A Close Facsimile To

This is sort of picking up in the middle of a train of thought

2009-06-29T21:26:00.000-07:00

which appeared initially on my twitter and then surfaced briefly on facebook, and then once I'd gotten that much mileage out of it I figured it couldn't hurt to try actual paper, and then finally this blog that no one reads. So I guess if I wanted to contextualize this I'd probably link to my other pages or else include the text, but like I said no one reads this and I know damn well where to find the rest of it so fuck that.

***

I thought about knocking on the door at 1810, where he said he lived, but it was two hours past the five minutes he'd claimed his scissoring would take and also a bit after one, and I was feeling like it might be rude. The thought also crossed my mind that he perhaps did not live in 1810 and I would therefore be knocking on some other strangers' door, sort of indignantly demanding they give me my scissors, and all the self respect I'd lose over that conversation was a bit too much to handle.

Then I got to thinking about what that would mean, if he didn't live in 1810: that he was some kind of bro-ey scissors bandit who had cleverly infiltrated U Towers and then unscissored me and presumably other unsuspecting victims. Or else he is feuding with the tenants of 1810 and he wanted to soil their good name to their neighbors.

Once I'd considered those two possibilities I decided it was best not to spoil my new potential realities with facts that contradict them, and since I didn't want to get all... stingy (I of course mean "Jewish") about a pair of scissors which came in a 3 pack of various sizes, from ACO Hardware, which sometimes sold for as little as 10 cents, and which I had stolen, in 2004, and lastly because it meant not leaving the sofa or my whiskey behind, I decided I could simply accept the loss and write about it instead.

***

It's been a while now since I wrote this, but I forgot to "publish" it, so I guess I can give the rather disappointing update that a mere two days after borrowing my scissors for five minutes, the scissors bandit gave them back. I might have asked him what took him so long but he slid them under the door.

2009-05-14T06:12:00.000-07:00

I guess when it's between doing and saying horribly stupid things and later recalling, or never getting any recollection back at all, I'll take total blackout any day. But why the hell is it between those two things?

2009-05-14T05:41:00.000-07:00

At 1:15 last night I was drunker than I've been in, oh, four or five days.

So here's to getting an early start on the day.

So remember how I said I hate it when old people use new internets?

2009-04-27T12:56:00.001-07:00

Yes, web 2.0 is obviously for people in their 20's, but whatever, old people are never hip to these things so they always fuck them up.

My great-grandfather is now on facebook. Yea, how about that. And he wrote this status update:

Allan Rosenberg So many of you facebook friends and relative challenge me to take the I.Q. test.Took the testbut i have no cell-phone.Tell me how i can do it without a cell- phone and i will be glad to take the test as a 90 yr. participent.

Who would have thought that old people were easily scammed?

Ho hum.

2009-03-31T19:49:00.000-07:00

There probably isn't a good way to start this, or a good way that I can think of right this second, so:

I use igoogle as a homepage, and one of the applications on my page is a list of free itunes downloads currently available.

Who knows, it might one day prove useful, but it has thus far done me no good: I took a look at the list of free music today, and discovered that someone has decided to offer John Cage's 4:33 for free. But actually not the entire thing, just the first movement.

Thanks itunes.

Briefly, I just wanted to share this with you.

2009-02-04T08:34:00.001-08:00

I was trawling the internet today, as I am want to do, and found myself for some reason looking through the filmography (which Microsoft word suggests in the autocorrect as “flexography” – oooh and those fuckers just autocapped Microsoft) of Eric Balfour, whom trivia tells me played Satan in a 2002 car commercial. He was also in a film called Lie with Me (2005), and I was a touch curious what this film was about, and so made my way to the page full of plot summaries on IMDB. Thus, I have this to share with you, a plot summary written by the ingenious Matt Patay. Please note that the principal characters in this film are named Leila and David.

“Lelia (Lauren Lee Smith) is a happily unattached, sexually voracious young woman who satisfies her instable appetite for sex with a host of young male bed partners. But all that changes when a chance encounter has Lelia meets and beings an affair with David (Eric Balfour) an artist looking for a committing relationship. David is just as sexually aggressive and ravenous as Lelia and whenever they get together, they grow more hopelessly entangled, both physically and emotionally.”

Perhaps this is not comedy gold to everyone else, but in this room here it positively kills.

As a side note, this is not something that happens often, but I really enjoy it when Word puts a green squiggly line under something I have written, and then when I right click it the line disappears. It’s sort of like I’m going “What? You got a fuckin’ problem?” and Word’s like “Uh, no man, it’s nothing.” and I’m all “Fuckin’ right it’s nothin’, punkass bitch.”

p.s. my husband is soooo gay.

From Drop Box

A Consistent Habit of Sharing Too Much Information

2009-02-03T11:41:00.001-08:00

What exactly would possess me to share with my father the fact that I have a blog, lord only knows. He was a little down my throat theo ther day about accomplishing nothing with my life, and so, hard pressed for any accomplishments, I told him I'd started writing for the internet, at least a little.

