Friday, July 24, 2009
I Moved!
Hey everybody! Or rather, hey the three people that I know for certain used to read this back when I had my ass in gear enough to actually post shit. I got really depressed last year and let my writing go down the drain. But the good news is, I'm back to blogging, now that my old site, diary-x, has been revamped as codexed.com. My blog is now here. Enjoy!Spudge at 10:03 PM
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Maybe I Don't Know What I'm Talking About, But I Can Rant With the Best of 'Em
I’m sipping coffee in a Jittery Joe’s coffeeshop right now, and writing this because a) I have nothing else to do, and b) it makes me feel like one of those artsy coffeeshop writers I’ve always wanted to emulate. I’m currently in Athens, Georgia, the hot, sleepy little college town that the University of Georgia calls home. Oh, before you even ask, yes, there is also a Rome, Georgia. And a Cairo (although it’s pronounced KAY-ro, and don’t you forget it, ya damnyankee). We’re not too original with the names here.Athens also happens to be the town where a lot of indie bands got their start. I’m sure can tell the signs of a fierce indie-kid through my writings. Alas, “indie,” like many rebellious genres gone before it, has mostly been sucked into the mainstream. The ideals still exist, sort of. Fight the system. The more unheard-of is always better. Turn away from the pop culture and refuse to be like “everybody else.” Instead, do things because nobody else is doing them. Problem is, everybody wants to do that sort of thing. Everybody wants to be the cool person not following the crowd. And once you’ve got everybody not following the crowd, guess what! It’s mainstream! Then, of course, the original creators become whores, as the writer of an indie webcomic (Spelling the Vacuum) that died a while ago (the comic, not the writer. I hope) pointed out. Once everyone’s a nonconformist, no one is. That’s why the ‘60’s hippies seem so silly to me for thinking they were countercultural. It’s not countercultural if everyone in the room is doing it. The real countercultural thing to do, in that era, was to wear a tie and be right-wing. Village Green Preservation Society, etc.
Anyway, I’m not saying that “indie” is dying because it took over the world. I don’t think it did that at all. I just think that, as soon as they started having “indie charts” and awards for “best new indie band,” etc., they effectively killed it. You can’t turn away from the system if you’re part of it. The point of indie was that it was underground, the geek thing to do. Revenge of the nerds, and all that. Once geek became cool (just look at how many high school kids were wearing Converse in the last ten years), it stopped being geeky.
Another problem, of course, is that “indie,” as a genre, is almost impossible to define. You could cite the Pixies, Neutral Milk Hotel, Belle & Sebastian, Elliott Smith, the Smiths, Modest Mouse, the Shins, Pavement, The Mountain Goats, or even (God help you) the Arcade Fire or Bright Eyes. The list goes on, and all of them sound wildly different. Well, if they’re good, that is. The Arcade Fire or Bright Eyes mainly sound like suck. Cheap imitations of better bands. Sorry if that offends you, actually, hell no, I’m not sorry if it offends you. I’m sorry that you have shit taste. I never said I wasn’t a music snob. But really, what is “indie rock” or “indie pop?” The latter actually sounds like a contradiction-in-terms, since “pop” is supposed to be what “indie” rejects. Actually, whenever I hear a band referred to as “indie pop,” it generally means that the lead singer has the same, whiny voice, and the band is more emo than My Chemical Reek (which in fact sounds like a better band name than the real one). “Indie rock,” on the other hand, tends to refer to more hardcore bands like the Pixies or Modest Mouse (who really stopped being “indie” after they had a music video on MTV).
I guess that should tell you what indie meant to me. It meant something nobody else knew about, a secret shared between cool friends, a sort of club that the idiotic mainstream people couldn’t take from me. I remember my shock when, walking down the street in a ratty Belle & Sebastian T-shirt a few years ago, a really preppy girl stopped me to shriek, “Omigawd I LOVE that band!” Don’t get me wrong, I want the bands I love to succeed, and I’m always glad to find people who share my taste. It’s just that it’s a bit jarring to find that what you think is so cool and underground is just as above-ground as anything else. While I’m glad for my bands, I’m also a little saddened that the genre is pretty much dead, having been pulled into the light for all to see. Means I have to find something new with which to fight the system.
