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histrionic justin's LiveJournal:
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| Wednesday, October 29th, 2003 | | 12:07 am |
Elliott Smith
I never really considered Elliott Smith a legitimate candidate for suicide; he always seemed too detached from despair, too willing to allow despair an ironic distance; he was, after all, the guy who named a record after kierkegaard's 'either/or', the title of which refers to the essential either/or of daily life- either you go to work or you don't; either you write a song, or you don't; either you drink a cup of coffee or you don't; either you wash your socks or you don't; either you live, or you don't. after choosing 'either' for so long- and by that i say that there's no specific way of knowing what precisely he was working toward, if anything, or if what he attempted to create was just another slash at the face of an 'or' that was leaning upon him every day- never mind- he came to a point, one morning last week, where he weighed the fundamental advantages of each side, and came down on the side of or. of nothingness. of obliteration. of despising life with such a vigor and such a fury that he shoved a sharp knife into his chest at an angle that could only pierce his breastbone and enter his heart. and then, because that manner of death can never be instantaneous, he waited, on his kitchen floor, for the angels to bear him upward. it was easy to laugh with elliott smith. it wasn't at all easy to laugh at him, or because of him, but it was easy to laugh with him. he was this shabby guy who happened to get nominated for an oscar and yet still lived in a fairly grubby brooklyn neighborhood in a walk-up and who would venture out to little dark watering holes not because he needed air and space but because he was a product of those holes. he'd taken that ethos into himself. walk into any brooklyn neighborhood bar- walk into any tiny, subdued bar, anywhere- and you'll see the sort of people who didn't give a shit about elliott smith the musician, but would have rubbed their knuckles across the concrete for elliott smith the man. he didn't sound strong, usually, but he sounded wry. and that wryness wouldn't fail him, we thought. it would always remain a joke, his despair, because humor leavened it, because he was never so fraught with peril, or never seemed to be, that he wouldn't allow a joke to undercut the darkness. i've got an interview tape from early '00 where he talks about 'pictures of me' and 'miss misery', and he sounds like a little boy, confused about his newfound success but willing to defuse its potential for destruction with a giggle and a halfformed explanation that what people perceive his songs to be isn't necessarily what they are. i always thought that elliott smith was jocular enough to explain away the misery. i thought he was amazing, but i also thought that he was postmodern enough so that i could never completely welcome him. i've always run to a more nakedly self-destructive bent; cobain, westerberg, macgowan, drake. apparently, i believed the hype. until last week, my only thoughts about him were idle and fleeting, roughly pertaining to 'where the hell is elliot? is he alive?' and then my friend steve, who essentially met his wife as a result of 'between the bars', called me at work and told me that elliott smith had been found dead of a stab wound that was likely self-inflicted. sing on, elliott. sing on until your lungs fill to bursting, until your angels bear you on to paradise, until your outsized heart is no longer at pain. sing on until you know how much we needed you. sing until you know that for yourself. and rest in comfort and tranquility. | | Saturday, August 16th, 2003 | | 5:08 am |
| | Saturday, August 9th, 2003 | | 5:41 am |
whine whine whine
me and everyone else. candace bushnell is coming to the store tomorrow. it's going to rain. it's raining already. i'm sick of listening to this bullshit moaning about how bad i am, how unprofessional i am, how i should be locked away because i still deign to smoke and wear torn jeans to work. i'm a steady anachronism. this new world isn't made for people like me. and to hell with it- i don't want this new world, anyway. | | Wednesday, July 23rd, 2003 | | 5:09 am |
i've been floating down the slide into abandonment recently; this i freely admit, and yet i find myself questioning why, if i can consciously acknowledge said slide, i still find myself seeking abandonment? could be because home- this life, here, at this shack that i'm compelled to call home- offers me no alternative. little time for wry observations, much time for blandishment. i mean, in the sense of explaining why i'm still up at five a.m. whoa, working retail in the hamptons in the summer's a roping good time. | | Sunday, June 22nd, 2003 | | 3:38 am |
| | Friday, June 20th, 2003 | | 2:44 am |
can't abide a cut tag right now
