who the hell is reading my bloody shit!

i wish i knew! there’s people searching for my name, and like 30-50 people a day reading posts on this thing, but i have no idea who they are or where they came from.

anyway.

i’m at rachel [brown]‘s, after a night at first thursday art walk in seattle with her and jason [connell], who i actually met 10,000 years ago on the streets of berkeley (actually, almost exactly four years ago, and i wrote about it here). it was funny. he just emailed me yesterday morning for the first time since november 2008, and i was like, “dude, i’m going to be in seattle tomorrow!” and so we hung out! weird!!!! life is the biggest weirdo!!!!

anyway — it was super nice to hit up the 619 building again after such a long time. before, when i had come every month or whatever, it was not particularly awesome because it wouldn’t really change all that much from month-to-month. but now that it’s been a couple years or whatever, the change is quite dramatic, which is great. same artists, but with completely different works. leveled up, if you will. saw chris sheridan and lucien knuteson, both of whom i interviewed way back when. and both of them are still as fucking amazing as ever. good job, humans. redd, i believe her name is, who makes pixie, hyper-colored anime-inspired illustrations… also has quite an amazing new body of work. seattle is doing a pretty good job, and the vibe in the 619 building tonight was unlike any i have seen. i guess the fact that the artists in that building are being kicked out because of the viaduct thing has kind of revitalized the scene, in a way… whereas a lot of stuff would close down by 9pm before, there were TONS of people tonight, and stuff was going well past 10:30pm… with live music and everything. good times.

especially since on the way up, the greyhound took forever to arrive (and i actually missed lars’ show that i had wanted to go to because of it… boo, hiss!), and i seriously got nauseous while on the greyhound. this is the second time this has happened when i’ve come up to seattle in the past couple months, but basically, i would take off my headphones and start listening to conversations around me… the first time was during a rideshare, and two or three other people were having a discussion but it was just super ego-ridden, where everyone was just basically waiting for their own time to talk about their own ego-ego-ego-driven things. and tonight was the same thing between two older seattle folk, and it seriously made me ILL. physically. it was pretty bizarre and i can’t quite get a grasp on why it even happens, but it does. weird weird weird weird weird weird weird.

you _ are _ me _ are _ you

summaries.

i’m listening to… colin stetson’s New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges — it’s crazy fucking saxophone music. pretty cool but this particular song is making me kind of crazy (one can only handle so much crazy ass saxophone music at once).

quick summary of the past couple days:

- robby just gave me a tape of denton bands that he made me for my birthday! i only write this first because it’s sitting right next to me.

- got a sxsw venue, it looks like, to throw a show for the first time ever. more details forthcoming, but if all things go as planned, it’s going to be pretty sick.

- got a couple new writers for redefine. heck yes.

- protested at an anti-abortion parade (puny, at 60 people), where people made signs and danced to a boom box (including ace of base). funny things related to that:
a) i went into planned parenthood to ask for a marker because i didn’t necessarily like what my sign said. i asked, “do you guys have a marker?” and the lady at the reception said no. then i asked, “can i borrow a pen, then?” and she’s like, “what are you doing, exactly?” and i told her we were there to support planned parenthood, and she’s like, “OH, OF COURSE I HAVE A MARKER!” and threw a sharpie at me. i lost the sharpie five minutes after going outside. i still don’t understand where the fuck it went… unreal…
b) there was a lady with a sign that said something like, “planned parenthood hurts blacks,” and i was like, “what the fuck? i need to know what this is about.” so i asked her, and she told me that three times more black babies are aborted than white babies… which, even if true, is hardly… proof… anyway, she said that planned parenthood hates blacks and that its founder (margaret sanger) hated black people and was racist and was trying to kill them all through abortion. she gave me a huge newspaper thing. you can search for stuff regarding it, but the websites are rather flawed and use hilarious logic, like, “Blacks make up 12% of the population, but 35% of the abortions in America. Are we being targeted? Isn’t that genocide?” hilarity.
c) i went to a party at dan [s]‘s that night, and randomly started talking to this guy named nathan. nathan and i just started talking immediately about, “what did you do today?” even though i’d never met him before, and he told me about his day, and i told him about mine and said that i went to a pro-life rally to protest, and told him that the signs we made said, “honk if you’re pro-choice,” but i guess he had already assumed that i was pro-life or something, and was just like, “i don’t… really… agree with that politically.” and i was just thinking, “what? is he pro-life?” while at the same time he was like, “she’s pro-life?!! whattttt?!?!!” haha. really funny miscommunication…

- continuing on with the dance party, had a really good plan, and loosely made pals with rose’s best friend, and we are supposedly going to go to the salton sea when i go down to los angeles in july for wedding action. i hope it happens. I WANNA GO TO THE SALTON SEA, DAMMIT.

- after sxsw, i have a flight booked to fly back from albuquerque on march 31st. i will be leaving austin on march 21st, which gives 10 days. during these ten days, IF my prison penpal says that i’d be able to visit him on the 22nd, i will take a greyhound from austin to lawton, oklahoma, and visit him. this is the pricey route, but if he happens to be able to take visitors that day, i kind of have to… if he CAN’T take visitors that day, i’m probably going to ride with the brainstorm dudes to marfa, texas, and then they’re heading to los angeles, and i’ll probably stop off at las cruces and take a greyhound from las cruces to albuquerque cause that’d be wayyyyy more affordable.

- watched a pedro almodovar movie, “talk to her”. it was pretty excellent, and i found my spanish aural comprehension skills were pretty alright.

- just went to eat dinner with christian at the santeria, and we embarrassingly practiced speaking in spanish for almost all of the conversation, and i discovered that my spanish is really godamn bad, and that the santeria IS SO FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOOOD.

- went to the beach for a day with jay and james. they’re taking off to go back to north carolina soon… the beginning of february, to be exact. they went to the party last night but i didn’t have too much of a chance to talk with them. mer… but yeah, the beach. we went to cannon beach, which was only 15 miles from where aaron and them are renting out a cabin in manzanita to record their next album, but unfortunately, since i wasn’t driving, i couldn’t get out there. which is kind of a bummer

- i am going to the forest tomorrow with rose and troy. yess! forest! and i’m going to make twice-baked potato with onion and cabbage, since i have a buncha leftover onions and potatoes… weird stuff.

- this morning i tried to make this weird ass dish for research club, but i’ve never worked with cottage cheese before. twas a little weird. i threw in a buncha oranges into cottage cheese and then put cucumber, and the cucumber totally ruined it. then i took the cucumber out and added a buncha chocolate to try and fix it, and it was not really fixed. though i just came back and tried it and it tastes WAY better now, so maybe it just had to sit for a bit!

