09.25.2004
is this thing on?
It's probably obvious to anyone who doesn't come here anymore because there's never anything to read that I've hit some sort of roadblock. Specifically it's the kind with a big P on the side of it. At least that's the letter on the side I can see.
Taking the time to come up with anything to say that even vaguely resembles what I've come to associate with the sort of thing that this place is for is not something I've ever got a mind to do anymore. I have lost the urge to autobiographizate, I've grown irritated with all things politic (especially the type espoused by one of the persons in my list o' blogs over there,) I've not been following what's going on in this blog-o-spheroid at all (was anything ever "going on" here/there?) It's not that I've got nothing to say, I think. It's that this place doesn't feel like the right place to say it.
Which is silly. I hate ruts, and I'm especially unfond of the kind that I force myself into.
Stops and starts. I don't have any desire to be confessional. I don't want to post this. I really want to stop yammering about how I feel about blogging. It's so fucking boring and tiring and even I don't give a shit. I really don't; it's just what comes out when I force myself to write here.
Some day this week I had the idea that I should post once a day for a month. The problem with that plan is that there are other things to which I'd rather force myself to commit. Primarily I want to write for real. I started something that I'm pretty certain holds promise. I started it before moving, and I had in mind that after settling in here I'd set some schedule for myself wherein I'd spend a certain amount of time per day working on it. Turns out that somehow, amazingly, no extra time was extracted from the ether upon moving into a house. None. Can you believe it? In fact, if at all possible, I'm now living through 17 or 18 hour days. No shit. While everyone else seems still to be meandering blissfully through their 24 hours a day, I'm stuck with only at most 18. I never knew time could be such an asshole, but it turns out it is.
I've still got a tremendous mess around me. The upstairs isn't bad. It's coming along, sprouting wings, growing hair. Good stuff. We painted my wife's office, a scary-bright green that actually looks pretty cool. We've ordered a new couch and loveseat (with nary a post about failed credit-acquisition schemes and the utter non-existence of furniture that's any non-beige color.) We ultimately found a cranberry red one that we like, a lot, and had no trouble getting the store to approve our credit for a year of no-interest payments. Hopefully it'll be here within a month.
Cousin Ed has been repaired. The body shop worked their magic, grinding or sanding or blending or whatever, then baking the hood so that everything looks nearly like new. There are a few spots where, upon close inspection, I can see that little grains of something or other got under the paint as it dried. It's very minor and after having washed and waxed it now I'm happy with it. The place did neglect to re-attach the washing-fluid nozzles to the hoses, but that turned out to be easy to remedy. As of this morning I've got a car cover to keep off the tree-sap (I've never noticed before how annoying that stuff is, all those tiny speckles of stickiness appearing even as I'm drying the thing after a wash,) and to hopefully prevent certain types of damage that may have been easier done to an unprotected car.
But this basement is still a horrendous mess. I've got too much stuff and I've made a decision to distribute it elsewhere, somehow. Ebay or garbage truck, or maybe just drop it from a bridge somewhere. Still I've got no conception of how I'm going to manage it. I've yet to decide what can go and what should stay. So possibly all I've done so far is make the easy decision. The hard part is yet to come, and I've not set any deadlines, though I probably should.
(Even as I write this I'm continually glancing around the room, trying to formulate a plan of action. What is all this stuff? How can it possibly be important? It all seemed important when I moved it, yet so little of it actually means anything tangible at all.)
Watched the DVD of Ladykillers last night, the Coen brothers film with Tom Hanks and one of the Wayans guys and a bunch of other funny persons. It was so much better than I'd hoped. I hadn't heard anything positive about it; I don't think it did well at the box office. I almost always love the movies these guys do, although The Man Who Wasn't There left me a little cold. This one, though, was one of my favorites. They were perhaps trying to do for gospel music what they did for old-timey stuff with Oh Brother Where Art Thou, and one of the primary things I take away from this one is a strong desire to hear more of that sort of gospel. It was fantastic, I loved every piece in there. The comedy, too, was excellent, and the story very interesting and never slow.
As a result of that positive experience I watched Intolerable Cruelty this morning, which I hadn't seen previously. This one's another from the Coen brothers which I hadn't seen yet. For some reason Kathryn Zeta Jones has never been a favorite of mine, and I'd never really been able to force myself to watch her in this. It was better than I'd expected, but only because I had low expectations. There were a number of very funny moments, but it was slow and there just wasn't enough of that peculiar Coen brothers humor to keep me entertained.
This'll do for now. It's been enough to make it obvious to me that I still have some use for this place. Just don't yet know where that leaves me.
