well here's a hearty fuck for you. my car was doing all manner of crazy things on thursday and friday, so i took it in on saturday to get it serviced. i got the call today that it would cost me $1600 to get it street legal in virginia. hum. let's see. $1600 up front? do i have that kind of money? hell no. what are my options? pour money into a nine year old car or invest in a new car. i suppose those could be called options.

so here i am. i have a car that barely drives and i have very few outstanding debts. well, here's another one. big money this time. big money. it's looking like a honda civic sedan at this point. i have to see what the situation is and whether i have to pay anything up front, but that's my situation. fun, huh?

whee.

once a week? i'm down to once a week? that's not good. not good at all, i tell you. maybe i should just dump this whole thing altogether. nah. that would be silly, really.

anyway. i updated everything here and across the board. all of my links are logical and easily spotted (i hope. let me know if you think that they aren't.) i'm also writing again, which is always a fun thing to do. write write write. i actually started a long-term story and i'm sort of seeing how it goes and where it goes. i have no idea, really. wait, hold on. i've already written about that.

what else is there to write about? party on saturday? shan's mom is coming into town on wednesday, which is why we spent all day yesterday cleaning? maybe.

i finished american gods yesterday (after the cleaning was done). it was a really good book, to tell the truth. now i'm reading the white rhino hotel by bartle bull. i'm not sure if i like it or not, but it's interesting. i guess maybe i do like it, because i want to keep reading it, which is enough, really.

so that's it. excitement. fun. me living life.

ciao.

argh. for some reason, weekends just aren't good for me to post on this thing. it might have something to do with the crappy ass connection i have at home.

let's see. i spent father's day with greg and gabe playing frisbee at rob's house. that was fun, but it wasn't really what i wanted to be doing on sunday. still and all... we saw o brother where art thou last night, which was genuinely enjoyable. george clooney did a great job, as did john turturro. i'm beginning to the think that john turturro needs to be in a movie with benecio del toro. soon.

so i'm sitting here wondering if i should start writing another novel. i've got my characters. i've got my opening. i just don't have an ending or a title. but do i really need those things? i have a quote that informs the story (such as it is). do i start writing down what these people are doing and hope that it all comes together?

gah. and now work intrudes on my artistic musings...

from the culture list:

Dear Sir or Madam Filth Merchant,

I would like to bring to your attention that the film aired on your channel the night of Friday last, entitled "Sorority Sisters Sexy Slumber Party", and rated MA for Nudity, Sexual Situations, and Language, did not have even a half-decent beaver shot. And don't get me started on the near lack of naked boobies. Furthermore, were I an ass-man, not a single bare ass would I have seen. Was I aroused? Not a jot. This is one of the least titillating features it has been my misfortune to pay $4.95 for. How dare you defile the sanctified custom of pay-per-view television softcore porn? If, in the future, your channel persists in such false advertizing, it will be incumbent upon me to expose you for the frauds that you are. Anonymously, of course.

P.S., my girlfriend would like to thank you for that half-second shot of that one guy's truly amazing butt. Is he Australian?

Yours truly,
I.P. Freely

Also, to whom it may concern, Friday's soft-core porn offering; "Midnight Ramrod Sexcapades", had clearly been edited for content, the story made no sense whatsoever.

ay. it's been a week since i posted (yes, yes). in that time, not many small things have happened, to be honest. i'm wearing a tie today because we have guests in the office and we all have to look professional. i'm in a constant state of rolling my eyes, believe me.

after the whole thing with arthur c. clarke last week, shan went out and rented 2001, which we watched on saturday night. she liked it, but she found the ending a bit confusing. i told her that now we need to see 2010 because so much more of it is explained there. at any rate, she really liked the visual presentation (so minimalist!) and the use of music. very kubrick. of course, as a result of us watching 2001, we didn't go out to catacomb, which shouldn't have been a big deal. i mean, we go out every single saturday night and have done for months. we took one night off and all hell broke loose. we got all manner of emails wondering where we were...

honestly, we didn't know that we were so popular.

there was one thing that i was sorry i missed, though. i've been trading casual conversations with the features editor from sequential tart, who happens to live here in dc. she's on the catacomb mailing list but she doesn't come out to the club very often. (you can see wherer this is going, can't you?) so she came out on saturday and i wasn't there. she asked around for me and was told (horror of horrors!) that i wasn't there. and i got a little "hey i was there for once..." email from her, which was cool.

it's always nice to be noticed. even better to be missed.

and i'm really hoping that this pans out...

we went to see a talk at the air and space museum last night. the speakers were ben bova, fred ordway, gene cernan and (via telephone) arthur c. clarke. that was really cool. fred ordway was all over the place and gene cernan needs someone to write his speeches for him because his enthusiasm only gets him through one point but ben bova was a really good speaker. arthur c. clarke was, of course, the old british gentleman with a great sense of humor. kind of reminded me of my grandfather, actually. he had one good line where he was talking about the mars orbiter's pictures and he commented that it looked like mars had been made by "demented landscape gardeners." fairly typical.

it was a fun night out, all in all. and it got shannon interested in the movies (she's never seen 2001 but she wants to rent it soon. i told her that we have to rent both 2001 and 2010). so that's a good thing.

i just finished reading fever pitch by nick hornby and i'm rereading shadow of the hegemon by orson scott card. i have the fifth elephant on order from amazon as well as some various and sundry books in my wish list. (i'd list them here but i doubt that anyone would actually bother to buy them for me.) one of those items, though, is a book by jan saudek. what's slightly amusing about that is that i was explaining who jan saudek is to shan last night and today salon put up an article about him. coincidence? i wonder.

an early morning and i have a lot to do. we went to my mother's birthday party on saturday night, which was enjoyable. she's fifty now. wow.

at any rate, i don't have much else to talk about here. i'm rushing to get something ready for the souvenir koan, but it's not quite ready yet. soon. soon. soon.

in the meantime, try this. it's funny.

i finished reading miss wyoming last night on the way home from work (to be honest, i was up to the last chapter on the way in TO work yesterday morning, but i just didn't get a chance to finish it before i got to work). at any rate, i liked it. much better than girlfriend in a coma, too. in fact, it was probably the best thing that douglas coupland has done. that i've read, anyway.

what was interesting about it was the way he told the chronological story all of the place and all out of order. iain banks did the same thing in use of weapons, but i think that coupland did it better - mostly because he wasn't held down by the structure. he allowed himself to move whereever he wanted and let the order be dictated by the story. banks was more rigid about it and that affected the story differently. they were both good books, but i think the lesson i learned from coupland is not to be too rigid about your structure.

this would be day one of the new site design (sans graphics). opinions? i feel so minimalist.

here are some random links that have been bounced in my direction. let's see what they are. here we have a digital theremin. interesting.

and here, here, here and here are some very interesting links about obscure and indecipherable books. very old, indecipherable books.

and that's all for today.