(no subject)

I would like to know why I have Macarthur Park stuck in my head. I get pretty random stuff stuck in my head, but this takes the cake, because I'm pretty sure I've never actually heard Macarthur Park, and if I have, then I can't place it. I haven't got the foggiest what the tune is, but I happen to know the lyrics (don't ask), and it just lept merrily into my head while passing the Macarthur BART station today, and hasn't left since. It's taking up valuable space that I could be using for more important things, like oh I don't know, remembering peoples names a minute after meeting them, or powers of 2 (Tangent: I used to get really bored at parties in my first two years of college, and I'd end up calculating powers of 2 in my head until I started getting the feeling that I'd bungled the math somewhere. That or the fibonacci series. This was back when I found numbers a lot easier to deal with than people. Though that's still true to a certain lesser extent. Rephrase. This is back when I *liked* numbers a lot more than most people)

Yesterday was hanging out with momness day. Woke up early, performed all the morning rituals, then went and fell a-nap on the couch waiting for the doorbell. Drove up to Will and Nadja's place. Got to pet her cats and see Will's exciting clothing invention. When all gussied up in it he looks a little like a combination between a bright orange jawa and the Oogy Boogy Man from Nightmare Before Christmas. I expect him to scare the hell out of hapless trippers who come across him at Burning Man. Grabbed Nadja and made off to the nursery to continue the search for a mother's day rose. Left Will behind to procure a car which will eventually be transformed into War Rocket Ajax for the Moons of Mongo camp. The nursery trip was a failure unfortunately. Nice roses, but mildewed. Shame. Called up Val and Marklar for cafe hang-outness at Au Coquelet for a bit. I take a lot of pleasure in the fact that my mom interacts with my friends on a level other than "Josh's friends". Tried to get Ericpants and Aaron and Melissa to come out also, but sadly failed. After brunchy action we headed for Telegraph Avenue to poke at stores. Divided up into predictable gender lines. Marklar and I looked at comic books and music while the females went peering at clothes. Oh, hunter/gatherer duality, what has become of you? After miscellaneous other shopping stops we finally made it to Shattuck Cinemas for movieness where we met up with Will again after parting ways with Val and Marklar.

Chosen movie du jour was The Cockettes. Nadja's choice, as most of the movies I'm interested in aren't quite out yet. The Cockettes is a documentary about a theater group in the late 60's. More specifically it's about a bunch of primarily homosexual, acid-head hippies who danced around in either elaborate drag or not much at all. Nadja of course wanted to see it because of the drag aspect, because as we all know, Nadja only likes movies involving cross-dressing (This is me attempting to beat a running joke to death, FYI). I think it's strange that I feel such a sense of nostalgia for a period in time that I never lived through. They all seemed so hopeful and wrapped in the belief that the world and humanity were generally good things and were only going to get better. I think the passage from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas sums it up best.

And that, I think, was the handle---that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting---on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark---the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

The seventies and eighties must have come as such a horrible shock for that sort of well meaning naivete. I think in a way I sort of envy them. I can't remember feeling anything but jaded in humanity as a whole for as long as I can remember. I can vaguely remember believing in political movements, but never very fervently. My communism phase lasted about a week in 6th grade, which is about how long it took me to realize that communism is fine in theory, but completely implausible once you factor in human nature. My anarchist phase was even shorter lived. Then I just settled into the belief that humans are capable of screwing up just about anything, no matter how well intentioned they are or how good it looks on paper. Mmmm, apathetic nihilism. Quothe Morla "Not that it matters...".

Anyway, we all enjoyed the movie quite a bit. After movie, it was off to Alameda for Mexican food and then Ain't Dead Yet where I was spinning. DJing was fun, but stressful. DJing in this scene is such a tightrope walk. You need to play music that everyone wants to hear and dance to, but if you do that, they bitch about hearing the same stuff every week. You need to play obscure music that no one's ever heard before, because that's the way obscure music gets popular, but if you do that people gripe about not hearing their favorites and not having anything to dance to. You need to play industrial for the rivets, goth for the goths, and rarely if ever the twain shall meet. You need to deal with requests that are about 100 BPM off of what's currently playing and that only one person in the club wants to hear. It's madness. I definitely fall way into the category of playing too much of what people want to hear. I *hate* clearing the floor. I hate feeling like I'm playing the same old thing all the time also, but them's the breaks I guess. After I settled into the groove I had a lot of fun. Looking forward to the electro lounge next month. Post club went back to Mike and Maggie's new house, which has a name involving chocolate chewy centers, but I can't quite recall the details. Sent an email to Ceren regarding trip to LA today, as we hadn't been in touch for a couple of days. Went to sleep planning on checking in with her in the morning, meeting up and then heading down.

Ended up waking up at about 9 am, which seemed pretty reasonable to me, but after checking email discovered it was about two hours after they had left. Sadness. I was pretty burnt out though, so maybe it's for the best. I would have either just slept in the car or been a cranky zombie monkey. Since I was already up, I headed out to make it back down to Dan's house. BARTed and Caltrained my way down the peninsula and decided to spend some birthday money. Unfortunately I just remembered that not all of the money in my wallet was for me, and after deducting what wasn't, now I feel poorer than I'm comfortable with. Bleh. Went to Barnes & Nobles and picked up yet another Discworld book. Unfortunately they didn't have all the ones I'm missing, and the only one they did have was Eric, which is immensely short. I finished it before I got back to Dan's house actually. 7$ go *poof*. This is why I occasionally read completely abyssmal, and yet really long fantasy epics. I know they're bad, but sometimes bad is better than boredom. I just couldn't bring myself to pick up mindless schlock today though. I think maybe I'm finally beginning to outgrow my love-hate relationship with bad literature. This is probably a good thing. My occasionally juvenile taste in books is a form of intellectual neoteny that I can do without. Picked up the new Christopher Moore book also, entitled Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. I'm enjoying it a lot of course, but I keep getting the feeling that there's lots of jokes I'm missing because I've forgotten pieces of biblical mythology. Oh well. Not really worth rereading the Bible as far as I'm concerned.

I'm getting sick of writing now, so I'm going to stop. And there's nothing you can do about it.