Bleat

• 20:49 Saw only your shapes through the haze of rain and no glasses, but knew who you were. #

• 21:15 Saw a rupture where dark clouds met a fading day. #

• 18:58 Saw you. We made eye contact and I tried to pretend it was accidental. #
• 22:33 saw myself seeing my self, my glasses reflecting the bathroom mirror and vice versa, ad infinitum. #
• 22:34 saw noise, peaking through the floor boards. #

• 13:07 I saw a microcephalic at Arby's. He wanted the BIG soda. #
• 14:21 Saw a crow harassing an adolescent squirrel on top of the admissions building. Jerk. #

• 00:21 thinks this rain is absolution if he's seen it at all. #

• 00:04 Various articles of doll clothing, wax figurines, and other sordid and sundry objects began raining from the sky at an increasing pace. #

• 15:33 Doing the mountain of work I have for next week < watching Superjail on Hulu #
• 01:35 local plant fetishist undergoes operation to allow photosynthesis #

• 16:53 @AndiSeriously tell me a story I haven't heard. #
• 17:50 beard gone. #
• 18:15 jesus and the new television both came with manuals. #

• 03:41 turkey vulture convention at the Coralville reservoir. Missing something I never had. #

• 18:07 Going home tomorrow. Listening to Odd Nosdam. Reading the copy of Watchmen that arrived inexplicably in the mail for me today. #

Favorite Albums of 2007

10.Stars of The Lid- And Their Refinement of the Decline
I feel like its pretty hard to make a bad ambient record. But this is most definitely something far more amazing.

9.Ulrich Schnauss- Goodbye
This is another soft and warm and pretty record. I've been feeling that vibe lately.

8.Radiohead-In Rainbows
Hail to the Thief was sort of forgettable in retrospect. This album exceeded my expectations.

7.Crystal Castles-Thrash/Thrash/Thrash
This is a hot mess of awesome.

6. Of Montreal- Hissing Fauna, are you the destroyer?
I never really listened to them before this album but after enjoying it quite a bit I *cough* acquired their entire discography.

5.Mum- Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy
I'm not sure I like the new sound of Mum as much as the old but this album is still fantastic.

4.Miki Odagirl- Fables
Just three little amazing songs, but somehow its enough.

3.Do Make Say Think- You, You're a History in Rust
Probably their best record yet. I like my post-rock Canadian.

2.Panda Bear-Person Pitch
Basically amazing. Gives me shivers up and down my spine.

1.Sigur Ros- Hvarf-Heim
I just listen to both versions of "Von" over and over again and it's amazing.


In other news, I'm back at school. New room, new room mate, new chances.

The sun descending in the west,

The evening star does shine;

The birds are silent in their nest.

And I must seek for mine.

The moon, like a flower

In heaven's high bower,

With silent delight

Sits and smiles on the night.

 

Farewell, green fields and happy grove,

Where flocks have took delight:

Where lambs have nibbled, silent move

The feet of angels bright;

Unseen they pour blessing

And joy without ceasing

On each bud and blossom,

On each sleeping bosom.

 

They look in every thoughtless nest

Where birds are cover'd warm;

They visit caves of every beast,

to keep them all from harm:

If they see any weeping

That should have been sleeping,

They pour sleep on their head,

And sit down by their bed.

 

When wolves and tigers howl for prey,

They pitying stand and weep,

Seeking to drive their thirst away

And keep them from the sheep.

But, if they rush dreadful,

The angels, most heedful,

Receive each mild spirit,

New worlds to inherit.

 

And there the lion's ruddy eyes

Shall flow with tears of gold:

And pitying the tender cries,

And walking round the fold:

Saying, 'Wrath by His meekness,

And, by His health, sickness,

Are driven away

From our immortal day.

 

'And now beside thee, bleating lamb,

I can lie down and sleep,

Or think on Him who bore thy name,

Graze after thee, and weep.

For, wash'd in life's river,

My bright mane for ever

Shall shine like the gold

As I guard o'er the fold.'

-William Blake.

