there goes the neighborhood

hehe

I am now gainfully employed; I am a telefundraiser for the University of Texas. I'm not really too sure what to expect, I'm just glad that I will have more money coming in. I haven't had a job since I was in high school.
I bought three DVDs over the weekend: Videodrome, Blue Velvet, and Donnie Darko. The first two are fucking insane, the former more so than the latter, and Donnie Darko is good. I just realized that I was cheap in the store and bought the regular version of Donnie Darko as opposed to the director's cut, but oh well. Hopefully the difference isn't sufficient to cause too much despair.
Videodrome in particular is a movie that I will never forget, you should see it. Fuck that, just buy it. There is a short film included that was created for, i think, the re-release of the DVD in the criterion collection that is very good. It's called Camera and stars Les Carlson.
Cronenberg is amazing, though i have only seen a little bit of his oeuvre. It takes quite a director to make Naked Lunch, the so-called "unfilmable book," into a movie.
Anyway, I'm slowly getting used to my schedule, and life is bearable.









Now the king told the boogie men
You have to let that raga drop
The oil down the desert way
Has been shakin to the top
The sheik he drove his cadillac
He went a cruisnin down the ville
The muezzin was a standing
On the radiator grille

The shareef dont like it
Rockin the casbah
Rock the casbah
The shareef dont like it
Rockin the casbah
Rock the casbah

By order of the prophet
We ban that boogie sound
Degenerate the faithful
With that crazy casbah sound
But the bedouin they brought out
The electric camel drum
The local guitar picker
Got his guitar picking thumb
As soon as the shareef
Had cleared the square
They began to wail

The shareef dont like it
Rockin the casbah
Rock the casbah
The shareef dont like it
Rockin the casbah
Rock the casbah

Now over at the temple
Oh! they really pack em in
The in crowd say its cool
To dig this chanting thing
But as the wind changed direction
The temple band took five
The crowd caught a wiff
Of that crazy casbah jive

The shareef dont like it
Rockin the casbah
Rock the casbah
The shareef dont like it
Rockin the casbah
Rock the casbah

The king called up his jet fighters
He said you better earn your pay
Drop your bombs between the minarets
Down the casbah way

As soon as the shareef was
Chauffeured outta there
The jet pilots tuned to
The cockpit radio blare

As soon as the shareef was
Outta their hair
The jet pilots wailed

The shareef dont like it
Rockin the casbah
Rock the casbah
The shareef dont like it
Rockin the casbah
Rock the casbah

He thinks its not kosher
Fundamentally he cant take it.
You know he really hates it.

It's a tortilla crisis
coooooool

a building shaped like godzilla
when he walked away, broke into a nearby store, took a shotgun and killed himself

some people, y'know?
Es poo
its time to ratchet up the yuan's value, boys


There was an owl hooting behind my apartment a little while ago. It's gone now and I am sad.
I really want to see 'Inland Empire', the new David Lynch film. Also 'The Last King of Scotland', so I can see Forest Whitaker eat some human flesh. I dunno if that even happens in the movie, but it should.
I had dinner tonight w/ my step mom and her cardiologist friend, both of whom are in town for a conference. It's cool to overhear medical people talk shop.


Here's a funny take on 'Blue Velvet', another David Lynch film:

"Heinecken?! Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!"

and a spoof on 'Brokeback Mountain':


haha, and 'The Fast and the Furious':


I put one of these up along time ago for 'The Shining'

Whoa...

bloody well right

"They're giant, marauding, godless killing machines."
Stephen Colbert on bears


omg that man is hilarious, and he performed BRILLIANTLY on the O'Reilly Factor.

parlez-vous ugly?

The subject line is a private joke between Roy and I that is supposed to mean the same thing as "do you speak french?" We like to pretend that we have a vehement distaste for all things french. Notice that I did not capitalize french.
Tonight, as many of you know, Stephen Colbert and Bill O'Reilly will appear on each other's shows. Should be interesting. Hopefully Bill O'Reilly will be a good sport and not make too much fuss about how Colbert's character on the show is just a parody of O'Reilly.
I had my first class of the semester today, Environmental Ethics. It should be very interesting. One very cool thing is that the prof. told us how he thought it was unethical to require students to purchase his book, so we will be provided w/ complimentary xeroxed copies. Some people actually applauded this.
The ice is melting very slowly outside.





How can I be sure when your intrusion's my illusion?
How can I be sure when all the time you change my mind?
I ask for more and more, how can I be sure?

When you don't give me love, you give me pale shelter
You don't give me love, you give me cold hands
And I can't operate on this failure
When all I wanna be is completely in command

How can I be sure for all you say you keep me waiting?
How can I be sure when all you do is see me through?
I ask for more and more, how can I be sure

When you don't give me love, you give me pale shelter
You don't give me love, you give me cold hands
And I can't operate on this failure
When all I wanna be is completely in command

I've been here before, there is not why, no need to try
I thought you had it all, I'm calling you, I'm calling you
I ask for more and more (ask for more and more)
How can I be sure (how can I be)

When you don't give me love, you give me pale shelter
You don't give me love, you give me cold hands
And I can't operate on this failure
When all I wanna be is completely in command
(Completely in command)

You don't give me love, you don't give me love
You don't give me love, you don't give me love
You don't give me love, you don't give me love


And heres some random shit that I've been holding onto for a while:

SONSABITCHES!

