Is It a Website?!

If I recall correctly this game was invented back when I lived in San Diego. Here is what you need to play:

- A few fun people
- Some booze never hurts
- A laptop with internet

Here is how it works: You think up web addresses that may or not be real. You type them in. You find yourself constantly amazed, delighted, appalled, transfigured.

That’s it. That is the whole game. It is perfect in its simplicity. I understand that right now you don’t think much of it, but go get some people together, pop open a bottle of wine and try playing. It is simply and always (seriously, 100% of the time) a super fun way to kill an evening.

And hey, maybe along the way your roommate will be forced to defend herself for looking up animal porn.

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My New Charity.

My roommates just decided that they are going to stop showering for good. Please donate to my just-created charity: Save Jamie’s Apartment from The Smells!

We will use your donations to purchase air fresheners, scented candles, lots of Clorox wipes, and enough of those pine-scented Christmas trees to make the apartment look like the place where that sloth-y dude was strapped to the bed in “Se7en”.

Hooray for charity!

Please donate here:
SaveJamiesAprtmentFromTheSmellsDOTorg

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That One Temper Trap Song.

Is it possible to not love this song?



I know that this album has been out for a long time and that the song has been in the cultural ether for a long times as well (you heard it in “500 Days of Summer” and in that one Diet Coke commercial that made it seem like drinking Diet Coke was cool and I’m sure in many other places), but dammit, I just love it. I happened to randomly pop this CD in today while driving (yes, I still primarily use CDs because I find that if I have my iPod in the car I am constantly fiddling with it instead of focusing all of my energy on not hitting anything while I’m driving) and was reminded of what a good song this is. In fact the whole album is really quite good and if you don’t have it you should get it. Or ask my roommate to burn you a copy because that’s how I got mine.

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Fiesta Over!

Dear people with roommates,

Do not give your roommates a half a bottle of red wine and then allow them to alter the settings on your smart phone. They may reset your language to Spanish and change your very relaxing live wallpaper of savannah grass blowing in the digital breeze to some sort of weird tide pool and/or dreamy dandelions.

Fiesta over!

j.




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Maintenance, Orchids.

So I was just told by my roommate Arundina graminifolia that my blog makes her computer run super slow. Logging into this blog very nearly crashes my little laptop too, so I am – with great sadness and regret – going to remove that huge tag cloud thing down there on the bottom right and see if that make it work better.

You will be missed tag cloud.

Or maybe not.

Let’s see.


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Roommate Writing!

*


So my badass roommate Eggplant (still test driving blog names for her) totally got herself published! Click on this link to read up on her good works!

The very cool magazine is available in both print version (please buy a copy and help out some struggling awesome-neers), but also in downloadable PDF version.

Please spend some time on this here website and snoop around. These guys are doing impressively good work: Proxart.

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(my roommate's name is Erin, BTW)



*this image is from the esteemed Mathew Billington

Ways in Which I Am Considerate.

Text message I just sent to my roommate Bouvardia (still test driving blog names for her):

Hey do you want me to drink your red wine for you before it goes bad?

I know, I’m the considerate roommate that you always wished you had.*






*If ever it seems like half the crap on this blog is just me finding myself entertaining, that’s probably because that’s what it really is. I mean, this is A BLOG after all. Anybody who chooses to hemorrhage their psyche all over the internets for fun probably does it because they find themselves fascinating already..
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*** Breaking Roommate News ***

My roommate Fancy Star Fairy (still test driving blog names for her) has started doing a mocking impression of me that basically involves a deep voice that sounds nothing like me.

Also, she made a big deal about how Mark Walberg totally gets it on with Amy Adams in some new movie and she watched the trailer 14 times because she knows that:

1) I adore Amy Adams, and

2) I detest Mark Walberg

Also, she just put my glass of wine on the top of a bookshelf that I am barely tall enough to get it down from.

I’m not complaining or anything, I guess.


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Loneliness, and Other SAT Questions.

I have felt like crap lately. I have been hovering near the edge of sick for over a week, but I never quite seem to get there, plus I have not been living very healthy (or healthily) lately, plus I felt really and truly lonely the other day for the first time in a really long time. Like massively and tragically ALONE, like in a write-a-poem-about-it-and-then-stick-your-head-in-the-oven kind of way.

