fair warning very early on

having started this whole web log thing again (if any of you remember the ubps days, you'll kindly also recall that you're probably considered a friend and forget them immediately), I think there are a few things I should set out right here at the beginning. Ground rules, for myself as much as anyone else, listed in no particular order of importance, and conveniently located here very near the beginning of this--if I may--"blog" where those reading in reverse chronological order might never find it.

call it potential hindsight correction. you know, in case someone else later on reads this whole damn log in reverse chronological order. I imagine some woman I'm interested in down the line settling down at her computer, all dolled up in her comfy clothes on a lonely, tipsy Saturday night and doing a little standard background checking. she finds this blog in some Google cache--or better yet, still going!--and starts with the most recent post. of course, it's witty and wry and ironic and oddly twisted and annoyingly self-conscious and she's intrigued. she keeps reading.

keep in mind, it's a long way back to this post, the one you're reading; these ground rules, this explanatory manual of painstakingly assembled context specifically to be referred to in the future, as the blog ages and matures and grows and blossoms. before that lady ever gets all the way back here, she reads all the fucked up ranting and idiotically lurid mind wanderings of this tortured soul.

she's really freaked out now--but she can't stop reading--when the insight calvary rides in and saves the day(/night/potentially positive nature of the relationship): she finally comes back to this post...

hang on one second, I smell something burning.

(10 minutes later)

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST. I was talking about ground rules at some point. Well, here's number one, the first: No blogging while making dinner. I just freakin' scrubbed down my stove a half hour ago (down being a key word here; I removed a layer of "flavor" about a quarter-inch thick) and now here I am letting the pot boil over. And now here I am letting my dinner get cold. And now here I am still typing, dammit.

Fuck ground rules. Let's eat!

Currently Listening:
Songs On Radio Idaho
By The Actual

wherein every sentence is like battery cables to the brain

This sentence no verb.
Cette phrase en francais est difficile a traduire en anglais.
"yields falsehood, when appended to its quotation." yields falsehood, when appended to its quotation.
What is a question that can serve as its own answer?
In order to make sense of "this sentence", you will have to ignore the quotes in "it".
This is a sentence with "onions", "lettuce", "tomato", and "a side of fries to go".
This is a hamburger with vowels, consonants, commas, and a period at the end.
A ceux qui ne comprennent pas l'anglais, la phrase citee ci-dessous ne dit rien: "For those who know no French, the French sentence that introduced this quoted sentence has no meaning."
I am not the person who wrote me.
I am jealous of the first word in this sentence.
I am simultaneously writing and being written.
I am the thought you are now thinking.
Do you think anyone has ever had precisely this thought before?**
The reader of this sentence exists only while reading me.
Say, haven't you written me somewhere else before?
Thit sentence is not self-referential because "thit" is not a word.
No language can express every thought unambiguously, least of all this one.
When you are not looking at it, this sentence is in Sanskrit.
If this sentence were in Chinese, it would say something else.
If I had finished this sentence,
What would this sentence be like if Pi were 3?
because I didn't think of a good beginning for it.
This sentence was in the past tense.
In the time it takes you to read this sentence, eighty-six letters could have been processed by your brain.
This sentence has cabbage six words.
You may quote me.
Does this sentence remind you of Agatha Christy?

** these are all cribbed from the first article in Douglas R. Hofstadter's Metamagical Themas. How does it hurt?

Currently Listening:
Loose In The Air
By The Double

justification

I buy a lot of couches. I mean, A LOT of couches. I'm into the comfort thing, lounging around my apartment (it's big, to fit so many couches). On a good Saturday night I find myself at the furniture warehouse with all the hip kids in town. The door charge is totally worth all the great couches I get to laze about in. But lemme tell ya, a couch is expensive. It looks even more so when you spend the percentage of income that I do on couches. So I carefully evaluate every couch I'm interested in before I buy it. I sit in it, make some time for the cushions to mold to my ass, get up and walk around for a bit, then sit down again. It takes a bit of time, but the people who sell me the couch understand that I'm seriously considering investing in their couch, and that if I like it I'll recommend the model to everyone I meet at the next warehouse blowout or online. If it fits, I buy it. If not, next couch! Some couch retailers don't understand my situation, and I just don't buy couches from them. Anyway, I can't just buy every couch I sit on. That would make for some awkward situations at friends' houses, or in hotel lobbies, or at the arthouse cinema down the block. But I do buy couches; not as many as I try out, true, but a lot of couches nonetheless.