Examine that idea with me for a little bit if you will: my father semi-accuses me of being a do-nothing loser, and I come back at him with "Oh yeah? Well I have a BLOG!"

Thankfully, he's terrible at the internet and I think therefore believes there is some sort of prestige to blogging (quick example of his internet prowess: I later emailed him the text of the laptop pizza post and his most pressing question was "what does IM stand for?"). He's still in the chain email forwarding phase of internet use, so I'm unsure if he has any idea of the sheer scope of this "world wide web" or not.

At any rate, he was excited by my blog achievements and thus pressed me for more details, such as the url. I dodged the question, but I suspect if he is even mildly resourceful and half as curious as he indicated that he was, it is highly probably he'll find the blog and ruin my day. NOW HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO BITCH ABOUT DADDY ISSUES AND MY OVERUSE OF NARCOTICS* WITH HIM LOOKING OVER MY SHOULDER?

It's always seemed to me like an unwritten rule that who I am with friends and/or the internet is not the same person as who I am with my parents or said friends'/internets' parents. By extension of this it has always seemed hugely inappropriate to me when friends' parents have facebook profiles or myspace pages, and then take it one step further by adding their children to their friends list. Is it seriously that difficult for baby boomers to accept that technology has passed them by and the internet is simply no place for their kind?

Crawl across the web with your wheelchairs and walkers if you must, old people, but please do it in a different corner of the internet. I am almost certain there is a virtual Obituary page you can go read to find out that everyone as old as you is dead or dying. Stop trying to be so savvy, it creeps me right the fuck out.

*ha ha dad, got ya, didn't I?

WATCH YOUR FUCKING BACK SCIENCE

2009-01-21T08:31:00.001-08:00

Because this is fucking it, you hear me? Yeah you do, and now let me tell you fucking why.

I was just sitting here, minding my own business, when all of a sudden this stupid fucking body you invented for me made me simultaneously cold, tired, and in need of pizza.

WHAT IN THE FUCK SCIENCE, I'M TRYING TO IM PEOPLE AND YOU GET IN MY FUCKING FACE WITH THIS HANGOVER BULLSHIT.

So I'm like "oh, no problem, I'll just warm up in bed with my laptop made of pizza, which I can eat and also IM with." And then it hits me: laptop pizzas don't exist. I'm going to type that again because the completely depressing reality of it demands that I do so: LAPTOP FUCKING PIZZAS DO NOT EXIST.

Guess what people: I'm a Christian now. Jesus is my motherfucking savior. And you know why? Because placing my faith in science has gotten me FUCKING NOWHERE. Maybe if one of those asshole liar "scientists" had delivered on the promise of laptop pizzas somewhere in the last, oh I don't know, 2000 MOTHERFUCKING YEARS, then we wouldn't be in this situation, but now I'm another asshole who's going to goddamn heaven and it is ALL SCIENCE'S FAULT. I'm done with this.

Watching the inaugural address today

2009-01-20T13:33:00.000-08:00

Organized a speical playlist for while I was watching:

-Curtis Mayfield: Pusherman

-DJ N-Wee (Jay-Z vs. Pavement): 99 Problems Here

-Silver Jews: Pet Politics

-Ol' Dirty Bastard: I Can't Wait

-Jim O'Rourke: All Downhill From Here

-Nas: The World is Yours

-The Fall: New Face In Hell

But then those assholes kept trying to make me listen to Hail to the Chief and shit and I'm like "WHOSE WORLD IS THIS?" and I can only answer back to myself "the worlds is yours."

Apologies (for content of the post as well as for what it's being used to refer to)

2009-01-06T05:29:00.001-08:00

Oh what a loss
My soft hands replaced by claws
You turned me into a stray dog, from a mighty human man
Oh what a loss
I miss my closest friend[s]
And now I cling to rocks and wind
It's a precious thing we lost

It's nights like these

2008-12-30T01:16:00.000-08:00

that give me a real appreciation for what a rare thing I have in my friends.

Namesake: The Birthday Blog

2008-12-18T10:00:00.000-08:00

My name has been a bigger part of my life than I imagine it would have been if I was named, say, Michael, or Justin. Those are names that you hear often and therefore do not provide any kind of automatic distinction just by being named them. I will tell you that for many years, I have caught all kinds of shit for 3 famous neils, because there are only really 3: Armstrong, Diamond, and Young. People feel a need to point out when something is eccentric but still recognizable, younger kids usually do this by insulting one another, adults make lame jokes or talk to you in a really boring way (e.g. 'Oh like Neil Armstrong, eh? How's that?' and I'm like 'I don't have any basis for comparison I suppose because my name has always been Neil, but I guess it's fine, you boring fuckwit').