- i was invited by tori to participate in an art show she is throwing at the end of the month. here is my description write-up to her (christian is going to help me do a sound clip):

Earlier this month, I did a day of blindness… it was remarkable in some ways, though I think a day is too long. But I think it’s something most everyone should experience. I have this crazy blindfold thing that blocks out light COMPLETELY. I want to give five-minute blindness “tours”, in which, in an ideal world, I will:

{1} Make up a t-shirt that says, “Follow me for a blindness tour.” to try and bring mall-goers to the gallery (ideally);

{2} Offer four separate tours… SCENT / SOUND / TASTE / TOUCH… I’ll bring all necessary sound samples and maybe try and attain permission from Body Shop to bring people in there if people choose SCENT;

{3} Collect money for donation to Guide Dogs For The Blind or Oregon Council Of The Blind or something else similar (need to do more research in the possibilities);

{4} Bring in a blind or sighted individuals from one of those organizations to talk to people and answer questions about blindness.

- fun conversation with shawn:

Me: “I have more leftovers than Jesus.”
Shawn: “Jesus is leftovers.”
Me: “That doesn’t even make sense.”
Shawn: “Yes, it does.”
Me: (thinking about it) “I guess you’re right.”
Shawn: “Jesus is bread.”
Me: “And Jesus came back from the dead!”

edit @ 3:47am:
after getting enraptured by music and going to bed with music blasting, i woke up a little bit ago. am talking to lenny right now and thought i would add an addendum that describes just what happened to me when i walked home today: i was walking home and i saw this guy turning the corner and i felt like there was something off but wasn’t sure what, and i walked closer and he was like jacking off with his penis through the hole, and i was just like, “what are you doing!” and he was just looking at me. and he was like same-aged (which is perhaps the most disturbing part). this is the second time i’ve been walking home from downtown and avoided any problems downtown but ran into problems in the “safer neighborhoods”. last time, some car was yelling at me from across the street, at a stop sign, and then i waved cause i’m a weirdo, and they pulled up next to me, and i was like, “what the fuck? no.” and kept walking and the guy in the passenger’s seat was just a dude that was texting, and they stopped for a sec, and drove off again. weird.

cosmic.

right now im watching this documentary about harry nilsson. i didn’t know who he was until a couple days ago, and this film was mailed to me to review. i just picked it out randomly cause it was the only one i could find out of a stack of them that i have. weirdness #1.

weirdness #2. yesterday, i went to an art show, and there was an entire wall of letters. the letters were a woman’s mother’s; her mother had passed away last year and these letters were her mother’s letters to her prison lover. the letters were arranged out on a huge wall. there were probably like 500 sheets of paper being displayed. i just went to one wall right away and started reading, and in that letter, it was talking about carlos castaneda — an author who i am reading right now. i got his book like a week+ ago, but i’d stopped reading it for a few dadys to finish another one. i just started reading it again yesterday, so it was weird that out of 500 pgs i picked that letter to read. i looked at other ones afterwards, and they were simply not about that subject matter at all.

similarly. another girl who went with me picked out a letter arbitrarily, and it was about wicca and tarot reading, which were things she started doing a lot of lately. mind-blowing coincidences!!!

recap central: england, day three: london.

thursday, march 4th, 2010.
Took the overnight bus, as previously mentioned, and when I got to Victoria Station in London, I called Jericho. Jericho had gotten a local phone, which turned out to be quite handy for him, sure, but also quite handy for us. Anyway, he met me at the coach station (since I went on this trip I definitely call busses coaches… it’s funny) and we just wandered around. The goal was just literally to wander aimlessly and wander aimlessly we did. We started by picking a random bus stop to get off of: Embankment Tube Station.

Wandering around led us to Somerset House (Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA) where there was a Michaelangelo exhibit going on. It was a bit pricey, but we went anyways. Wherever the wind blows us, after all.

Michaelangelo did about a million renditions of this here piece, The Dream, and many were on display here (Michaelangelo’s Dream was actually the name of the show, after all). Here’s a detail pic I took:

Up next, more wandering, where we saw some funny sights, including this poster! Can you believe Zombie Nation still exists?!!!!

And male Lady Gaga — excuse me, Let’s Go Gaga — body-building. Z O M G.

Some ruined-ish buildings:

We putzed around forever and finally, Jericho decided he wanted a smoothie, so we tried to get him one. But it was major fail; all these cafes and restaurants would have photos of smoothies on their windows, but then we would go in, and they would deny us. Finally, we went to some major coffee shop chain — I forget which — and we were able to get him one. Woooooo! The line was insanely long, though. I should also mention I had my backpack from Iceland this entire time — that wasn’t super fun.

Finally, we decided to head towards the hotel area where we’d be meeting Sherry and Lori. We were slated to meet at like, 2:00pm or something around there, and we got there early and were waiting around the front forever. Finally, I suggested that maybe there was a back entrance, and Jericho went off to check it. Of course, when he left to go check it, Lori and Sherry came around the back entrance where they had been waiting and found us. Miscommunication galore! Sherry booked the hotel with her reward points, so we all kinda crammed up in there. Weeee.

That evening, we pretty much just went shopping. We went to Harrods (87–135 Brompton Road, Knightsbridge
London, SW1X 7XL):

Harrods is kinda too expensive to really buy anything, but Sherry got some cookies — what’re these called again? I forget — to give Tinwin because they’re Tinwin’s favorite things ever. They were like 2 pounds apiece or something ridiculous, though, so I didn’t even try them. [Poor as fuck.] Jericho bought one, though, but he crammed the whole thing in his mouth at once and declared it was delicious, and we were all like, :0 — “You ate it already?!!!”

That evening, we ate sushi across the street. But it was in this building with all these mini fast food conveyor belt things… including a fast food LEBANESE CUISINE conveyor belt! OMG! But Lori is allergic to peanuts, so feeding her miscellaneous foods is kind of impossible… I think she could have eaten like, Indian food, for instance, but she’s never had it ever…

I reckon we went home that evening, and Jericho was supposed to meet up with us early the next morning. Bright and super early. It was Lori’s first time out of the country, so we had to make the most of things!

recap central: scotland, day three. glasgow.

wednesday, march 3rd, 2010.
Woke up at poopy hostel in Glasgow, and didn’t have too much planned for the day. I went to check out one of the galleries there, the Kelvingrove Art Gallery And Museum. It was free, which is a plus. It might also be the weirdest fucking museum I’ve ever been to. The art was whatever. The museum portion was interesting, particularly the part about Scottish history. Lots of peculiar little displays about local life, including some about women’s rights and mental disabilities. Weird. There were also huge sections with stuffed dead animals, with gangs of school kids drawing these dead animals. Also weird.

Afterwards, I walked around kind of aimlessly, on the quest for vegetarian haggis. I was suggested a place with it, but no dice. Could not find. Found another market that had it, and I sat down on the street near a bridge to eat it. It was like, pretty good, I guess, but after about half of it, I was done with it. The spices are good and all, but they’re also kinda overwhelming.