Currently Listening:
Homesongs
By Adem

love schemes

I'd forgotton how nice it is to have this kind of outlet for my whimsy. And, I don't have to set anything up! Sweet!

Anyway, I got some spam today that wasn't automatically redirected by hotmail, but because I'd posted an email address on my profile I thought I'd give it a look. Boy, am I ever happy I did! Zowee! Here's a snippet of the email I got:

Hello,

Do 
accept my sincere apologies if my mail does not meet your 
personal ethics. I will introduce myself as Mr.Robbin Kuuk,
a staff in the accounts management section of the above 
firm here in the United Kingdom.

One of our accounts with holding balance of �15,000,000
(Fifteen Million British Pounds) has been dormant and has 
not been operated for the past four  (4) years.

From my investigations and confirmations, the owner of 
this account, a foreigner by name Kurt Kahle died in 
July, 2000...

It goes on, of course, but I think you know what it says. I enjoyed the fresh plot of a British businessman dealing in Pounds Sterling instead of the usual hereditary prince of BFA, so I thought I'd reward them with a reply. Here it is:

Hello Mr. Robbin Kuuk -

Do you believe in love at first read?

I sure do. Having received your email regarding what, I don't know, and having read the glorious prose through which you set forth some fraudulent scheme, I instantly became wholly infatuated with you.

Will you bear my children? Will you blow alternating hot and cold? Will you make sweet, sweet, love to me and my family while we discuss financial balderdash and evil identity theft plot schemes? Oh, I do hope so.

Ethics need not be considered. My steaming pile of love for you transcends ethics, travels deep into and well beyond the cold, desolate realm of scruples, envelopes and destroys the concepts of money, power, and sexuality, whizzes at lightning speed by the flesh-eating morass of politics, government and soverignity, and leads (hopefully) to your soft, wet cavities.

Pleasure me with your English Pounds. Load your ridiculously improbable amounts of money onto my hardened, thrumming sex drive, and let us fuck away our cares. I'll do you first, and once I've had my way with your hidden Kuuk, we'll see about you getting yours.

If there is any possibility of us meeting in person, so I can fill you with my hot bank deposit and you can wear my identity like a mask over your bulging, deceased assets, please reply and let me know. I am eager to feel your skin on my sharpened objects.

Please, please do not ignore my fantasy. If you do, I'll tell my daddy who works at Fox News. I know you.

Peace,
Ted

The last time I replied to one of these (he was "African" with a poor command of the english language), we went back and forth discussing the possibility of burying the money he had access to in my backyard. I'm hoping for some more exciting fireworks this time.

Currently Listening:
Leviathon
By Mastadon

wine

Jesus, I'd almost forgotton. It's been a long while since I've sat down and had a few glasses of wine. Beer and whiskey at the bar plenty in the past few, but a cheap bottle of corked red and a sofa has long been absent from my life. If only for the hot lovin' that used to come afterwards. That would round things out nicely, I think.

Alas, though I wasn't alone, I certainly wasn't with anyone, and that makes for a bit drier experience. Oh, and HBO dramedy season finale programming is a bit of a mood killer, even between friends. But I'm still drunk, and in a pleasanter fashion than I've been since almost a year ago. There's a lot to say in favor of that.

Instead of going on at length on the topic, though, I think I'll just drift off to sleep amid the meandering strains of Mick Turner's guitar.

Currently Listening:
Marlan Rosa
By Mick Turner