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January, 2005
Monday, January 31, 2005 What the Snowman Learned About Love Once again, we have Monday off from work. Lest any of our meddling readers think of sending us emails about what they perceive to be our unwarranted good fortune, be aware that we spent an interminable Saturday afternoon sitting in our office, and we have earned the right to spend the morning sitting on the sofa, watching ER reruns and reading the Sunday Times. However, we intend, at some point, to get up, put on some grown-up pants, and go accomplish things. The list of possibilies is endless, including finding our van and starting it up, since it has lain completely inert in 4 feet of snowdrift for over a week now, and returning some library books that are more overdue than you can possibly imagine. If our readers have some ideas to share along these lines, we welcome them. For an excellent example of the sort of thing we are talking about, please enjoy the following email we received moments ago: What's your plan for you glorious day off? Do you own any top hats? We have to tell you, we are very excited about this snow butler idea. We do not have any top hats, but we do have a cowboy hat, and a checkered vest. He will have to be more of a jaunty jack-of-all-trades than a proper butler. We are worried somewhat about how to bring the snowman to life. We have no enchanted pendants, ancient tomes of sorcerous magic, mysterious potions obtained from wizened Chinese men stooped in tiny shops, helpful fairies, sacred American Indian warpaint, clockwork engines, powedered unicorn horns, thaumaturgic coins or silver dust. Fortunately, the law of narrative causality leads us to believe that he will simply come to life on his own. But do we deserve a snowman butler? It would be nice to have someone to clean the dishes and feed the cat, but there is probably an orphanage somewhere where he could make a real difference. Good luck, magical snow butler. It's a cold world out there, so keep moving. The air was crisp
Friday, January 28, 2005 I Must Be Very Ill In retrospect, perhaps we should not have called the doctor's office during lunchtime, as the woman answering the phone clearly did not possess "good phone answering" as one of her primary skill sets. She also did not possess such esoteric specialties as "rudimentary knowledge of the English language" or "ability to process new information", but this was not her fault. (Also, we did not have a good reason for calling and changing the appointment, other than the fact that we dislike waking up early, and prefer to do errands or unpleasant tasks in the afternoon.) The following is a transcript of the conversation with the woman, who we have named 'Grace' for purposes of this blog post: Grace: Hello, [unintelligible: possibly name of doctor's office] Clearly we now have two separate doctor's appointments on Monday. We can only assume that this means we are very ill, and hopefully we will get the treatment we need.
Thursday, January 27, 2005 Planes, Trains and Automobiles We are bleary-eyed today, daring readers, unshowered and unshaven, our body sore from a day spent in transit. We made our way to Washington last night, first taking a cab across midtown Manhattan at rush hour, then taking the train from New York to DC, then spending interminable amounts of time on gloomy, ill-lit subway platforms waiting for the Metro to Alexandria. We are too old to take trips that involve more than one sort of transportation. It is taxing, and it jostles the bones. But given that our last two drives on the eastern corridor were made in the teeth of driving, apocalyptic snow, we had no heart to get back in the van. Also, you would not believe what we had to go through to get a parking space in our neighborhood in two feet of snow. It involved grown men shouting angrily and money changing hands, but we can't really get into it here. At any rate, we have a lot of business to take care of today. Now leave us be. We'll call you tomorrow.
Wednesday, January 26, 2005 Discussion Questions, Part. 1 The following questions may be answered in any order. When the bell rings at the end of the 30-minute time period, please put down your pencil and turn your paper over. If you finish ahead of time, check your work. Once you have done so, you may rest your head on your desk, and dream of the distant sea. 1. At some point in the future, computer and robots will be constructed with sufficiently advanced artificial intelligence as to make them seem equal to human beings in many regards. Robots will, of course, lack any sort of moral code or aesthetic judgement, except what is programmed into them. However, morality differs from culture to culture. It is likely that consumers will prefer artificial constructs whose apparent worldview agrees with their own, leading to Christian robots, Republican robots, Jewish robots, bohemian robots, fat robots, and so on. Is this variety preferable to generic robots with no developed sense of these qualities? Discuss. 2. "I'm going to laugh and jeer and wiggle my ears at your death throes... You can OD on religion or dope or war or toadburgers, for all I care." According to essayist and science fiction author Harlan Ellison, the three most important things in life are sex, violence and labor relations. Discuss. 3. The 'Rock n Roll' album by singer-songwriter Ryan Adams was widely-dismissed by critics as being "self-indulgent", "insincere" and "craptacular." How much of this criticism is a reaction to the work, and how much is a reaction to Adam's public persona and transition from underground musician to mainstream artist? (Note: Recall that while some of the songs on this album, most notably the pointless tracks "Shallow", "1974", and "Boys", are not worth the plastic they are encoded on, some others, such as the Morrissey tribute "So Alive" and the surprisingly delicate piano-driven title track, are excellent songs.) If you need additional room, you may use the back of the test paper. Remember that brevity is a virtue.