I didn’t have too much to do after that, so I just walked a whole bunch to the downtown area. I stopped by the CCA (350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow). The exhibits were MEH-ish but the people were extremely friendly! They also had a really rad performance art thing going on that evening, as a part of a really rad arts festival… but I wouldn’t be in town. Overnight bus to London. Bummer.

After hanging out, I went back towards the hostel to grab my shit, and contacted Nim’s friend, Ben. I think it was Ben. Anyway, hung out at their pad for like, forever, hanging out with his girlfriend and meeting his roommate and numerous swinging door of guests. It was quite nice. The Canadian roommate cooked me some vegetarian dinner, and it was excellent. I can see a little bit of charm in Glasgow, I guess, from people’s lives… but again… not that fun for tourists.

I headed out a bit early to pick up my bags from the hostel and to go to the bus station. Woo, overnighter to London. Megabus. Word up.

recap central: scotland, day two. edinburgh & glasgow.

tuesday, march 2nd, 2010.
Woke up, checked out of my hostel, and left the bag there for a while so I could go explore. Just walked around and headed downtown.

First stop: tour booth so I could get a map to find out how to get to the Contemporary Art Museum, because it was so far from the City Center that no maps had it on there! Yay! There was a #15 bus that ran to it, but fuck that… it was only like a two-mile walk, so I did that shit. The main strip of downtown Edinburgh is like everyone, full of world-wide chain retail stores (see photo). Boring. Keep walking.

So, the Gallery Of Modern Art and the Dean Gallery (75 Belford Road, Edinburgh, EH4 3DR) are across the street from each other. This is in the lawn of the Dean Gallery. I LOVE IT!

The Dean Gallery had one really, really amazing thing in it. It was the reproduction of one guy’s entire former studio, put together with his help before he died or something. Really amazing. I forget who the artist is at the moment. Will fill in the blank later.

Entrance to the Museum Of Modern Art.

I don’t remember anything from the Modern Art Museum off the top of my head that really stuck. Oh yeah. There was one thing where there were a bunch of portraits of famous people, and their eyeballs were cut out, and they were set on mirrors. So when you matched up your eyes to the mirror holes, it looked like you were looking into the reflection of said famous person. Kinda neat.

Above-ground cemetery. I think it had a sign saying that only family members could go to it, or something.

I took the bus back, and I ate at Jimmy Chung’s Bar And Chinese Buffet 17 Waverley Bridge Edinburgh EH1 1BQ). The notion just really, really amused me. And it was fun. There was an OK amount of vegetarian options, but it was mostly a shit ton of chicken, which was too bad, cause some of it looked pretty delicious. Ah, well. I mostly liked the idea of eating Chinese food in Scotland, but actually, THERE ARE A SHIT TON OF CHINESE PEOPLE IN EDINBURGH. It’s truly mind-blowing, and other people I spoke to about it noted it as well. Guess there are just a lot of Chinese people in the UK in general. Veird. Or not veird. I dunno. But Edinburgh especially felt mind-blowingly Chinese.

I walked around aimlessly for a while. I had time to kill before taking the bus to Glasgow.

Classy.

Before I went to the bus station (where they wouldn’t let me catch an earlier bus, godamnit), I stopped by The Fruitmarket Gallery (45 Market Street, Edinburgh, Scotland EH1 1DF, United Kingdom). It has a small, but very nice, bookstore, and had an OK architectural-type exhibit going on. Mostly cool, mostly for the book store, though. I found a buncha stuff I woulda bought, but ended up buying a book on Muslim art. Cause that shit is awesome!

Good ol’ snags from the bus shops in Edinburgh. Cadbury rules the UK. It’s owned by Hershey’s, I think, in the States, but not over there. Good thing Hershey’s is not as evil as Nestle, so I can still eat it!

Uh, so, I dunno where I put my Glasgow pics, but I haven’t uploaded them yet. There aren’t many. But I got into Glasgow pretty late in the evening, and I took a cab to my hostel, Glasgow Youth Hostel (8 Park Terrace, Glasgow). It’s in kind of an inconvenient part of town… well, kinda. There’s lots of crap around it, but it’s in a university neighborhood and isn’t the main downtown area. Anyway. The cab driver was REALLY nice. I told him I was only there for an evening, and that I had never been in a black cab before, and he took me on a mini-tour in his car and made sure that my price remained the same. He was sooooooooo nice. Also, as we were getting out, he insisted on taking photos of me riding in the driver’s seat of his black cab. Which is really awesome! That never happens! He was so cute and old and nice!! He also confessed he knows nothing about technology and doesn’t care to. It was cute. I dunno.

I got in pretty late and immediately went off to Nice N Sleazy to see a show. It was only a few blocks from my hostel, which is nice. I was warned by the cab driver not to walk up one particular road on my way back to the hostel. Apparently, one side of this park is kinda dangerous, and it’s better to walk on the streets. Anyway, the lineup for the show: dd/mm/yyyy, Mice, Macbre Scene! There were a lot of shows there that evening, but dd/mm/yyyy was the only appealing one to me, even though I didn’t actually know who they were at the time. I just knew they had opened for These Arms Are Snakes, and that alone was enough for me to go see them. And they were AMAZING! I made sure to talk to them after the show to see if they might be interested in having us cover them at SxSW. That did end up working out, and it was all good times. But great show. Mice was pretty good as well. I missed Macbre Scene. Nonetheless, it was a little weird going to the show by myself, but there were a lot of awkward stragglers such as myself. The venue was weird, though. There were a lot of chairs, so a lot of people sat. A lot of people also left after the opening acts played. In-ter-est-ing.

Sleep. The bathrooms were pretty fucking filthy, which was weird considering there wasn’t really anyone in the hostel. They also required that you pay for WiFi (actually, this was a pattern in a lot of Glasgow… really hard to find free WiFi). I wouldn’t recommend this hostel. Hell, I wouldn’t recommend Glasgow, really. I only went there because Nim had lived there and said it was cool. I’m sure it’s pretty awesome if you live there because there’s a thriving music and arts scene, but as a tourist, without friends in Glasgow, it’s pretty fecking boring.

your fingerprints on everything.

i’m listening to… elvis.

don’t have much time to type too much these days. fauk. so busy trying to get redefine all squared away… hopefully i’ll have some more time to write in the near future or something. bah, humbug.

