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February 4, 1997,Tuesday

Today's events were governed to some extent by my infamous "primitive woman" bowl, the ceramic marijuana paraphernalia that somehow survived a year in "Dog House" (one of the nastier off-campus houses in Oberlin), several years in my Shaque, and most importantly, the entire history of Big Fun. That bowl has had everything from Opium to Datura to Dextromethorphan to Nutmeg smoked through it. But the beautiful thing today was that it had a rather large amount of pot in it, left over from the night before. I smoked the stuff several times today. Since I almost never have any of my own pot to play with, this was a bit of an adventure. I could smoke pot and then do things unrelated to anyone else. Ironically, though, pot is the perfect antisocial drug, most people seem to smoke it in the company of others. That's stupid; it leads to paranoia and takes away from the fun that could be had alone.

After I smoked some of the evil weed, I walked over to Cocke Hall to do some computer work. As I walked, I had a revelation that chicken is to egg as happiness is to comfort.

When comfort=technology
and happiness=art
and an egg is a chicken's way for getting from one chicken to another
and a chicken is an egg's way for getting from one egg to another
it's just the emphasis your prejudice gives the form
thus some people love technology and see technology as the ultimate goal
and art is a mear opiate to keep the masses complacent
and to occasionally introduce CREATIVITY necessary for
more technology
and there are some people who emphasize the arts
Happiness is what counts to them, not comfort
They see technology as a tool for advancing the arts
if they like technology at all
and many of them, perhaps most of them
hate technology
I used to love the technology and saw art as just another tool
I even failed to see the need for art in inspiration
now my opinion is reversed
thus it is not for the egg that god made the chicken
but the chicken for which god made the egg

Marijuana, used with restraint, occasionally leads me to profound insights. This is not a good example, but it is an example.

Elizabeth and Andrew were watching teevee at our house when I got back. A very weird situation was then afoot in the country...President Bill Clinton's State of the Union Address was about to be delivered just as an announcement was to come of the jury's verdict in the OJ Simpson civil case (the families of the victims versus the former football great). I kept expecting the teevee to go split-screen so both enormously news worthy events could be simultaneously televised. The decision announcement kept being held out as imminent, but time dragged on and I became bored. I certainly wasn't going to watch Bill Clinton's feel-good propaganda. So I took my pre-work nap.

I slept fitfully in the end, but in the last ten minutes before my alarm went off, I had a powerfully frightening dream about being in my old high school during a frightful electrical storm. I hated to leave my bed but it was time to go to work. I felt like casting my employment to the wind for an hour more of sleep.

Yesterday I bought Sonic Youth's 1995 CD Washing Machine used for $7. Today I bought two girlie rock CDs, PJ Harvey's To Bring You My Love (1995) and L7's Bricks are Heavy (1992). Somebody appears to have unloaded their PJ Harvey collection. As an economic decision, I took the most scarce of the PJ Harvey CDs, since I'm not that familiar with her work though I like some of it.

The Sonic Youth CD is surprisingly chaotic and unfamiliar despite how recent it is. It starts out as close to tonal as those guys ever get, but by the end, it sounds like the crappiest stuff that Josh and I do in his pornography heaven.

The PJ Harvey is like a female version of Nick Cave's better stuff (listen to "C'mon Billy," track 4). It's thus no surprise that PJ has collaborated with Nick on some projects. I'm rather surprised by how much I like this album. An especially good song is track number 5, "Teclo."

One has to wonder with a novelty like an all-girl sludge metal band like L7, if they were boys, would they still be considered any good? I don't know. A band does what it takes to get attention, whether it be all-girl, or whether (as in the case of Hole) its lead singer has a mega-famous husband who commits a gruesome suicide. The ridiculously named Bricks are Heavy starts out rather lame, like a Joan Jett and the Blackhearts rehash almost (listen to Track 3: "Pretend that We're Dead"). If it weren't for the starkly creepy grunge of the guitar, I'd probably have trouble making it to the middle, where the CD picks up enormously. By the end, they've used Arabic scales (listen to Track 6: "Slide") and wallowed thoroughly in punk. It becomes a wonderful piece of work.

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