“I can’t hear you. I don’t understand. I’m confused." Rob sat considering the progressively-shrinking impersonality of Vincent’s statements as he pretended to sip the calescent coffee in his twitching fingers. "I’m a fuck up.” Vincent’s desperate face beckoned for consolation, and Rob felt like he should offer some. Instead, he changed the subject. “Coffee is surprisingly less-shitty than I expected.” The statement seemed abundant in adverbs yet deficient in meaning. “This fucking sucks.” Vincent would not be swayed from his target so easily.

The morning hours race like water droplets on my skin, whisked toward the drain by forces cosmic and mysterious.

My dreams rarely return to the same location. Some symbols reappear: mental wards, parks, high ceilings, canopy beds, older women; but each one is different, unique in color and shape and style. Except for the movie theater. The same carpet, the same employees, the same handwriting on the list of showings: everything is always the same at the theater. I even get there at the same time: I always look at the list of showings just as the movie I want is starting. Yes, someone hand writes the list of films. The list is different every time, and most of the movies have names that sound like Disney derivatives: knock-off cash-ins from other studios. I also always drive to the theater. I’ve never driven a car in any other dream. Under each title is a list of attendees. I only ever recognize (and only ever read) one name. I always go to the theater where that name supposedly sits. I never find him or her. Instead, I watch a few minutes of a movie (usually a cartoon with big, puffy characters and foreign dialogue), and the dream terminates.

favorite albums of 2013 churroparty: no particular order CHVRCHES - The Bones of What You Believe

Kanye West - Yeezus

Sky Ferreira - Night Time, My Time

Drake - Nothing Was the Same

Justin Timberlake - The 20/20 Experience

A$AP Rocky - LongLiveA$AP

James Blake - Overgrown

J. Cole - Born Sinner

Earl Sweatshirt - Doris

Discolsure - Settle

AlunaGeorge - Body Music Overall, a good year of new music from many of my old favorites. Thoughts? I like all the ones you mentioned (except J. Cole of course). Some other albums I enjoyed: Savages- Silence Yourself

The Knife- Shaking the Habitual

Arcade Fire- Reflektor

Run the Jewels- Run the Jewels

Pusha T- My Name is My Name

MIA- Matangi

Autre Ve Neut- Anxiety

Chance the Rapper- Acid Rap

Danny Brown- Old Which is pretty solid except that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs new album was a middling experiment in acoustic crossover nonsense.

In Greek, “nostalgia” literally means “the pain from an old wound”. It’s a twinge in your heart, far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards and forwards, it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. - Don Draper, “The Wheel” (via churroparty) (Source: larmoyante)

There have been days where I’ve felt better than today. Emotional states are weird. Plotting them on axes wouldn’t reveal a progression or even a regression. They wouldn’t look like a sine wave either, although that was the first description I thought of (before ending a sentence with a preposition). No, the graph would look more like the values of junk bonds or sub-prime mortgages. Their high volatility isn’t good for anyone except those taking advantage. I’m not going to write about my problems (that’s what private posts are for!). Instead, let’s examine my night. I was short on inspiration for my school work and everyone is on vacation somewhere (not here) for reading week, so I decided to watch something on Netflix. Adventureland is a decidedly good-but-not-great film from the Jewish comedy troupe known as Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen, and Everyone Else They’ve Ever Met in Hollywood. Freaks and Geeks was probably their best creation, Superbad their second. I like their work in general, even if I might be growing out of it. The movie focuses on Jesse Eisenberg’s summer job at a theme park which isn’t really that funny. There are a lot of Lou Reed references which aren’t particularly insightful or anything, but he died last week so the scene with “Pale Blue Eyes” went from being melodramatic to heart-breaking. Kristen Stewart plays the role opposite Eisenberg, and she’s just as flat and affectless as ever. She reminded me of an old friend a few times though, and some nostalgia kicked in (another closing preposition!). Nostalgia is actually the most dangerous feeling in human existence (or at least this human’s existence). I try to act out glamorized memories that end up being little more than simulacra. Brand New used to be my favorite band on earth. I didn’t know about Radiohead, and I was too proud to listen to the Beatles. Their first album is some pop-punk trash, but their second LP Deja Entendu did some things that I’ve never witnessed on another emo album. “Sic Transit Gloria…Glory Fades” made me so scared of sex that I waited until after high school to ditch my V-card. “Okay I Believe You, But My Tommy Gun Don’t” is a lyrical masterpiece. The feel of the album is darker and more powerful, more Pinkerton-era Weezer or Taking Back Sunday than Blink-182. Their next album, The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me was my go-to receptacle for “deep” depressive feelings. “Jesus” used to destroy me from the inside out (as did most of the rest of the album). I started listening to Devil and God tonight for the first time in several years. Wish me luck.