this was stolen from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) kittenface, just because. What 80's band are you totally crazy about? most every band i really care about could be considered an "80's band". although that's not actually true; it is true, however that most every band i care about came to prominence in the eighties. as far as true eighties bands go, though... i guess katrina and the waves. What makes you squeamish? the concept of children. the sound of chalk against a chalkboard. viscera. vomit- not my own. seeing the blade slice through the skin. What smell makes you sick? roasting cumin seeds. and raspberry flavored coffee. If you were an ice cream flavor, what would you be? good crisp breyer's mint chocolate chip. a nice cooling sensation with a minty bite at the same time. and big surprising chunks to keep you honest. Have you/would you ever meet someone you got to know online? i met my girlfriend online, though i tend to hesitate to say that because i think (and it's been proven) that saying that leads inevitably and almost immediately to "ohmigod, you met her in a chat room??!?!", which i most assuredly did not. we met at www.tapetradernetwork.com , and it's a lovely place. What is your favorite hour of the day? eleven? who knows. Which is better, sunrise or sunset? depends on when i'm seeing it. i much prefer the days when i can fully appreciate them both- without having slept at all between them. Would you rather rollerblade or skateboard? my center of gravity is somewhere in the dakotas, but i think rollerblade, because at least then i could play hockey. Would you rather play bass or the drums in a band? i'd rather play drums. good drummers are harder to find than good cobblers. What is your current favorite song (or at least one of them)? i quite like metallica's cover of (yeah, come get me) 'whiskey in the jar'. today, before work, the last thing i heard was 'dear chicago' by ryan adams. i can't stand him, but it sort of reminds me of the place that at this time last year i thought would become my home. and it's a great hungover song. i hope to listen to it in the same capacity today. but my current favorite song is 'word unspoken, sight unseen' by richard thompson. Which popstar would you most like to kill? which one wouldn't i like to kill? i'm sick of britney. she's verging on this 'now-respectable-remember-her-when?' sort of vague legitimacy now, and i'd like to snuff that while i still can. Who from your past would you most like to kill? chad fenelon, fat-ass chad, who i was never big enough to beat up, or even go a couple of rounds with. he once accused my entire family of being complicit in my being a geek- and, hey, some things are sacred. i heard that later he got arrested in florida for trying to rob a mall and was sentenced to a couple of years in a pen in florida, but i'd still love to get my hands on that cocksucker. because i'm now big enough to at least draw with him. (he was not small.) If you could go back in time and change one thing that you really fucked up, what would it be? i'd major in something other than literature. If you could go back and seize an opportunity you missed what would it be? my baseball coach, at baseball camp in '90, told me 'with a little work, you can be a great one'. then nirvana came along shattered my world. but i wish i'd done the little work that that coach- who was known to be the toughest in that camp- had recommended i do, because i've been curious ever since. If you could have a superpower, what would it be? the ability to impart common sense to the average person. Do you feel bad for the animals at the zoo? yeah, i guess, but i don't cry for two reasons: 1) if not for zoos, there's a pretty good chance that the layperson would never see a white tiger or a seventeen-foot python; 2) a monkey once, when i was seven, at the bronx zoo, threw excrement at me. which i'm sure that it probably had something to do with confinement, but it still wasn't a pleasant experience. i'm of two minds about zoos- i mean, if not for them, most people wouldn't get to see certain animals which are not candidates for household ownership. and yet the curation of the zoos- the care and handling of these animals- leaves tons to be desired. my solution? stop carving up hundreds of acres for one more damned golf course, and create a zoo which has natural habitats- or at least fairly approximate natural habitats. because, as horrible as humans have been over the centuries, zoos do- in conjunction with their breeding labs- play a fairly sizeable role in the perpetuation of some endangered species. If you were an item on a fast food restaurant of your choice's menu, what would you be? a rally's big buford with swiss. i so wish i had one right now. Which celebrity makes you drool? meg white. yeah, i know. Have you ever been in therapy, and if so, was it helpful? i was in therapy from late summer '91 to spring '92 and from fall '93 until spring '95. at the time, i didn't think it was helping me, but in retrospect i think i underestimated exactly how gratifying it was to have someone to talk to who wouldn't judge me, in any way. i got out of the game once drugs came into the picture; that didn't strike me as therapy, that struck me as gamesmanship. and i wasn't interested