And I do still hate the system. These new “thrash-metal” bands, the hardxcore stuff, the emo kids, the wannabe goths, and, dear lord, the scenesters. So fucking pretentious, all of them. On the other side, all my college friends ever listen to is Sublime, which gets old after awhile. Oh well, at least they aren’t giving in to the pleas of my other friends to listen to “hard rock.” Seems like if it doesn’t involve the same incredibly loud baseline, and the same, semi-retarded lyrics (but that’s okay, because they’re screamed so you can’t understand them anyway), and the same, head-banging beat, it just doesn’t satisfy the young people of today. Seriously, if you try to piece together the lyrics of most “hardcore” music, it’ll either come out sounding mentally challenged or like a crappy version of Avril Lavigne (I honestly can’t tell the difference between that shallow bitch and Paramore), for whom my hatred cannot even be coherent. But the worst sin, in my book, is that it all sounds the same. I went to a concert a year ago given by Cute Is What We Aim For (But Sucky Is What We Accomplish), opening for Paramore. Except for the genders of the lead singers, I honestly couldn’t tell the difference between the bands. If you tell me that’s because I haven’t listened to them enough, I will smile and say, “Yes, I’ve been lucky that way.”
Well, that was quite a little rant, I must say. My apologies, I don’t think I’ve ever fully introduced you to the extent of my music snobbery. There you have it, another facet of my character revealed. I’m a very difficult person to please when it comes to music. Surprisingly, I’ll almost never criticize someone else’s music in public. That’s because I take my own music to heart, feeling personally insulted if anyone else casts aspersions on it. I feel like your music defines who you are, in a way, and that people judge you by it. Probably just my own self-projection, I know, but I don’t want to hurt anyone else’s feelings in case it’s not. So, unless I know you very well, I’ll usually just smile and say nothing if I haven’t got anything nice to say about your music. Then I’ll come on my blog and JUDGE YOU TO THE WORLD.
Just kidding. I try to be good about not gossiping about people on here. Besides, who the hell cares that Girl A thinks Avril is the shit, clearly indicating that she has neither depth nor musical taste? I certainly shouldn’t. So I’ll try to keep this thing either to Amusing Anecdotes From My Not-Very-Amusing Life, or to Rants Accomplishing Nothing Other Than Making Me Feel Better. Or, occasionally, A Cool Book/Movie I Read/Watched That The World Should Know About.
Speaking of, I’m currently in the midst of the travel writings of Evelyn Waugh. I love Evelyn Waugh. Brideshead Revisited has had a major impact on my life, which I can’t talk about, because I’ve already spewed out an incredibly long post.
By the way, people have an alarming tendency to take me too seriously. Don't make this mistake. Chances are, I'm just blowing off steam. If you disagree with everything I'm saying, that's totally fine. Just don't get all upset and angry about it, like some poor feminist who has to spend all her life being offended.
Honestly, I don't see how hardcore feminists have any fun at all.
Spudge at 3:04 PM
Saturday, May 17, 2008
The One Week Where It's Totally Normal to Meet Young Frankenstein Look-alikes at Three in the Morning
[This was actually written last week, but due to the interventions of exams, coming home, and my laptop not working, I didn't get a chance to post it until now.]It’s common knowledge that finals week is hell-week for college students. It’s also hell-week for the heart and lungs, given that we all tend to charge our system with massive amounts of caffeine and nicotine in an effort to de-stress. Neither of which, as my friend, Jake, would point out, actually help with anxiety, since they’re both stimulants. Then again, he also thinks that alcohol is a stimulant, and is willing to argue the point for hours at one o’clock in the morning while everyone else is desperately trying to study lab because we’re all fucked and would you shut up, Jake, please? Let’s just say Jake is not the most focused person around.
