Slowly Going Bald

"Look, we're gonna spend half the night driving around the Hills looking for this one party, and you're gonna say it sucks, and we're all gonna leave and we're gonna go look for this other party. But all the parties and all the bars, they all suck. I spend half the night talking to some girl who's looking around the room to see if there's someone who's more important she should be talking to, and it's like I'm supposed to be all happy 'cause she's wearing a backpack."

Monday, June 14, 2004

Thoughts I Have Had Today (6.14.04)

I need a job.

Why did Oprah pick Tolstoy's Anna Karenina for her latest book club selection? Most of her constituents probably needed a dictionary and roadmap just to make it through The Purpose-Driven Life. Does she hope to somehow take classic literature to the hordes of clueless middle-class Midwestern women who still say "You go, girl" and chortle? Man, I hate her.

I wonder if my general lack of interest in professional televised sports will make life harder or easier.

Talking with my aunt's boyfriend is always bizarre. I don't hate the guy at all; I just don't care that much about the whole situation.

Sometimes I'm so stone-frozen petrified of the fact that I'm moving in nine weeks to California, where I have no job waiting for me, that I start to realize that, yes, the next few years will probably be tougher than originally imagined/intended. There's a lot of fast water between here and 30.

Working with attractive women is like wearing comfortable shoes all day: one less thing to worry about.

Target is an okay place to go.

I really need a job. So much talent and schooling. All so I could ask, "And what two sides would you like with that steak?"

I need to eat more Chinese food.

A young black boy, no more than seven, knocked on my door this afternoon and asked me to "take him to swimming." I told him I couldn't, I had things to do. This disappointed him, but he moved on. I bet he's one of the kids that live upstairs, always running around and jumping on things. At least in my old apartment, the upstairs neighbors were reliable: parties every Friday and Saturday night, with bonus rounds in the bedroom above my roommate. But these kids are unstoppable.

Still, despite that aforementioned uncertainty about life, I'm still excited. I guess I have to be.

I can't believe how lucky I am.

2 Comments:

While I cant really stand the phenomenon of the Oprah bookclub, in its defense when she backed East of Eden (John Steinbeck), sales of the book surged to numbers it had never seen even in its heyday. That said, no one publishes the numbers of people that actually finished the book. However, the world should read E of E as it is possibly the best book written in recent history (humble opinion).

By Claire:, at 7:54 PM, June 14, 2004

Hi Daniel...I got your link off of Melanie's AIM profile, and I just had to tell you that the same kid came to my door the other day and asked me to take him swimming. I pointed him to the pool and he said "No, I want you to take me." Thanks, but no thanks. So random.

By Jennifer, at 8:46 PM, June 22, 2004

: Name: Dan Carlson; Location: Houston, Texas, United States

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...a stone, a leaf, an unfound door; of a stone, a leaf, a door. And of all the forgotten faces....

O waste of loss, in the hot mazes, lost, among bright stars on this most weary unbright cinder, lost! Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When?

O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.

--Look Homeward, Angel

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.

--John Stuart Mill

We have all read in scientific books, and indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.

--G.K. Chesterton

We were, for the briefest of moments, something greater than the sum of our uncertain parts; we were youth itself, in all its painful glory and sharp joy.

--August Van Zorn

There is a time in the lives of most writers when they are vulnerable, when the vivid dreams and ambitions of childhood seem to pale in the harsh sunlight of what we call the real world. In short, there's a time when things can go either way.

Film lovers are sick people.

--Francois Truffaut