Recently during one of those troubled and drunken talks with a friend I found myself saying that "The way I feel when I'm completely focused on a drawing, when all my will and all my heart is there between my eyes and my fingertips and I feel like I can see through everything, when I'm drawing better than I actually can, y'know, that is what I live for."

Date:	2004-09-22 23:44
Subject:	One in every family
Security:	Public
Mood:	contemplative
Music:	sermonaudio.com

Didn't make it to Costello's for Italian language night. I'm still sick, my nose is running all over the place, et cetera et cetera. Well, they do this every month, so now I have that much time to study up for the next one... and hope I don't get sick again.

Speaking of obstacles to communication, I spent some time talking with my oldest brother tonight. It's easy to dismiss him as a Christian Whacko, which is in fact what I did for many years.

He's actually an alarmingly smart guy, in a certain sense. He could easily have gotten his degree in Architecture about 25 years ago while he was living in Boston, travelling in Europe, being sort of a pioneer of urban subculture as far as I was concerned. When I was a teenager he turned me on to a lot of great music and art, and made architecture seem interesting. But for some reason he never quite finished school or got his degree. Then at some point in the 80s he suddenly turned into a rabid fundamentalist, joined a catholic splinter sect, and without even trying to win us over to his beliefs, started condemning the rest of the family all to hell. Every encounter with him was an argument, which was sort of fun at first, but fruitless all around.

He spends a whole lot of time on the internet, doing the Conspiracy Theorist thing from the fundie christian angle, exposing the fake popes and the Masons' manipulation of the church and the true believers who quietly disappeared. I have to admit I'm occasionally fascinated, being such a critic of the catholic church, to hear about our religious leaders making deals in the back room... after all, it's good to have proof that organized religion is just another tool of statecraft. But what concerns me is that everything he learns just becomes another reason to alienate himself from the family.

Tonight I decided to talk with him for a while without getting baited into an argument. I listened mostly, just to hear where he was coming from. And it's unsettling to be reminded that just about everyone agrees that the world is a mess which needs fixing... but everyone focuses on whatever little part of the mess bothers them the most.

In this case my brother seems to think that having some sort of totalitarian catholic fundamentalist regime would not only get the arsonist and the prostitutes and the abusive lesbian couples out of his neighborhood, but would also unite our family into the honest, loving, capable people we were supposed to be.

It would have been so easy to just jump in and start slugging it out, yelling at each other over the phone without even listening to a word each other says. But nobody learns anything that way (except advanced techniques in non-listening), so I've decided to listen to him for a while.

Let's see where this goes.

Date:	2004-09-21 00:48
Subject:	Social-Linguistic anxiety
Security:	Public
Mood:	listless
Music:	suddenly aware of all these humming electric things

So I find myself wondering... was I really too sick to do anything but watch cartoons for the last four days?

Too sick to study Italian, for example?

You see, tomorrow night I'm stopping off at costello's for Italian Conversation Night, even though I haven't so much as conjugated a verb in six months. Hoo boy. This ain't gonna be pretty.

I was talking with a friend a little while ago about social anxiety, and how sometimes it just creeps up on you out of nowhere. Now I'm thinking, "Well, if it happens tomorrow night while I'm watching people wince at my butchery of their language, at least I'll know where the anxiety's coming from."

Like that helps.

Well, if I must butcher the language, I'd rather do it here



than here



Capiscete?

I knew I was a damn fool to ignore that sore throat I've had all week, and go out drinking and smoking thursday night. But you know, it had just been too long.

So now I get to spend my weekend sitting around, trying to work on projects, but guess what I wind up watching.

Spent a little time this weekend with a friend of a friend who, after laboring in obscurity for years, just scored a show at a major gallery... right before he got blindsided by some truly bad luck. He wound up having to get at least ten paintings ready to hang, at the last minute, in somebody's living room.

I helped him as much as I could for a few hours, and then went to drawing class inspired by this guy's will to persevere in the midst of the shit-storm.

The Stereovision/Little Sue/Queens of Oblivion show was great... but I don't want to see live music every single weekend. Tonight let's try...

Date:	2004-08-07 17:22
Subject:	tonight
Security:	Public
Mood:	ecstatic
Music:	see below

So Flugtag in German means "flight day" or "flying day". Hm. So how do you say "Massive crowd of bored half-drunk tourists"? I think the whole Flugtag thing is pretty impressive, but for bog's sake, the fucking crowd!

So Elisabetta36 and I gave it the drive-by, saw a few "flugen" from a little too far away, and caught a bus back to southeast. She wasn't feeling well, so she stayed home while a friend and I jumped on our bikes and tried to catch the tail end of the Soap Box Derby. Nope. Too late. What the hell. We insisted on riding to the top of Mt. Tabor anyway to see what was left of the party, but in the end all we got to enjoy was the ride back down and then a drink or three at BOTG.

Now I'm continuing my little project, digging old drawings out of my sketchbooks and scanning them:

So the freaking thing had this unstable screen. Everything else ran fine but the screen would be more or less scrambled depending on how hot it was out, or whether or not I used the right finesse to open it, or what color my desk was. It finally got so unstable, so often, that I spent half a day on the bus bringing it to the only place in town that was willing to diagnose a laptop's display rather than just replacing it outright.

Few days later they call me and tell me it'll take like five hundred dollars to fix. No thanks, I said, and paid some nominal fee for the diagnosis and return shipping.

Shows up in the mail. I turn it on. Everything works fine.