Anyway, despite all the panic-attacks, I find myself loving finals week. It’s hell, but at the same time, it’s kinda fun. When else do you get to stay up all night
having nervous breakdowns with your friends? Case in point: At two-thirty in the morning, Monday night, I looked around the commons and took in the spectacle. One guy was standing on top of a table, strumming a guitar and singing nonsense, another guy was blatantly smoking indoors (in California, no less, the land where smokers are pariahs), and the rest were studying as if their lives depended on it. Which, if we want to stay at this college, they do. If you fail one class here, you fail out completely. That accounts for a great deal of the aforementioned stress.
The point is, though, that you never get that kind of experience, much less that kind of bonding, outside of finals week. We’re all screwed together, so we bum out cigarettes and make each other coffee like there’s no tomorrow. And if you want to cry on someone’s shoulder, go right ahead. You can run outside and let off steam during the Midnight Scream (or any other time, really, but that’s when you can be sure of company). You're free to wander around, muttering things about syllogistic figures or harmonious equipotential systems, which would ordinarily earn you a trip to the psychiatrist, but tonight everyone understands. In fact, they're doing the same thing. Finally, once your brain ceases to process any form of logical thought, you can grab a couch anywhere and sleep for a few hours, if you don’t mind being hideously uncomfortable when you wake up. Which you don’t. It’s finals week, of course.
Then there’s the actual final. Obviously, it sucks, but the adrenaline-rush beforehand is sort of fun, in a masochistic way. Then there’s the beautiful, simultaneous feelings of accomplishment, writer’s cramp, and adrenaline let-down as you walk out, knowing that one exam, at least, is over and you never have to do it again. Unless, of course, you fail, but we don’t think such thoughts. Not if we want to stay sane, we don’t. Those thoughts are for the night before, when you’re melting down, but there’s still conceivably something you could do about it. After the fact, it’s over and done with. No need to dwell on it. You’re probably too busy worrying about the next exam, anyway.
And then there’s the silver lining to keep your mind on: The end of the week, when you can at last throw your pencil down and go have that drink, or drinks, that you’ve been looking forward to all the dry, studious week long. I also have a mad frenzy of packing to do this weekend, but that’s not a silver lining, that’s just depressing. So I’m just focusing on the party aspect this weekend.
Once that’s over, then the glorious summer begins, and you can finally go home and see all your friends for the first time in four months. Then the frantic search for a summer job begins!
To quote the infinite wisdom of Calvin and Hobbes: “The days are just packed.”
Spudge at 6:43 PM
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Sharpen Your Teeth on a Jumble of Memories
I’d forgotten how much Ugly Casanova reminds me of Montreat. All it takes is “Smoke was pulled in ribbons from the windows of your car…” and I’m instantly back in the humid sleeping porch, the taste of Cheer Wine in my mouth, lazily scribbling in my book of ideas. The orange one, with the gridded pages. I finished that one a long time ago. I’m sixteen, or even fifteen, again, angry at the world, and glad to escape for a while to North Carolina. I’m sitting next to Lauren in the living room of the old, crooked house, writing, or playing guitar, while she draws a random picture, using up the last of her green-gray ink. “Bones of my ink,” she calls the picture. “Smells like autumn, smells like leaves, you don’t know that you’ll rust and not belong so much and then get left alone…” and I’m smelling the scent of pine in the muggy rain, walking down that steep, steep hill, exploring trails and bridges. Avoiding choir practice, getting beyond drunk on what turned out to be moonshine, and sleeping on stone walls in front of the general store with hideous hangovers. “Turns out the pony only had one trick…” Having an argument in front of the library, storming off in a dramatic huff, then feeling silly and making up. Lauren’s long hair fans out behind her. Next year, it’s above her chin, English-urchin style. Vague attempts at