friday timbro called me up, i cleared out my bank account of it’s last $7 and went to chef of india for the lunch buffet and it was so worth it. tim and i used to go to indian buffet all the time and it remains one of my most treasured food experiences. we always get big plates of food, sit down, and stare at the food for a little while psyching each other up. the food consistantly kicks. we also ran into the curtin brothers (indeed, the whole family), who i delight in enourmously. afterwards i was dropped off at highland street, and me and the chickenhawks drove off to see the boston ballet at the wang center (or as glasses brigade was wont to call it, “the ballbuster at the dong”). we got all dressed up and had a grand time. it was nice to go out, and i’ve always said i need to see more live theatre, and of course i enjoy the idea “ballet”, so i had a pretty good time. the weird thing, however, about the nutcracker is that the entire second act consists of various residents of some sort of cloud city putting on a show for the main character, who watches from a little booth on stage right, so it’s like ballet carte blanche with no narrative or anything. but who cares i had a good time.

i continue, from last week, to eat a lot of pasta.

i got a hit yesterday from a google query of “give me information about sour candy”. here’s some information about sour candy, nudnik- it’s awesome! it’s a candy you can kind of enjoy just by thinking about it. i bet your mouth is going through all those awesome pavlovian sour candy routines right now, just reading this. fuck! if i was a pretty girl (who just didn’t care) i’d definitely put sour patch kids on the amazon wishlist of my camlog stat. and if i had the quality “pretty” as much as i have the quality “crazy about sour patch kids”, i’d get em. stat.

big ups to kevin, whose crashing jets website is now lynx-(and mobile device)-viewable as a direct result of getting mugged. this may sound kind of callous, but it seems the event had primarily positive results on our friend (cheifly in the focusing, hewing, and thinking-out-of-the-box departments) so hooray for that anyway. anyway, in deference to kevin-in-a-sling, this entry was typed using only one hand.

programming chirping birds and mountain songs on max/msp (still got 23
days on the demo). drinking lemonade with cayenne pepper and chunks of
ginger and effervescent vitamin c powder. nice new socks. going to the
boston ballet tomorrow, after which miguel herrman’s throwing a rager
(call for details, of which there are few if any). this has been end of
the week preliminary wrap-up. fujichia: we’re your
station, nurd.

allegra, i lost the number to the hippy house, so
call me.

embargos are macabre, sad nell. listen, o! not to no nets! i’ll lend a serb a camera, so grab me!

i’m snowed in at my mom’s house. all day today listening to cds i got (wu tang clan, the new missy elliot, the x anthology) and futzing around with max/msp, making bleepy machines, trying to make birds. xmas morning me and my mom ate fried potatos and watched the royal tenenbaums, and cocoon. i’m in the thralls of that kind of snowbound melancholy you get when you know your friends are all sledding on the other side of town. happy birthday jesus– sorry about the president.

friday last we had a going away party for kasey and boy what fun. it was an around-the-world affair, so everyone’s room had a different theme and the party moved en mass around, following names drawn out of hats. my room had a math theme, with caricatures of mathematicians, a flash card game with fabulous prizes, a math-related booze drink, and a math-related dance party (all 1-4-5s– mostly little richard songs). other themes included childbirth (you enter the room through a special door i need not describe, then leah and jonah constructed a huge boob that dispensed warm soy milk, and we watched russian waterbirthing movies (which were incredible)), catholicism (we ate a reasonable facsimile of the body and blood of christ, and everyone got creeped out quick fast & in a hurry), columbia (poetry and pictures from a recent visit), dirty dancing (the kind of dancing, not the movie, with paper footprint instructions), uh… crayons, and steve fischer. saturday drove into providence usa for [shits and giggles / the olneyville craft fair]. got a bunch of christmas presents and the new paper rodeo, in which mike has a brutal page about beating up a motorist with a u-lock (mike, did this really happen?). sunday i couldn’t get together a ride into boston to see the epic christopher vs. rob francisco noise battle, so i sat around and watched white christmas. i also watched james’ collection of cameo music videos three times in a row and holy shit.

there’s a saying i’m fond of, by heraclites,
about how no man can set foot in the same river twice. this is because the river is constanty destroying and recreating itself, as is the man whose foot would do the setting-in. i’ve discovered no artifact that so clearly illustrates that the world is constantly in the throes of this violent process than the cameo music video collection. it’s chistmas eve but it bears repeating: holy shit.

ben schecter said to me last week- “i realized that i don’t need to take drugs. because i just eat terrible food all the time and it always messes me up in different ways.”. i love this! eating three bulbs (that’s right- bulbs) of garlic in a row last night certainly put me in a funny headspace which could merit further investigation.

i’m sure i’ve mentioned this before but it bears noting again- ben schecter has what would seem a great nickname in “bent scepter”, which a) sounds awesome, b) is the b-side to the trashmen’s “surfin’ bird” single, and c) is close to his actual name. sadly it will never work (except in online forums) because it is so close to the actual pronunciation of his name as to not register as a nickname, humourous or no.

continuing a theme, i’m trying to beat a cold the matt hallas way: eat garlic until you hallucinate, then scale back. i’ll let you know how it works once i get my arms reattatched to my body.

so, in answer to matt hallas’s question of some weeks back, regarding garlic and vampires– an article in the current scientific american states what is apparently a popular theory on the developement of vampire folklore: porphyria.
from sciam: “porphyria is actually a collection of related diuseases in which pigments called pophyrins accumulate in the skin, bones, and teeth. many porphyrins are benign in the dark but are transformed by sunlight into caustic, flesh-eating toxins. without treatment, the worst forms of the disease… can be grotesque, ultimately exacting the kind of hideous disfigurement one might expect of the undead. the vicitms’ ears and nose get eaten away. their lips and gums erode to reveal red, fanglike teeth… [in the past, victims] might have learned to avoid eating garlic, too, for some chemicals in garlic are thought to exacerbate the symptoms of the disease porphyria, turning a mild attack into an agonizing reaction.”. the article also mentions how, since one modern treatment for the disease involves blood transfusions, it’s possible that a medieval remedy might involve drinking blood. but that seems to be going a bit too far.

yesterday sarahscales.com taught me how to play dominos and though it seems an easy game to master i lost consistantly, and by a wide margin. today i made mikey play with me (teaching him how in the process) and again, lost consistantly, and by a wide margin. if it were a less lazy game i might be frustrated. mostly, i’m happy to be taking part in activities mentioned in the song “it was a good day“.

things to do today: noise song for rob attacks’ eunoymous CIRCUS LOVE ACID noise comp. song for sourpus mark’s ramones tribute (but do i do howlin’ at the moon, i remember you, or she talks to rainbows?) song for the dc-fiy comp. shit to do in my cozy fucking house!

my house is cold but with some effort cozy. new year’s party has been confirmed. step. mix tapes and booze-ahol. step. when steve fischer gets drunk he developes an english accent. step.

the bed is not coming together. i have a prototype but it’s too tall, it really dominates the room, and basically, it’s just not as good as sleeping between chairs that have blankets draped over them. which is an option.

i am going to see the boston ballet performance of the nutcracker, and i’m wicked psyched. steve says in all seriousness that it’s traditionally held at the wang center. there is no coherent joke i can make here but the reason this is funny should be evident to all.