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MAR

19

2002

here's what i've been listening to the past few weeks, reproduced here in their entirety:

tom jones - sex bomb (dj amanda remix)
electric light orchestra - don't bring me down
dean martin - canadian sunset
elvis presley - i got stung
rob zombie - dragula
freedy johnston - love grows where my rosemary goes
smash mouth - diggin' your scene

etta james - pay back
etta james - you can leave your hat on
aneka - japanese boy
fleetwood mac - i think i'm in trouble
orchestral manoeuvres in the dark - sailing on the seven seas
thunderball - domino
laura cantrell - lee harvey was a friend of mine
j.j. abrams - alias theme
kasey chambers - not pretty enough
pop in wonderland - grow a baby
the cars - magic
princess superstar - wet! wet! wet!
pointer sisters - neutron dance
kasey chambers - changed the locks (live - austin city limits)
supremes - heat wave
elton john - your song
run dmc - its tricky
the cars - you might think
u2 - baby please come home
ramainz - judy is a punk
lovage - stroker ace
morrissey - girlfriend in a coma
lush - chirpy chirpy cheep cheep
detroit grand puh bahs - sandwiches
rufus wainwright - one man guy
roxy music - love is the drug
robin hitchcock - balloon man
marvin gaye - it takes two
rufus wainwright - cigarettes and chocolate milk

songs in red are old songs. songs in green are current favorites.

i finally finished invisible monsters last night. i was really starting to not like it. the writing's great, i just didn't care for the story anymore and wanted to finish it as quickly as possible. it did pick up in the end and everything started to make sense. not as good as survivor, but that chuck palahniuk, he can sure write some mean prose! the book had some interesting messages, one of them being that beautiful people are cursed by their attractiveness. beautiful people can never be sure if people are nice to them because they really care about what they think, or are people just nice to them because they're beautiful. only when you're ugly does the "ugly truth" comes out regarding people's real intentions. i guess the same can be said for rich people as well. how do they know that their friends are really their friends and not just there for the money? and like every palahniuk book, invisible monsters showed me new ways of committing old crimes. if i ever wanted access to expensive presciption drugs, i'll just go to expensive open houses and plunder the medicine cabinets.

what's next in the closeted reader's book selection? until my amazon.com order arrives (it's backordered for some strange reason, on the day i went to go cancel they said my order was processed and couldn't be changed), i'm going to finish some short stories that were included with i am legend. afterwards, philip k. dick. i feel sorry for that book, gathering dust underneath my bed. it's a library book too. i have to remember to return it, i think it's almost due.

so back to my life. i finally threw away my cat grass today. it'd been sitting on my desk, slowly dying. i didn't water it over the weekend, and when i came in yesterday, it was this wilted mess. it's pure sickness on my part, but i actually enjoyed watching it die. maybe because yesterday was such a somber day, it sort of matched the mood perfectly. but today i decided to put it out of its misery and before i left work to go home, i pulled out all the substrate rocks and threw away a rectangular clump of dirt and roots and dried grass. what am i going to grow now? everyone asks. the problem with where i sit and pretty much the whole upstairs in general is we don't get very much sunlight, if any at all. the sun's rays never shines upstairs, the daylight we do get is indirect, bounced off from the signal trapping at&t monolith behind us. whatever i grow will have to really love the shade, and when i say shade i mean 100% devoid of natural sunlight. possible candidate, mushrooms, possible candidate, moss.

i went running today. it was cold, in the mid-30's, with a constant near freezing drizzle, too chilly even for me to wear shorts. in addition to the long running pants i also had on a pair of gloves. midway through i took off my gloves and rolled up the sleeves of my turtleneck. my arms actually felt tired holding a glove in each hand! it was kind of fun running in the rain, i'd purposely stomp through the puddles and let the raindrops on my face bead up and roll off the edge of my brow. it was mostly groups of guys running along the charles river, real corporate looking middle aged fellows. two guys were tailgating me and i could hear the thumping of their shoes behind me. i tried to outrun them but they kept close, eventually passing me. then i turned the table on them, tailgating them as they ran. at one point i could sense them trying to speed up a little bit, but i just went a little faster myself and they were unsuccessful in shaking me off. i was so close to them that i could've stretched out my arm and touched them. i mean, either you stay far enough behind me or if you're going to pass me, run faster so there's some sort of gap between us. it's not my fault that they ran the exact same speed i was running (okay, so i cheated, they did try to pull away, i wouldn't let them) and i ended up following them for about half a mile. finally at the next available alternate path they veered off to the right and that was the last i saw of them. i hope i totally creeped them out, the charles river's not big enough for all of us. when i got to the base of the longfellow bridge i checked my watch to see that i ran a little bit over an 8 minute mile. i got back, showered, and picked up my au bon pain arizona chicken sandwich that carrie was gracious enough to go out and buy for me while i ran.

when i got home and weighed myself on the scale (something i do occasionally when the mood strikes me), i saw that i had lost 5 lbs over what i weighed at the beginning of the winter season. it's only a minor victory though. i can gain as much as 5 lbs in a single day depending on what i eat. i think the trick is to see if i can maintain my current weight.