I have absolutely nothing to do right now.  So I thought I'd write a bit.  I just watched the end of Fight Club.  I didn't really like it when I first saw it, but there are several aspects of the movie that I've come to appreciate.  Particularly the Pixies' song Where is My Mind at the end.

    So far on this little holiday break, I haven't done much.  I've consumed quite a bit of food.  Wait, actually, I don't feel right about saying I haven't done much.  It just feels like that.  It's just that I've spent a lot of time sitting around the house, mostly watching tv, usually eating while doing so.  My brother Garrick arrived yesterday, with his new digital video camera.  So we took quite a bit of footage.  We shot a few scenes of me jumping out of our large maple tree, then through iMovie on his Powerbook, ran the clip backwards so it looks like i'm jumping into the tree. It was all quite amusing.  If at all possible, i'd like to upload it at some point.  It's really quite remarkable how easy it is to make movies on a computer.  Of course, the camera and computer cost over three thousand dollars.  But once you get over that hump, there's lots of fun to be had.  We spent all last night coming up with different scenarios to shoot that would look hilarious when we reveresed the clip.  By the end of the night, I was seeing everything in reverse.  It's really hard to think backwards.  I had to walk backwards out of the frame, and plot everything out in reverse order. It starts to mess with your mind a little.  But it's some of the funniest stuff I've ever seen.  I gotta git me one o' them cameras.
    Besides that, I've done a bit of shopping, stopped by TJ Maxx for some pants, dropped by the mall for a few slushies at Bavarian Pretzel. I gotta tell you, they make some really excellent slushies over there. Nice and thick and dense and heavy.  Just wonderful stuff.
    Thanksgiving dinner was a little weird, what with two of the four brothers missing.  This was the first year in 20 that our dinner didn't include at least 6 people.  A small, scaled-down affair, but still tasty.
    I've been getting more and more tales from my youth from my parents. Today my mom informed me that she thinks of all the kids, I've learned the least from the parents. I don't think that's true at all.  I just don't flaunt it.  My mom was also telling how weird and picky I was.  She said I used to cry and throw a fit when my sweater sleaves weren't the same length.  She said I'd hold out my arms and started screaming that they weren't even. To illustrate this point, my mom held out her arms in front of here and produced this pained look on her face and started whining really loudly.  She said "You used to always go..." and started whining. It was sort of weird, really.  I didn't remember doing that till she said it, but of course it makes complete sense.  I'm really weird about shit like that, about symmetry and even sides and precision.  It's totally OCD.  Which I really sort of am. Less these days I think.  I let a lot more slide.  I think I don't even really notice it anymore though, so it could be worse than ever.  But certain things just have to be perfect.  Like certain motions.  Like checking my watch before I bowl or serve in tennis or shoot a free-throw or throw a horseshoe. I always have to know what time it is.  I go nuts when I don't know what time it is. I don't know why. Part of it is superstition, like it's somehow lucky. But another part of it is just some pyscholigical weirdness. I don't want to say "disorder," because it's not that serious, but it's just weird.  When I was at Rodzilla's place in France, and I woke up in the middle of the night, they didn't have a visible clock, and when I didn't know what time it was, i slept fitfully for the rest of the night.  I think that's the last time it happened. Since then, I always make sure to have a way of knowing what time it is. I've been like that since I can remember, ever since I got my first watch. By the way, when I got my first watch, I always thought it might be a girl's watch. The band was too thin.  I wonder if that's affected my watch selection since.  Anyway, I can't believe I had these weird little hangups as a small child.  I cried when my sleaves weren't the same length? Oh my god... just thinking about it right now, I actually sort of stopped wearing this one shirt because I always had to pull the left sleave down. For some reason, that damn sleeve was always riding shorter than the right one. I know physically they were the same length, but it just wouldn't sit right.  There're other shirts that constantly give me this problem as well. Maybe that's why I roll up my sleaves so much these days.  How truly odd.