in yoking myself to a drug that had no set cutoff 'now you're better' date. i still recommend therapy to whomever asks me about it, with one stipulation- that it be psychotherapy. psychiatry= much freudianism= many slips= much uncertainty= proffering of drugs. to hell with that. the best therapy is just in having someone to talk to. (and in having insurance that will pick up most of the cost.) Describe your favorite pair of shoes: ever? my sad lamented combat boots that i had resoled three times, i think, and then were still lost in the move from the old house to this one. If you could sit in the audience for the taping of any show, including cartoons or shows that aren't on the air anymore, what would it be? the last letterman show that bill hicks did, where hicks was banned for saying, "if you're so pro-life, do me a favor. don't lock arms and block clinics; lock arms and block cemeteries." How do you feel about emo? i don't even know that i know what emo is. Do you exercise regularly? i lift weights, on occasion. Are you prone to road rage? i don't drive, at least right now, but i think that if i did i'd be very prone. certainly, riding shotgun has given me a clear perspective on just how ridiculous it is to be a driver; but i wonder if my fury wouldn't be mitigated a bit by having to pay attention to the whole controlling-the-car thing, were i driving. but people are certainly stump-dumb stupid, especially on the road. What was the worst soda ever made? crystal pepsi Do you take a lot of those personality tests online? only to kill a couple of minutes of time. Do you fill out a lot of surveys like these? more than i'd care to admit. The Osbournes: what about them? they're getting spoiled, i think. ozzy's still the same old wreck, and i'm glad that sharon's recovering. kelly's record's okay, not great, not bad, and jack- well, jack's in the position of being the unattractive-yet-wildly-famous-son-of-oz zy-osbourne-whose-every-move-is-being-re corded-for-MTV. who among us wouldn't be stunned and shattered? Anything you want to get out of your system? cell phones are death. why don't people understand? mostly, these goddamned hiccups. | | Tuesday, June 3rd, 2003 | | 3:04 pm |
snapping it off, snapping it off, snapping it off- snap
so i'm a wiggly hungover mess at the moment. it's odd; it's the sort of strange hangover that seems to continue getting worse as the day goes along. plus i'm terribly hungry, but i sincerely don't have the stomach for food at the moment. i want a cigarette desperately, but the draconian anti-smoking rules at home are in effect, even though my wretch of a brother seems to be ignoring them with regularity. and smoking my stash of cheap ohio camels, to boot. the bastard. anyway, yeah, i'm back in new york. on long island. in the beknighted and disgusting hamptons, god help me, peace be upon us all. and my hands are shaking. jamie took me out last night and put a large hurt on me, aided not at all by the fact that i was for some reason inclined to drink coors, which is never a good idea. i miss jenn. hell, that's reasonably obvious. but just for the record- i miss jenn. quite a lot. work doesn't start until thursday, at which time i will apparently be dragged over to the new bookhampton, in sag harbor, to shelve bookcase after bookcase of shite in order to make it pleasant and functional and operational and all that hopped-up nicety that just makes you green and tacky on the inside. (bookharbor? nah, that's gay.) and gee, this isn't how i thought i'd be spending the summer that i officially enter my late twenties. which in itself is a horrifying thought. there's an old gin blossoms song that goes 'i've been keeping myself busy with my books and with my tapes/everything's much clearer since i've slowed my drinking pace'. i regret to inform the collective that i have not at all been keeping myself busy with my books or with my tapes, and have instead increased my drinking pace. with vigor. is this a positive? i'm damned if i can tell. in keeping with the bleariness of the times, i expect. or of my times, at least. i'm successfully avoiding politics, which is doing wonders for my attitude. um. i listened to 'strange little girls' last night for the first time since i bought, and guess what? it still sucks. i'm not reading anything of note, and new york city's still an egregiously overpriced hovel. whoa, it's just struck me how horribly boring this must be to most of you. here: tits ass clit fuck cum bitch slap taco. hey, advancecassette, if you're still on long island, you wanna go and get smashed and argue about baseball once i can afford it? you'd be my first lj meet, incidentally. all right, enough of this maudlin flogging. spread the love about as necessary. Current Mood: spinalCurrent Music: erm, Hank Williams Jr.- To Love Somebody. I'm so ashamed. | | Saturday, May 10th, 2003 | | 5:42 am |
| | Thursday, February 27th, 2003 | | 9:27 pm |
| | Wednesday, February 26th, 2003 | | 12:48 am |
| | 12:42 am |
just what i needed
check out what the quizzes tell me: 
How evil are you?and, not only that, i am: i am a scenester!
