziest language Nazi of all. Everything suddenly became crystal clear. I was being asked to participate in something intrinsically un-American, and thus undoubtedly Communist-inspired. I was being asked to give an American education to a foreigner!

I was shocked! Revolted! ...But slightly tempted to participate. This last thought that zigzagged through my mind scared me most. After much deliberation, I have decided to do the right thing and turn myself in to the government. Tomorrow will likely be my last day as a free American, for temptation is harshly but justly punished in our wonderful country.

Made some more progress with my music - the Tina-turned-Chun song is moving along beautifully.

I'm writing and expecting...yearning for...nay, praying for an interruption, because material is scarce, and my movie hormones are flaring at full throttle. Tonight still lives with the promise of another B-rated film ruthlessly sacrificed to my addiction, but time is passing and...was that my name being called? Hm...no, that was just me saying it aloud. Enough! I suppose tonight, I'll have to initiate the ritual.

Breaking News

Saw In Bruges yesterday. It's quite the menagerie of plot devices: There's a 30-year-old retarded child played by Colin Farrell, a midget, a global midget war between white midgets and black Vietnamese midgets, a priest who can't stop bullets, a gun-toting Lord Voldemort, a league of principled hitmen, and a handful of dead children. Ironically there's very little plot other than a parade of the aforementioned items, and some witty dialogue. It was enough to keep me entertained, as I also had some popcorn, but my dad didn't ration his portion well and began whining less than half way through the movie. The ending, SPOILER ALERT, is one of those unsatisfying "Everyone died. Wait did they? I think I saw an arm move! Credits roll, and now we'll never know."

Mom offered me to help her cook dinner today, and I suddenly realized how much I missed grandma, so Mario, my sister and I visited her for dinner. We visited, but karma caught up to me, and I ended up having to help grandma fix her Cablevision after a storm knocked out the electric power. This included some quality time on the phone with Liz from Cablevision Customer Service. She must have been following a script, because the first words I heard from Liz were long-winded flaccid assurances about how anxious she was to be of help to me. Then she made me do all sorts of ritual dances around the TV and Cablevision box, and read her the codes from all the barcode stickers in the room. Despite Liz's help, I eventually managed to figure out where the DVD player's power button was.

On another note, a new song was born today, to commemorate yesterday's failed hang-out with Natasha. She was to go on a morning hike with her parents, and then call me so we could decide what we were doing. I ended up calling her at 7PM, and she blew me off. I cried a little from loneliness, and held a short funeral service for the $1.50 she cost me in text messages. When I woke up this morning with red-rimmed eyes, I decided to devote a song to yesterday's tragedy. The song's done, but I haven't recorded the vocals yet so it'll probably be up tomorrow. Meanwhile, Mario and I decided to write some more songs about other girls, so Anna, Lucy, Tina, watch out, our lyrics are rarely completely complimentary.

Today

About time to start a blog, if at least to give my stalkers an edge. Been resisting for a long time, but being a quitter, and in the interests of self-promotion, I'm abandoning my reluctance and embracing the soon to be enormous publicity.

Just came home for the 30 day weekend before I'm off to Texas. I'm already immune to cold, but still quite sensitive to heat, so it's time to learn that new skill - how not to get a heat stroke. I've decided the best way is through daily practice.

Our band, whose name is yet to be determined, but whose place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has already been assured, today held one of those once-a-year practice sessions. We ran through the staple song of our performance(s) - Clean Kitchen. It took some work, because despite having three guitars, we only had one cable, and one amp. Also, only 50% of the two of us knew how to play it. Oh, and we're still

looking for a drummer and singer.

Nevertheless, Clean Kitchen Unplugged now exists.

I've been slacking a little in my apprenticeship with the Spanish language. I started reading Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal hace un mes, y he leido solamente 35 paginas. My progress into the book resembles a logarithmic graph. Today I was able to satisfy my conscience with a mere opening of the PDF file.

If anyone wants to suggest a name for the band, I'd condescend to at least hearing the suggestion. So far, today, we've come up with the following possibilities:

buzz
buzzed
fuzz
strapless
unemployed
samurai love
12 string samurais
something kinky
santa's girlfriend/mistress

Our current MySpace page is Not4Profit, but we are not committed to being poor forever, so we're looking for a more permanent name.

By the way, graduated from college a couple days ago. Haven't gotten my diploma yet, not having gone to the ceremony. Is there an actual use to a diploma?

Realized I only actually left ~2 people when I left college - those few that ventured over to the couch I sat on the past two semesters. I managed to phase out most of my friends by graduation, saving myself the tearful goodbyes and future house calls. The people I will miss are so few that I can say with almost 100% accuracy that you're not one of them.

Don't expect more than two entries in this blog including this one, I'll probably forget to write in it after this entry.