socializing with the other kids, with whom we don’t fit in at all. Noticing that they all look alike, the girls with ponytails, tank tops, and shorts, the boys with baseball caps, that preppie bowl-cut, and cargo shorts. Wondering why. Pretending to be the female versions of Ozzie Osborne and Bob Dylan. “The parasites are excited when you’re dead…” and puking our brains out in front of all those kids, due to the effects of the moonshine. Unsuccessfully hiding it from the grownups. “They said they’d give me everything, here’s the part that made me laugh: They didn’t give me anything, and they took half of that…” Taking random pictures of Lauren and Patrick with cream sodas, dogs, windows, waterfalls, and other random settings. Eating glowing gummy worms and large ice cream cones. Feeling awkward around Lauren and Patrick. “I lay down with the southern range…” Exploring Lake Susan with them, still not sure what to make of Patrick. Black nail polish and dog-collars, in an act of defiance against all the preppies. “Soon as I can walk, I walk out the door and never stop…” Harmonizing to Queen and snapping pictures of Lauren and Patrick whenever they got… awkward on the drive back. Blue Ridge, and breakfasting to the strains of the Pixies’ Surfer Rosa. And then, the depressing anticlimax: Going home. “So long to the holidays….”Spudge at 7:26 PM
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Search for the Truth, and Take a Few Drinks Along
I was out drinking the other day, having an after-party for the powderpuff football game. “Powderpuff,” in case you were wondering, is the term for girl football. Yes, I played. Yes, it was fun, and yes, I am now painfully aware of every movement I make. We played our asses off, but the upperclassmen won, because they started calling fouls on us every five seconds. I’m a little bitter about this, because the freshmen and sophomores totally deserved to win. We were so much better. Oh, well. So, anyway, we had an after-party involving hot dogs and, of course, lots of beer.At first, we were all at a certain park down the road, which happens to be closed at the moment for renovation or some such nonsense. It’s been closed most of the year, actually, but we’ve had a lot of parties down there, regardless. So we were hanging out there, until a security guard, or something like that, walked up to what was probably the calmest drinking group he’d ever seen, and told us, rather rudely, to leave. Our response was “Okay,” and we instantly packed everything up and left.
At this point, some of us decided to leave altogether, but the others wandered down the road to another dirt patch that we habitually frequent. I was the only freshman who remained, and pretty soon I entered into a discussion with a couple of the sophomores, musing on how truly strange people at my college are. There’s no place like it. And the people there are completely inexplicable to the people outside. Just looking at that last incident, our drinking party was sitting around a fire pit, engaged in semi-intellectual conversation, when a guard came over and was unnecessarily rude. We didn’t give him any backchat at all, we simply cleaned up after ourselves and disappeared in literally under a minute (we’re rather used to getting kicked out of places). We simply moved a few hundred feet and continued our chill party. Someone started playing tunes from his car, and the intellectual conversation was resumed, occasionally broken by bouts of singing or rapping along to the music, or, more frequently, lapsing into gossip, which is much more fun (as a graduate once put it, “There’s two things to talk about here: The books and the people. And after about the first two weeks, you get pretty tired of talking about the books.” The people, on the other hand, are always changing).
That’s my college. We’re intellectual, we’re nerdy, yet we’ll burst into rap when the spirit moves us, and switch just as easily into indie rock or an Irish drinking song, or something equally unexpected. We swing dance, we get into furious debates about matters ranging from whether an angle can be a magnitude to which of the old Star Wars was the best to why the Iliad ends with the burial of Hector. We watch movies in cars off-campus, we smoke like chimneys, and we drink in dirt patches, while remaining comparatively polite. Most of us are either semi-alcoholics, or getting there. And, somehow, we preserve chastity.