How indie are you? test by ridethefader
You are so indie it hurts. You hang out with the coolest people in your city. It doesn't even bother
you that none of them know your name. You know lots of bands personally, you know a couple of
guys from We Hate The Mainstream Records, and you blag your way into getting almost
everything for free. That fanzine you write gives you extra kudos. You probably don't
even care that non-scenesters think you're a pretentious fuck.
this is information that i desperately needed. is it any wonder that i can't seem to find a satisfying job? although big apologies and sympathy to my man [ Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<ljuser="advancecassette">') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.] check out what the quizzes tell me: <center><a href="http://home.att.net/~slugbutter/evil/" target="new"><img src="http://home.att.net/~slugbutter/evil/pureevil.jpg" border=0></a><br><a href="http://home.att.net/~slugbutter/evil/" target="new">How evil are <i>you</i>?</a></center> and, not only that, i am: <center><font face="arial">i am a scenester!<br> <img src="http://home.iprimus.com.au/sparvin/scene.jpg"><br> <a href="http://home.iprimus.com.au/sparvin/indie.htm"> How indie are you?</a> test by <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/ridethefader">ridethefader</a> <br>You are so indie it hurts. You hang out with the coolest people in your city. It doesn't even bother you that none of them know your name. You know lots of bands personally, you know a couple of guys from We Hate The Mainstream Records, and you blag your way into getting almost everything for free. That fanzine you write gives you extra kudos. You probably don't even care that non-scenesters think you're a pretentious fuck. </font></center> this is information that i desperately needed. is it any wonder that i can't seem to find a satisfying job? although big apologies and sympathy to my man <ljuser="advancecassette">. *no* one should have to be conor oberst. conor oberst is a fucking windchime. also, i'm hot. i should've taken off my jacket a long time ago. although soon i'm going to have to go drag the trash can down to the curb, so perhaps it'll all balance out. that's the hope that i'm going with, at the moment. i have received many many replacements shows from my friends at alt.music.replacements in the last week or so, and this is a very very good thing. and i've been eating philip k. dick up with lentils and rice wine. | | Sunday, February 23rd, 2003 | | 2:27 pm |
oh, lookie. joy.
