I have been writing a lot, which means I have not been writing here. That happens. It makes me wonder what the hell I should be writing here, especially since blogging is essentially dead and I should just be posting pictures of my cats. (Here is a picture of one of my cats. I have more. Don’t tempt me.)
I feel like blogging about all of the exciting stuff that has been happening lately. There hasn’t been any, so here is other stuff.
- Last week, I stabbed myself in the finger with a knife, pretty much down to the bone. I have this little CRKT knife and was hacking at the tape on a box in a way you should not hack with a knife, and my left hand was holding the box, and I stabbed it into the side of the base of the finger, and it went about as far as it could. My first thought was that I should go to the hospital, but fuck hospitals. I’d probably have to wait hours, behind at least two or three people who were just shot by Oakland police officers, and all they’d do is get me hooked on Oxycontin. The knife was brand new and extremely sharp, so it made a very clean slice. I put a bunch of Neosporin in it and closed it up with a bandage, and it’s slowly healing together. It’s made playing bass interesting.
- I am in a weird funk with bass playing. I feel like I would need to dedicate a ton of time to it just to advance a small amount in my ability. It’s times like this that I feel a need to spend way more money on better gear, which is of course a sickness. I just spent too much money on a new bass last January, so I can’t buy another one. I still do like to turn the Zoom B-3 onto the Cliff Burton setting and play minor scales over and over and over. Sounds cool.
- I have been reading that Jennifer Egan Goon Squad book, and I really like it. I went through a long run of not liking stuff I’ve been reading (aside from your book, if I just read it – that was great) and the structure of this one is really blowing me away. It reminds me, not in content but in structure, of Jonathan Lethem’s Chronic City, which I really loved, and truly wished I could write.
- I was at a conference last year, waiting for a lecture hall to open so we could go in and sit down, and me and Jonathan Lethem and someone else were standing next to each other, and I had my copy of the aforementioned book in my bag, and I did not say word one to him, because I am a stupid introverted fuck and never know how to talk to people. There’s also that meeting heroes thing, or whatever.
- Similarly, Marie once sent me Mark Leyner’s home address, and I never did shit about trying to contact him.
- I put an SSD drive in my computer. It’s faster, I guess. Everyone says it makes it way faster to start programs, but the thing is, I never reboot my computer and all of my programs are always open.
- I am over 70,000 words into the next book and have no idea what it’s about. I am starting to get ideas about the overall structure. I feel an overwhelming need to make it radically different than the last few books. I also feel a strong need to get it done asap. These two things are not compatible.
- I saw the Oscars and they were horrible. I bet when various outside countries like Syria or Iran look at us, they probably think we’re insane because out of all of our movies, the “best” of the “best” involved killing a terrorist, rescuing people from terrorists, and a civil war. And pretty much everything else was franchise necrophilia of some brand that was beaten to death years before and needed to be remade because Hollywood is out of ideas, except for all of the jingoistic terrorist stuff.
Blah blah blah. I need to get back to work.