    Anyway, besides remembering childhood traumas, i've been trying to forget about this sort of nagging sense of dread I've been having for the last few days.  it's basically your Sunday night kind of dread. You know, from school. Sunday night, and you've still got all sorts of shit to do but you sit around watching TV or something all day.  that's me now.  It's partly school. The one class I have, I have to write one whole thing this term, and the one idea I submitted was pretty much shot down. So I have to start over, with about three weeks left in the term.  I'm kind of passively shitting my pants.  Secondly, this whole job thing is freaking me out.  I need one.  I really need to start fulfilling this writing dream.  Have I ever really referred to it as that before?  I don't think so.  Not even to myself, I don't think.  Maybe I have, but lately it's much more vibrant.  It's not just talk.  I can sort of feel myself getting closer. For the first time ever, I feel like I've made some progress toward this goal.  And in more than one way. As much bullshit as grad school has been, it's actually helped me in more ways than I think I know.  And I really want it now, more than ever.  I can't really imagine doing anything besides something at the very least related to writing, be it fact checking or research or whatever, just something on the same path.  I really enjoy writing. The problem is, I enjoy writing about almost nothing except myself.  I think I'm pretty good at it.  I should just start churning out memoirs.  I tried to start one a few months ago, actually, after Jen showed me a few passages in Dave Egger's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.  I figured, who the hell was this guy, and why can he write a memoir and I can't?  Basically, I don't think you really need to be famous, just good.  I was handed David Sedaris' book Naked recently, after many people recommended it.  I haven't started it yet, mostly because I think it will make me angry.  Angry that I wish I could do that.  It's just a bunch of humours, autobiographical essays.  If that's what it takes to write a book, I think I can handle that.  I just know I'm going to read it and think "Fuck, this is what I should be doing."  the parts I've heard have been truly hilarious though, and I'm looking forward to reading the whole thing. Matt said it really encapsulated our sense of humor.  If this is actually some sort of genre (I don't read a lot), maybe that's where I should be.  I mean, I think I've really been honing my humorous-memoir skills.

    What I have been reading while here at home is an excerpt from a new book about Robert Kennedy.  It's sort of fascinating.  I've never really known anything about the man, just the caricatures I see in movies.  The book actually makes that point, that RFK is more a mythical figure than a historical.  The excerpt is from the part of the book that deals with the Cuban Missile Crisis, and how that was his sort of coming of age as a statesman.  I don't know much about the Cuban Missile Crisis either, so that's an added bonus.  Now I may just go see the new Kevin Costner movie 13 Days.  But I don't like movies that have actors playing the Kennedy's that look nothing like them.  I'm trying to think of movies that have had actors playing the Kennedy's that looked like them.  Let's see.  I think the guy who played RFK in Hoffa was about as close as anyone's come.  The Kennedy's of the recent movie The Rat Pack really weren't good. I think the guy playing RFK was actually older than the guy playing JFK.  Anyway, this is really a waste of time and space.  Hey, speaking of that, let's now try to think of other things that simultaneously waste time and space.  How about...TVs? You waste time watching it, and it takes up valuable floor space. Then again, I can't really fairly say TV is a waste of time for me.  Hell, let's drop this pointless excercise.
    Speaking of pointless excercises, what the hell was the shuttle run? And why were we forced to do it in gym class? It wasn't even that much excercise.  Just running back and forth between like ten feet for like 10 seconds.  Talk about a pointless excercise.

    By the way, I was reading Newsweek the other day, and in it was a little blurb about how you can expect  music to be better when the economy is bad and other things to rebel against.  Which of course is what I was writing about last month. So that's about two references to this topic in three days. It kind of makes me all jumpy because I've wanted to write about better version of the piece I wrote for Insound.com, but I'm still looking for a place to send it too.  You know, you think you have an idea sort of first, or the first of the most recent wave, and you feel like it's yours and get pissed off when other start coming up with it.  You do the same thing with bands or cool places to hang out, etc.  It's stupid, sure, but surely it's a legit feeling.  If anything, it's making me more motivated.  Like I can write about things besides me. Write well about them, I mean.  I actually might have an idea or two that would have a wider audience than 20 people a day.  Not that I don't appreciate you 20 people. Cos I do.

    Anyway, I've got one more day of clowning around at home.  I've really enjoyed the doing of nothing here. I'm not looking forward to a crowded bus on Sunday.  And I sort of feel like I should try to be somehow social and active tomorrow.  But let's not get ahead of ourselves. I'm still sort of sick and this lying around is just what I need to feel better. And I do. How bout that.

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