Now that’s hyperbole, of course, but … holy shit! Loneliness totally blows.

Now I have some great friends and a super awesome roommate and there are people in my life whom I adore, so I’m not trying to botch and whine about how awful things are. I am just taking a little stock of things. And so I am saying: I felt really lonely the other day.

And if you’re familiar with this sort of thing, then you probably know what I felt. For those of you who aren’t, we will restate it like an old school SAT (because nothing is more fun than the SATs!):

If boredom is being cold, then loneliness if hypothermia.

Or, maybe, that doesn’t really work.

How about:

Disneyland is to happiness as the dark side of the moon is to loneliness.

Does that one even make sense?

How about:

Writing blog posts about loneliness is to blog readership as ants are to a picnic.

Yeah, that one kinda works.

I got so bored and lonely I was reading old emails from my Ex (from the happier times, obviously) but that lead inexorably to the more recent and unpleasant emails and so I just went on this weird bender of reliving a whole lot of emotions I could have done without in the first place.

BTW, NEVER READ OLD EMAILS. Ever. It is worse than going through old pictures.

Anywhoo, I know that my life is not all that bad. In fact, it isn’t bad at all. Sure, I don’t have enough money and I don’t have any of the professional success I had hoped to have by this point in my life, but I do have good days. In fact, sometimes I have really good days. Recently I spent hours and hours talking to a charming and delightful friend of mine and we just talked, about all kinds of things. And if you know me at all (or have learned a little about me by reading this blog) you know that I LOVE TALKING and I am interested in everything. So sometimes just getting to cut out all of the background chatter of the world and just talk is quite nice.

Also, I have been and done all sorts of awesomeness lately. I went to an art show/bar/folk band concert and I got to look like a dirty hipster. If you ever have the chance, check out
The Airliner in Lincoln Heights.

I also went to one of the coolest/weirdest events of my life recently: a big LA thrift store opens up their warehouse once a month and for a $10 cover, there’s an open bar and bands and you get to rummage through bins of clothes and then buy them BY THE POUND! Yes, buy clothes by the pound. (That was at a place called The Boogie Den. I would give you the link, but their site always crashes my computer.) I am now the owner of a strange red leather jacket that is so cool I’m a little afraid of it.

I finally went to this thing called First Friday that they do down in Abbot Kinney in Venice. On the first Friday of the month the street are lines with some of LA’s finest gourmet food truck and you get to spend hours and hours wandering from one to the other and eating. I had some cheeseburger sushi, among other delicacies.

The point of this post – in so far as these things ever really have a point – is just to step back and take a look at life and size it up and down and make it clear to myself that I should stop complaining so much, which I now realize, I should.

Now I just feel sort of silly about having written this whole thing.

Well, whatever, it is really hard to generate content!

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Take On Me.

In case you were curious, my day was bad in just about every way that it could be. So I am sitting on the couch drinking crap wine and reading Tom Robbins while my roommate Eggplant Parmesan (still test driving blog names for her) and dearest Jennica learn “Take Me On” on ukuleles.

Don’t ever tell them that I said so, but they are actually getting quite good and the soft uke sounds actually help to rub down the nasty edges of my day.

If I were to step out of my head for just a moment (fat chance of that) I might actually realize that life is okay at this very moment.


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Problems = Stories = Math.

Lately my roommate Bedazzler Champion (still test-driving blog names for her) and I have been having these tag-team problem sharing sessions where she talks about her problems (and I pretend to listen) and give sage advice and then I talk about my problems and she pretends to listen and give sage advice.

Now I don’t really open up very much or very well, so when I say “talk about my problems” what I actually mean is that I briefly describe them in the way that one might briefly describe the top part of the iceberg that juts out above of the water: “so cold and ice-spiky!”

The thing that we keep saying to each other is that ‘other people’s problems are always more interesting’. It is true. I love other people’s problems. All of that crap going on in your life right now, I find it fascinating! Maybe it’s the ‘misery loves company’ thing, or maybe it’s what my Pop Culture professor (and all Germans) called schadenfreude.