Last night, I traveled to the Electric Ballroom to watch the performances of Royal Thunder and Baroness. I’d never been to a metal concert before, but the terrifying accounts provided by my friends had convinced my subconscious that the floor at such venues quickly became a swamp of blood, sweat, beer, and breast milk: that mosh pits were a fantastic battlefield of merciless struggle rivaling the coasts at Thermopylae. Obviously, I had to prove them wrong: and I had to do it alone. Riding the tube is much like traversing any other metropolitan transit system. Passengers are packed like sardines (in a crushed tin box!), and there is a direct correlation between proximity and Laissez-faire. The individual, impenetrable universes frequently contain only the rider and an Other or object companion. In London, this object is quite frequently a book: generally something pulpy with large embossed letters on the front cover and white text on the opposite side. Perhaps Baltimore isn’t the only city that reads (did you know that about Baltimore?). The Electric Ballroom was almost adjacent to the train stop, which was both convenient and nerve calming. This moment of unprecedented success in finding the destination caused a swell of satisfaction and calm to pass over my awkwardly dressed form (why would I want blood on clothes I actually like?). I was in Camden at night, so there were at least thirty tattoo studios within my vision, and I wasn’t wearing glasses (and I don’t wear contacts). My calm transformed into excitement as I realized that this would be an incredibly opportune moment to get a tattoo, but then I remembered that I didn’t bring my wallet (I’d be easy to rob when my legs were broken, so I left everything that was even mildly valuable behind). While I was waiting in line to enter, a man next to me engaged in a lengthy telephone conversation about fantasy football. As in, the NFL (not the Premier League): I didn’t know anyone in the UK played fantasy football. Hopefully his team’s having a better season than mine. Like his neighbors in line, the NFL guy had a scruffy brown beard covering most of his face. Once I was inside, I realized that the males in attendance could be easily divided into two groups: adult men with beards and teenagers who couldn’t grow them. It had been a few days since my last shave. Concerts always run slow: I’ve never heard of one that didn’t. I had showed up when the doors opened, so I had at least an hour to kill. Wandering around, using the restroom, and reading the floor posters only used about ten minutes: so I started drinking at the bar. The women seemed to be more generally clustered around this area, and they were not as easily characterized as their opposites. Most wore sweatshirts, but a few had those outlandish (leather) outfits that network television associates with metal shows. Almost all of them were accompanied, and this became more apparent during the show. Guys in middle school were hardly this possessive. I walked back towards the stage, and there she was. I’ve only been to three concerts in my life, which is actually really embarrassing (so don’t tell anyone). The first was Californian internet phenomenon rapper Lil B (THE BASEDGOD), and the second was a Radiohead concert at an outdoor amphitheater in Massachusetts. I had gone with one friend and several respectively. At the Lil B concert, my friend and I had both noticed a woman of about our age who was a sort of beautiful I’d never seen before. She was at the concert alone, but her cropped blonde hair and delicate expression exuded a kind of firm yet compassionate confidence that my mind tends to associate with the divine. We lost her there; she disappeared well before “Pretty Bitch”. I’m not sure where she was for Radiohead, but she was back tonight. She had on the same close-fitting-yet-tasteful leather jacket, the same combat boots. The white skirt of my last encounter had been substituted for a pair of jeans which matched her bag (another new addition) and displayed her thin hips. Her hair was even shorter, but she was older now: it made sense that she’d become more refined in my two-year absence. The alcohol made me want to approach her (she was alone again), but I knew better. I was afraid, not so much of being rejected as of splitting the halo of archetypal glory within which I had enshrouded her being. I sipped a little more slowly and listened to the waiting-room playlist of Deltron 3030 and Them Crooked Vultures (among other things which I didn’t recognize). As the room started to fill, I realized that men decidedly outnumbered women: and the crowd was almost unanimously white. I’d never heard of Royal Thunder before I decided to go to this event. Rather than check out their music, I consciously chose to go in with an open mind. Why ruin my experience by knowing that they suck? As the band filed onto the stage, the first thing I noticed was that they were a three-piece: guitar, drums, bass, and nothing else. Next, I realized that their bassist was female, and she had approached the only detachable microphone. The appeal of metal is very simple. In a culture of refinement and precision it offers the antithesis: animality and a return to nature (which is interestingly created by very precise use of refined musical instruments). It took a while, but bands are finally starting to discover that a female voice is better at creating this effect than a male one: at least within the male psyche. Thunderous drums and rushing guitar chords are powerful because they represent the uncontrollable forces of nature: the forces which flood and tear and burn the culture of refinement. As Simone de Beauvoir wrote, sex and reproduction are also members of this calamitous arrangement: and to the man, woman is Sex and Nature. She is both Aphrodite and Gaia, the temptress that lures and the earthquake that rends. At least, if you go in for that sort of thing. Mysticism aside, Royal Thuder’s vocalist was objectively talented and engaging. I’m not sure, but she may have been a contralto: her unique inflection poured over the pounding drum beats and flashing guitar rhythms like the rain of a thunderstorm. I was pretty impressed, and showed my appreciation by headbanging furiously. I’m not actually a huge Baroness fan either. To me, they’ve always been Mastodon Jr.: a good southern metal band that doesn’t quite measure up to the best of the genre. Their riffs are cool, but not as proggy or sludgy as their better compatriots, and their lyrics are well-written without being particularly insightful. I’m am however, a huge fan of the song “March to the Sea”, mostly because the choruses are actually about me in exactly the same way that Taylor Swift lyrics are actually about thirteen-year-old suburban white girls. After coming on stage, “March to the Sea” was the second song in the rotation (after the slightly-more-popular-but-not-as-interesting “Take My Bones Away”), and the mosh pit formed during the chorus about heroin. There was a distinct lack of violence that surprised me at first: no one threw punches, and the pushing seemed conservative enough. As we got to some of the less-well-known songs (“Green Theme”, stuff from the Red Album, etc.), the violence started to get turned up a little. The circle was directly tangent to my right shoulder, so I had engaged in a little pushing here and there throughout the first few tracks. A short, dark-haired kid (he couldn’t have been older than eighteen) directly next to me actually started throwing punches at some blonde guy who had pushed him when he wasn’t expecting it (or something). After a couple blows to the face, I decided to step in before someone got arrested. Fortunately, a friend of the short guy’s managed to pull him away while I tried to stop him from hitting blondie again. Napoleon complex in action, I think. As the concert progressed, the pit started to vacate and the older guys moved in and started taking off their shirts. This was literally the most homoerotic thing I’ve ever seen in real life, and I grew up in a town where kissing dudes was a common component of truth or dare (and I didn’t always choose “truth”). The men would push and shove each other, then hug it out when the song ended: hairy chest to hairy chest. There was definitely some arousal going on (but not on my part of course!). As the concert ended and the lights came on and Snoop Dogg played, I found Artemis once again. In the yellow glow of the overhead spotlamps I finally got a glimpse of her, head-on. Her pointy nose was wrinkled slightly in the satisfaction displayed by her dilated pupils. I decided to risk everything, to expose myself to the unbridled natural divine: the warnings of Flaubert pounded in my head as I matched her even strides. “I like your hair.” Her head turned swiftly in reaction, and her thin pink lips parted quickly as her eyes registered the coherence of my supplication. “Oh, thank-you.” Her slight smile was an elixir of modesty, embarrassment, and surprise. She didn’t know what to say and probably thought I was some kind of lunatic stalker (but what am I actually?). I shaved as soon as I got back to my room.