[above: just one of the escher images i found inspiring for the day. trust me... the detail on the actual lithograph is AMAZING...]

went to see the m.c. escher exhibit at the portland art museum today. let me just tell you… i’ve always loved escher but seriously, seeing it in real life is just mind-blowing and allows you to think about it in a whole different way. seeing the intense process he undergoes for just one piece — doing study after study after study on medium after medium after medium — is amazing. cause it’s not like his pieces are simple doodles that are easy to reproduce… they’re highly stylized, highly thought about works that require an intense amount of measurement and trial and error. in short: amazing.

and two days in a row now i’ve eaten on this crepe place at sw 10th and alder, and let me just say that their spinach and cheese crepe (plus tomato, salt, garlic, pepper, parsley) is fucking amazing.

yesterday i rented “holy mountain” per aaron‘s suggestion… going to watch it later. also rented this swedish vampire flick called “let the right one in” and brought it over to cole‘s place to watch it with him, ron, and brian. it was nothing like i would have imagined, that’s for sure. it was really good, though — well-shot and conceptually interesting. prior to watching it, and hearing people say, “it’s the best vampire movie ever,” i could not imagine how it could possibly differ from all of the other vampire movies that exist… but it did differ, and it did differ good, unga bunga!!!

i’m babysitting trask‘s cat right now, too. just call me cat lady! reer!! all the cats have been pretty cuddly off and on lately. i like cats when they’re cuddly. there’s one sitting in my lap right now. when they’re not cuddly they’re not so fun. but cuddly cats are soft and cute. wow, i sound retarded. i should end this. elvis rules.

it’s cleaning me. why are cat tongues so scratchy??

i’m such a schoolgirl.

3:06am
I’m listening to… Nurses.

This evening, Hojo, Graham, Tiffany, and I went to see No Age at the Triple Door. As a part of the Seattle International Film Festival’s annual “Face The Music” program, No Age basically did a live score to the film, The Bear. I don’t feel it was as good as when Kinski did it, but it was pretty solid. :} I had a bit of food coma and almost fell asleep during a part of it, but luckily, I didn’t. Hah. The Bear is a weird ass movie. It’s fucking amazing, some of the footage they got, of bears all up in human’s faces, roaring like crazy and shit, and then just backing down like it wadn’t no thang thang. Freakish. There was also this part where the bears at mushrooms and tripped out which was pretty bizarre and random, because it was literally just like, three scenes of the film where they used stop motion claymation crap, and the rest was normal… I don’t know why they chose to do it. It was largely enjoyable. And the food at the Triple Door is fucking GOOD.

After that, Graham and I went to the Halogen Gallery and the Roq La Rue and checked out some amazing art. I reallllllly need to update Redefine’s art blog ASAP. Hah. Max Kauffman was in town for a show at the Halogen Gallery, so it was nice to meet him, and Robert Hardgrave was there, and I haven’t seen him in a long time, so that was nice, too!! :}

Then we went to Healthy Times Fun Club, where Yair was playing a Big Spider’s Back show, but unfortunately, he was supposed to go on at like 9:00pm or 10:00pm and he didn’t end up going on until 12:15am-ish. Haha. I shoulda stopped back over but it was late. :L It was my first time to Healthy Times, though, and it very much reminded me of The Smell, and was really cool! SO CUTE. Four people live there as well, and they were offering free chips and chili!!! And cost was donation-based. So godamn cute. I would love to have something like that in my living abode. So awesssssoooooommmmme. It’s a pretty fucking solid venue, too, sound-wise and some of the shows they have in there are pretty legit. Also got to meet the guy who runs SeattleDIY, which is awesome. Was hoping to stay around for Universal Studios Florida (I’d actually heard their music before and liked it) and Yair’s set, but because it was so late starting and we had to go catch the Nurses show, didn’t get to.

Nurses played at some house show that was like, right off of Rainier Ave, at this new-ish house venue called The South Pole. A chick opened for them (and some other bands, but we got there at 11:00pm and it started at 9:00pm)… she was basically just a loopstation, guitar, distortions, mic. Some songs were good. Some were not. Simple.

Nurses were really fucking solid, though, and I’m glad they lived up to my expectations. Definitely going to interview them in a couple weeks when they come back to Seattle, or in Portland early next month. Hoping that I won’t need to make the trip down to PDX. ^O^ I was kinda scared to talk to Aaron, the lead singer, before leaving that house party thing… and I’m always fucking super awkward about talking to bands after shows haha. Rarely smooth about it. As we were leaving, though, Graham went and told them the show was awesome, so I was like, “Ah feck, I guess I will, too,” especially since the group had thinned out a little by then and he was no longer being mobbed. Turned out to be a jolly good time with lots of stupid jokes that snowballed into ridiculousness. LOL. Someone said the word “hambone” and soon every other word ended with “bone”. It was silly.

That’s all. Fucking awesome.

I’ve discovered, randomly, that there’s this certain pattern of speech that I find really attractive, and it makes me instantly attracted to people who talk that way… and then in retrospect, I think about it, and feel like all those people are kinda similar. It’s a very factual, very to-the-point, very confident style of speaking. Haven’t pinpointed it yet, but it’s interesting.

looking back on portland.

CURRENTLY WATCHING… “Atonement” (HBO On Demand!)
I’ve got a lot to write about Portland. Here is my attempt to work my way backwards in time.

***
Thursday, October 16th, 2008.

Watched “Midnight Meat Train” because the title was funny. Really high while watching it. I don’t know if we watched it on this exact evening but WHATEVER. The first few nights, being all high, kind of blurred into one another D:***

Friday, October 17th, 2008.

Trader Joe’s sushi. Why would anyone try such a thing? FUCKING DISGUSTING!

Obama rally, March 4th Marching Band coverage.

***

Saturday, October 18th, 2008.

Watch TV with Dan and Jack high until really early in the morning. Lotta “True Blood” episodes…

Takes me a while to adjust to Portland life, but (and this is reaching in to the future) the trip home to San Francisco does wonders on helping to adjust to Portland life and life on the road. Strangely. It’s the needed boost of familiarity, I suppose!

***

Sunday, October 19th, 2008.

Get a ride to airport from Jack, ass early in the morning!

***

Monday, October 20th, 2008.

Home, dinner with Sherry and Xinlei at Lindo Sushi. Or Sushi Lindo? I don’t know.

***

Tuesday, October 21st, 2008.

Lunch with mother. Then I am off on the BART to the airport!

Then I am not able to get a ride back home, so I take the MAX and get home around 11PM but it works out. Very easy, straight shot from the airport!

***

Thursday, October 23rd, 2008.

Baked sushi at Mio Sushi with Jack. Actually, it was a sushi pizza. It was okay.

ZOO. NAKED MOLE RATS. BATS. BIRD FEEDING. TO BE UPDATED LATER.

New favorite bird: Carmine Bee-Eater.

***

Friday, October 24th, 2008.

This night was frankly rather ridiculous. Kelly came over and really wanted to fight some bitches. I wasn’t around, but apparently she kicked Dan in the face. Haha?

We were just all sitting around the dining room table… Cole had bought a fifth of whiskey and Kelly had bought a fifth of vodka. It was being split amongst everyone and everyone was getting hammered and lots of people were getting retarded. The boys started arm-wrestling and trying to see who was the biggest man or something. Jack was uber buff. I mean, Dan is buffest, but Dan is huge. Jack was deceivingly strong.

***

Saturday, October 25th, 2008.