That’s pleasure derived from the misfortune of others. Honestly though, I think it is more just that I like listening to the telling. Any discussion of a problem begins with a story, because a problem is just a story that hasn’t ended yet. In order to explain to someone why you had such a shitty day, you have to start with the story. For instance:

YOU: “Why do you have all of those severed fingers in your glove box?”

ME: “Well, that’s a funny story . . .”

Not to get all English Department about it, but if you can find a way to understand The Story - in anything - then you already have a leg up on everybody else. Everything is s story. I have actually told people that the only reason I am able to do my job (it’s a ridiculously complicated Accounting Department position calculating “residuals” in the Merchant Services industry) is because I am able to follow the story of the money I am moving around. Am I being too obtuse? Here, this will make more sense: I have a charming and delightful little friend who (doesn’t read this blog, so I can unironically use words like “charming” and “delightful”) recently started doing Accounts Payable for the company where she works. I have done AP, so I understand it and I was asking her how she was taking to it (some people burn out on accounting-type work really fast) and she was saying that she actually found it relatively enjoyable. This was met with sputters of rebuke from the other people around (or as I like to call them, “the non-account-ies”). My charming and delightful friend explained that the math really isn’t very difficult at all, but that it takes a while to learn The Logic.

For this blog post, ‘The Logic’ will be used interchangeably with ‘The Story’, or at least interdependently, I haven’t decided yet because I’m making all this up as I go along.

So we live our lives as slaves to the tyranny of the forward passage of time, right? This is why we read from left to right and top to bottom. We have all agreed (in the Western world at least [get with it Buddhists and Hindus!]) that this is what time is like, and so that’s how we live.

So understanding The Logic is being able to look at a bunch of numbers on the page and discern the ways in which they interrelate; in other words, it’s being able to see The Story. You have to mentally place everything in its order in order to understand it. This is how a really well-programmed Excel spreadsheet can transcend the mundane to become artful (I have actually spent a good deal of time trying to figure out how to write a story that functions like a spreadsheet, made entirely of pieces that are clearly connected, but with all of the complicated relationships made invisible).

I felt a little validated then when my charming and delightful friend invoked The Logic, because I felt like someone else understood (in some miniscule way) the way that I see life. Math is really not that different from storytelling, in fact, math is story telling and stories are fascinating!

You know what else is fascinating? All your problems!

That’s how all this started remember? A problem is just a story too.

But why then are problems (other people’s) more interesting than just a story? Why do I always want to gouge my eyes out when you tell me about your trip to the grocery store, but I’m just rapt when you tell me about how your house burned down after you accidently lit your cat on fire? Is it just that nasty German schadenfreude? Maybe. But maybe it is also because when I hear about your problems, it is just so much more genuine, so much more heartfelt and somehow more meaningful. We spend so much of our time not being meaningful. We make so much small talk. We spend so much of our time asking “Hi, how are you” and responding, “Good”. I am a champion of small talk and I can small talk just about anybody under the table, but I have to flip a switch to make it happen. Most of the time I avoid it like the plague. So maybe this is all about some pretentious quest for truth and a deeper understanding of mankind.

But probably not.

Maybe it is just that other people’s problems are more interesting, And maybe they are more interesting because they are so full of real emotion and none of it affects me at all.

I can’t help but think at this point that some psychiatrist somewhere is reading this and going, “Wow, this guy needs to be on a couch.” Why? Probably because I’ve written a thousand words about problems and accounting and meaning without offering up a single detail about what is bothering me today.

So what is bothering me today?

Hey, look at that iceberg! So cold and ice-spiky!


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It Gets Hard to Come Up With Storylines After Awhile.

So my roommate Galactic Adventurer (still test-driving blog names for her) is watching Grey’s Anatomy right now and apparently there is a storyline about this purported virgin girl who had a – get this – condom stuck in her lung.

As I post this, the episode is still ongoing, so I don’t know what the deal is with this whole condom-inhaling thing, but I thought that it should just be mentioned. Talk amongst yourselves.

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All I Don't Need.

I had to turn the television off just now because my roommate Azalea (still test driving blog names for her) is currently recording both Grey’s Anatomy and CSI, so I can’t change the channel. She isn’t home, BTW.

