Dream Diary: The Last Train and Instant Rice

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Originally uploaded by Covet Canyon.

I was in an underground train station. This particular stop was similar in construction to 12th Street BART station (imagine a place slightly Escher) except orange, yellow and cream colored. Two men behind me were speaking Russian or some other Eastern European language. I decided to take the stairwell to the right which, I already knew, required me to duck a little. Why would they make this stairwell so short? You'd have to be 5'9" to pass comfortably, I thought to myself. I descended the stairs and went to duck but the slanted ceiling had gotten shorter. I had to put my bag down, lay on the ground, and slide on the tile to get into the stairwell. Making it down the stairs was just as tight. The passage became smaller. I could see the train tracks and I was pulling myself through the passageway. I was very thankful that the walls, ceiling and stairs had recently been polished which allowed me to not get stuck. At one point I wondered if I'd even fit and make it out the other end.

Once on the platform I decided to make instant rice. As I put the rice on, the final train arrived which I needed to take. I got in the final car, expecting there to be a box of rice (usually someone always leaves a box of instant rice behind on the final car of the last train) but there was none. I sat down and looked at the people around me. There was a guy sleeping in a bunker. He had taken this train all the way from New York and he was going to the University of Southern California, at least that's what his hat said. He had a bureau, an alarm clock, and a television. I wondered what that must be like, riding in the train across the country. What did he do all day? I knew he was on the final days of his journey that must've taken a week.

Outside the window I could see leaves and brush. The sun was shining bright and yellow. We were moving at a very slow pace. I could hear the rhythmic thudding of the train's wheels on the tracks.

At the Checkout

At the Checkout
Originally uploaded by smartsetpix.

80 Carolina parking lot, around five o’clock, cool and cloudy skies. My cousin Andrea walks from her car and into the building to work. “I didn’t know you’d work this late,” I said. Our desks were supermarket check-out stands. Our computers were where the cash register should’ve been. K. A. demonstrated how this new set-up was going to work.

Monday Morning, Riding The Bus

The page of the book I’m reading (Geraldine Kim: Povel) glows in a fragment of peach-light. I’m on a comfortable and smooth-riding bus and it’s seven-thirty in the morning. The top half and tips of the Port of Oakland crate movers are covered in thick and gray fog. Greens and Reds, coming mostly from the logos of metal shipping boxes and stop signs, are vibrant and alive. when I decide to stop reading a paragraph and look out the window I see that sunlight finds the cracks and crevices in the clouds. Ships and barges from this distance look like model toys. The sun’s light glows ominous. Itself is reflected in the bay’s water as if it were an omen, the approach of a boiling comet that’s specifically reaching for San Francisco; a city asleep in its own gray doldrums.

Today's Playlist

The Cardigans: Long Gone Before Daylight
Whiskeytown: Pneumonia
Some Girls: Crushing Love
The Blake Babies: God Bless The Blake Babies

Today's Playlist

Mazzy Star: Among My Swan
The mix I made for Brendan that I haven’t mailed yet
Tribe: Abort
The Breeders: Pod

Today's Playlist

Broadcast: Tender Buttons
Gorillaz: Demon Days
The Mendoza Line: Full of Light and Full of Fire
Madonna: Confessions on a dancefloor

People Were Cutting Themselves!

“During the recent sidewalk redo, Rodeo Drive ‘looked like a war zone; there were piles of dirt for six months,’ said Bijan's assistant manager, Marjan Townsend. ‘People were cutting themselves’ on construction debris as they walked.” – LA Times, Seeing Granite as a Paving Grace, Bob Pool, August 25, 2006.

I would link the rest of the story but the L.A. Times website won't let me get to it. I'm I got to it when I did. Rodeo Drive wants to tear up the runway of their walk and add slabs of granite. I know the homeless faction is pissed. Have you ever tried sleeping on granite on a cold, LA night?

I bet someone's Prada shoes would sound like claps of thunder on a piece of mineral like that though.

But, that quote is the best. I see tanned skin, gold lame, rivulets of blood.

Today's Playlist

Death Cab For Cutie: Plans
Rufus Wainwright: Want One
Madonna: Confessions on a dancefloor
Hole: Celebrity Skin

Today's Playlist

Cat Power: The Greatest
Whiskeytown: Stranger’s Almanac
Rasputina: Thanks For The Ether
Curve: Pubic Fruit
The New Pornographers: Mass Romantic

Epistolary #1

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Originally uploaded by Covet Canyon.

Come home now, we're all waiting.
The family has noticed that the artichoke dip is getting cold.
Leave the holy wars behind.
It's not good on the gums.
Battles of your caliber cause shin splints.
There is nothing on television and we need your DVD collection.
Love, Mom.

