Lately rain is being predicted at about 50% probability 24 hours a day, resulting in reality in about 45 minutes and two inches of rain anywhere between 3 and 7 pm, after which the sun cleaves the clouds and I’m sure produces a rainbow somewhere outside the visibility of my apartment windows. It smells like damp cement every night, which is good.
Weeks are flying. I have to stop and remind myself that the summer is technically only a third complete. I am wasting my time drinking sparkling-grapefruit-juice-based cocktails, riding my bike places to buy more sparkling grapefruit juice, and reading a lot about Ghost Box. The label had a feature article in an old copy of The Wire magazine that I once bought because it had Joanna Newsom on the cover. I think I threw it out in March, just before I moved, so I had to order another copy, as well as spend as much as I could afford on the Ghost Box releases most likely to go out of print next. I envy this guy:

I hope that when I turn 30 my taste in music doesn’t become depressingly banal. It probably will. Self-described geek bloggers/Mac disciples always gravitate towards the most inoffensive “indie rock” there is.
Ugh, and I hope I never ever turn into a “witty blogger,” that demographic makes me nauseous, one of those Hold Steady-listening, Colbert-worshipping, Pixar-loving, Guitar Hero-boasting, identity-cultivating, opinion-spewing, lowbrow-championing, tweet-twittering, Kottke-wannabeing, Peter Pan complex-having man-children who are only capable of making cheekily self-deprecating jokes about their own narcissism and who like name their iPhones and shit and say “FTW” and “[adj.]. [noun]. Ever” and “the Intertubes,” circle-jerking all over the blogosphere OH MAN DIE.
It’s like this anonymity through adopting a singular voice, that same tone, those same interests; half the blogs on Technorati, it’s that same picture-in-the-corner, “The personal weblog of,” “Random thoughts from a geeky guy,” everybody wants to need a soapbox but nobody needs one. I’m guilty of it too because it infects you, that tone, cadence, inflection, the way you write when you know anybody might be reading what you write, the suffocating stiltedness of it. Your audience isn’t your friends, and it isn’t the populace at large, so it’s this midpoint between the personal and the impersonal, with that safe, dry humor that just makes you look like a twat. Being proud of every nuance of the personality you’re trying to manufacture through associations with pop-culture signifiers. Somebody please know what I’m talking about. From now on I promise to be absolutely humorless, so there are you happy.





katie t.
Jul 25, 2008
That rain sounds nice. And the grapefruit-juice-based cocktails, yum!
Also I like that Ghost Box stuff, they’d love that at FFFFOUND.
“It’s like this anonymity through adopting a singular voice, that same tone, those same interests”
Sigh, somebody’s group up if we’re going to make things easy for the history books. But it’s weird that their sameness is often motivated by the desire to be quirky and different. We all end up being different in the same way! I wonder if people reflected on their society in similar ways at other times in history. Like how people as groups and movements have meaningful places in history, but the individuals themselves were just ordinary people. Uhh ramble ramble
“From now on I promise to be absolutely humorless, so there are you happy.”
Oh WHOOPS TOO LATE