In the daytime, Micah, Dan, and I head to the park nearby their house to watch Micah and Dan compete in holding themselves upside down on those playground rings and other inane shit. Kind of amusing and kind of ridiculous. Then we played some pool at Cooperstown. Same ol, same ol.

Later that evening, a buncha people head to Dan’s sister’s for a BBQ. There aren’t that many people who are there other than us, Dan’s sister, and Dan’s sister’s man, but it is primarily entertaining because Cole and Jeanette drunkenly perform a small show for us. Including their DRACULA song. Video to come, because the song is amazing and gets stuck in heads for DAYS. DAYS I SAY!! DAYS!!!

As far as everything else, though, we didn’t do too much other than played a little bit of Poker, socialized minimally, and blahblah.

After that, Jack and I head over to this house for a house party to film this artist named Mattress, and Micah comes as well. I knew from listening to 15 seconds of Mattress’ music that he was going to blow chunks. And, despite his suit with strings of Christmas lights wrapped through it, he did suck. Big time. His music was crap. But people liked him a lot so what can you do?

It was the house’s first time ever holding a show, and mostly everyone there was underage. They sure as hell looked like, older than I was, though. ~__~ Awkward! Not really sure what to do with myself in house party type scenarios haha. AWKWARD!

The rest of the acts were OK. Some kids were playing truth or dare and dared other people to kiss Jack and he kissed a guy and a girl I believe. It’s just funny because he was chosen and he wasn’t even playing!!! In the meantime, I pretty much hung out with Micah the whole time and listened to largely terrible musak. Jack got free drinks and lots of attention just cause he was carrying around a camera. That’s the way to go. People don’t really care about a person with a regular SLR or other camera, but someone with a nice video camera is instantly popular!!

***

Sunday, October 26th, 2008.

Jack and I go eat at Bluefin Sushi. It’s pretty good but kinda awkward upon first entering the premises.

Play pool with Jack, Dan, and Cole at Cooperstown. Get lectured.

We get home and all decide to have a TATTOOOOOOOO PARTTTTTYYYYYYYYY! Cole volunteers for half sleeves, and they look fucking DOPE!!

***

Monday, October 27th, 2008.

Play pool with Jack, Dan, Micah, and Cole at Cooperstown. Jack snorted a lot of Dexatrin and is high out of his motherfucking mind. Haha. As for me, I felt really HIGH all day even though I didn’t smoke. It was fucking WEIRD. SO WEIRD. Like I was seriously high. And it did NOT go away until I went to bed and woke up the next day. And then it was fine. And then I didn’t touch weed at the house ever again. Haha. Oh, not only that but this day and the day before my hands were tingling ALL DAY. It finally went away after I woke up on Tuesday morning, thank GOD. Twas starting to freak me out a little. It was like my hands did not belong to me!!!

***
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008.

Evan is here from Olympia. His sister dropped him off. He simultaneously cleans the living room while dancing. It’s fucking awesome.

Go to the Matador with Dan, Kelly, and Micah to shoot some pool. I think. Shit. Days are all blurring into one another. Haha.

***

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008.

??? WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED ???

Jack and I eat lunch at Mio Sushi.

***

Thursday, October 3ost, 2008.

Everyone was pretty much home today except for Cole and Brian I believe.

I washed dishes for more than an hour using a giant bowl and pot as wash basins because the basement is kinda flooded (or as Evan proposed, “puddled” because “flooded” is too extreme a word for such a scenario, since there was only an inch and a half of standing water). It was kind of a fun exercise of potential water conservation… I say potential because I’m not sure if it actually saved water or not haha. But either way, a shitload of water was used even despite my greatest efforts in water conservation!! It took forever, but it was kinda fun. Plumbing still isn’t fixed, though, which is kinda nasty considering it generally means no one can do laundry unless they’re doing laundry and simultaneously scooping water out of the basement………….. hrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. I think Dan’s the only one who has done that so far so basically everyone else is just a dirtball. Not that I’m not. But at least I’ll be able to get some clean clothes upon going back to Seattle…??

This evening was Last Thursday! Didn’t have many plans other than that. Portland has two major Art Walks that I know of — I reckon there are probably more — but there is the Downtown one and the one on Alberta St. Last Thursday is on Alberta St. and is more small boutique-friendly and more street performer-friendly. Not that the other one is bad at all (see next week for the write-up about the other one), but it is different for sure.

Jack came along and Dan was going to but then he flaked out! Jack and I started off by eating at some Mexican restaurant that was pretty good and fairly cheap. Pretty much my entire time in Portland I’ve been either eating Japanese food or Mexican food. Nothing else, really except for the occasional platter of American food and fries or something.

After food, we started the Art Walk. There were people in costume and some Dia De Los Muertos parade because well, Dia De Los Muertos was coming up obviously. There were people on stilts, people wearing masks, and people being people.

Some interesting art but nothing overwhelming as it was not too late into it when Cia and Micah asked Jack and I if we wanted to go see this band with them. Chervona was the name, and they were some kind of gypsy-punk band. Unfortunately, when we met up with Cia and Micah, Jack decided he didn’t want to pay $5 to see the show, so he went home (he actually couldn’t have gone anyway, since he’s under 21). When we got to that bar, though, we sat outside for a while while this cover band guy with a lead singer dressed up like Axl Rose sang. They were kind of terrible acoustic singer-songwriter type shit (despite the fact that there were three people, it still sounded like one singer-songwriter practically… go figure). So outside we sat, drawing on these picnic tables that were riddled with shit already. I had nothing that interesting to contribute, unfortunately.

Miss C apparently knows someone who is a chemist and makes drugs from scratch, so that is a very very exciting thing for me. D:

When lame singer-songwriter wannabe was done, we went to the concert room but Chervona still wasn’t on for another hour and a half, so we went to another bar and sat around. Blah, blah, watching people get drunk, blah, blah, walking back and forth between bars, blah, blah. Finally we left early instead of sticking around for the show when I realized I had no cash and neither did Micah, so we bummed $2.00 from Cia and took the bus back. GHETTO!!!!

***Friday, October 31st, 2008.

On Thursday, I received an email from Mute Records asking about Freak Night through Paul Van Dyke, so I decided to take them up on their offer and traveled up from Portland to Seattle for my once annual rave. Freak Night was also the first rave I ever attended, seven years ago, so it holds a good amount of sentimentality. Nonetheless, I must say that this Freak Night was not 100% worth the effort, and I probably would have had more fun just staying down in Portland. Oh well, though. Too late to change it now.

Left Portland and was picked up at the Seattle Amtrak station by Lingo, who was my +1 on Freak Night. We went back to my house for a little bit and then met up with Tony and this friend… Fred? at Maekawa Bar, which is sooo not my favorite restaurant in Seattle. I am not a huge fan of izakayas or wannabe izakayas for that matter. Whatever, though. Not to mention there was terrible communication and Lingo and I both thought Tony was coming to my house (“I’m amazed he knows how to get here,” I said to Lingo, upon recalling Tony’s horrible sense of direction.) but we realized that was not the case when Tony called us from Maekawa and asked where we were. What a motherfucking nubcake!!!