But whatever. I don’t need the television. I don’t need anything. I don’t need any of this stuff. I don’t need you. I don’t need anything ... And that's the only thing I need is this. I don't need this or this. Just this ashtray... And this paddle game. - The ashtray and the paddle game and that's all I need... And this remote control. - The ashtray, the paddle game, and the remote control, and that's all I need... And these matches. - The ashtray, and these matches, and the remote control, and the paddle ball... And this lamp. - The ashtray, this paddle game, and the remote control, and the lamp, and that's all I need. And that's all I need too. I don't need one other thing, not one... I need this. - The paddle game and the chair, and the remote control, and the matches for sure. Well what are you looking at? What do you think I'm some kind of a jerk or something! - And this. That's all I need.


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Niche Dating.

So I don’t go out to bars that much and, although I live on the outskirts of Los Angeles, I am pitifully uninformed when it comes to strange and fetishistic goings on in the world of niche dating.

However my roommate Clementine (still test-driving blog names for her) has informed me that apparently there exists in the world a little subset of Catholic girls who chase and lust after would-be priests.

That’s right, there are seminary-student groupies.

That seems odd, right?

Odd, but also kind of loyal and almost pious somehow?

It reeks of some sort of daddy-complex if you ask me, but I think that this phenomenon, while bizarre, will make for a pretty good porn film one day (if it hasn’t already).


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Red Hot Love.

Since it has been awhile, here is a picture of Scarlett Johansson, who loves me and is sad I have not been blogging as much.



And here is a picture that my awesome roommate Azalea (still test driving blog names for her) sent to my phone when she was in Laughlin.




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Conversational Strategery.

So my roommate Eggplant (still test driving blog named for her) and I were just talking about stuff and in the course of talking we stumbled across something that we disagreed about and I was getting all geared up to explain to her why she doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about and all of the sudden she was all like, “Nope, you’re totally right, I agree.”

And I was bumfuzzled and disappointed because one of my favorite things to do is explain to people why they don’t know what the hell they are talking about.

And then I realized that she wasn’t agreeing with me at all! In fact she was only trying to placate me until it was time for her to leave. She was expressing her disagreement through the strategy of Agreement and that is like one of those perfect chess moves that I don’t know anything about, wherein the opponent is left with literally no options but to flip the table over and storm out of the chess tournament hall. That’s what I felt like. I wanted to go all Bobby Fischer all over the situations, but I realized and accepted that I had been beaten in a game of conversational stratagem (or “strategery” if you’re a Republican).

My roommate Eggplant then did a little victory lap about how we have only been in this apartment two months but she already knows how to win. And apparently it is by ostensibly agreeing with me.

And to this I say, “What the fuck ever.”

I feel like I had commanded the prettiest horse cavalry in all the world, six months into World War I.

I really hope that this whole “I agree with you” thing doesn’t catch on, because I would find it hard to live in a world where there’s no one to get angry and indignant at.


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Songs For My Band's Next Album.

So if you have read this blog before, you know that I am in a completely fake band. We don’t practice or play and that’s good because most of us can’t actually play what you might call ‘traditional’ instruments anyway.

Myself, I play the variable-speed blender and I am getting quite good (not actually) at the harmonica.

What our band does do, however, is amass good song titles. Below are some of the better and best that we have come up with lately.

Tell me that you don’t want to hear these songs. Seriously. Say it with a straight face.


Some of the awesome songs for our next album:


The Rusty Lush

Tasks Heroic and Necessary

Hot Foggy Glasses - (this is stolen from Eggplant).

Infrared Love Story

The East German Mummy Mania Project

Naked Shower Ghost – (this is stolen from Eggplant & The Captain)

Hot and Damp (like laundry)

Electric Shakespeare

Static Kill

Pavilion of Wigs

Chronic Love Captive

Glorious Defilement

A Growing Constellation

The American Asylum

Slunk Traffickers Trail a Pregnant Cow - (this is stolen from William Burroughs)

Fallacy is the only Phallus I got

Lunar Parking is Easy to Find

Burned Nickel is Burnished Metal

Don’t Stop Unless I Say the Safe Word


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Hot Pockets!

My roommate Sunflower (still test driving blog names for her) has – apparently – never had a Hot Pocket.

That’s bizarre, right?


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P.S.
She was just surprised that it was hot.


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