The Self-Starter Foundation - Stealth {Tarter}

NP: "Pardon My French" – Get Him Eat Him.
NP: "Fake French" – El Guapo.
NP: "Love Goes Home To Paris In The Spring" – The Magnetic Fields.
NP: "Paris Rag" – Masa Sumide.
NP: "Dear Spirit, I'm In France" – Oxes.
NP: "Open Air" – The Oranges Band.
NR: last issue of The New Yorker. A short story by Samantha Hunt that seems to be set within a half hour of where I grew up. My jaw almost dropped when a reference was made to a roadside "Crystal Cave" sign.

Finally got off my ass and got some photos from the Franz Ferdinand tour up online. I'm not very happy with how they turned out, in general, and I wish I had taken more, um, "candid / life on the road" kinda shots, but... At least there are a few shots that are salvageable. Here they are:

franz ferdinand tour photos

I also finally finished up "The Megan Brown CDs" project. My niece Megan turned 12 in August, and i felt this was the time for a more formal introduction to good music. Me being the foremost authority on good music, of course. And, of course, this means I also ignored pretty much every genre of music that I'm not versed in, so it ends up being a list of punk / indie / alternative songs of the last 30 years. The entire playlist was determined by figuring out exactly how many songs fit on 30 cds (down to the second, pretty much), while still allowing for data to be burned onto each cd: all the songs are ripped as mp3s and contained on the disc, so that Megan could drag and drop the files straight onto her MP3 player, if she so chooses. And, of course, the order of the songs on each cd was painstakingly selected. Not working straight through, but the project still isn't actually finished. I've been sending her a new cd approximately every 12 days, so that it will take her a year to get all the cds. And I only just now finished the final eight CD's running order. I still need to burn those eight, but in the meantime, here are the tracklistings for the entire series:

Megan Brown CD #01 Track Listing: click here
Megan Brown CD #02 Track Listing: click here
Megan Brown CD #03 Track Listing: click here
Megan Brown CD #04 Track Listing: click here
Megan Brown CD #05 Track Listing: click here
Megan Brown CD #06 Track Listing: click here
Megan Brown CD #07 Track Listing: click here
Megan Brown CD #08 Track Listing: click here
Megan Brown CD #09 Track Listing: click here
Megan Brown CD #10 Track Listing: click here
Megan Brown CD #11 Track Listing: click here
Megan Brown CD #12 Track Listing: click here
Megan Brown CD #13 Track Listing: click here
Megan Brown CD #14 Track Listing: click here
Megan Brown CD #15 Track Listing: click here
Megan Brown CD #16 Track Listing: click here
Megan Brown CD #17 Track Listing: click here
Megan Brown CD #18 Track Listing: click here
Megan Brown CD #19 Track Listing: click here
Megan Brown CD #20 Track Listing: click here
Megan Brown CD #21 Track Listing: click here
Megan Brown CD #22 Track Listing: click here
Megan Brown CD #23 Track Listing: click here
Megan Brown CD #24 Track Listing: click here
Megan Brown CD #25 Track Listing: click here
Megan Brown CD #26 Track Listing: click here
Megan Brown CD #27 Track Listing: click here
Megan Brown CD #28 Track Listing: click here
Megan Brown CD #29 Track Listing: click here
Megan Brown CD #30 Track Listing: click here

01.20.06 s'more bloody awful poetry

NP: nuthin'.
NR: nuthin'.

Those two poems I made reference to the other day:

Perspective

They passed like strangers,
without a word or gesture,
her off to the store,
him heading for the car.

Perhaps startled
or distracted,
or forgetting
that for a short while
they'd been in love forever.

Still, there's no guarantee
that it was them.
Maybe yes from a distance,
but not close up.

I watched them from the window,
and those who observe from above
are often mistaken.

She vanished beyond the glass door.
He got in behind the wheel
and took off.
As if nothing had happened,
if it had.

And I, sure for just a moment
that I'd seen it,
strive to convince you, O Readers,
with this accidental little poem
that it was sad.

Wislawa Szymborska
(Translated, from the Polish, by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh.)
(From The New Yorker a couple of weeks ago)

tonight

"your poems about the girls will still be around
50 years from now when the girls are gone,"
my editor phones me.

dear editor:
the girls appear to be gone
already.

I know what you mean

but give me one truly alive woman
tonight
walking across the floor toward me

and you can have all the poems

the good ones
the bad ones
or any that I might write after this one.

I know what you mean.

do you know what I mean?

