does going to sleep bother you? in all my years, i don't believe i have willingly gone to sleep more than a handful of times, all of them times when i was tired from working all night or else sick. of course, clearly sometimes you are dogass tired and you crash. but do you ever just think it's eleven o'clock and it would really feel nice to go to sleep?


a subway at night

although i like sleeping, and i more or less sleep the proper amount, sleep is something that happens to me, not something that i do. often, i fall alseep where i am while doing something--reading or listening to songs or pretending to do work. listening to the news. watching tv. doing anything to stay awake and delay having to go and lie down. and when i'm lying down to sleep, properly, i always think about how far away morning is, and how it will be so long to wait. i get a similar thought before i take a long trip.

i have always equated the feeling of not wanting to sleep with the feeling of not wanting to leave a party. or, if you prefer, the feeling of not wanting to die. the surrender of one's experience to the next step, which is the next unknown. if you do any of those things--go to sleep, leave, or die--you might miss something. maybe you should have been strong enough to stay awake, or stay alive. et cetera.

for the past few hours i've been wondering why it's cold in here. then i got the idea to go around and close all the windows.

ever notice this about the beatles?: you think you should know all the beatles songs, or at least find them all familiar, but occasionally you hear one and you don't know it at all. it's a beatles song that you've made it thirty (or whatever) years never knowing. and it's a good song. it's a perfect, catchy, wonderful song, and you've never heard it on the radio before. and there it is. a beatles throwaway, practically flawless.

currently you will find me in the westin bonaventure in downtown LA. the past couple days it's been pouring down rain, so i haven't been outside much, but i did notice that our hotel was flying chinese flags on the flagpole.

today i took a walk, and found that not only that, our street has chinese phone booths and chinese street signs and news stands filled with chinese newspapers. everything is cartoonish, though, because if you get really close to it, you see that the phones have clear tape over all the buttons and cardboard stuffed in the coin slots, and the signs are on wooden stakes. the whole street is dressed up to look like china or singapore for a movie filming. under an overpass i found about fifty old-looking bicycles chained up, with a bunch of prop-looking rickshaws, and some chinese delivery vans and two tanker trucks with chinese writing on them. occasionally i see a security guy walking around in a windbreaker, but no one seems too concerned about rickshaw theft.

tomorrow i leave for los angeles for a conference. the past week i continuously freaked out trying to pull my work into order and make a passable presentation out of it. finally, thursday night i started to feel woozy and resorted to checking myself to see if i could hold my arms out and touch my nose, like a drunk test. judging my performance only mildly passing, i went downstairs and paid thirty bucks to take a cab home in the pouring down rain. aw, pity for josh. yes, i know everyone's work is a pain in the ass; mine is no different.

and yes, till today it has been constant downpour for eight(?) days. guess how many days it takes our roof to leak. seven.

so yesterday i finally finished everything, and i rewarded myself by getting to listen to my headphones loud for the last hour of the day. there are specific settings in windows media player and the master volume control above which i am not permitted to go. except in cases when i have performed the undesirable task of my choosing. don't you do that, too?

there's a professor at work that i like talking to. we chat about whatever is going on with us--only occasionally, but he's a professor, so he's probably not supposed to talk to me at all. it seems like he'd be happy to drop the professor gig and spend his life listening to jamaican music instead, and maybe that's why i like him. i got him to branch out to johnny cash, so we always have that as a ready-made topic. for a year he kept telling me that cash's cover of solitary man had become one of his favorite songs, and that's cool, right?

he's got a daughter who's about ten. i asked about her the other day, and he said she was running for president of her class, or something like that. (seems a little young to introduce kids to politics, right? but anyway.) her campaign platform is the following:

1. There should be enough balls and jump ropes for everyone to have a ball or a jump rope if they want one.

2. Better food in the cafeteria.

3. If something's boring, you should go along with it anyway so everyone will have a good time.

that's awesome, right? number 3? i didn't learn that till i was like twenty-five.

on friday i saw speeches by two nobel laureates, and i have this to report--sometimes even they use comic sans in their presentations. say i'm dreaming. say it ain't true.

i went to see belle and sebastian last sunday, and i also went to see belle and sebastian the sunday previous to that--once in london, and once in brooklyn. the trip to england happened to coincide with the show, and mia picked the travel dates without any input from me, so i figured it was fate. fate wanted me to go, and how do you say no to fate?


belle and sebastian at the barbican in london

the show at barbican hall in london was totally sold out, and i resorted to a scalper, which is something i generally do not want to do. on top of that, i had to buy an extra ticket from my scalper, and so then i became a scalper. it was all very becoming what we most hate, but the show was perhaps my favorite i can remember. best show ever. i even sat next to the guy i sold my extra to, and we chatted, and he was a nice guy.

the barbican show was extra special, because they were performing if you're feeling sinister from start to finish, as it is on the record.


belle and sebastian at the cyclones stadium in brooklyn

the show in brooklyn was part of an outdoor festival called across the narrows, and b&s were opening for beck. the show was far more disorganized on the part of the band, which i found quite endearing, and generally it was a nice time as well, even taking into account the hour-and-a-half it takes to go to coney island on the train.


the crowd in brooklyn

so, that's it. enough of all this crap--i'm going to follow belle and sebastian around in my volkswagen microbus now. i will be the only one doing it, but maybe it'll be the start of something huge. so, this will likely be the last you ever hear of me. may everything work out for you all, bye bye!