Food was mediocre, and I basically just watched those fools drink alcohol. Yayyyyyyyy. When we finally got to Freak Night (it was a short walk away from Chinatown), fucking had to wait in line for an hour to even get my Will Call pass (despite the fact that I was on the Paul Van Dyke guest list) and had to wait another motherfucking hour to get into the actual event. Two hours total to even step foot in the door, and by then it was 1AM, with the event ending at 4AM! What ridiculousness!!!!

The event itself was fine, apparently there were a lot of E-bombs going around that were subpar and, in Nate’s words, “made people feel like they are dying when they’re coming down.” So, I avoided them, not that I wasn’t going to avoid them anyway. Tony definitely asked me, “When was the last time you did E?” and I said, “Three years? Two years?” and he had to remind me that I was a big fat fat liar because apparently I did a half a pill at the last USC even though it didn’t work at ALL. “Snap,” I said, “I totally forgot!!!” Mmmm. E. It does a brain badly.

Andy C was quite a terrible DJ and he kept doing the motherfucking REWIND thing during non-REWIND worthy moments. He did it at least 3 times which is much too much considering I didn’t even see his entire set!! The other DJs after him were much better. FAILURE ANDY C!! FAILURE. YOU’RE THE FAMOUS ONE, TOO!!

The Trance room, with Paul Van Dyke, was big time suck. At least the people at Freak Night looked decidedly less douchey compared to the people at USC this year (they looked like total frat boys and girls… perhaps the costumes adequately disguised this fact during Freak Night). Even Lingo, who was rolling just so slightly, couldn’t handle the lameness that was the Trance room. Drum N’ Bass Room for lyfe. This was also like the smallest massive / smallest side room / smallest drum n’ bass room ever, because it had maybe, at its maximum point, like… 50 people. Haha. What the fuck. Not that I’m complaining because it never got hot (a rave rarity) and never got sweaty (a rave rarity) and never got crowded to the point where one could not find a space to dance (another rave rarity).

All in all, it was fairly fun, but not worth the trip up, and apparently I have hairier legs than Lingo. I’m not too surprised really, though.

***

Saturday, November 1st, 2008.

Woke up after sleeping not too many hours post-rave and was somehow OK as far as energy levels go.

I went to lunch with Alex at Flowers — vegetarian buffet style! The rice pudding was DELICIOUS as was this eggplant saucy dish. MMMM. I want to eat it again!!!! Then we had some bubble tea and sat around for a bit. When I got back to the house, I did some massive packing and then Alex dropped me off at the Amtrak Station in Seattle around 5:00pm.

Three and a half hours later and one boring ass screening of Wall-E later (yes, they show movies on the train, apparently!), I was back in Portland, and Micah picked me up at the train station. I reckon that was… 9:00pm ish? We went back to the house and then went to meet up with Cole and Dan at Biddy’s, where Dan and Jack apparently had some sort of problem. Jack had Britain, girl offa Craig’s List, over. Dan kinda slapped at Britain’s tat and she got offended and then there was miscommunication and all kindsa good stuff. ~__~

Frankly, Dan was being pretty weird the entire evening and was standoffish and barely talked to me once when we got there. I just kinda talked to Cole about HIS problems with Dan regarding Leeba… seems like everyone has some issues there. Fun.

***

Sunday, November 2nd, 2008.

Went to the Matador with Micah and Kelly, and we attempted to play pool on these tables that turned out to be EXTREMELY crooked. Everything would roll towards one side — so extremely that at one point all the balls were literally on one side of the table. Haha. Ghettooooo. I had this plan to put matchbooks underneath the table legs but that didn’t work out too well because the table was too heavy for Micah to really lift and the matchbooks were practically flattened instantly anyways. Instead we decided to sit at the bar and just chat, which felt remarkably comfortable despite the fact that I’ve never actually sat at a bar before. o__O I mean, for an extended period of time, anyway.

There was this old guy who kept talking to Kelly and was going to buy her a shot or something but she ended up buying a pitcher before that. There were also like 5 Alaskans in there at some point which was fucking weird, cause I mean, before I came to Portland I’d never met a godamn Alaskan and since I’ve been here I’ve met like a million thousand. But it’s all good, I guess. O__O

This guy Kelly made out with some previous weekend at a ’80s night thing came over for her for a date or something. He really wanted to bone her, I guess, despite the fact that at ’80s night, he had turned her down for bonings due to personal reasons. Evidently she looked up his MySpace and he was very much Christian and all about Christianity and she felt like she would be corrupting him or something. She kept saying stuff like, “I don’t want to corrupt you,” and, “Why would you want to do it now,” and, hilariously, “I believe in Satan yet you want to have sex with me?” Yet the man maintained and attempted to sex0r her, and eventually Micah gave them some condoms, and they went on their merry way. Actually, though, it wasn’t a very merry way, because their last words before leaving was her saying, “Fine, let’s just fucking go then,” and they didn’t even say bye to us!!!!

It’s also kinda lame for her that she left because there was a pretty good-looking guy there named Joel, who is, coincidentally, Micah’s brother’s best friend, and he thought Kelly was cute. But Kelly went off with Christian boy, so no Joel for her, I guess.

Later that night, Jack, Dan, Micah, and I sat around and attempted to watch movies I do believe. We started with “Night At The Museum” because Dan and I both had wanted to watch it. Jack and Micah had both seen it and thought it was terrible, and boy were they right. It was awful. Not amusing at all.

***

Monday, November 3rd, 2008.

Micah went to get his drug test done early in the morning. When he got back, we went bowling with Cole and Leeba. Leeba’s awesome. But young. Cole was fairly good and got I think over 150 the second game. I did worst and never broke 100! Fuck man, bowling is some expensive shit, too. Even at like 1:00pm on a Monday afternoon, it cost $11.00 each for shoe rental and two games. What kinda shady shit…

Then Trader Joe’s, where I ran into Andy Combs from Andy Combs and the Moth. Actually, Leeba saw him too, but they didn’t talk to each other. I opened my mouth before I could think and ended up having an extremely awkward conversation with him. I gave him a business card, though, and told him if he releases an album anytime soon that I want it!

Don’t remember what I did the rest of the night… at least at the moment.

***

Tuesday, November 4th, 2008.

November 4th is Election Day, jea jea!

Micah and I go attempt to eat some sushi, but Takohashi is closed, AGAIN, and so we walk around aimlessly. We finally find Dragonfish, which also has a branch in Seattle, and decide to consume that. They’re having Happy Hour, so it’s pretty good for the price. Chicken wrapped in lettuce, salmon katsu, smoked salmon and creme cheese sushi rolls, California rolls, and crab rolls.