Today's Playlist

Liz Phair: my own B-side mix
Neko Case: Fox Confessor Brings The Flood
Radiohead: OK Computer
Pet Shop Boys: Fundamental
Liz Phair: Somebody’s Miracle

Today's Playlist

Trembling Blue Stars: The Seven Autumn Flowers
Liz Phair: Whip-Smart
Neko Case: Furnace Room Lullaby
His And Her Circumstances: Act 1.0
Lucinda Williams: Essence

Today's Playlist

Death Cab For Cutie: Plans
Radiohead: Amnesiac
Aimee Mann: self-made mix
Ladytron: Witching Hour

Today's Playlist

Lucinda Williams: Essence
The Sundays: Static & Silence
Liz Phair: Whip-Smart
The Prissteens: Scandal, Controversy and Romance
Cranes: Forever

Untitled Scraps of Construction Paper

He found a tennis racket in the upstairs attic.

He tells her that he wants milk in his cereal and not water.

When the state comes over to visit they bring doctors.

These doctors are paid for by the state.

When the state isn’t looking we go and play in brambles behind the baseball field.

When the state is over we eat homemade cookies and play board games.

I don’t like the smell of fish.

When he was on his way to the dentist he decided to go fishing instead.

The other day he left his thermometer in the baby’s bottom by accident.

He thought his little brother was sick.

Whenever I see yarn I think of a grandma I would like to have someday.

My grandma doesn’t like me to call her grandma, I call her Steph.

My mom and grandma go out dancing together and leave me home with my sick baby brother.

He likes the taste of pancakes on a Saturday morning.

His favorite cereal is Capn’ Crunch.

The last movie he saw was at two in the morning on a cable station he’s not supposed to watch.

His own piece of justice is still sticky from the last handler.

Once they went swimming in the town pool and brought their cartoon towels.

When he sees a plane in the sky he picks up a stick and pretends to shoot it down.

At night he hears the motorbikes in the woods and thinks they’ll come and kidnap him.

He likes it when he eats a popsicle and his lips turn another color like lipstick.

Everyone smiles on the TV Guide.

Everyone in television sitcoms is happy and glad to be with their families.

I don’t like playing basketball even if it’s for fun.

Yesterday's Playlist

Broadcast: The Noise Made By People
Catatonia: 93/94
Neko Case: Furnace Room Lullaby
Rufus Wainwright: Poses
Tori Amos: Under The Pink

Today's Playlist

Badly Drawn Boy: The Hour of Bewilderbeast
Liz Phair: Exile In Guyville
Neko Case: Fox Confessor Brings The Flood
Throwing Muses: LIMBO

I Know That Now

1.

A bomb-shelter of secrets buried below 20 feet of soil, covered in three feet of granite and a foot of concrete. Metal shelves holding ephemeral segments of memories. He has more sex than I do.

2.

He came up through the ground, sprung out from a rabbit’s hole with his white gloved hands splayed open and shaking like fireworks.

3.

Would you be willing to meet me near the aqueduct?
I have two more airplane tickets and I know
that you have no desire to leave
but listen to the radio and tell me that you may reconsider.

Today's Playlist

Broadcast: Tender Buttons
Cyndi Lauper: (self-made mix)
His and Her Circumstances: OST
Catatonia: International Velvet

W.W.J.D.D.

Zoo exhibit 2
Originally uploaded by h i r 0.

Here we have a wonderful example of the Devon Rex. Note the Gremlin like appearance, the ferocity in his face, the way you don't want to F with it.

Somebody, buy me this kitty, you'll be in my favor for the rest of our lives.

He can guard my clean laundry from Nagamuko sleeping on it, he can bite my toes so I actually wake up on the morning, he can tell me what I want to drink when I approach the bar. He can come with me to work and keep me company to discuss recent Middle East political activity and the way Janice Dickinson makes insanity seem so effortless.

WWJDD - "What Would Janice Dickinson Do?"

David Mitchell: Ghostwritten

Just finished reading Ghostwritten by David Mitchell (1999, Random House) on the #10 bus on my way to work. I wasn’t too fond of the book until the last 80 pages (the last few sections); the ones set on Clear Island and Night Train. Holy Mountain and Okinawa were also good. On the whole, as I was reading, I wanted to get deeper into the story, into the surroundings. At times the stories were too shallow and lacked depth or skimmed across large ideas without clinging onto any clear evidence. It was as though the book was originally some 800 pages long but an editor cleared away the hedges with a pair of red shears. I think, without some of the superfluous stories and expanded upon, it would’ve been stronger.

The concept I really enjoined; interlocking lives, some relations stronger than others, traveling from Japan and further West to New York City and back to Japan. It secured well and believably the concept of Six Degrees of Separation and the Butterfly Effect. All the elements were there for a superb and knuckle biting novel but, as said before, it was too thin, almost brittle, reading like cliff notes, like the plans for a fantastic novel.