 You're Conan O'Brien. You are a god. And your funny, a rarity in talk show hosts. Everybody loves you. By the way, we love your hair...and Max. What Talk Show Host Are You Most Like? brought to you by Quizillakind of a lame quiz, though; no jon stewart action. but jimmy kimmel is a possible result? i mean, i kind of like jimmy kimmel, but come on. | | Tuesday, January 7th, 2003 | | 5:45 pm |
just a little litany
- i wish bil keane would finally retire. good god, 'the family circus' makes me hemorrhage every single time i come across it. i mean, is there anyone out there who really thinks to themselves every day, 'ooh, goody, a new family circus'? - i have to do the laundry. i will do the laundry. i'm sure that doing the laundry will be fine. but right now, as i sit here, i so do not want to do the f*@!ing laundry. - i got an email from some smug bastard from some temp agency that i sent my resume to last week that said, essentially, 'you poor sucker. we've got NOTHING for you right now. nor will we ever.' so i fired him one back that said, essentially, 'look, you're not going to find anyone better than me for whatever job you've got offered, unless it's for a master surgeon or something. so give me a chance, you phlegmatic bastard, you.' improper business practice? probably, which is why i'm becoming convinced i'm never going to make it in the "business" world. of course, at the same time i don't ever WANT to make it in the "business" world- wearing a tailored suit and sucking up to halfwits. but i've had to suck up to halfwits while working retail, as well, and at least if i had to suck up in the business world i'd be making a living wage. - even this book that i read last year, 'a working stiff's manifesto', which largely outlined the author's trials and tribulations in trying to make it in the wider world with an english degree, sort of implied that the author was at least able to *get* employment that paid a living wage. which i've thus far not been able to secure. which is driving me insane. - i feel like i'm teetering on the edge of collapse. and i've been smoking too much today, already, even though i've, for the moment, switched to parliaments- and have restricted myself to three today, so far- because i completely reintroduced my winterly bout of bronchitis to myself, after being good for a couple of weeks, last week, when between friday night and tuesday night, i smoked seven packs of camels and went through about four cases of beer. and a lot of absente (absinth? the stuff that they market as absinthe that is devoid of wormwood, at any rate- basically reeeeeally strong licorice spirits.) -um. mission of burma is holy. i've mentioned this before, but i'll reiterate, just because it needs to be said and said again. -write me letters, pray for me. | | Monday, January 6th, 2003 | | 12:38 am |
| | Sunday, January 5th, 2003 | | 6:18 am |
| | Saturday, January 4th, 2003 | | 9:32 pm |
uh, yeah, i'm a little slow. when i wrote 'thank god, to say the least' below, i of course meant to add '... that's he's okay and at home resting.' maybe i need that tea worse than i thought. | | 9:09 pm |
can't anybody here play this game?
more football, but only a little. ha ha ha ha, the jets annihilated the colts. ha ha ha ha. and i'm not even a jets fan. but they've suffered long enough. and now the falcons are beating up on the packers. which i really don't much care about, but it points to just another reason why i love football more and more each season- nothing is ever certain. but these have been two pretty weak games here, today. at least as far as games go. the holidays were okay, for the most part; supremely uneventful, to be bluntly honest, except that my grandmother cooed and whinnied and got tears in her eyes when i gave her the hank. which was, it goes without saying, rather satisfying. i did have a horrifying weekend of the 29th and 30th, however; i woke up on saturday morning to the news that a good friend of mine from high school had been stabbed just down the street from my house, and it was touch and go until about sunday afternoon. he's okay, relatively speaking; leastways, they've let him go home to recuperate, which is a solid sign, of course; it was bleak enough, for awhile, in fact, that on saturday afternoon, when we stopped over at my grandmother's house to say goodbye, she told me that she'd heard, in church, that he'd died. she said this rather offhandedly, apparently not knowing that i'd been friends with him, and so i spent most of saturday up in port jefferson with a friend of mine from college and his sister, watching the games and numbing myself with a combination of drinks and making frantic phone calls to mike's (friend of mine who got stabbed; my college friend is also named mike; there've been a lot of mikes in my life). but then i finally got through and the rumors of his demise had been greatly exaggerated, although i still get nauseous when i think about it. three times, whomever it was, stabbed