When I was a little kid I used to challenge myself to little things, like pretending that the groceries I was carrying home was actually a circuit that could disarm a nuclear time-bomb located in my family's refrigerator. I think I'll employ that same sort of thinking now, and pretend that my laptop's display has a sort of index that can tell when I'm using it for creative and self-enhancing ends, and when I'm using it to idly amuse myself, and if I use it for the latter too much, the screen will get scrambled again.

Hanging out on the back porch with my chickie and a good friend. Drinking and talking about growing up in the 70s and 80s, all the stuff that shaped our lives. Baffled that we could could have such a deep and geniune response to such terrible music...

Yup. This is what a summer evening should be.

Now I just have to go buy a bocce set.

Ah.

"I want everyone who reads this to ask me 3 questions, no more no less.
Ask me anything you want. Then I want you to go to your journal, copy and paste this, allowing your friends (including myself) to ask you anything."

With the help of a dead computer and a live girlfriend, I'm making stuff again. I decided to exhume all my old sketchbooks and journals from their box in the storage locker. I started trimming out all the best little sketches and doodles, touching up a few of them, and collaging them onto old wood panels.

I used to hate relying on old work. I remember too many times when I tried to make a birthday card for a friend and, failing to come up with anything relevant, cut a decent drawing out of an old sketchbook and pasted it onto a card. Look. I made this just for you.

I've finally gotten it through my head: This is different. This isn't living in the past. If I don't get all these things out to experience the light of day, they're going to sit around like unpaid bills until I get tired of lugging them around and, in a fit of emotional cleansing gone too far, purge them. If I did that I would briefly feel set free. Then later I would find myself trying to recall just what I was doing all those years, with all those pencils.

Unfortunately, now that my computer's dead, I can't scan them and show them to anyone on the net. I guess you'll just have to wait until I put up a show.

Anyone who's annoyed by me constantly writing about my laptop may be pleased to know that it's pretty much died.

Just as well, really. I think it's time I took a break. Seems kind of absurd to think that I've spent at least an hour every night for the last FIVE YEARS sitting at my desk engaged in, well, idle amusements. For christ's sake, imagine what I could have done with all that time. I could have been working out, practicing guitar, painting, drawing, talking with a few people about whom I give a rip, writing, reading, fuck, you name it.

Of course the computer can help with these things (I'll miss it next time I study Italian) but for the most part I ignored its life-improving potential and treated it like a more interactive version of late-night cable tv. I spent so much goddamned time just stabbing about for anything that seemed interesting or arousing or amusing. I just sat there and sucked it all in, growing cold and jaded, and didn't do anything in response.

So yup. I'm using Elisabetta's computer to check my mail and do my journal and to track down those weird Italian words that aren't in any of my dizionarii. The rest of my idle time I'll just have to spend consuming and producing intellectual property the old-fashioned way. This will continue until I can learn to use the net to make myself less boring.

My desire to have a small, portable laptop is at odds with my desire to have a large, hi-res screen upon which I can draw.

My laptop is working ok again... evidently it'll work fine as long as I shut it down completely every night, and don't keep the screen active for eight hours at a time or more.

Reminds me of the first computer I had. It was basically being thrown out by a friend who makes real money writing software. Come to think of it, it was being thrown out to make room in the back of the closet so his old computer could go in the closet to make room for his new computer on his desk. One of those people.

Anyhow, it was free. Only problem was you just had to plan ahead to shut off the monitor every half hour or so and let it cool down for five minutes. If not, it would overheat and shut itself off right when you were in the middle of something.

I decided not to buy my friend's incredible laptop. I want to go to Europe instead. Even if this screen goes to shit again, I'd rather go to Europe. I keep telling myself that every time I walk past a record store or used clothing place. I'd rather go to Europe.

Lisa's band is playing saturday.

Date:	2004-02-01 23:41
Subject:	low-budget laptops
Security:	Public
Mood:	amused
Music:	pretty quiet, actually

So now that my creative forces has been jumpstarted and I'm ready to pioneer the concept of "Web Design as Fine Art", the screen on my laptop is beginning to go. Colors are getting shifty and bleedy and I'm sure at some point the entire thing will just go blank. Then I'll have to get some cheap old CRT monitor, which will take up a whole ass-load of space on my desk, and hook the laptop up to it. So much for doing graphics work on the free wi-fi network at Powells.

I have a friend who keeps trying to sell me his not-so-old laptop because he wants to switch back to mac. 2.6Ghz and great software and DVD player and all this other shit. He bought it just a year ago for $1500 and I could buy from him for half that.

But somehow it just ain't got the soul this old bomb has. I feel weird using a real computer. It's too big to carry around... the keys plunge too deep and click too loud... my tablet's driver might not work... and I'm barely able to save money for the trip this fall as it is.

While I wrestle with this dilemma, I'll post another drawing I did on this machine while it was still perfect:

Studying Italian was great for a while (and it did wonders for my self-esteem when the teacher told me to skip a grade and come back for the advanced class) but let's just say the thrill of studying at home has worn off and the only thrill is in speaking the language, trying it out on someone new, out in the big world.

But for the most part, learning new things, and really enjoying that learning, doesn't happen that often anymore. I try to learn a few new chords on my old guitar, or read about emerging artists, or something like that, and my head just grows heavy and itchy and my eyes get blurry and it's like there's some kind of slumbering beast deep inside that just doesn't want to wake up.

This evening, however, sheer frustration drove me to finally get over that last tech support hurdle: