etiger4

Normally at the end of a year, I reflect on it as I reflect on the music I've listened to, and I think about how nothing ever changes in my life. But that is not the case this year, as it turns out, as this year was home to some very big changes in my life and how I lead it. Let us begin.

First off, at the end of last year, my computer for some obnoxious reason pooped out, and I was forced to buy a new computer. This new computer and I wrestled around in the slovenly shitpiles of my room until I eventually concluded that I fucked up bad. My expensive soundcard that lets me record music doesn't fit in this computer, and my expensive ethernet adapter was no longer supported. Long story short, I stopped listening to music all the time, for the first time in my adult life. And I didn't record any of my own music this year (unless you count my one hip-hop collaboration featuring auto-tune!). It's almost as though I grew up, transitioned into one of those miserable adults that doesn't listen to any music at all.

I also transitioned into one of those adults that is in love with another adult, with whom I have the pleasure of being in a relationship. Parents have been met. Fights have been had. Houses have been nearly burned down. It was tumultuous and scary and wonderful, like relationships are supposed to be. The fact that he's 16 years older than me doesn't seem to bother people as much as I would have imagined. I find myself saying "my boyfriend" the way I'd hoped I would ten years ago. Totally matter-of-factly, without that hesitation that comes with knowing you're somehow breaking some sort of golden rule. You know, the golden rule that says don't be a homo. And if you _must_ be a homo, find someone your own age. It feels really good to give that golden rule a golden shower.

I had my first serious bicycle accident in Boston and separated my shoulder, which will leave me "permanently scarred", insofar as scarring means a bump that you'll see if you know where to look. I may never throw a baseball faster than fifty miles an hour or shoulder press more than a middling weight. I think I'll probably survive, though.

I had two job interviews, one of which was successful. And now I feel like a working stiff of the most obnoxious caste, the overpaid whiner. For I am deeply unfond of my job - which consists of shuffling data from one format to another, making dumb mistakes, and fixing them. Sometimes I'm asked to make new features which destroy the work I did before, and I can't help but contemplate that if I were to stop working and let them figure out what they wanted before they asked me to do it, all parties would be more pleased. But then I wouldn't get paid, and we can't have that. I am a useless cog in a system that purports to value originality and ingenuity, but in fact values pubs. Both publications and publick houses. Whatever.

My bicycle got hit by a car, and then got stolen. Where by stolen, I mean I left it in Davis Square for a week while I visited Houston, and then couldn't remember where it was when I got back. My friends and housemates bought me a new bike. Then I found my old bike. Whatever brain cells remained from my numbing employment were very unhappy at this series of events, but ever so grateful for the friends that seem to think I have something to offer. Life goes on.

Jim is moving to Boston next year, which is both wonderful and scary. Part of me is terrified that things won't work out and I'll be responsible for destroying his career, but that part of me is being won over to the fact that things are probably going to work out. We aren't going to live together at first, which everyone agrees is a good idea. I have no idea where Jim is going to find a place to live, or how he can keep being a working potter, or where his gigantic lummox of a dog is going to establish his kingdom, but we'll figure it out. It's not as if I'll be busy next year.

My scholastic career has degenerated into a breath-holding marathon. I keep hoping that nobody will discover the fact that I don't know anything about my purported area of expertise, and that I can graduate and move on to greener pastures. I'm not sure what I want to do, but I'd really like a job that values my creativity, or at the very least, a supervisor with whom I can set a meeting time if I have to. My dissertation is supposed to be first-drafted in eight days. This seems at least mildly impossible, but I figure I'll just do my best and at least make some nice figures.

I can think of about a million metaphors to describe my thesis, but maybe the most apt is a compost heap. You put in a bunch of trashy data and unfortunate ideas, and try to brave the noxious fumes long enough to stir it. And if you can brave the foul stench long enough, and you keep stirring for months and months, then you can only smell a mild perfume of shit wafting out of what looks like dirt. My shit is starting to look like dirt - ordinary, vaguely clumpy, kind of smelly dirt. And lots of people are trying to convince me that my dirt is like gold, so valuable because now I can plant my career in it. But I don't actually want to spend the rest of my life trying to turn shit into gold.

I suspect that by the time I graduate, I will be terrified enough about my ensuing poverty that I won't care in the slightest what miserable job awaits me, but I can always hope. I'm jealous of Jim, who knows what his dreams are, and I want him to do whatever he needs to do to reach them. It's hard watching from the sidelines, wanting him to push harder, to pull out all the stops, to claw his way to the top. There's only one way to get to the top, and that's to have an bottomless faith in yourself, and a persistence that makes your bottomless faith look like a puddle of mudd.

I'm reminded of my friend John Joseph, who is now the peripherally almost-successful LaJohnJoseph, burlesque darling. La JJ won't stop until he's king of the queen of the kings, because he can't conceive of himself as a failure for long enough to fail. I can't think of a force more powerful than that sort of self-confidence. Well, maybe visa restrictions, but I'm sure he'll charm his way into Canada somehow. If Jim had half the gumption that LaJohnJoseph can muster, he'd be a pottery superstar. Then again, he'd probably also be naked and lipsyncing, which would work for Pook Toques, but might not sell handcrafted stoneware.

As far as my own self-esteem, well, it's complicated. I still feel Morrissey-esque in all of the bad ways, and I still feel like the only way to see the world is through a psilocybinned haze. Somehow, I've been a vegetarian for over a year, and a teetotaller for ten months. I'm not sure if either of these has made me a happier, purer or less grating person, but if nothing else, being a vegetarian does make me, as I mentioned, Morrissey-esque. I'm convinced that one day I'll just decide, "you know what, that was fun, but it's time for some carnitas," but that day has yet to come.

Come 2010 I will be a published author, if coauthoring a chapter in an academic book that nobody will read makes you a published author. I worked on it to help out a friend - I keep hoping someone will show up like that and ask me if I'll work at their company on something creative and unique. As it stands, my progression towards mediocrity continues.

Reviewing the music that I missed of 2009, I can't help but think that I didn't miss a whole fuck of a lot. 2008 was a much stronger year. As evidence for that, I present to you the Menahan Street Band, an afro-beat soul hybrid instrumental group that rocks my socks. I'm turning into an old curmudgeon, with a yen for the good old days. Fortunately, there is an ever growing cadre of soul revivalists waiting to turn my dreams into reality.

May your 2010's be full of soul, and may your dreams kick some serious fucking ass.

Cambridge, MA is so weird. They constantly send a guy in a little truck with a big loudspeaker around to tell us things. Right now, the truck is going around and around letting us know that the mayor has declared a snow emergency and we need to move our cars out of the snow emergency lanes. I mean, it's nice, it's really nice that they warn us. They also go around on every single street cleaning day throughout the spring and summer to give us reminders about which side of the street is safe to park on. It's great that they remind us, and it has saved our butts on more than one occasion, it's just so weird to live somewhere where loudspeakers are always going by. It's so Orwellian, so 1950's.  We used to live in Somerville, MA and our car was towed all the time there. No one was out there coddling us in Somerville. Anyway, it's funny because we don't have a drop of snow here, yet. Supposedly we might get some around midnight. Some forecasts say less than 6 inches and others say more than 18 inches. :) I'm not worried, we've got hot chocolate and apple pie in the house, and lot of good books from the library.

I went to see Avatar tonight. It was incredible, I loved it. discojesus  and oakenguy  tell me that I was sitting right next to Henry Louis Gates. I didn't recognize him, but if that was him, he was a very funny guy. A huge charmer. It was his first 3D movie, he said, and he was completely excited about it.

I've spent the morning reading about cults, for some reason. Wait, I remember! Brian was playing an iphone game featuring a faux Pokemon character called Tusk. That's when I tried to sing the Fleetwood Mac song and Brian just looked at me like I was an alien. He couldn't figure out what song I was trying to sing! Can you believe he hadn't heard Tusk? So I had to search for a good version and then I started reading their Wiki page. And then I grew fascinated about the one Fleetwood Mac member who said he was going out for a magazine in L.A. and never came back...it turned out he was recruited into the Children of God cult. And that led me to reading about deprogramming techniques and Ted Patrick. Check this fascinating page out: http://www.rickross.com/reference/deprogramming/deprogramming7.html

Hey, you might need to rescue a cult victim one day. Apparently, the trick is to keep asking questions, to force them to think.

For those of you who are not on Brian's friends list, well... 1. you should be, because he is the better and more prolific writer of the two of us. You can find him at oakenguy . and 2. I've got some sad news. Toby Dog has moved on. Having apparently failed to get our attention with his depression and near constant sleeping, he decided to take matters into his own hands and just stop eating. We went into the vet and were like, Hey this dog won't eat, what gives? And they said We'll take out all his teeth tomorrow! $2000! And so we said, um, yikes, ok. And we took our blind, hiccuping dog home, planning to bring him back the next morning for the surgery. But the vet called a few hours later and said, Psych! He's got renal failure. $6000! 3 days in hospital! And then we'll see if he eats afterwards. And that's when I think we did the only smart thing we have done for Toby in the entire last year. We said, you know, I don't think any of this will be all that much fun for Toby, and now that we think of it, being a blind, toothless dog probably isn't that much fun in general. So let's just not. One of Good Thoughts I try to hold on to is imagining how wonderful Toby must have felt when that first small wave of anesthesia hit his bloodstream. It was probably the first time in a year that he was completely pain free. He was probably like, Oh yeeeaaaaahhh. He looked pretty happy, snorting away in his doggy dreams, his eyes moving fast... His teeth were in very bad shape for a long time. We knew that he would have to be put under anesthesia in order for them to operate on his teeth and he was a bad candidate for anesthesia because of his Cushings Syndrome. So we knew that when we took him in for dental care it was likely going to be a death sentence. And it was. I just wish we had brought him in a year earlier, because that dog had some really bad teeth. So any of you dog owners out there, you need to keep an eye on your dog's teeth. If the kidneys start going bad, that can cause the teeth to decay, and it can all snowball pretty fast. Actually I have to give Angell Memorial Hospital some props for making the whole last hour of his life really beautiful and ceremonial. Brian and I have cried buckets in the last 24 hours and we probably have some more to do, but we're both really glad for Toby. We know he is much better off where he is now. It's just us we are crying for. But we're doing pretty good, overall. A huge granite wall of worry is off our heads. I'm going to the doctor's myself today to get my bronchitis looked at. Maybe I've learned a valuable lesson here about not ignoring things for too long. *sigh*

There's a saying I drag out every now and then (usually when I'm defending my interest in seeing a particular movie or performance piece): It's not how well the bear dances, it's that he dances at all.

While I've applied it to a lot of things over the years, it's seldom been as apt as with what I discovered this weekend. For a charity event, one of Britain's top dance groups had a dance-off...with BBC newsreaders.






I think this really, really needs to happen over here. And not just because I have a hunch that Keith Olbermann has some moves, yo.