rely a bit too much on alcohol and irony coffee

Damn alcohol and coffee for keeping me up right now, lucid and dreamy, tied to a lamp post with my bed a few feet away (wait, what the hell is it doing in the middle of the road???).

still [draft]

still – call just a little
ask me what I am doing

we all need some cash
on us sometimes for
the street vendor or a cab
or the open tab at the bar

phone call from the bottom of a well [draft]

phone call from the bottom of a well
trying to get the Duke of Ellington
what a crazy cat, Tom
always got sticky fingers into something
nouveau with her own niche
She’s got it made
I wonder sometimes:
does she even know it?

a response to the willows

I was a swinger of birches,
and yes, I dreamt
of going back to be,
loneliness, disappointment, other considerations
tempted me astray eventually

Down the heavy-rutted wagon trails,
I followed the boisterous and the busy,
convincing myself I was content,
I saw oaks and maples
but no birches where I went

it’s not an HMO

Two Things That Aren’t Covered by Your Friend With Benefits.

via McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

I presume lil’ Bush isn’t quite up-to-date on the idea of “friends-with-benefits,” or we might have already witnessed a speech in which he confused the term with some sort of solution to HillaryCare II…

readings – a post of interesting reads, at least once a week

Months worth of $5.99 and $4.50 a pop, one-at-a-time newsstand “subscriptions” to the New Yorker and Harper’s Monthly have now, thankfully, ended. I finally had the money to pay up for full subscriptions and the will power to not spend it elsewhere. I also have online access, which is key since I often lose my copy of either magazine somewhere around the city (can someone please confirm that this is a normal part of NYC living?).

I’m a huge fan of Harper’s “Readings” section in the beginning of each issue. The magazine reprints excerpts and full-length selections of various writings, from interviews to journal publications to novels. While someone adamant about the degradation of human attention span might be critical of the jumpy, hodge-podge nature of it (note: I think ADD/ADHD is way over-diagnosed), I think the breadth of selections is more informative and educational than detrimental. While I generally don’t make an effort to learn more about all the passages and the people/events involved, I do pursue a few, opening my mind to many things that were never on my radar.

random spam subject line of the day

“Which cola do you prefer: Coke or Pepsi?, Schaefer!”

seriously, wtf? obviously I prefer Royal Crown…

“pimpin’ shoes”

I bought a new pair of shoes recently. I don’t make shoe purchases lightly. Not because they have any significant bearing on my social life; on the contrary, I tend towards the practical and, dare I say, conservative, when it comes to “regular” shoe purchases (I put this in quotes specifically because my running and racing shoes over the 9 years of competition tended to stick out in some way…one pair in high school was purple and “tennis ball” green).

and we’re back…

I want to take a screen shot of Gmail’s chat side bar after my internet connection goes through its regular spastic connect/disconnect conniption about every 20 minutes. I’m constantly being notified that “we’re back…,” as if the internet, as if Google specifically, is trying to tell me something about my life (not surprising since it’s tracking much of my online to-and-fro). I’m not one versed in the tenets of consistency. Even now, I wonder if I’m going to finish this because some surreptitious bout of exhaustion has fully entered my blood stream and I can’t think of any other recourse other than passing out, mental piles of tasks left undone another day. A yawn slips out. I wonder whether or not it is worth it to slurp up some more caffeine considering the late hour. It’s only a little black tea, so what the hell. (note: I don’t have a working enter/return button, so this is going to seem like some unbroken chain of stream-of-consciousness until a later date). Black tea has a stronger effect on me than coffee…or maybe it’s just a more pleasant experience, I don’t know. As I was saying, consistency is and has never been my strong point. Sad, no? The peanut gallery does not have to resound with a chorus of “you have no one to blame but yourself.” I said I was inconsistent, not unconscious. I am self-aware, some might say too much so, and (this being my blog and the tagline being “…navel gazing”), I realize things need work. My writing for one. I like to write. At least I think I do. I tell myself I do. I tell myself I like to read, yet I allow very short reading to envelope my life. I was working on Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, but I managed to lose my copy somewhere in this big city (off to The Strand tomorrow to see if I can find myself a cheap copy). But back to writing. I just haven’t nailed this blog thing – who really cares though, right? Well, I care because I know I need an outlet, especially since it is easy to feel very isolated or alone in this city of 8 million+ people. I know I can release mental pressure verbally only so much before it seems like a billion molecules of hot air. I spend too much time in physical life in conversation that doesn’t bring me anywhere. Here, perhaps, I can release these molecules in a constructive way and find focus elsewhere. There are plenty of other reasons why blogging, for all it’s navel-gazing and obscurity, is a good outlet, but I’ll get to those in other posts. For now, I am (once again) re-christening asidesoflife.org, though for now it is being hosted as a WordPress.com blog. The original asidesoflife might come back sometime soon, but this is good for now. As for sps.bigwhoop.org? I’m not sure where that will fit in. Bigwhoop itself is on the descent, at least for now. It is sad, but such is the case with all good things – existence has yet to become a permanent phenomenon. Matt Jankowski is still sorta posting. Bess has found a new home at UrbanSpinster. Furst is the energizer bunny of Bigwhoop. Lara is too busy, unfortunately (though she is commenting elsewhere…perhaps she will grace me with a few comments). There will be a little bit of everything around here – I can’t figure out how I could possibly make this a neighborhood-centric NYC blog considering how many times I’ve moved recently and I don’t see myself getting incredibly involved with community affairs for the moment. Nor could I ever be up-to-date or connected enough to be a edgy mp3 blogger. I expect to include a little of both because most of the people I know do not live in or blog about NYC nor are mp3-binge-purge music lovers like me. Whatever form this writing takes, hopefully it will be consistent at the very least.