1.  Jonathan Richman- "Neon Sign"
2.  Daniel Johnston- "Some Things Last a Long Time"
3.  The Magnetic Fields- "When You're Old and Lonely"
4.  Hubcap Holmes- "Lights Inside My Skull"
5.  The Dirty Projectors- "Follow Me Not If You Still Care"
6.   Fog- "Check Fraud"
7.   The Gentleman Losers- "Silver Mountain"
8.   Grizzly Bear- "A Good Place"
9.   Lilys- "Elizabeth Colour Wheel"
10.  Leonard Cohen- "Suzanne"
11.  Louden Wainwright III- "Motel Blues"
12.  Low- "The Plan"
13.  The Microphones- "I Felt My Size"

We watched The Devil and Daniel Johnston last night. It was probably one of the best music documentaries I've ever seen.
Lookuh's Favorite Music Documentaries (in no particular order for now)
1. The Devil and Daniel Johnston
2. Strait, No Chaser (Thelonious Monk)
3. The Power of Salad (Lightning Bolt)
4. Fearless Freaks (The Flaming Lips)

    Skipped school and slept all day for no reason. Perhaps people don't remember them as vividly as I do, or perhaps they find their own too absurd to recount, but rarely have I heard anyone describe having dreams as strange and complicated as mine.  I don't feel happiness or sorrow in them, just confusion and, at times, mild amusement.  I frequently find myself in strange dystopian futures, operating a spacecraft or navigating a giant warehouse for obsolete technology. While asleep today I dreamed of arriving home, or perhaps waking up, to such a setting. I was trying to piece together the connection between some seemingly unrelated events concerning a notable television personality, the death of an unknown girl, and my brother who for whatever reason had been exiled.
 I wish I had the sense to keep better records, as any decent psychonaut should.

Check out this recording of the Rhythmicon. It's a composition for it called "The Llama Strut". Some of the most haunting music ever.
The Llama Strut

Also read the lyrics for "An Animated Description of Mr. Maps" by The Books. I just realized they are talking about Don Quixote.
He saw Mars but he felt Neptune,
he had hoped to feel a certain strong emotion but this is all they had to say:
"I was the son of a man, and so we came together and we shook hands."
"We shook hands."
He often wondered what a million people would look like scattered randomly
across a moonless sky, and how unlikely it would be that they would all just say the
obvious thing:
"You may call me brother now."
"Yes, brother, I know."

He is forty two,
five-feet-eight-inches tall,
normally wears his curly hair long.
He has a ruddy complexion, broad shoulders and is barrel-chested,
is unusually strong.
He frequently wears a full beard and sometimes glasses.
He is a college graduate, a talented artist, and sculptor.
Now, Maps is a soft-spoken loner, who resents society and all organizations.
Maps fancies himself a ladies' man.
He is an avid chess player, smokes cigarettes, and a pipe.
He is a beer drinker and loves to eat.
Maps is a man of widespread interests, who might very well be living abroad.

He felt lost but he felt pretty intensely good,
and he woke up screaming having dreamed of a color he had never seen before:
"I went to bed and to sleep, it was so unexpected, it really was frightening, and I saw
pretty much
the same thing embedded in my pillow."
He had no trouble recognizing patterns in the most delicate arrays of tangled lines,
but he had a strange fixation on partaking in nefarious things:
"Stealing, lying, cheating, gambling, fornicate..."

He saw red, but he thought five.
He was pleased to find his road trip was enhanced by number-color synesthesia:
"My trusty Rosinante bounds along the road very well, leaving the friendly aroma of donuts and
chicken tenders hanging in the desert air."

He willed away the miles while quixotically attempting to reclaim his inner child,
he was embrangled and enmeshed in something far too loud to comprehend:
"I want all of the American people to understand that it is
understandable that the American
people cannot possibly understand."


That is all.

I was standing at the Kum and Go earlier when I realized that not only did I not want to be there, I didn't want to be anywhere or with anyone. I asked a friend who was planning on heading home if she could give me a lift on her way, but apparently she couldn't spare me 15 minutes. Nobody made a noise when I said that I would just walk home and exited the store.
Whenever someone is leaving I try to make a point of not only saying goodbye but giving them some form of both verbal  and physical affection.  If a someone died tomorrow I would want to be sure that they knew that I cared about them.

From the Kum and Go I was looking at a 40 minute walk home. As I made my way up Gilbert a beat up Oldesmobile went past and a kid with a backwards cap yelled "Hey, faggot!" at me.  I was so baffled that all I did was stand there and sort of wave. 

Perhaps I do give off gay vibes to people like that.  I don't dress like most men I know, nor do I talk like them.  I would like to think that at this point in our human existence we woud be past the point of  baseless ideas like Masculinity and Machismo but I'm reminded of the opposite quite frequently. This is puzzling especially considering that I live in Iowa City, a town purportedely forward-thinking and well educated. Whether it's being judged for my tenor and dress, or watching another intelligent and sensitive girl hook up with an emotionally obtuse brute, it gets me down.

"The peacock's tail, the grotesquely enlarged claw of the male fiddler crab and the machismo of members of the human species are all exaggerated features that may cause injury to individuals that display them but attract females."