2005-08-09T19:59:35Z tag:,2006:/8 Movable Type Copyright (c) 2005, CLM 2005-08-09T19:59:35Z 2005-04-30T22:56:47Z tag:,2005:/8.214 2005-04-30T22:56:47Z

See also: (redacted 9/9/05)...

CLM clm@badmachines.com See also: (redacted 9/9/05) 2005-04-30T13:46:16Z 2003-02-24T19:01:41Z tag:,2003:/8.121 2003-02-24T19:01:41Z

A google search that has been popular the last little while now appears to be ranked in the top ten of it's own search results... can the end of the Internet be far off?...

CLM clm@badmachines.com google search that has been popular the last little while now appears to be ranked in the top ten of it's own search results... can the end of the Internet be far off?]]> 2005-04-30T13:46:18Z 2002-10-11T16:16:42Z tag:,2002:/8.135 2002-10-11T16:16:42Z

"WASHINGTON, Oct. 10 — The White House is developing a detailed plan, modeled on the postwar occupation of Japan, to install an American-led military government in Iraq if the United States topples Saddam Hussein, senior administration officials said today." Presumably...

CLM clm@badmachines.com WASHINGTON, Oct. 10 — The White House is developing a detailed plan, modeled on the postwar occupation of Japan, to install an American-led military government in Iraq if the United States topples Saddam Hussein, senior administration officials said today." Presumably to mirror our home-grown military dictatorship...

Really, I'm not sure how I feel about the whole Iraq thing, but I think the choice to take over altogether kicked home-rule's ass. If nothing else, now we'll finally get to build that America East oil-themed theme park and entertainment bazaar we've been so sorely needing ever since we were first disappointed by EuroDisney's sad failure to address Europe's fascist ideals.

]]> 2005-04-30T13:46:18Z 2002-10-10T23:06:18Z tag:,2002:/8.133 2002-10-10T23:06:18Z

Every Sunday, I buy a half-dozen of the finest everything bagels in the world and transfer them to my freezer. Every weekday morning, I thaw one in my toaster oven (set at 300) while I shower, slice it, and spread...

CLM clm@badmachines.com
Every weekday morning, I thaw one in my toaster oven (set at 300) while I shower, slice it, and spread it with cream cheese. I wrap my bagel in paper towels, set it aside, and make two peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches using Jiffy Supercrunch peanut butter, Smuckers strawberry jam, and Stroehmann's whole-wheat bread.

Taking breakfast and lunch in hand, I leave for work dressed in my black-tee and bluejeans uniform. I walk a block north and catch the F train. I ride in the last car, and I transfer at the second stop to the last car of the A train. Two stops later, I get off.

After leaving the station, I buy coffee from the same sidewalk vendor (small, black, no sugar), sit on the same bench, and eat my bagel. Then it's off to work, where I perform repetitive tasks.

Weirdly, this actually makes me happy.

I can feel my lifetime piling up.]]> 2005-04-30T13:46:16Z 2002-10-02T19:13:15Z tag:,2002:/8.122 2002-10-02T19:13:15Z

My ex-hosting company www.whizhost.com (no, I shan't link!) is totally unacceptable. Email-only tech support that doesn't often respond, frequent downtime, and today they cut off my account a day early since they knew I didn't plan to renew, leaving me...

CLM clm@badmachines.com My ex-hosting company www.whizhost.com (no, I shan't link!) is totally unacceptable. Email-only tech support that doesn't often respond, frequent downtime, and today they cut off my account a day early since they knew I didn't plan to renew, leaving me without access to all the email stored there. Avoid at all costs! 2005-04-30T13:46:16Z 2002-08-31T16:09:41Z tag:,2002:/8.112 2002-08-31T16:09:41Z

Q: What do you get when a site redesign like this one goes live? A: Twelve hits from the Google search "Man fucking animal". For which I'm currently ranked sixth. How fucked up is that?...

CLM clm@badmachines.com Q: What do you get when a site redesign like this one goes live?
A: Twelve hits from the Google search "Man fucking animal".

For which I'm currently ranked sixth. How fucked up is that?]]> 2005-04-30T13:46:16Z 2002-08-23T00:27:36Z tag:,2002:/8.119 2002-08-23T00:27:36Z

Walking in Park Slope today, I saw the single most beutiful bagel I've ever imagined: plump, evenly browned, encrusted in seeds and in golden nuggets of onion, bejewelled with salt and oozing with molten cream cheese.. It was in the...

CLM clm@badmachines.com
It was in the arms of a young boy, and I fell like wolves upon the child's parent. Who was, of course, spooked by my heated inquiries, imagining (he being John Turturro) that I was a would-be starfucker or indie film zealot of some kind.

