me and the girl

JLB rationalizes God

Picked up a collection of Jorge Luis Borges's fiction, and opened it to a random page. This is what I read:

"I close my eyes and see a flock of birds. The vision lasts a second or perhaps less; I am not sure how many birds I saw. Was the number of birds definite or indefinite? The problem involves the existence of God. If God exists, the number is definite, because God knows how many birds I saw. If God does not exist, the number is indefinite, because no one can have counted. In this case I saw fewer than ten birds (let us say) and more than one, but did not see nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three or two birds. I saw a number between ten and one, which was not nine , eight, seven, six, five, etc. That integer—not-nine, not-eight, not-seven, not-six, not-five, etc.—is inconceivable. Ergo, God exists."

JLB, that doesn't make any sense, man.

hell day 3

Third hell day of the three-day hellathon. Morning. Took pooch for a walk. Didn't bother to put a shirt on, or underwear, because that's not the kind of day today is. It's overcast and windy. Chilly. Kahlua's turd was bigger than mine usually are. She is a beast.

Went to dinner with the family last night. It was fun. We joked around, there was no serious family talk. Grandma and I shared a Mudslide.

At work we play this song by the Jackson 5, "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus." It bothers me because the kid in the song has two options: 1) His mother is actually kissing his father, and there is no Santa Claus, or 2) His mother is a whore. It's interesting that a child's revelation that there is no Santa Claus would coincide with his understanding that his mother, his totem of purity, actually has sex (!) on a regular basis.

BOLANO

The word of the day is BOLANO. There's an en-yay on that N but fuck it, I'm tired and lazy because Black Friday kicked my ass.

I will keep this short: please go out and read Roberto Bolano. I'm working through his whole oeuvre before I get to "2666", which he never finished before he died. Words I've seen used to describe it: apocalyptic, noir, pulp, sci-fi, raunchy, violent, inventive, brave. It's essentially five novels in one, all circling around the murders of the women in Ciudad Juarez, right over the border from El Paso.

This is a big deal. I'm in the middle of "The Savage Detectives" right now. All I can compare it to is when I tore through "Infinite Jest". Never been that engaged in words since.

saturday and sunday

I decided to say "Fuck it" and go with the flow. I wasn't going to kill myself at work, trying to do three things at once. Occasionally I did, it can't be avoided, but I didn't freak out about it. At the end of the day I felt much better and I think overall people were much nicer, as they could sense that my vibe was much more laid-back.

BLOOD'S A ROVER

From Sobel Webber Associates:

BLOOD’S A ROVER
by James Ellroy
(Knopf, Fall 2009)

Foreign Publishers
France: Rivages
Germany: Ullstein
Italy: Mondadori
U.K.: Random House Century

At long last—James Ellroy’s greatest work of fiction.

BLOOD’S A ROVER is the third volume of Ellroy’s Underworld USA Trilogy. Volume 1, AMERICAN TABLOID, covered 1958-’63 and ended with the JFK snuff in Dallas. Volume 2, THE COLD SIX-THOUSAND, covered Dallas to the MLK RFK hits and their hellish aftermath. BLOOD’S A ROVER takes us on the wildest historical ride of them all.

There’s a horrific armored-car heist, replete with a stash of missing cash and mysterious emeralds. There’s J. Edgar Hoover and Howard Hughes moving into their psychopathic dotage. The FBI’s out to infiltrate two evil black-militant groups in L.A. The mob wants to plant lush hotel casinos in the Dominican Republic. There’s a voodoo vibe in Haiti, and, brother, it be bad gre-gre. Two rogue cops and a kid private eye are locked in a consuming fury to claim the Red Goddess Joan.

Sex and history—on an unprecedented scale.

Raging love stories, the clash of race and ideology, the moral fire of a great American time.

Playboy will publish a 10,000-word excerpt in this year’s Christmas issue on sale Nov. 10.

Alfred A. Knopf will publish BLOOD’S A ROVER in fall of 2009.

Feel the all-encompassing heat!

Fear this book.

I must have this. Now. Going out to buy Playboy. Need...excerpt.

flight of the conchords

Rios loves Flight of the Conchords. I pretend that I don't like them. But they're funny. Sometimes. She rented the DVD, which is now overdue. She's watched the season...twice. She listens to it in the car all the time. It's not so bad, but the songs aren't really good song-wise (like Tenacious D, for example), so it's basically like listening to a comedy sketch over, and over...

