theology&geometry

Yeah, I’m home and the TV’s on and, you know, why not?

So, so far:

• Sarah Siverman is awesome.

• Jack Nicholson is drunk.

• I’ll be asleep in less than an hour.

• Justin Long just said “fully erect.” I am confused.

• Ooh, they just showed Sacha Baron Cohen. Hott.

• Dane Cook cut his hair. I don’t care if he’s the official douchebag comedian. He’s hott.

• Why are they pimping out all these cars?

• Jay-Z is unattractive and minimally talented, yet really rich and famous. I am unattractive and minimally talented, yet poor and unknown. The universe lacks justice.

• Will Ferrel and Sacha Baron Cohen just made out. I’m going to need a few minutes to myself. In the shower.

I’ll have to write more about the Rob Crow show when I get up tomorrow (today; this was taken at 1 or 2 a.m.). I’m way too drunk right now. I’m so drunk I wrote all kinds of shit on myself while waiting for the bartender to ring me up. What did I write? Your guess is as good as mine. Lots of stars, though — a sign I’m in good spirits.

Project 365

• I burnt the ever-loving shit out of my left thumb and forefinger today, getting Texas Toast out of the oven with what are, apparently, completely decorative pot-holders. It has taken me, like, fifteen minutes to type this many letters.

• My neighbor has three big dogs living in her apartment. It’s sweet in theory, but really annoying in practice.

• Perfect pre-spring sipping wine: Viognier. Mmm, apples and honeysuckle.

• I’ve spent more time than is reasonable looking at this cat macro thread. I only made it through the first 21 pages. There are, like, 30 more.

• I took a walk to Rite-Aid today. Wondered why I’ve never been in Cosmic Closet. Is it better to go when broke or when moneyed?

• I totally just looked up “moneyed” to make sure it was a word.

• My weekend is half over. What to do? I thought about going to see that Eggleston exhibition tomorrow, but my budget is tight. I’m gonna squeeze Rob Crow in there. Then nothing ’til the end of the week. Blah.

Why is it that, at 25 years old, I still feel like some sort of 10-year-old pretending to be grown up when I paint my nails?

Seems silly.

• I’ve been reading a lot lately about Tuscan wines, and trying to teach myself how to properly pronounce Italian words and phrases, and it has rekindled in me the long-held hunch that I am an Italian trapped in a Scotch-Irish body. “Sangiovese” and “Brunello” and “Trebbiano” can’t help but sound rich and sensuous as they roll off the tongue. (And to think, I thought it was “san-gee-oh-VEESE” until, like, two days ago.)

• Today I left the office at 5:30 in a huff, irked because there was nothing for me to do and I was bored out of my mind, so I took an early lunch break and went to the liquor store (I’m not sure I could be more of a skank) to stock up on wine for the weekend. My rage was not abated by my mini-roadtrip, however. On the contrary. It festered, fed by my finicky blinker, which decided to be all rebellious during rush hour and NOT WORK AT ALL, leading me to avoid left-hand turns altogether. Which made for a comical trip around Midtown. I swear, that car is asking to be melted down into scrap metal. And I threatened to take it out to a vacant field and burn it. But it didn’t listen. Damn unintelligent machines.

• Moods intrigue me. When I feel a foul one rise up from my gut and sour everything around me, I often wonder how that happened.

• I think Tamara and I talked about this the last time we hung out, but what is it about unmarked white vans that totally creep me out? Yeesh.

• I was reading through some of my archives, and it occurs to me that I miss my old life. I mean, I’m happy with my life as it is now, but how comfortable it was to throw around words like “my boyfriend” and “Mufreesboro.” I post a lot more pictures than I used to, which I think is an improvemenet, but overall I feel like maybe my blog is way more boring than it used to be.

• However, I feel much wiser than I did then.

• Though I still feel appropriately clueless and naive.

• MEN, you confuse me. All of you!

• I have been looking at Shauna’s photos and I swear they make me a little more fertile upon every view. Pea is such a cutie.

• I am adding things to the sidebar. The uber-perceptive will notice.

• The family decided not to come up this weekend for the farm show at the Cook Convention Center. Some pre-pubescent boys (who have broken into my great-grandmother’s house as well as Phil’s great-grandmother’s house, which sits on the historic registry) are terrorizing Saltillo with serial break-ins, and my folks are kind of leery about leaing the house overnight. So this means I’ll be Saltillo-bound on Sunday, as I owe my dad a birthday present.

• The plan is to go see Black Snake Moan Monday night and decide for myself if it’s shit or art, or some sort of hybrid.

I just took the first of the last three sips of this glass of Italian skunkwine (can someone translate my mixed terminology, please?) and I caught a glimpse of an avalanche of sediment tumbling from the little reservoir atop the glass’s stem. Ew.

Today I spent the day looking at pictures of dead dogs. Believe it or not, it’s a project I’m working on at work. And it’s pretty sad. Pit bulls bred for meanness in the inner-city, where quarters are tight, and the havoc those dogs can wreak on a community. Apparently there’s a whole subculture of pit-bull worship/exploitation I’ve not been privy to. Rap videos apparently feature pit bulls fighting, and tattoo parlors around Memphis stain patrons’ skin with likenesses of pit bulls at an alarming rate: Dozens of times more than German shepherds or poodles or any other breed.

The local animal authorities are pretty much in the business of euthanizing pit bulls; the city has a no-keep policy at the shelters. Three days and no owner to claim you? A dose of potassium chloride (I imagine; maybe not) and a trip to the incinerator later, and we’re on to catching the other six pups in your litter who are probably roaming around town, snapping at people.

Brutal stuff. My eyes got a little prickly while reading the story.

I hope my design can do the whole package justice (dumb and fruity as that sounds).

If all goes according to plan (meaning my first round of ideas don’t suck so thoroughly that I am ordered back to the drawing board), this thing should print and ship with the March 4 edition.

But, of course, I’m afraid that what I’ve offered up to my art director falls short of what she was looking for. I spent an entire day immersed in this story and its imagery, and still I feel like I have managed to completely miss the mark with my approach at presenting the story.

But maybe I haven’t missed entirely. Maybe I’m right on the mark, or close.

You just never know. That’s the excitement/anxiety that comes with a “creative” job. The success of everything you do depends on the opinions of other people. Nothing is objective. I can put things on a page that make me happy and reference, even slightly, things in my life that make me smile, but other people might never get those visual references and jokes. So you just hope that you at least construct a solid foundation of elements that harmonize and, at some gut level, make sense. I’m not sure I can explain it any better because that’s the extent to which I understand design. As much as I like to believe I can plan for a design, there is always that impulsive part of it that comes from a particular day’s very specific breath.

*The only reason I’m posting this is because I’m teaching myself (finally!) how to use iMovie, and it’s taking longer than I figured to transfer files. And I can’t just sit and wait; I have to be MOVING AT ALL TIMES. And that means BLOGGING WHILE BORED, the worst kind of blogging there is, period.

This afternoon I was in the shower, nursing a dull headache (no doubt inspired by the fact that from about 6 p.m. until 2 a.m., the only liquid I ingested was extremely fermented), when it occurred to me that I had possibly bought a Justin Timberlake song off of iTunes the night before. And, sure enough, now I see that “Rock Your Body” is part of my digital collection.

WTF?

I just spent, like, an hour on MySpace.

And what have I gained?

Herpes, probably.

Finally, it feels like home.

Er, “home.”

I’m not sure when I’ll ever find home again. The real one.