Then we meet up with Dan at Washington Mutual (who dammit, also cannot exchange my godamn Japanese Yen… it seems nobody can, motherfuckers) and then we head to the Matador, where we meet up with Kelly. Tis a pretty chill bar. I’m a fan. They also have 25 cent pool and actual pretty decent pool tables… at least compared to those at A&L, which is right near the house in the Hollywood District. The Matador is near PGE Park. A very comfortable bar, for sure. I think I’ve been to more bars here than I have in my entire life otherwise. LOL.

Anyway, we played a few games of pool, watched some election television, and then headed back towards our house to go to Cooperstown. This was around 9:00pm, because after 9:00pm, food gets dirty cheap at Cooperstown. Got a cheeseburger and fries for $4.50 — I don’t really eat burgers, but it was the best deal for the $$ and well, better than nothing. I kinda already wrote about this evening, though, and you can see it by clicking here.

Later that evening, though, there was some more fun. Went to Kelly’s real quick prior to getting home to watch an episode of South Park and for the dudes and her to get stoned. She has three cats. When we got back in our neighborhood, we ate at Cooperstown but Dan left early. Kelly bought a 12 pack of Pabst from the Plaid Pantry, and I found out that Plaid Pantry has BANANA MILK. HELL FUCKING JEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. FIRST TIME I’VE SEEN IT IN THE UNITED STATES!!!!!!!!!!!! (other than in Paldo World, but that doesn’t count since it’s a Korean supermarket!!!)

Then Jack, Kelly, Micah, and I went to A&L to play some pool on their fucking TERRIIIIIBLE tables. And their cues are missing the rubber parts on the bottom, so they’re super light. Bleh. Playing pool there is kinda hard and terrible. But we played anyway. Jack initially got kicked out because he didn’t have his “ID” but he went back and got it… it wasn’t an official license of any kind, but after a brief lecture, the bar guy let him in. I mean, he is practically there daily, after all. Jack played a little and left early. Kelly had smuggled in some Pabst in her purse but Micah told her not to drink it there since we’re there so often or whatever. She bought a pitcher and then got drunk and proceeded to zone the fuck out. Like. Hugely. She was lost in her world of music and Jack and I would try and talk to her and she wouldn’t even realize we were talking to her. The only times she would snap out of it is when she would be wanting one of us to listen to one of her songs… odd. One of her cousins is a member of The Used so The Used is literally like her favorite band, alongside Senses Fail. Which is funny, because I haven’t really heard those bands be relevant in quite some time. Therefore, they are not relevant. PERIOD. Just kidding.

But yeah, Jack left early and Kelly was there zoning out and not really talking to anyone, so we decided to head back. We took a shortcut through a park, and Micah and I walked ahead of Kelly. When we actually turned arond, we noticed that she was dancing and twirling and dancing — lost in her own musical world. And they weren’t mini moves or slight shakes of hips. They were literal ballerina twirls and shit. It was um quite um interesting. At one point, we stop to wait for her, and she ducks under these trees and is like hiding out there for a bit. And we’re just waiting for her. She doesn’t reemerge until Micah calls her name, and then she just slowly creeps out of the shadows and then continues dancing behind us as we walk. What da fack. She’s a cool girl when she’s sober — just the right blend of rude and nice — but when she’s drunk, I don’t even know WTF to do with her!

As soon as we get back, Kelly passes the fuck out on our couch. We’re hootin’ and hollerin’ yet somehow she doesn’t wake up. No shite off my back.

Because Cole did acid the evening before, I asked him about it. Jack hears and asks if Cole would like to get higher than he has ever been, and Cole says sure. Jack busts out some 40x salvia divanorum extract (a legal drug, mind you, despite it’s ridiculousness and ability to fuck people up big time) in this black plastic container thing. Cole is skeptical and doesn’t believe that the drug could ever be anything more than say, doing 8 hits of acid, which he has done. But as the salvia kicks in, Cole can’t really even control himself. I mean, video of that shit to come as I did take video. But it was some amusingness for sure. Then Micah tried it (he’s done it a buncha times before) and had a totally different reaction — his reaction was one of a pretty straightforward hallucinogen — not like some time/spatial warp shit that usually happens on salvia. His reaction was generally positive. Jack tried to try some but he didn’t take enough for it to work, so he wa just a little off but not REALLY.

Videos to come. It was definitely AMUSING. I was offered some but I really have no desire to try salvia. Actually, I did the next morning, but not that evening.

As this is NOT shown in the video, though, Cole’s interpretation from his less-than-savory salvia trip was that life is just like a deck of cards folding onto itself and that who we are and what we do has already been done a million times in every different direction, and that life will be over in just a mothafuckin’ blink of the eye. WORD.

***

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008.

Was woken up by a phone call early in the morning (early being 10:30am) by a recruiter for Microsoft. Blah, blah. Then went back to sleep. Woke up late-ish as usual, and then went downtown with Micah and Dan to get some tacos from the lovely taco truck!!! It was cold as fuck today though, and we all froze to death while sitting outside and eating tacos.

Then we went to Powell’s Books for a couple hours. That place is so great it’s evil. It’s practically impossible for me to go there without buying SOMETHING… because they have EVERYTHING. We only went to 1/3 of the store (or maybe 1/4) and I left with one magazine that I hope to make collages out of and two books. One of the books is a Sociology type book about a 24 year old that acted like a teenager, with the permission of a school principal, and did an undercover story for a year. The other book is about voodoo, zombis, and shamanism.

When we were done there, we went to Dan’s friend Brian’s house and they smoked. I watched them smoke and play video games. No big deal. I tried playing Call Of Duty for like two seconds but I’ve always had a hard time playing FPS games on big maps where I can barely see the other player. So I died like 3 times and then said screw it, this is probably boring everyone, and handed it off to Brian.

We took the MAX back and there was this drunk Italian dude on it talking to this other older dude about legalizing marijuana when we first got on the MAX. Then Dan joined in and started talking to him about legalizing pot and they came to the conclusion that it didn’t matter when pot gets legalized as long as it gets legalized at some point. The Italian dude claims he grows weed and was extremely strangely accented. The busted out a fifth of rum on the train and like started drinking from it. The old guy, who was on his cell phone, said, “They’re watching,” pointing at the ceiling because there was supposedly CCTV on the train. Nonetheless… people do crazy shit on the MAX all the time so I hear. So they probably didn’t even care. I guess Micah was on the MAX the other day and some kids brought a boombox and started popping and breakdancing and everyone except for this one old dude was all bout it. AWESOME!

On the walk back to the house, lots of hilarity ensued. There was this giant wheat stalk type thing — one I was fascinated with before when I was on shrOoms — that can be used as a wonderful feathery poking stick. The stick became a… penis… a “food on a stalk that animals chase after that are always in front of them but that they never reach” (with Micah and I being the animals)… and food Dan claimed to eat when he was a “soldier in Vietnam”.