him- twice in the back and once in the temple. out behind a bar that i've been to hundreds of times. seeing it here, in black and white, again, really gives me pause. i mean, thank god, to say the least. there was a small writeup in saturday's post about it, 'stabbing horror in hamptons', and that was the sort of thing that, breaking into muzzyheaded obvious imbecility for just a moment, one never wants to see. but then, to see the name of an old friend of yours there, written out- it's stating the obvious, so i won't bother to do so, but there are things that go through your mind that you'll never forget. so but, because we boozed so heavily when i was out there- and because i smoked so heavily, as well- and because i pulled a drunken all-nighter on new year's day, having as i did to fly back at six a.m., my cold came back. i've been coughing and achy and stuffy since then, and trying desperately not to smoke too much. which has been reasonably successful, though i'm still at about half a pack a day. down from two and a half a day, or so, the previous week, though, so i'm relatively pleased. jenn and jenn's relatives got me many wonderful things (elton john greatest hits, new queens of the stone age record, lots and LOTS of bill hicks- a bunch of hrm-hrm bootleg live stuff- strange brew, joe vs. the volcano and jackass v. 2 and 3 on video, a pair of silk boxer shorts- and i'm told there's more on the way), and my relatives got me cash, which is about all i really needed, and so xmas was pretty solid and bedecked in smoothness and rich warmth. now we've just feasted on kfc and the game's in the fourth quarter, and i'm a teensy bit sleepy. or not sleepy, really- just relaxed. sedate. folding myself into night very nicely, and debating a cup of tea. | | Friday, December 20th, 2002 | | 5:05 am |
i am horribly (or is it gloriously?) obsessed with mission of burma at the moment. i cannot figure out why it is that the entire world is not similarly afflicted. and i kick myself endlessly that i missed them last month at the metro. let us all recognize the heroism inherent in them. woo hoo. Current Mood:  calmCurrent Music: star trek voyager | | Wednesday, December 18th, 2002 | | 6:10 am |
| | 5:02 am |
haven't updated in forever, so i figured i would. leastways while, now, i can still hold my eyes open, after no sleep last night (in order to get to officemax while they were open and get the $8 deal on the hundred cd cases that they were offering; i hear i'm a dork) and what amounted to a nap this afternoon; yet here i am, listening to mission of burma and drinking a busch at five a.m. and i've got mild laryngitis. starlee from TAL wrote me back tonight, finally, after i sent her a pleading email the other day re: my application for the internship. she says she's been swamped and won't be making a decision until the new year, which in some ways stokes my pessimism but at the same time makes me think, well, she didn't tell me to give it up, so who knows? mission of burma is my new thing, i think. jenn had a shot of nyquil about an hour and a half ago and is now asleep- and so thus missing star trek voyager- for the first time in quite awhile. she's stirred a couple of times, but hasn't woken up. at least not fully. and i'm liking it quite a lot. not that i necessarily want to be awake while she's asleep, of course, but she's been sort of insomniac recently, and though i've somehow been much in favor of sleep recently i relate utterly and it's just great to watch her rest. you can almost see the tank refilling. what else? the mets signed glavine and stanton. and, more importantly, got rid of that fuck ordonez. which gives me glee, although i can't help thinking, in true mets fan fashion, 'well, glavine's kind of old and stanton is, too, and shea's a hulking mess of a stadium and we're still paying rey rey four and a quarter million not to play for us'. and philly's got thome, now, and the braves? christ! suddenly the braves have russ ortiz? and hampton? typical. but, we'll see. mo vaughn's promised to come to camp in shape this year. and stay that way throughout the season. and maybe piazza won't look 34 this year. although i remember when gary carter was 34. by then, he was already a shell of what he'd once been. that's a couple of months away, though. first comes the holidays, which are somehow just right now around the corner. i spent most of today burning my grandmother a copy of my 'complete hank williams' box which was my big christmas gift in '98. and i'm not even sure she's going to really like it. this is my thing, though; this seed implanted itself in me a couple of years ago, when i first started to toy with the idea of getting a burner, that 'memere'd really like a copy of the hank set'. but i know- or, rather, i think i know, and that's almost good enough- that she's going to get it and go, '(guttural french) what is this? everything? i love that song, joosh-tanh.' |
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