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February 23, 1997, Sunday

Insightful thing to say today: Spiked collars make about as much sense as neckties.

I'm at UVA's Cocke Hall as is normal on a Sunday morning. One guy working here has to keep getting up to smoke a cigarette. He reeks afresh everytime he comes back from the outdoors. I think my body odour is pretty rank this morning but it doesn't compare to the foulness of his clothes. What people will do to feed their addictions...

The air has become more seasonal today. But it's still nice outside. The sun shines brightly. I feel good about myself and about my place in the world, though I have an idea that I might need yet another group of friends as a backup for situations like last night when all my social situations fail to entertain. Of course, I could start doing more with my four track. With all due arrogance I now contend, "The World would be a better place if I did."

I made a fews stabs at four track recording that were better in execution that previous attempts. Yes, in this case I rehearsed just a tiny bit before recording. That made everything go much better. But the "songs" I created were monotonous enough to indicate rehearsal combined with more complex composition is necessary. This isn't like painting, where I can "just begin painting." I have to have a plan, work on that plan, master that plan, then record based on what I've practiced. Anything gained beyond that is just icing on the cake. In many respects, mastering multitrack recording is a delicate process of learning (in my case by trial and error) in which order to take which steps.

I had a remarkably boring day, punctuated by events such as nap taking. In the end, in the evening, I went to Theresa and Persad's place and ended up watching a movie. They were getting along much better than last night. They sat beside me on the couch and kissed each other noisily like some sort of dispassionate bodily function. I could have been disgusted, but I was just happy they weren't fighting.

The night before my first viewing of Brazil, I'd seen Eraserhead with Jessika while we both were on Ritalin.
The movie was Brazil. I don't think it's mentioned anywhere in the Big Fun Glossary, but I tried to watch Brazil once before, at Big Fun during the Storm of the Century with Jessika and Matthew Hart. That time we'd all ended up falling asleep. It had been too complicated to follow in our mental states at the time. This time I had more luck in understanding it all, perhaps this time facilitated by the strange intense but jumpy focus that marijuana brings to a mind such as mine. Okay, I still don't understand it all. But it's a film mostly about the oppressiveness of a bureaucracy-based utopia. Well...dystopia, actually, since all the normal human failings are there: love, greed, sloth and idealism. In one scene, people are all dressed up, eating and conversing at a fancy restaraunt when guerillas smash through the wall and engage in a skirmish with government forces. Such events are so commonplace, though, that people resume conversing and eating and the string quartet resumes playing while the battle rages on the other end of the dining room. The stifling nature of the bureaucracy, partly carried out by the cool irrationality of machines, can be seen as a sort of "bureaucratic asthma" sickening the entire government, preventing anything like freedom or happiness from ever taking place. For all its interesting and subtle variances from the norm of filmmaking, the movie's production values, mood music and acting styles seem time-worn and dull to me. You see, During the Storm of the Century, this aspect may have been the thing that kept me from immersing myself in it enough to appreciate it. The night before my first viewing of Brazil, I'd seen Eraserhead with Jessika while we both were on Ritalin. And Eraserhead is so fucking weird that Brazil had been a let down. Everyone had hyped Brazil as such a weird movie, but it just looked like another 80s movie once I'd seen Eraserhead.

At midnight we drove out to the Eastern Standard (a "gay bar" near the west end of the Downtown Mall) to pick up Monster Boy, who'd been washing dishes there. Theresa and Persad had to go to sleep early in preparation for a Monday of activities, so they let Monster Boy and me out on Wertland, and he and I went to my house. On the way we stopped and chatted with Josh Mustin and what appears to be his new girlfriend, an insipid little baby-face who might still be able to get on circus rides for half price. We discussed the violence of my birthday night. I assured Josh that Theresa isn't particularly mad at him despite what happened.

Monster Boy and I sat in the Dynbashack living room discussing all manner of things, gossip mostly. Here is a list of some of the points raised:

I went to bed at about 2am.

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