But through all the comments, I've never actually been curious which one of the three neils I was named for. I more or less assumed it had to be one of them, because I don't believe there are any neils in my known heritage, and I assumed there had to have been somewhere that my parents heard my name. Of late I had hoped it was Young.

There were babies around the table this thanksgiving in Petoskey, where I saw my mother and stepfather after some months of not seeing them (as they live in florida and I in michigan) and my mother was having a conversation with a new mother about her son's birthing, which I guess is an appropriate thing to talk about when you're a mother but it seems a little invasive in my mind. At any rate my interest was vaguely piqued and so I asked at what time was I born, and my mother answered almost instantly that it was shortly after 2 (which is right now actually). And then she starts laughing a little to herself and she say that she remembers this because days of our lives had just ended.

And so my sister and I are ribbing her a bit for having been a fan of the lathery operas when she was younger, at which point I was devastated to discover that I am, in fact, named for the Days of our Lives character Dr. Neil Curtis. "He was a serious hunk," apparently, and also a doctor, and I guess that's a relief, but today for the sake of this blog I looked up his character's history on a soaps website, and discover that he was also addicted to gambling, and like 5 different people tried to kill him, he had a stillborn son, two daughters from two different marriages (one of the two marriages occuring in prison [which by the way ended in a prison break that led to his new wife getting shot and having a bout of amnesia {again}]) and a third, illegitimate daughter to whom he relinquished all parental rights.

I guess he was some kind of super doctor, because at different points in his career, he performed brain surgery on the woman he loved (who is by the way also the girl he ended up marrying while she was in prison, and the surgery is what led to her first case of amnesia), artificially inseminated another friend's wife (but not with his bilk [that is to say, ball milk], which I think would have been a better plot twist than having it turn out to be some other handsome doctor from Chicago), and survived a bomb blowing up in his face, which apparently left no scars on his exceptional face.

The character apparently lasted some 20 years on the show, so I guess I should be relieved (should I?), and don't get me wrong, I like the name Neil, but fucking dammit, why didn't she just say she was really into After the Gold Rush at the time of my birth. That would have worked for me.

My father doesn't actually know about this yet, but I think I'll tell him over dinner tonight, see if he's crushed or what.

-Neil.

as a side note, turns out people have been using my last name as slang for women masturbating somewhere in the world, or so says Urban Dictionary. It's the "female equivalent of fap."

upcoming blogs: a reminder to myself (also for your calendars)

2008-12-18T01:58:00.000-08:00

expect from me in the next week:

-namesakes (birthday blog).

-pretentious/fat people talking about heath ledger, asian cinema and the only american melodrama, plus imperialistic western film critics.

-condescending computer support indian explaining in extreme detail what it is to unplug something.

-why we need to employ someone named scott at blockbuster.

Ask yourself this: are you Neil's friend? Should you find that the answer is yes, it's basically your job to make me write about these things before I cannot remember.

bonus blogs: accidental discharge & a day at the races with Leo, Johnny, and Tom.

2008-12-17T13:34:00.000-08:00

Bicycle-by shooting is the green alternative to a drive-by.

I'll come back to this later.

I forget where I found this, but I thought I should show it to you.

2008-12-16T04:51:00.000-08:00

And by "you," I mean you personally.

alone until wednesday.

2008-12-15T01:39:00.000-08:00

my roommate told me I can't have any parties while he's gone. i meant to tell him haha but it came out as gag instead.

i'm really excited for the computer that i will one day own, which will be controlled by my gloves. that is to say, I will control the computer using my gloves, which very clearly have circuit boards built into the fingertips and the palm, and it is not to say that the gloves themselves will be autonomously controlling my computer without any imput from me. That would be silly. For the time being they will have to function as slap amplifiers.

I own what I feel is a respectable number of sunglasses, but they are all women's designs, so I guess that makes them a disrespectable number of sunglasses.

The Small Kindly Wolf Sees Red Riding Hood in the Forest

2008-11-10T00:41:00.000-08:00

He thinks it rude to interrupt

her walk, enthralled as she is by the forest around her.

Her cloak flits over her shoulders, her slender back,

the sun peeking through the canopy to play across her face

as she skips along with strange purpose.

She must be headed somewhere wonderful,

he reasons.

And when she spies him in the trees,

and smiles, he shies away,

and pretends he is otherwise occupied.

He has not the time for conversation with beautiful girls carrying baskets of food.

The Small Kindly Wolf starved to death,

alone in the shadows,

Manners dressed in wolf’s clothing.

There may be a more appropriate place to put this

2008-10-03T08:07:00.000-07:00

But I don't appear to have any set criteria for posting thus far, so I'll be disappointing no one if I break from my literary facade and post a trailer for The Christmas Cottage, which I think is going to be awesome:

(Thoughts On) After a Heavy Rock Falls Upon it, Sawing One's Arm Off with a Swiss Army Knife in Yellowstone National Park:

2008-10-03T00:36:00.001-07:00

Fuck.

-Neil Schlick (et al.)