Thursday, October 24, 2002
Disillusionment.
You know, I don't think I'm doing this blog thing quite right. It's just not...oh, I don't know. It just doesn't sing like it's supposed to. I mean, I'm a witty, hip, funny kind of person, I think; aren't I supposed to enjoy myself a little more?
I've seen this phenomenon before, you know. It's an old story - person is cool, person doesn't know how cool person is, person stops being cool and starts being pathetic. It's tragic, really. That must be it, then. Yes, I think that's exactly it.
I'm not really just witty; I'm also dark.
Yessir, I like that much, much better. Thanks.
You know, I don't think I'm doing this blog thing quite right. It's just not...oh, I don't know. It just doesn't sing like it's supposed to. I mean, I'm a witty, hip, funny kind of person, I think; aren't I supposed to enjoy myself a little more?
I've seen this phenomenon before, you know. It's an old story - person is cool, person doesn't know how cool person is, person stops being cool and starts being pathetic. It's tragic, really. That must be it, then. Yes, I think that's exactly it.
I'm not really just witty; I'm also dark.
Yessir, I like that much, much better. Thanks.
Sunday, October 20, 2002
I am transported, by a tiny red sportscar.
It's sometime in late summer, 1988 - a year unrecorded in any of the many journals I've kept over the years. Falling, as it had, sometime between my birth during the fall of Nixon and my social rise in high school during the onset of grunge, this year is otherwise wholly unremarkable. But there I was, despite its utter un-noteworthiness, with a song in my ears and a girl on my arm.
We were rising into the sky, slowly, riding a metal wave of diesel engine fumes and gaudy neon-lit concessions. A carnival was in town, and we had just been bustled aboard the "Flying Saucer" - twisting slowly to a crescendo, shaped like the lid of a saucepan balanced unsteadily upon one edge. It's a little known fact in some precincts of Middle America that these events are often called "bazaars;" needless to say, that's how I felt, pressed against the textured steel seat by the whirling inertia of the ride on one hand and the warm contact of my first girlfriend on the other.
"Put her on the inside," the carnival barker had said, aside, to me, "so's that you don't squish her." And he winked.
The ride was straining into the sky, and couples of all manner rode ahead of us, preceding us to the crest of the Flying Saucer's arc. It was then, as we were at its highest point, groaning around in our turn, that I saw us there: sailing above the ground, out of reach of pubescent uncertainty, neighborhood bullies, and history, I saw my future laid out before me. I did not read it, however, as I was young and unwise. Instead, I turned to the mysterious beauty beside me, and smiled. Prince's "Little Red Corvette" was starting up on the loudspeakers, and I figured this was the moment I had been waiting for.
It's sometime in late summer, 1988 - a year unrecorded in any of the many journals I've kept over the years. Falling, as it had, sometime between my birth during the fall of Nixon and my social rise in high school during the onset of grunge, this year is otherwise wholly unremarkable. But there I was, despite its utter un-noteworthiness, with a song in my ears and a girl on my arm.
We were rising into the sky, slowly, riding a metal wave of diesel engine fumes and gaudy neon-lit concessions. A carnival was in town, and we had just been bustled aboard the "Flying Saucer" - twisting slowly to a crescendo, shaped like the lid of a saucepan balanced unsteadily upon one edge. It's a little known fact in some precincts of Middle America that these events are often called "bazaars;" needless to say, that's how I felt, pressed against the textured steel seat by the whirling inertia of the ride on one hand and the warm contact of my first girlfriend on the other.
"Put her on the inside," the carnival barker had said, aside, to me, "so's that you don't squish her." And he winked.
The ride was straining into the sky, and couples of all manner rode ahead of us, preceding us to the crest of the Flying Saucer's arc. It was then, as we were at its highest point, groaning around in our turn, that I saw us there: sailing above the ground, out of reach of pubescent uncertainty, neighborhood bullies, and history, I saw my future laid out before me. I did not read it, however, as I was young and unwise. Instead, I turned to the mysterious beauty beside me, and smiled. Prince's "Little Red Corvette" was starting up on the loudspeakers, and I figured this was the moment I had been waiting for.