disturbing seattle fashion!

in this, my first foray into "living in the city", i've been privy to numerous odd choices. the "walk bike", in other locales known as the "bike", which is basically a bicycle--usually an overgeared, poorly fitted "track bike"--that one leads around by the stem. i've seen some of these "walk bikes" on the front racks of buses, following their "masters" around cap hill and ballard looking for "parking" and generally being WASTES OF TUBING AND FUNCTIONAL ARTISTRY. there's the "chunky eyewear" choice of a few otherwise sensible looking young women: frames that look like what you'd have found on the stereotypical "nerd girl" in a john hughes movie. these "eyewear choices" tend to be paired with ill-fitting thrift store t-shirts, the kind one would usually find in the bottom of a drawer, too "well-worn" to actually keep, but forgotten about. the kind one can see through cos the fabric is so thin. not sure what this is about. there's the "train conductor" cap on a woman who is obviously not "conducting" much of anything beyond her curation of mystique. the "so tight i can't pull them up but i carry them anyway so my boxers squish upwardly and outwardly and i look like a damn fool who's about to fall over" pant, the "jayhawk's reject" purple jean, the curated "newsboy" cap on a frat kid who's never "dropped" a newspaper in his life, and the list could go on, but my brain is feeble and i can't recount them all. and the colourways, yes, so many i don't even understand. the abovementioned purple jeans, the mustard yellow hoodies--i've yet to see mustard yellow in anything other than hoodies or poorly knitted cardigans--and neon mismatched everything. seems a few years ago there was just too much subtlety and simplicity. if it's ugly, flashy or even downright horrifying, one of the many "cliques" in town is probly carrying it. dollar signs, prints of benjamins, bling of all sorts "ironically" carried on the backs of otherwise normal looking cats. brown "courds" carried with broad-spectrum neon nikes, mothbitten "skullies" carried back on the skull so as not to do anything the "skully" was designed to do (y'know, keep the head warm). i don't know. maybe i'm being "skeptikal", but when i see a dude carrying carhartts to pump coffee or someone leading his or her "walk bike", i get just a bit het up. i'm sure the woman in the "conductor's cap" is just being "whimsikal", as the hat is paired with tie-dyed "scarve", but to me, i don't know, she just looks silly. actually, at second look, she's kinda cute. maybe there's some "lesson" there, in the "confusion" colourway.

toby young is a liar.

a close friend buys wine according to the axiom "you can't judge a bottle of wine by its label, but it's a good place to start" and it was with this in mind that i took up with GREAT EXITEMENT the relationship manual "how to lose friends and alienate people" by toby young only to find that it was NOT A RELATIONSHIP MANUAL AT ALL, but rather a whiny "memoir" about being hired by vanity fair magazine, shipping from london to new york and successively FAILING AT EVERYTHING. no hints on how to "alienate" people. um. . .come on! throw us a bone here! there's 500,000 people in this sorry metropolis and THERE'S NOT ONE ANTI-FBC BLOG ANYWHERE! WHAT AM I DOING WRONG??? PEOPLE STILL TALK TO ME!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

anyway. we were at the mural amphitheatre last night checking out the moondoggies' groovy-but-ultimately-disappointing set when we noticed a random guy DANCING BY HIMSELF. i thought, "is this actually happening?! we're in SEATTLE for God's sake!! DANCING???!!! REALLY???!!!" he was WAY into the music, something akin to being WAY INTO JELLYFISH AND "DANCING" ALONG WITH THEM. he was also missing a tooth, wearing mid-nineties "realaxed-fit" jeans and a "loose fitting" button-down that was obviously meant to be worn by sweaty jersey locals to their jobs as extras on the set of "the sopranos". basically, HE WAS FKN AWESOME!!!!!! people in seattle have ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE OF HUMOUR ABOUT ANYTHING--which explains why it took EIGHT LONG YEARS to oust greg nickels--and this righteous fellow was flouting the (breaking character for a moment of honesty here) utterly pretentious, stayed, spineless, stultifying seattle ethic. (okay, back we go.) when the moodoggies finished (thank God), this man rushed the stage in utterly ecstatic anticipation of FRUIT BATS' return, after six or so years--where the @#$(*& were you guys?--and PROCEEDED TO DANCE HIS @$$ OFF EVEN THOUGH NO ONE WAS PLAYING ANY MUSIC. to his later-apparent dismay, he was joined by other people at the stage. the crowd continued to grow, as did this man's anxiety. FRUIT BATS started their groovy-and-entirely-awesome set, and this man started dancing in earnest. when the crowd round him joined in, we could sense his fear. "what were these people doing?" he seemed to be thinking. you could see in his face his confusion when he turned away from the stage. "this is seattle, and people are dancing! what is wrong with this?" he then showed his stronger stuff, dancing his way out into the crowd where he proceeded to dance with now wild abandon. he was alone, just like he thought he should be, and he was dancing only for himself. the smartly seated crowd around him ignored him in practice, though they were mocking him in typical passive-aggressive seattle style--the palm-face stage whisper. by the time FRUIT BATS crowned their set with a typically groovy and restrained cover of INXS' anthemic ballad "never tear us apart", he looked utterly spent, AND HAPPY AS THE HINDENBURG.