Bought some stuff at Atomik Pop, today:

language

I am obsessed with learning Spanish. Every course is a language course. If you're taking Spanish, you learn that these words, in this sequence, stands for this idea. If you're taking Botany, in the same way, you need to learn the language. Take the word "xylem." You might build a little word bridge in your mind, i.e. xylem = tissue that conducts water in vascular plants, but what you really need to do is destroy that bridge and set the tiny islands of thought like transparencies on top of each other, until you understand the words qua the words, the same way when you see "agua" and you think "water" in English, you should be thinking of WATER, the stuff you drink, otherwise you'll be a translator, a human Babel Fish, instead of a speaker of Spanish or Botany. Compartamentalize ideas into the shorthand of words, make it second nature. Every course, I'll say again, is a language course.

stray dog

Today there was a fat-ass labrador wandering across the road in the neighborhood that I drive through on my way home. I pulled my car over and got out and said "Come here." He smiled and listened. He licked my hand, not really shy or excited, blind in his left eye, no tag on his collar, eager to get back to sniffing the grass.

I looked at the houses in the neighborhood. I shrugged and decided to start ringing doorbells. I left my car on the side of the road, running, and made my way up the sidewalk toward the first house I saw and turned and the dog was standing in the road, looking at me. I started towards it, and I shouted, "Get the hell out of the road. The fuck is wrong with you?" He bumbled up onto to the sidewalk, keeping his head cocked, so he could see me with his good eye.

I grabbed him by the collar, intent on taking him to each house with me, but a hundred pound dog doesn't go where a hundred pound dog doesn't want to go, and he had grass to sniff. He licked my hands a couple more times, saying, "Hey, man, it's cool. Let me do my thing." I watched him trot along the grass between the sidewalk and the road, sniffing, maybe going home, and I got back in my car and drove away.

holiday season request #1

Don't go to a store near closing time. Seriously.

If you glance at the clock and your desired retailer is 30 minutes from closing, and you absolutely must go, it's like a life or death thing, then go, because there's obviously something specific that you can run in, grab, and purchase all before closing time.

If you glance at the clock and your desired retailer is 30 minutes from closing and you think, oh, I'll have a few minutes to just glance around, you are a piece of shit.

Don't go. Stay home.

kahlua hates leashes

"Come on, Kahlua. Wanna go outside?"

"I would love to take a walk."

"You're a good girl."

"Thank you."

"Here's your leash."

"NO. NO. A THOUSAND TIMES NO."

"Kahlua, quit fucking around, put your leash on."

"I WILL NOT."

"Dog, you know we can't go outside till you put this on. We do this every day, and it never changes anything."

"WOULDST THOU NOT COWER UNDER THE MASTER'S LASH THE HUNDREDTH TIME SAME AS THE FIRST???"

"Jesus Christ. Here. Would you like a potato chip?"

"I would love one, thank you-- OH YOU'VE DISTRACTED ME."

"There. Now let's go for a walk."

"I am so melancholy."

"Quit being a baby."

"Sigh. I just...my, the air is fresh. And look, Father, over there! A squirrel! Oh the butterflies, how they tickle my nose! How the leaves crunch delightfully beneath my paws! How the sun shines upon my cool fur! Nature, you truly are God's gift to dogs. I believe I'll take a shit."

Obama Wins

I am so fucking elated.

Been saying it for a while now.

I love this country.

"Rocknrolla" was very cool. I liked it a lot. I think Guy Ritchie is one of my favorite filmmakers. "What??" you say. "He made 'Swept Away'. And 'Revolver' made no sense."

But you see, that why I like him. He fucks up. It adds character. He's obviously talented, but sometimes the bitch wife demands a starring role, and love can make a man do crazy things. And sometimes a man tries to be like Lynch, and really, only Lynch can be Lynch, except for sometimes Miike, another fuckup that I love dearly. What I'm saying is, when he's on, he's on, and when he's not, he's human.

The movie has gangsters, rock stars, Russians, and loud, awesome music. There's also a painting. It's sort of like the suitcase in Pulp Fiction, except in Pulp Fiction we all know the suitcase holds Marcellus Wallace's soul. In "Rocknrolla", we have no idea what's in the painting. It's the property of a Russian gangster, who calls it his "lucky painting." It captivates whoever looks at it, and it changes hands several times throughout the film.

What could be in the painting that is so enthralling> Oh, come now. I think we both know.




God. Just looking at Statham puts hair on my nuts.