I think he was a little disappointed when he realized I actually cared only about the bagel. When I had my own, however, my suspicions were wholly confirmed: the best bagel in the world is served by the Bagel Hole on 7th Avenue between 12th and 13th, and can be as thoroughly enjoyed by any passerby as by the children of celebrity.]]> 2005-04-30T13:46:16Z 2002-08-21T03:50:30Z tag:,2002:/8.109 2002-08-21T03:50:30Z

Vomiting Cat Week has begun. The cat, she travels from room to room throwing up. Or, more likely, she's hit on a new kind of construction project, something of which Doozers would probably approve wholeheartedly: she wanders from place to...

CLM clm@badmachines.com
This morning, for example, she seems to have somehow spirited herself through or under the closed bathroom door whilst I showered, leaving in her wake a slimy heap of fresh-looking damp lamb, which I found with my bare left foot. All stubble-faced and foreign, shouting "Sacre Bleu!", I leapt with that vertical leap for which I have become reknowned in certain circles back into the tub, where I stumbled into the froth of body butter running down from my roommate's shelf and crashed headlong into the wall.

Never get off the boat.]]> 2005-04-30T13:46:18Z 2002-08-18T23:41:41Z tag:,2002:/8.137 2002-08-18T23:41:41Z

Screaming Cat Week II : Irritating Beyond Measure has just opened at my local cinema. How the fuck often do these things go into heat, anyway? If God had meant us to keep cats as pets, he'd have made us...

CLM clm@badmachines.com Screaming Cat Week II : Irritating Beyond Measure has just opened at my local cinema. How the fuck often do these things go into heat, anyway?

If God had meant us to keep cats as pets, he'd have made us idiots.
]]> 2005-04-30T13:46:18Z 2002-08-04T02:02:57Z tag:,2002:/8.136 2002-08-04T02:02:57Z

Available in 87, 89, and 93 octane; to be printed on yellow vinyl with outdoor adhesives for distribution via the forthcoming FatalFuel domain. Replaces all standard octane labels at all major gasoline chains. Apparently, this means I'm a political...

CLM clm@badmachines.com
Available in 87, 89, and 93 octane; to be printed on yellow vinyl with outdoor adhesives for distribution via the forthcoming FatalFuel domain. Replaces all standard octane labels at all major gasoline chains.

Apparently, this means I'm a political activist. I thought it meant I'd finally decided to Do Good Things with my Art.]]> 2005-04-30T13:46:21Z 2002-08-01T03:45:55Z tag:,2002:/8.190 2002-08-01T03:45:55Z

1) Today, at the Madison Square dog park, I watched a gremlin mount a rat. 2) The city is full of sunburned Catholic tourists, presumably spillover from World Youth Day in Toronto. And all the motherfuckers be stoned. 3)...

CLM clm@badmachines.com 2) The city is full of sunburned Catholic tourists, presumably spillover from World Youth Day in Toronto. And all the motherfuckers be stoned.
3) The roof garden at the Met really is one of the finest places on Earth.
4) Does it strike anyone else that white people in New York are comparitively less fat?
]]> 2005-04-30T13:46:17Z 2002-07-31T17:56:25Z tag:,2002:/8.130 2002-07-31T17:56:25Z

I love animals, and not only for the eating. I think bunnies and puppies and baby chicks and baby seals and even kittens are adorable; I'm happy to fritter away the afternoon watching squirrels in the park; there are...

CLM clm@badmachines.com I love animals, and not only for the eating. I think bunnies and puppies and baby chicks and baby seals and even kittens are adorable; I'm happy to fritter away the afternoon watching squirrels in the park; there are few sights as stirring as a deer bounding through morning mist or a bear raising dripping jaws from the river or whatever the fuck else. And you already know how I feel about my two wonderful dogs back in Colorado. Anyway, the point is that I really do love animals and am not by nature cruel to them.

Problem is, I've been living with this fucking cat.

For most of my life, I was deadly allergic to cats; in the last year or so, I'd begun to notice that, well, I'm just not anymore. So, being assured by said cat's owner that she was a well-behaved animal, I saw no real problem with the idea of moving in with her.

Problem is, the motherfucker's defective. There is, I mean it, something seriously and irrefutably wrong with this animal. This is an animal that wriggles around in its litter box, is terrified of the shower curtain but loves to play in the curtains that serve as my roomate's walls, and has not stopped screaming for three fucking days. This is a habit that's going to get irritating really, really quickly. I'd thought I'd taught it to be afraid of me; I'm happiest when not being rubbed up against or being tripped up in the hallways, so I spent my first week here shouting NICE KITTY! and clapping my hands whenever she approached me, which had the desired result; until screaming-cat-week began, I didn't see much of her.