in other news, the horrible, TOTALLY UNDESERVED heat of the last week of july has brought on the feeling of an early fall. the leaves are dropping already and there's colour in trees that usually don't break till late september or early october. when the weather pattern turns to more of a marine push, it feels like such a reward. we got through that horrible week, and now we get an early dose of fall, THE BEST SEASON OF THE YEAR. and if you haven't watched the train video moe posted last week, do! it has snow. snow is God's way of saying "I love you."

and then a brief intermission followed by violin music

S&H 277:30

Front yard on the way to work with plastic flowers on a guy wire.



THINGS BROKEN AT MY HOUSE :

• sole coming off one shoe of the Frankenstein clogs again
• DVD player connected to the VCR player won't play
• other DVD player requires you wiggle the cord around a while, then sit motionless on the bed, stiller than dead, to watch it
• slight leak under kitchen sink
• leak on top of kitchen sink runs along countertop and trickles gently to floor, then runs behind fridge before disappearing (look on the bright side: possibly replenishing an aquifer somehow?)
• water dripping inside fridge
• vertical blinds in livingroom keep falling down and breaking(I HATE THEM and am starting to wonder if I will need to pay the landlord a bazillion dollars for their decrepitude when we move out.)
• can't turn phone ringer off

As for that cool old green metal gooseneck lamp that I've had since '95, I stopped being sad that it broke and I threw it out. I got a new lamp shaped like a ridiculous vase.

me too!

i don't get machete queries on my commute, but i do see LOTS OF RUMMIES. mostly sleeping in doorways at the early hour of my commute, (9 am), but they can be interesting, talking about who got all shitty and arrested last night, who's out at the 50th street off ramp--a bit of a commute from ballard--for tonight's cardboard duty. especially the woman who looks to be in her late sixties. she usually sleeps in the same doorway next to the bay theatre and is often blinking herself awake when i ride by to get my coffee. while i certainly feel bad that her bedroom is so public and non cat-friendly, i can't help but laugh just a bit. no one sleeps next to me, so i don't know what i look like waking up, but i'm sure it's remarkably similar. and before you charge me with having a dystopic outlook or a lack of empathy (or is it sympathy? i can never keep 'em straight), remember that ballard is usually one of the most temparate places on earth. rarely does it freeze, and aside from the late july heat, rarely does the mercury (or alcohol, since that's supposedly more accurate and certainly more apropos given the scene) rise above 85. it's probly a bit better than living in some coldwater flat in pasaic, nj. one just has to deal with the audience, and given how most of the rummies behave in ballard, they seem quite happy to have an audience. out front of the shop yesterday at opening, there was a woman carrying a pocket dog in one hand and a cat in the other yelling--not arguing with, just yelling a conversation--at her spouse--i think; they're always together--who i initially took to be far up the block, but who was ACTUALLY RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER. it was so loud i thought the hindenburg was going down on the corner.