Charles Bukowski

01.19.06 nothing funny

NP: "The Smile You Smile" – Van Morrison.
NP: "The Man Comes Around" – Johnny Cash.
NP: "Do The Strand" – Roxy Music.
NR: last issue of The New Yorker. Dragging my feet on this one. Doing too much Sudoku and not enough reading.

some photographs:

How can you tell if someone's a New Yorker? Check out their spelling of "Broom".

Found this on the floor of St. Dymphna's a while ago. Poor Kevin.

I don't know if the homeless guy sleeping within noticed the irony of his selection of boxes.
[click on image for a larger photo.]

01.13.06 such bloody awful poetry

NP: nuthin'.
NR: nuthin'.

There's a poem in The New Yorker a couple of weeks ago that reminded me of a couple of poems. I need to find it and transcribe it (as well as this one Bukowski poem that's amazing that I just read), but here are some other poems:

I wonder how many people in this city
live in furnished rooms.
Late at night when I look out at the buildings
I swear I see a face in every window
looking back at me,
and when I turn away
I wonder how many go back to their desks
and write this down.

Leonard Cohen

Excepting the diner
On the outskirts.
The town of Ladora
At 3 a.m.
Was dark but
For my headlights
And up in
One second-story room
A single light
Where someone
Was sick or
Perhaps reading
As I drove past
At seventy
Not thinking.
This poem
Is for whoever
Had the light on

Donald Justice

jake hates
all the girls(the
shy ones, the bold		paul scorns all
ones; the meek		the girls(the
proud sloppy sleek)		bright ones, the dim
all except the cold		ones; the slim
ones		plump tiny tall)
		all except the
		dull ones
gus loves all the
girls(the
warped ones, the lamed		mike likes all the girls
ones; the mad		(the
moronic maimed)		fat ones, the lean
all except		ones; the mean
the dead ones		kind dirty clean)
		all
		except the green ones

e e cummings

Celebration

When you kneel below me
and in both your hands
hold my manhood like a sceptre,

When you wrap your tongue
about the amber jewel
and urge my blessing.

I understand those Roman girls
who danced around a shaft of stone
and kissed it till the stone was warm.

Kneel, love, a thousand feet below me,
so far I can barely see your mouth and hands
perform the ceremony,

Kneel till I topple to your back
with a groan, like those gods on the roof
that Samson pulled down.

Leonard Cohen

01.12.06 Did you give up punk for lent?

NP: nuthin'.
NR: nuthin'.

Annoying poker over the last 24 hours. Just can't hit a hand. Dwindling stacks. Finally hitting top pair and losing to flush. Getting AQ when somebody has AK. No real bad beats, but definitely some bad luck. And a little bit of bad playing, but nothing real noteworthy (honestly).

Online play, which was so good to me for a week, also went to hell. Low stakes pot limit omaha high/low on bodog... was crushing it for a week. Then in the last two days, I just lost every hand. Flopping middle set and losing to top set. Never hitting the nut flush, but backdooring a Jack high flush and calling a bet only to be losing to the King high flush.

So I decide to play some $4/$8 limit hold 'em. Haven't done that forever. Outdrawn after outdrawn after outdrawn. Lose $200 in like 90 minutes. Realizing that I must admit to being awful at limit. I keep losing at it. I haven't made money at limit since Playstation existed. That's bad.

I was up $1000 for 2006. In my last three sessions that all went away. Which means I'm even. But I can't afford to be even this month. I need to make $1500 playing poker this month. I NEED to. I need to play and win. I'm trying to take it seriously, and play well. I need to get over the last 36 hours of poker if I'm going to be able to do that. I hate feeling the confidence trickle away after a couple of losing sessions. I really hate it. I hate this fucking game sometimes. I'm just not a strong enough player to really play well all the time; I'm not a strong enough person to just stop playing it at all. And my finances are just so fucked up that I must admit that the allure of it is just too much for me. I'm frustrated.

I had the strangest thing happen to me today. I saw a cute little kid being pushed in a stroller, and suddenly I had the urge to have a child. I don't know where it came from, or why. But there it was. Just for a second. I'm sure it had something to do with seeing Match Point last week. I'm sure it has something to do with thinking a bit about Molly. A certain amount of just pure escapism fantasy ("what if my life were completely different?"), and some of it was just one of those random thoughts that usually probably passes without even really noticing it. But it was kinda strange.

What happened right after was kinda funny, too. I went to get a slice on the way to work. I'm sitting next to a little girl and her father. I feel like the guy gives me a bit of a strange look, but I don't really think about it. Then when I leave I look in the mirror and realize: I'm wearing a 2 Live Crew "Me So Horny" shirt. doh.

princess, the cat at my deli. princess is 19 years old and weighs exactly 4.75. i know this because she was asleep on the scale when i went in there the other night. i will miss princess when she dies. she's been the only real constant in my life for the last ten years.

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