Everything is covered in ice outside, and the first two days of classes have been canceled. I tripped on an icy step last night and hurt my knee.
Also, I made a couple of deposits at the bank yesterday and the money disappeared overnight, but the people at the bank tell me that everything's gonna be alright.

my dad brought me a Façonnable (their suits are $1,400) t-shirt back from Paris. He has to go back in April, and said he would like to fly me out for a weekend. I would only get two days there, but hell, it would still be awesome. It also appears that Roy and I will definitely be going to Amsterdam this summer.
yay. I need to renew my passport.
I go back to Austin Tommorrow.


...


Ticking away the moments that make up the dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time has gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say

Home, home again I like to be here when I can
When I come home cold and tired It’s good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away across the field The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees To hear the softly spoken magic spells.

good idea, guys
Sergey and Larry must be so proud
Oh please

$250M?! I thought we didn't like soccer

dumb paratrooper son of a bitch will kill the already enfeebled economy

I just got this in an email

Bono, the lead singer of the band U2 is famous throughout the
> entertainment industry for being more than just a little eccentric.
>
>
> He is playing a U2 concert in Glasgow, Scotland when he asks the
> audience for total quiet.
>
> Then in the silence, he starts to slowly clap his hands, once every few
> seconds.
>
> Holding the audience in total silence, he says into the microphone,
> "Every time I clap my hands, a child in Africa dies."
>
> A voice with a broad Scottish accent, from near the front of the crowd,
> pierces the silence...
>
>
> ........ "Well, fuckin stop doin it then!"

no comment
it was nice for the gov't to throw united a bone like that

Travel Album

IAH
i'm everywhere
Bamalanding in Houston



All of these pics I took
some were modified digitally
...duh

cool pencil art
those french...
what does this mean?


Back in Houston, praise god.
will put some pics up later

WELL THANK GOD
100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 carats
oh bloody hell

I miss Texas; I love it so much I could cry.
Tomorrow we're all driving down to Huntsville, AL to visit the NASA center there. Should be fun, they have a centrifuge in which you can experience 3 Gs.
My nephew Jackson (i have two) has got to be one of the most adorable three year olds ever, and he's very smart! I'm really enjoying my time here. Yesterday my BIL and I, along w/ some kids from his church (he is a youth pastor), shot his new Colt AR-15. It's a .223 and shoots like a dream.
I also met Michael W. Smith (i hadn't heard of him either), he's the lead pastor of the church and apparently he is a pretty famous/successful Christian musician.
My sister and BIL actually live in Franklin, TN, which is a small city about 20 mins. south of Nashville, and its supposed to be one of the wealthiest small cities in America, and one of the top ten destinations in the south.
I only hope I can get out of here without being cornered by my sister and asked about the state of my spirituality.
I found out recently that San Antonio has overtaken Dallas as Texas' #2 city. Hurrah.
In Toronto I saw Volver, which is Pedro Almodóvar's latest film. It was really good. Really.


Ric Ocasek performs "moving in stereo"

oh ma gawd, so funny

What the hell am i doing in Nashville?
so many hicks...

Happy new year from Canadia!

My time in Toronto is almost up. I fly to Nashville on wednesday.
We did the whole new years thing at the farm (my stepmom's dad's country house).
Roy and I got pretty tore up. After an afternoon/evening of beer and whiskey, we eventually killed 2 1/2 bottles of champagne, though i have no recollection of the third bottle being opened, or of Roy testing my knife's sharpness on his hand.
Anyway, there was something of a minor scandal the next day over the utter waste we had layed to the beer fridge. Roy and I were the only people who got drunk.
The drinking age here is 19, so needless to say there was one thing (among some others) on our minds when we came up.
This is Roy's first time to Toronto, so it has been fun to show him around the city that I now know quite well.
It will be a bit of a change after a week of drunken debauchery to go to Tennessee and visit my hard-core christian sister and BIL. They don't drink, and even if they did on occasion, i doubt they would be cool with me drinking too.
But it's been fun, and i've had some opportunity to get to know one of my Christmas presents, a white PSP. I insisted on the white one, and thankfully my mom came through for me. She always does.
I bought a Swatch today in Eaton Centre after we visited the CN tower.
Tommorrow I think we will explore Yorkville and possibly North York.

Detail of an Anish Kapoor sculpture, downtown Toronto

The Farm


The Ontario College of Art and Design



Urban Camping downtown

A wall installation in Toronto City Hall

Model of the city in city hall

Santiago Calatrava's fantastic atrium in BCE Place






And on another note:
I recently determined that Architecture is not for me; I won't go into details because I don't feel like it, and also because (like many things for me) it'd difficult for me to put into words my rationale. It is just something that I know intuitively.
The main draw for me to architecture was the influence I could have on the built environment. Anywhere you go that isn't out in the woods has a certain character that is created in large part by the buildings there, and I wanted to do what I could to make the world, or at least a small part of it, a better looking place. Well it is for the same exact reason that I have chosen real estate development. I can still influence the built environment. Not to mention the fact that I could become disgustingly wealthy in the process. But let me be clear: money is not my goal, my goal is to make a difference, but a boy can dream can't he?
Anyway, when I go back to school I will look into transferring to the business school.
I need to shave.