you can't wait

As soon as I teach myself to edit, I am going to post a homemade video of the commute, all stuck together from clips of jerky video in different weathers and different lighting (see, but jerky won't be so bad if it is little pieces. It will just resemble the beginning part of Hawaii 5-O !) and the annoying bad sound will be edited out, maybe a nice instrumental from the Timewarp Tophands put in instead. Too bad it will not include the exciting moments. The man getting on the train briefly at Gateway, asking ANYBODY WANT TO BUY A MACHETE?....ANYBODY? ...YOU?, the other man "no thanks man I'm good", first man gets off. The group of people who huddle in a mysterious group in the secluded pedestrian walkway by 102nd every day doing something they don't want anybody to see except for everybody on the train is ok with them.

i always get shot down in august.

last month brought a full day of REAL rain to seattle (at least 6 hundredths of an inch!) and that whole 103 degrees hottest-day-on-record thing, while so far august has been, well, uninspiring. nobody's driven an OJMobile into the shop, the weather is typical seattle whatever, highs in the low seventies. . .basically what you'd expect. i've been bored enough to begin my yearly hallucinations before any ski mags post up on the shelves. . .scenes of chinook pass in late november, loveland in march, a deep day out south in late february flash with disturbing alacrity across my addled mind. seems "turning the corner" is kinda like DROPPING A BUNCH OF ACID. wait. i've never actually done that. i heard that it's a hallucinogen, though, so i'll leave it there.

in other news, this morning a neighbour cat decided to come visit. i sleep with the sliding-glass door to my bedroom wide open cos i need fresh air to fall asleep and that's the only recourse i have. not owning a screen door, this leaves my WAY exposed to the elements. said feline club member has used this open door to startle me in the past, one morning hanging out by the inside door of my bedroom while i made lunch upstairs and then nearly stepped on him walking back into my room; another time staring at me like i was charlie chaplin till i woke and started visibly and made some noise like a perryesque "ohf!" and then running off. this morning i awoke feeling pressure on my shoulders. i was sleeping on my stomach as i never do, and the neighbour cat was sitting on my shoulders MEOWING LIKE THE HINDENBURG. i said something remarkably witty like "ack!" or "oof!" and he ran off again. hm. the battle continues.

i bought two pair of pance last week at the goodwill in upper ballard. . .one of them has become my FAVOURITE PAIR OF PANCE EVER and the other is totally confusing. the waist is spot on but the quadal/hamal region feels as though it was cut for a gazelle. and they're strangely boot-cut, so the ankles are more like flowing dresses for my calves. i don't know. they seemed like a good plan in the dressing room. maybe i was blinded by the pink tag and the $5.99 price for kenneth cole. maybe i'll try and return them, get my money back.

speaking of hallucinations: my idea for a romantic magnet: a righteous pair of skis.

Please send us your romance magnet ideas!

We are thinking of having a contest here at HC, the prize for the winning entry of which might be..... a 3 or 4 foot length of tasty boiled yucca root? (or suggest alternate prize). We have absolutely no use for such RMIs, ourselves, but as a public service are willing to open up our soaring and convenient blorg space to our many many many many many many readers, to work together, to make the world a better place.

Example RMI (told to me once by somebody male) : Small dogs! Puppies and small dogs are chick magnets! Pro: doable, even affordable, and sort of logical. Con: you might end up owning a small dog. Ick! Qs about this RMI : Does it have to be alive or does taxidermy count?

Another example RMI (which I happen to know) : Many women like people who stutter, although people who stutter probably don't realize this, or at least, most women who like people who stutter (in a general way) don't know if p.w.s. know that women like them. Pro: also doable. Con: Your new Relationship may be based on a Lie, if you don't stutter, and some people object to this once it is revealed.

Please limit your RMI contest entry submissions to 15. Don't worry about spelling or grammar too much. Remember this is a G rated blorg, I think. OK to type as though you were stuttering (it isn't making fun of stutterers since we just confessed a sort of thing for them) but if you do that, please include your email address and a telephone number in your entry.

axl rose is missing a letter. plus he's in the wrong business. he should be mechanic for a florist.

today is apparently my day off. this means i hafta think of SOMETHING TO DO. i'm fairly poor at this. usually i sit at a coffee shop and (duh) drink coffee and look pretentious for a while before wandering home like a lost puppy. when i reach my apartment i promptly GET AGITATED AND LEAVE AGAIN, driving off to who-knows-where, usually with my mountain bike in pieces in the trunk. i don't always ride this bicycle, but it's always there. sometimes i just sit at a river and look pensive, hoping a beautiful woman will wander along and see me there looking pitiful and join me for a moment, thus relieving my sadness and boredom. this never happens, and every time i'm faced with vast tracts of free time, i promise myself i won't end up feeling sorry for myself. this also never happens. maybe some day i'll climb a mountain.