This week, though, I've had to prod her with things to get her off the toilet seat every time I've wanted to use the bathroom. She seems to have developed an instinct for when I want to shower, and she's been arranging herself in the tub at appropriate moments so I have to lift her out. And last night, while I was cooking dinner, she crossed the line: she leapt up onto the kitchen counter while I was cooking dinner, and even got one of her paws on my veggie-covered cutting board before she started screaming and drew my attention.

Unfortunately for Kitty, my hands weren't empty at the time. And unfortunately for Kitty, my own animal instincts are pretty damn strong: when I see an animal in my food, I attack, be it bug, mouse, rat or cat. So I swung the pan before I thought about it long enough to realize she's alleged to be a pet and not a pest, and that one does not strike pets with kitchen implements. Rolled-up magazines? You bet. But one must not swat Kitty with a skillet for misbehaving.

Luckily, cats are damned fast; I connected only with the tip of her tail as she performed a miraculous back-flipping escape. But I swear to God, if this keeps up, I won't be held responsible for my own actions. It looks as though neither the cat nor I am trainable; one of us has got to go before somebody gets hurt.

Anybody know of a cheap apartment?]]> 2005-04-30T13:46:17Z 2002-07-30T04:46:42Z tag:,2002:/8.129 2002-07-30T04:46:42Z

Today I read The Interrogation by Thomas H. Cook, a very decent, if disposable, thriller. Afterward, I read Douglas Coupland's Girlfriend in a Coma. I've had my doubts about Coupland, as long-term readers might be aware (as I think...

CLM clm@badmachines.com Today I read The Interrogation by Thomas H. Cook, a very decent, if disposable, thriller.

Afterward, I read Douglas Coupland's Girlfriend in a Coma.

I've had my doubts about Coupland, as long-term readers might be aware (as I think there was a post here some time ago about Generation X, and possibly even one about Shampoo Planet), largely because he's become so fucking iconic. Nowadays, though, I've begun to suspect that he's achieved his outrageous status in pop culture not through any of the usual chicanery, but simply because he actually is that good.

You're probably aware of at least some of Coupland's work; this is, after all, the guy who got to coin the tag phrase under which I and my peers will forever live. Unfortunately, most people using that tag (and especially its users in media) seem to have missed the point behind the book, which is simply that if this generation suffers stifling irony, if we're unable to take things seriously enough, if it seems that no Important Work is being done here, it's not because we're lazy - or, anyway, not entirely because we're lazy; it's because the world really is broken and because the work of putting it right again looks impossibly enormous. Laziness it is, but it's laziness in the face of a daunting task of superhuman proportion, and I think it's therefore forgivable - if only in the short term.

I've read almost all of Coupland's work, mostly immediately after it's release - but re-reading over the last several months, I've begun to notice a pattern that should have been obvious all along. Though he's never been shy about the failures of Western Civ (it's worth noting that his happy, well-adjusted characters are those who have completely withdrawn into strange consumer realities, a la Tyler from Gen X and Shampoo Planet), Coupland has also always gone for the happy ending. As he ages, however, he's increasingly reliant on deus-ex-machina strategies to make his happy endings believable; imagine, for example, Girlfriend in a Coma without it's miraculous 54th street conceit or All Families are Psychotic without it's suprise AIDS cure.

Whatever. Whether Coupland actually believes in his premise that the world is saveable, or whether he believes that genuine miracles will be required, he's got a way of capturing the miseries of modern life so they feel more vibrant - more real - in his prose than they do on the streets or even on TV. If for no deeper reason than that, I finish his books each and every time resolved that we should all Do Good Works- and, if the world should prove irreparable, at least we'll have made some fucking noise about it, proving endless pissy poets shortsighted.]]> 2005-04-30T13:46:21Z 2002-07-29T22:37:35Z tag:,2002:/8.185 2002-07-29T22:37:35Z

So there are a number of large and gaping gaps in the main blog. It's not because I'm not writing entries, mind you - I've just started primarily writing entries not suitable for public consumption; I'm tired of feeling this...

CLM clm@badmachines.com So there are a number of large and gaping gaps in the main blog. It's not because I'm not writing entries, mind you - I've just started primarily writing entries not suitable for public consumption; I'm tired of feeling this cynical about my city's future, and it's leaving me utterly without anything to say that's sayable. 2005-04-30T13:46:16Z 2002-07-29T22:31:30Z tag:,2002:/8.120 2002-07-29T22:31:30Z

Yeah, I'm a hole-digger. I dig holes....

CLM clm@badmachines.com Yeah, I'm a hole-digger. I dig holes.]]>