Yeah. Nothing like the place, nothing like the people. For the first time I found myself thinking of this place as a kind of home. A funky, messed-up, claustrophobic home. Sounds like it should suit me, in a badly-fitting way. And maybe badly-fitting’s not so bad. It's sort of a perpetual state for me, in fact. I think I'm finally getting comfortable with it. After all, it's probably the best I'll get.
Spudge at 7:20 PM
Monday, February 18, 2008
A Passing Feeling (I know, I couldn't think of a better title)
You know that fragile feeling that you get when you’re about a drink and a half away from an actual hangover? That vaguely unstable, shaky feeling where the world is slightly too sunny and you have just the faintest ghost of a headache, and the slightest twinge of queasiness. And you know that if you had had just one drink more, just one less glass of water the night before, you would be absolutely fucking miserable today. You stumble out of bed around noon or later, and go out to face everybody. That first walk outside after partying the night before is always daunting for me. For one thing, it’s inevitably fucking bright outside. Well, I am in California, after all. But it still seems like it’s mocking me.For another, I’m always somewhat reluctant to meet the people I hung out with the night before. I think Terry Pratchett said it best, but I don’t have the actual quote on hand, so I’ll try to paraphrase: That feeling when you got absolutely smashed the night before and jumped on the table, and started singing those songs that were screamingly funny at the time, and you know you have to go out and see all those people again today, and when you look them in the eyes, you’ll both remember, but the difference is that you’ll both be sober this time. Not that I did anything hugely embarrassing (I hope) last night, but still. There’s always that initial hesitance when you wake up and your memory’s all foggy and jumbled up, but you do remember that one incident, or two, involving that guy and the beer, and you sincerely hope he doesn’t. Like Pratchett says, it was so funny last night, but now that you’re wrapped in a cloud of sobriety once again, you just can’t see the humor anymore. And that’s really, I suppose, why sobriety sucks. Because you take life too seriously, and you start making stupid judgments and bad decisions, and generally making a fool of yourself.
Because, see, that’s what you do when you’re drunk, but I’m being all clever, and trying to make the same point about being sober. I’m sorry, I just wasn’t sure hit you over the head with the Great Sledgehammer of Unsubtlety enough to get the point.
Anyway, I’m holed up in my dark cave of a dorm room, with the aforesaid fragile feeling, sipping tea and writing this, because I really don’t feel like writing my math paper right now. I’m also listening to a mix I made that I’m actually quite proud of. It’s the Alcoholic Letdown Mix, for situations exactly like this one. The day after a party, when you’re experiencing the pains of the booze leaving your system, and sitting around, saying “Now what?” It includes, of course, the best hungover music I could find, such as classic Modest Mouse and Ugly Casanova ("Things I Don't Remember," anyone?), The Department of Eagles (probably the most soothing music I’ve ever found. And, of course, not to be confused with the Eagles), Eels, Wilco, etc. Mostly chill stuff. It almost goes without saying that Elliott Smith, and the Mountain Goats are represented, as well as various other good songs by other artists that fit the idea of the mix.
I’m not sure why I’m going on about this. It’s not that original of a mix, I know, but it’s rare for me to make mixes that aren’t totally second-guessed and over-thought. In short, it’s hard to make a mix that my insecurities don’t eventually ruin. This one just felt right.
It's a rare feeling for me. I'd like to keep it.
Spudge at 11:34 PM
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Eat, Drink, And Be Merry, For Tomorrow We Fast
Today is Ash Wednesday. I’m hungry. Believe it or not, those two sentences do go together, because Ash Wednesday is one of the two fast days of the year for Catholics. Good Friday is the other one. A Catholic fast day, in case you were wondering (you probably weren’t, but what the hell), consists of two snacks (which do not, when put together make up a full meal), and one meal. And abstinence from meat. I decided that my meal would be dinner, therefore I am hungry. I just had some rabbit food as one of the snacks. Carrots and lettuce, I mean, not what you feed to actual pet rabbits. It helps, somewhat.But Ash Wednesday is depressing. It’s the most time possible before Lent finally ends at Easter. And the idea of Lent stretching before us is enough to make anyone devoutly wish we could all just skip the next six weeks or so. So I should get off the topic, or I’ll sound like a self-pitying whiner, and whining in self-pity is not what Lent is about. Instead, I’ll talk about Mardi Gras, which was yesterday, because yesterday was fun. In fact, yesterday may have been one of the best days I’ve had here all year.