in other news, it's cloudy. obviously this is a Good Thing, cos clouds are water. Water=Good Thing. at least that's my thinking. except when it's not, like last winter when i go shut in greenwater for 3 full days without being able to leave cos it was RAINING LIKE IT WAS THE HINDENBURG and every shallow depression became a massive river and highway 410 was washed out or covered by a mudslide in at least forty places. this may sound good to the more hermitic, but given my above-mentioned lack of ablitity for coping with boredom, it was horrible. i couldn't sit along a river bank cos EVERY SINGLE ONE HAD BEEN WASHED INTO COMMENCEMENT BAY. there were also precisely 3 beautiful women in greenwater, all of them married. no chance of one of them wandering along a non-existant bank to find me and save me.

lastly, i heard a terrible song on the country station (i admit to an alarming need for nashville country) last night with the thoughtful chorus of "I WANNA GIRL LIKE/ I WANNA GIRL LIKE TAYLOR SWIFT". for those of you who don't know, taylor swift is the terrifyingly wholesome country singer who's like twelve and whose current single is basically a nashville-country update of the police' way creepy hit "every breath you take" and who, at some point, wrote the metaphorical masterstroke "YOU WERE ROMEO/ I WAS THE SCARLET LETTER". me? i wanna girl like marie curie. SHE WAS MORE INTERESTED IN RADIATION THAN PEOPLE.

heat.

i've been wondering where the past week has gone, so i decided to take stock. i've made a comprehensive list of what happened each day outside of work:
monday: i don't know.
tuesday: i don't know.
wednesday: i don't know. it was WAY HOT.
thursday: i don't know.
friday: i don't know.
saturday: i don't know.
sunday: i don't know.

as far as answering questions: i haven't figured out how, yet. this whole technology thing scares me. it involves people.

now that i think about it, i think i went swimming up in the hills one of those terribly hot days. we'll say it was tuesday cos it was a hundred @(^& five degrees as opposed to a hundred (*#& ten like wednesday. it was cool on the lake cos there were NO PEOPLE. and the water was, um, cool. i took my shirt off. i never do that. EVER. and there was a girl there. that's pretty unusual, too, especially the part about her being there ON PURPOSE.

(by the way--the so called "hot chicks" are in ballard. i think. i don't really have a comparison cos i've never had a girlfriend. but they seem duly attractive to me. (which is certainly not to say attracted to me.) anyway.)

last week during the incredible heat i checked the noaa forecast for leadville CO. high of SIXTY FREAKIN EIGHT!! our low wednesday night was like a hundred and ninety. damn hippies and their high-country slouch.

the other day i got an invite to "national night out". i was confused. WHY WOULD I WANT TO WALK AROUND MY NEIGHBOURHOOD AND TALK TO STRANGERS??? my mother taught me to never do such a thing, and i ain't one to go back on childhood parental lessons. the invite said "potluck". more like "potbadluck". who checks these dishes for germs? for correct cooking times?? for PALATABILITY for cryin out loud??? i think i'll be carrying my portable irradiation gun if i go at all. these cats even posted the "block party" FOR MY BLOCK. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!
maybe i'll just be sleeping with my shotgun.

right now i really want a one six oh of red bull but i checked my bank account and i have only 8 dollars. i don't think that's enough.

check it out: I have a whole toe of the one sock knitted already

Bro, Phil E Buster: where are all these hot chicks with the magically adhering sandals, again? Because I am with you 100% on the implied fed upness on flip flops. Bro: do you notice when everybody started wearing THOSE things, then they had to make up a different name for them that wasn't the same as underwear? Dude, why was everybody in love with flip flops anyhow? They get all mashed down and sort of curved. They look so disposable. They pretty much look like a person is walking around on the styrofoam trays that grocery stores put under every single piece of meat they sell you.

Dudes : I'm not violating any rules by talking about underwear on this blog, am I ?
Hello. hello.
(freaky. nobody ever says anything to me even though they seem to yackety yackety yack to themselves ALL DAY....)