Then Micah and Dan started throwing the stick like a javelin and counting out the winner by measuring with foot paces. Dan won. The stick provided many minutes of amusement

***

Thursday, November 6th, 2008.

Woke up at like 1:30pm or something ridiculous. Got ready and headed downtown with Micah with a “Talk To Us” sign. (“Talk To Us” will be described in another post.) The sign was pretty much the same as always, with block letters drawn in pen with those exact words on it. There was one difference, however. This time I decided to add a squarish robot on the bottom, and also put a lion’s mane type thing around it. Micah was fairly nervous about how the whole thing was going to go down. For good reason, I suppose. Newbies are often nervous about this strange project of mine.

Before embarking on talking to people, though, we went to go get tacos from the taco truck we’ve gone to a million times the past week and then headed to Rich’s Cigar Shop on Alder St., which is one of two locations which supposedly carries REDEFINE in Portland. Unfortunately, the last issue was Summer, and now it is practically Winter, and as a result, they no longer had any copies. I picked up the newest issue of COLORS Magazine and that was that. We also ate some truffles… and got two sampled for free! Then we moved onwards to Pioneer Square. Yupyup, Portland ALSO has a Pioneer Square. It’s more of a Square than Seattle’s Pioneer Square, however, as Seattle’s Pioneer Square is not really a Square!! EEP!

So like I said, the “Talk To Us” will be described later, but it was all in all a pretty good experience despite the fact that the array of people was NOT that wide and they were generally the same type of person: young, liberal, often homeless (or traveling?). I usually like diversity, but what can you do. Micah enjoyed hisself, which I am glad about.

Then we went to a coffee shop and just sat around for a while because both of our Vans leak water for some reason and our feet and socks were fucking SOAKED. My shoes are new, too!! WHAT THE FIZUCK. We attempted to do a crossword puzzle but let’s face it. Those things are like damn near impossible. I don’t see how my fobby uncle Roland can complete New York Times crossword puzzles so easily. Mind boggling.

After that we walked around for a bit and then decided to check out the Portland First Thursday Art Walk. It was actually quite excellent. Had heard things about it being sub-par or too hoity-toity and what not, but I enjoyed myself thoroughly. Here’s coverage I wrote on the Museum of Contemporary Art, which had the most AWESOME exhibit ever.

Came back, did some writing, went to bed.

madrid’s reina sofia is love at first sight.

Alrighty, then. What’d I do today? Today was my first official day being entirely alone. Bonnie and Sarah went off to the cleaners and walked around and did some English book shopping and such. I went to the Reina Sofia, where I spent… I think around four hours. Pretty good for a museum. It was a confusingly laid out museum because a lotta random parts of it were closed down, but the one Maquinas Y Almas exhibit is one of the most amazing things I’ve seen. Definitely the most amazing thing I’ve seen when it comes to modern / contemporary art. AMAZING.

But before I got to the Reina Sofia, I was wandering a bit and stumbled across this row of outdoor used book sales tables. I started looking through them. Was going to buy an extraterrestrial sightings book but decided not to. Then I saw some Jane Austen? (maybe?) book and was going to buy it because I like to buy books to translate to learn languages. It wasn’t too hard to read and as a result, seemed really good as a potential translation match. But as I was flipping through it and reading maybe a page or two, this crotchety old woman came up to me and started muttering a bunch of shit and saying that I can’t read it if I’m not going to buy it or some crap. She literally pulled the book out of my hand and slammed it back on the table. I wish I knew better Spanish because I would have actually said something useful as an argument. Unfortunately, I didn’t.

Well, I was peeving the whole way to the Reina Sofia but luckily Maquinas Y Almas picked up my spirits. By chance, it was the first room I went into in the Reina Sofia even though it was strangely places. Hell, though, everywhere in that godamn museum is strangely placed. I mean…………………….. they have four floors, but the only floors shit is on are PART of the first floor (where Maquinas Y Almas was), the second floor, and the fourth floor. What the shite? There was also a half area that was blocked off… not officially with rope or anything, but with a person sitting there telling you you weren’t allowed to walk over there. Frankly, it was all kinda fucking weird.

But Maquinas Y Almas picked up my spirits from the first piece I saw in there. Go to REDEFINE’s ART BLOG to read my review about it, cause it’s a helluva a lot better than me trying to write it again. Lol.

The rest of it was OK. Saw the famous Picasso “Guernica” and some Dali pieces. Nothing else was amazingly mind-blowing after the Maquinas exhibit, though, so that’s too bad. Picasso and Dali both did have a lot more diverse portfolios than I had given them credit for, though, so that was definitely a thumbs up.

That evening, Sarah, Bonnie, and I went to a local supermarket and bought some foods. We went to a Carrefour Express which Sarah had seen. Got some Asparagus and Cauliflower Crème Soup, a beautifully packaged Carrefour brand mango lassi, some Meditteranean flavored canned tuna, tea-flavored water which I’d been eyeing for a while, and some canned marinated clams. CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP. The mango lassi was like the most expensive thing. But shit was gooooooooooooooood (mango lassi = Indian smoothie type drink).

On the way back, we stopped by a FRUTAS Y VERDERAS (OR SOMETHING) MARKET. Fruits are ridiculously cheap. The banana for 0.85 EURO wasn’t particularly. Nor is an avocado for 0.99 EURO. But onions? Apples? All like 0.20 EURO each. Fucking bargainish. MONEY.

We went back, invaded the kitchen, and cooked some foods. I heated up my tuna and made some soup. Sarah had a red bell pepper which she stir-fried with garlic, and Bonnie had an eggplant she stir-fried with chili, garlic, and onions. Word.

Got harassed towards the end of our meal by two Aussie guys Bonnie really didn’t like. Turns out a lot of northernish Aussies think that the southern Aussies are um, a little off.

Later that night, I went into the kitchen and those two guys were there along with these three other Aussies (a guy named Scott who was traveling by himself for a year and a married couple). The married couple and Scott were cool. The other two guys were nice and fine but they got bit very drunk. Brendan got so drunk he was like a walking zombie and while sitting in the kitchen, leaned over the spit on the godamn hostel floor! We were all not cool with it. His friend kept muttering shite about how he had to babysit that guy and had to travel with him and how it was terrible.

We went out to a pub after, right next to the hostel. Not like I drink, but I went anyway. Brendan continued to pass out at the table. The other people were cool, though.

After that Brendan’s friend had hash, so him and married husband guy smoked some. Scott, wifee, and I left early. I obviously only know a couple names here. @__@

How they scored the hash, though, I guess, was they went to this website… I forgot the name of it… but it basically told you how to get weed no matter what country you’re in. It told them to go to a certain bus stop in Madrid and then lift up an eyebrow at a black dude there. And it actually fucking worked! The black dude sold them some hash for I guess like 30 EURO. I don’t know how much. But I can’t believe that website exists and WORKS. That’s so funny.

Then there was bed. The end.