“Anything else?" Lorna found herself in this exact position at least once a week. Jim was lonely, so he made up some inane task for her to perform then attempted to prolong his instructions. She should never have taken the position as his receptionist, but the pay was just good enough to prevent her from quitting. Jim clicked the springy end of his Bic pen twice then gave up. "I think that’s it for now.” He watched with veiled longing as his occasional companion left the room with a flutter of her shoulder-length draping of black curls. Jim returned to the pages of administrative proposals on his desk, while Lorna walked back to her assigned reading on the subject of vaccines and autism.

Jim was content. As Dean of the Mary Todd Lincoln University of the Black Arts and Pseudo-Sciences, he had overseen that institution’s greatest decade of expansion and development: no longer could the “accredited” institutions bully the public into rejecting conventional belief and pursuing such absurdities as “peer review” or “correlation”. MTLUBAPS originally began as a sort of anti-vocational training institution under its original founder, Dr. Anthony Gown. “Tony” (as the man insisted on being called) had received a PhD in a different discipline from each of the six Ivy League universities (he hated snow so much that he willfully ignored Cornell’s 1865 founding) and had began a promising career as an academic with already-achieved tenure at both trusses of the straddling Oxbridge by the age of thirty. Although he had finally finished school, the sex-doctored Gown realized that he no longer had any immediate goal to reach toward: and that his career as a prodigy would soon come to an end.