For one thing, because it was Mardi Gras, everyone felt justified in acting goofy all day. The Austrian boy in my section (one of the craziest people I’ve ever met in my life. He’s completely insane in a hilariously vague and out-of-it way. The quintessential mad genius), was called on to do a Euclid prop in Math. He wandered up to the board, suddenly whipped out a home-made devil-mask, and started screaming the prop at us in German. My section erupted in laughter. It was by far the funniest class we’ve had all year, and we’ve had some pretty wacky ones.
And the day just got better from there. We were all determined to go out and party that evening, mostly because it was Mardi Gras, but also because when would we ever not want to go out and party? Mardi Gras just gives us a better excuse than the usual cry of “Because it’s Tuesday!” So as soon as seminar (a 2-hour-long evening class) ended, we all changed into the warmest of our warm clothes, grabbed various blankets, chips, etc., and streaked toward the parking lot. From there, we hiked up the hill to one of our drinking spots. These spots are typically large patches of dirty asphalt, or just dirt, as the case may be, located barely within walking distance of the college. Steep, hard-to-navigate-in-the-dark-even-when-you’re-not-drunk walking distance. This is because we are a) not allowed to drink on campus and b) underage, therefore we cannot hang out in a spot that’s actually somewhat comfortable to drink. So it’s not just the college’s fault, it’s America in general. Specifically California for not having more convenient landscapes in which to drink illegally.
And a really good time was had by all. One guy had very sweetly bought all the beer for us, so there wasn’t very much, but that wasn’t a problem. We had enough for at least two beers each, which was the right amount to get most of us relaxed and happy, but not anywhere near drunk. So we sat around, listening to the guys playing guitar, eating cookie-like objects, slowly drinking beers, and just hanging out. I’m having a hard time expressing what a great, chill time it was. Pretty much the entire freshman drinking group was there (there are roughly fifteen of us), with the exception of Leon, whose departure is still being mourned by all. We toasted his memory. The guys played a song for us that they’d started composing the night before. It’s the ballad of our drunken group, and so far they’ve only worked out the chorus, but it’s hilarious. Each one of us gets our own line. When I remember it (or when they come up with the full version), I’ll post it up here, but for now, the line about me is “Spudge’s stealing cigarettes from the bodies on the ground.” For the record, I have never done that. But it’s still hysterical.
We made it back about five seconds before curfew, which is eleven o’clock on weeknights, by running almost the entire way back. It nearly killed us, but we made it. Whereupon, I burst into the dorm, ran to my room, hugged my roommate, told her I loved her, ran back into the common area, ate several doughnuts, ran out into the courtyard where I hugged Maggie (one of my best friends among the freshman drinkers) and told her I loved her, too, and then tried to call Fishy in order to tell her that I also loved her. Of course, I got her voicemail, so I just left a fairly effusive message for her to hear in the morning, or whenever she feels like listening to the messages. Yes, I was very hyper.
And today is Ash Wednesday, which makes the good time yesterday seem even better. That’s the way the day before Lent should be, and that’s why people party so much on Mardi Gras. The orginal reason, anyway. You need a happy memory to look back on, to smile at throughout the dismal days of the Season.
I’ve given up dessert and sweets of all kinds. It’ll be interesting to see how well I can keep this resolve. Good for me, too. I'm definitely lacking in the self-discipline area. But, as of now, all that is changing.
For the next forty days and forty nights, anyway. With the exception of Sundays.
Spudge at 7:08 PM