I rool the skool

The first day of my senior year and someone caught it on video. Weird.

Suburban Outfitters

Moved in, wired, and the clothes in the closet are arranged by color, although it'll be another month before the books are put up again. But the coffee maker and kettle are plugged in and working on the kitchen counter and that's all that's important.

So far we have not been interrupted at night by screaming, yelling or barfing in the street outside, so I can't really find it in me to miss the old place much. The new landlord over there didn't like my color scheme in the library/bedroom anyway ("blue, white, green -- like a tennis court, you see?" "Huh. I guess."). The weird thing is I have no impulse to paint any of the rooms here. I like the off-white and brown trim look of the place. I'm having trouble imagining all of my art going on the walls as well. I think I may end up keeping it really simple.

I know. Weird.

Debate: Did I or did I not hear McCain say "snatch defeat from the jaws of victory" when referring to the war in Iraq? I don't know. I wasn't really listening anymore at that point because I was irritated by then. We eventually turned it off and watched Juno.

You know, I didn't really get into Juno. No one talks like that -- or do they and I'm just not hip to the lingo? They were all just ... really impolite n' stuff. So we turned that off and watched Black Caesar.

Black Caesar is the superior picture. See it.

Work tomorrow then school on Monday. weeyeeha!

Moving blows. I'm never doing it again. Ever. I'll set this stuff on fire rather than move it in another fecking box.

That is all.

Mater Dei 26 - Edison 58

I don't follow football, and I'd told my high school that I was deceased, but I still felt a one-up on the wee brother when I saw that Mater Dei ranked higher than Edison (Huntington Beach) on the Yahoo Sports top 100. I won't further embarrass the brother by telling everyone that he used to play football for Edison (whoops) and had once shaved his number into the back of his head (was that out loud? Sorrrr-reeeee), but I will embarrass myself by admitting that it was a Mater Dei football game that changed my mind about going to a Cat-olic school. It was the cymbals. I was watching the half-time show and said "Those. One day I'm going to do that. I'm going to play the cymbals." And, lo, the next year I did. If only everything worked out as simply as that.

(Oh, and Servite -- 74. Ouch.)

And thus a great darkness settled on the land of hateful

This moving thing kinda blows. I like the idea of going into a house with a yard n' junk, and there's no knocking the 2 car garage even if it has an old pump organ in it (or especially because it has an old pump organ in it), but changing over the utilities makes me manic.

I nearly cried to get out of the $825 deposit on the electricity (I know -- what the f...? $825? What kind of a power-suck are we moving into?), but we're stuck without internet or cable until September 24th. That was the earliest they could schedule some guy to come out with the box and the flip-switch job. What a drag. That means nothing between the Friday and Wednesday. No internet -- no blog, no daily horoscope, no facebook now that I'm starting to figure out what all the stuff is about on it, and no Fishdom for 5 whole days unless we can sneak in on someone else's WiFi. And no cable means I miss the second House M.D. of the new season. Why? Why? I tried crying to Comcast ("NOOOOOOOOOOO!"), but it got me nothin' but a "sorry, ma'am" and I hate being called ma'am. "Jaysis," I said, "we'll have to read a book!"

I predict we'll be getting out the felt board and puppets by Monday night. Or we'll have killed each other.

But if we can stick it out we're upgrading to HD on the new install. Now I get to see Kimi lose the F1 championship in high def. oh. boy.

Fear & Loathing (and why I still need t'ai chi)

So I jumped the gun a little with the last blog. We'd only just signed off on an application for the new house and hadn't actually been approved to rent it yet. I checked my credit online and it looked good, so I didn't think there would be a problem ... but then we didn't have a call from the landlady. All day. Then, at noon, the real estate guy calls and leaves a message on my cell phone telling me how the duplex was sold to some guy who not only hadn't seen our side, but he was also buying it as a rental and not a live-al, and won't that be great, and he wants to meet us on Friday.

Shite. Shite. Now what? Do I call real estate guy back and break the news? What if I do and new landlady calls to say that for whatever reason we couldn't move in -- yes, I know it's totally irrational. But what if? That's just the kind of thing that would happen now, isn't it?

We have new phones at home so I hadn't set up the remote message-checking yet, and we'd taken bikes to work, so there wasn't time to speed home at lunch. Why didn't she call the cell phone? DEAR GOD, WHAT DO I DO?

But, yeah, we got the house last night and we're signing over the money this afternoon. In a nutty twist, I have to borrow from the cousin/roommate for this one (I used a credit card to move into our last house), but we'll be able to move on the 20th.

I'm trying to work up nostalgia for this place, but after listening to drunks roll up the street last night for the millionth time, I'm just not feelin' it. It'll be nice to sleep at night rather than wonder who's breaking into the garage at 3 am.

Side note: Over the past few weeks I've become obsessed with House, M.D. (Parallel lives indeed, Mrs. Haske. Prison Break ... House ... why is Fox turning into a channel for quality programming? That can't be right.) I'm trying to catch up on season 4 before next week and had to jump discs from season 1 -- suddenly Cameron has blonde hair. Crazy. I didn't even recognize her -- thought she'd left the show.

Friday night I crashed your party/Saturday I said I'm sorry

Friday a realtor came to the house and showed it to people who asked un-landlord like questions like "Do those windows open?" and told me how they would definitely use the spare room for art projects. They spent 20 minutes on the lawn next to our open front door discussing the merits of living in our half of the duplex and renting the other side, that is if they can get the current owner to knock another $20k off the price. (It's not too big of a stretch to think that he will, because he just wants out from under it.)

That night we went over to our friends' house and played Bauhaus records and drank -- although with the ITP I had only one glass of wine and how fun to be the only sober one in the drunk room: "You knowha yer prollem is? Yer fraid ufah goo time." yeah yeah yeah.

Saturday morning I found a house on Craig's List. It's HUGE, but cheap, but needs a lot of work, but it has a yard for the cat to play in, but one room has red loop carpeting, but it has a dinette kitchen and a 2-car garage that will (sweah ta Gawd) actually fit 2 cars. The landlady has never rented to strangers before and was asking me things like "Do you think I'm charging too much?"

I'm going to call her today to accept it, which means we're looking to move in 2 weeks so it can be done before school starts. I don't know how these things happen. One minute I'm relaxing in the prospect of a whole month without school and now I'm boxing up books and counting pennies to see if I can put down the deposit. I think I got about 2 hours of sleep last night.

Last word: Frank Rich's editorial in the New York Times pleased me.

That is all.

Was? Wuh, übersetzen Sie, bitte.

... and God is a superstition

Pop likes Palin. Says she's "a fighter." hmpf. Go figure.

I am a false prophet...

So remember how I was barking about McCain's poor PR? Friends, look no further than the University of Oregon and the Oregonian: 'Dynamic Duck duo' help propel McCain's campaign.

I just don't know what to think --- except to say that I'm pretty sure my dad isn't going to vote for McCain with the idea that Palin would become president if the old man kick's it in office. He may, on the other hand, vote for Biden, the Catholic working man's hero. Say what you want about McCain's canny choice of a woman VP, but she has less experience than Obama. Although there's this little gem of a quote from the Los Angeles Times : Tamar Fenton, 45, of suburban Minneapolis, said she admired Palin, a mother of five, and was not bothered by the governor's relative lack of experience. "If you can go up against a teenaged kid," said Fenton, "you could go up against a world leader."

Made me think of poor Mrs. Wilcox from Howard's End:
"My idea has always been that if we could bring the mothers of the various nations together, then there would be no more war."