I’m sure many details were lost on me as I took a good while to read this book. I had lost interest about halfway through. The latter pages were exciting and I was looking forward to the end. It was intriguing to read this along with Atonement by Ian McEwan which is rich in detail, slow, deliberate, crafted, carved like wood, and terrifying.

Today's Playlist

The Clientele: Strange Geometry
Azure Ray: Hold On Love
Madonna: American Life
Ladytron: Witching Hour
The Blake Babies: God Bless The Blake Babies

From The Balcony of an Office Building

White Styrofoam peanuts fluttering across the parking lot, broken glass, empty cat food tins, Tupperware. It’s difficult to breathe here. A low-rider pick-up truck with hand spray-painted gray and purple flames or waves. Holes of construction to the east, dust storms in the unoccupied and graveled spaces. Afternoon lets you know that today is like yesterday is like tomorrow. The ribbon of freeway on stilts, the hoods of passing cars, buses, trucks. Afternoon lets you know that purity was just a promise of Morning. Lunch makes one tired. The builders have gone home for the day; the wind picks up its strength and empowers narcoleptic sunlight.

The Last Song

Last night I totally geeked out on iTunes which is far too easy for me to do. I’ve been obsessed with making playlists in the same manner I would’ve made mix tapes for myself in high school.

Well, I made a list of every song that is the last song on an album making a few exceptions for EPs and singles (mainly 50 Foot Wave, Belly, Kristin Hersh, and Tanya Donelly).

I found, in my research, that the last song is often untraditional to a bands general output. They’re often really short or really long, ranging from seconds to fifteen minutes. They tend to be either melancholy, celebratory, or even a direct goodbye to the listener. They’re fascinating!

Here’s a shortlist of some of my favorites.

Siouxsie and the Banshees: Superstition “The Ghost In You”
Tori Amos: Under The Pink “Yes, Anastasia”
Tori Amos: Scarlet’s Walk “Gold Dust”
Some Girls: Crushing Love “Magnetic Fields”
Some Girls: Feel It “Malted Milk”
The Blake Babies: God Bless The Blake Babies “On”
The New Pornographers: Twin Cinema “Stacked Crooked”
Neko Case: Fox Confessor Brings The Flood “The Needle Has Landed”
Radiohead: The Bends “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”
Cocteau Twins: Four-Calendar Café “Pur”
Cocteau Twins: Milk & Kisses “Seekers Who Are Lovers”
The Breeders: Title TK “Huffer”
Kristin Hersh: Strange Angels “Cartoons”
Kristin Hersh: Sunny Border Blue “Listerine”
Throwing Muses: The Real Ramona “Two Step”

Today's Playlist

Death Cab For Cutie: Transatlanticism
The Cardigans: Super Extra Gravity
British Sea Power: Open Season
Some Girls: Crushing Love

Today's Playlist

Bjork: Vespertine
The Young Girls of Rochefort: OST (disc two)
Britta Phillips & Dean Wareham: L’Avventura
A.C. Newman: The Slow Wonder

Where are you?... I am here...

lal7
Originally uploaded by mheekeow.

I think these shirts are cute but I wouldn't be caught dead wearing one as a couple. Maybe just one shirt with both lyrics on the front or maybe one on the front and one the back? They're slose kin to the "I'm with Stupid *arrow* " shirts so popular at amusement parks and carnivals in the mid to late '80s.

I foresee in the future a Lillian Vernon hipster catalog with these and a black and red beer can hat.

Today's Playlist

Broadcast: Ha Ha Sound
Some Girls: Crushing Love
Ryan Adams: Demolition
The Cardigans: Super-Extra Gravity
Bjork: Vespertine

Ptolemaic System

the turn.

juniper trees, blue
on his fingerprints.

the weaker of the sexes.

baking bread in a solar-wind
tunnel. as legless as red
berry mucilage.

breeding breath.

his hat wasn’t on straight
neither were his teeth. ears
only a mother
could love.

facing it.

solaris.

The Werewolf Hotel: Re-Launch!

Here is the new Werewolf Hotel! We've seceded from the Car Pool Log which began by taking over the conference room, moved into the lobby and even occupied our five-star kitchen. Gosh, it was as if they used the Ellis Act on us we were prime real estate. Or something.

Well, I'm glad we're still on speaking terms, they're good people to know.

They've done a bang-up job here in our new place. The chandeliers are polished, the help is friendly, and the banisters are in the shape of pineapples. I love that.

What I would like to see is some fresh flowers when you walk in. Stargazers, perhaps. They're pretty.

Now all we need are some sleepover guests for the First-Friday Slumberparty. And don't forget! It's Topless Tuesday by the pool! I don't want to hear any complaints. Capice?