Tuesday, January 25, 2005 Protest Songs We are currently enjoying a compilation CD entitled "Future Soundtrack for America", which features a number of indie-rock-type artists contributing a song for the purpose of raising money to help engineer the political defeat of the current administration. As most of you are aware, this effort failed miserably, leaving the president and his band of corporate lickspittles sitting up in the West Wing taking huge drags off of a industrial-size canister of nitrous oxide and laughing like hyenas. We suppose we should not wite things like that, what with the Patriot Act and all. While we would welcome the chance to mouth off to federal goons, we do not care for the thought of spending months on end in dank Central American cells deprived of all chance to communicate with the outside world, or the thought of being visited by the Official United States Torture Squad. So we had best clam up. At any rate, unlike most compilations of this sort, most of the bands in question did not hand over lame "live versions" of songs from their last album, or unreleased demos that no one wants to hear, so it is a pretty good collection of songs. More importantly, it is a pretty good collection of protest songs, a kind of music that is much rarer than it used to be, back in the coal-mining days. (We are aware that we are currently living in what might technically be considered "coal-mining days", inasmuch as coal is still removed from underground mines by hand in West Virginia and other auxiliary states, but you know what we mean.) We may be romanticizing the past, what with it's 16-hour workdays, lack of health insurance and payment in company scrip, but we cannot help but think of sepia-toned images of serious-looking men in buttoned shirts standing in front of the locked gate of the factory, their faces set with resolve as the tax-fattened bosses shake their fists helplessly, and a mournful but valiant banjo picks out the melody to "We Shall Overcome". We are not saying we would like to have been there, but we hope that if we were, we would have picked up a shovel and stood the line. You can't deny the other side
Monday, January 24, 2005 Our Lady of the Snows Come, see the north-wind's masonry, The weather reports were darksome and woeful, delivered in low tones by grim-faced men standing beneath white-shrouded eaves and shouting into their microphones. "It will be a long and fell night ere it is ended," they proclaimed. "And the sky will be anguished with the very weight of it, so fierce and terrible the storm! Back to you, Gordon." We loaded our minivan with guitars and New Yorkers, as centurions once girded their hips with sword and dagger, and left Washington DC late Saturday morning, to the lamentations of our friends and unspeaking accusation of the Channel 7 SuperDoppler Radar, which showed vast, amorphous clouds of snow and ice and wind from New England to Richmond. But we were not to be daunted, armed with the bravado of fading youth and flush with the heady wine of foolishness. Visibility was poor, and the windshield required constant attention in the form of de-icing spray, gloved hands and ineffective curses. Many Corollas and Jettas were unable to brave the storm, and sank beneath the mounting drifts with a last, desperate gunning of their engines. "Do not forget us," they seemed to call above the gentle, sinister wind. "Purchase snacks at the gas station in our names, lest our stories be lost to history." Clots of sedans gathered beneath overpasses to knock ice from their wipers and share tales of horror; short-lived communities of the damned. The state troopers drove slowly, like pace cars, and they were helpless in face of foolhardiness and foul weather. We crossed the Delaware Memorial Bridge just after nightfall, at a walking pace. The sea was choked by snowfall, and the far shore seemed lightless and alone. Unable to continue, we faltered, like a condemnned man facing the lions, and sought refuge at the Pennsville Hampton Inn, New Jersey exit 1. The Cracker Barrel was closed, to our dismay, but the trapped night-staff made cupcakes, as if to ward off the murderous dark, and we thanked them. Although we had prepared to meet our maker, there in the quiet of room 327, pitiless fate granted a reprieve, impressed despite itself by our resourcefulness, resolve and ability to steer in the snow. The next morning the roads were clear all the way to Brooklyn, and we drove into the city, singing as we went. And if the snow buries my neighborhood,
Friday, January 21, 2005 Life as a City of Boats Things have become hectic and unplanned, here at the home offices of Bears Will Attack. Tonight is a rock show featuring Meredith Bragg & The Terminals, as well as the Debutantes (the rock band of the Cutest Redhead in the World), and there has been lots of confusion over drums and guitar amps, and people arriving from New York on buses. Add to that the looming threat of world-ending snowfall and icy storm-weather and armed guards in the streets of federal Washington. Also our shirt is wrinkled. Well, there is nothing for it but strong drink and fast driving over treacherous roads, as our grandmother would say. The minivan handles like a walrus in snowy weather, by which we mean it is ungainly and weird, and wobbles from side to side in an alarming fashion. But it runs, and that is all we can ask of it. We are too flustered to pontificate today, so we will instead share with you the following heart-warming true story sent to us yesterday. It is a tale of two men who bridged the gulf between therapist and client, and we feel it strikes the right note for the end of this long and troubled week. (Note: Names have been changed to protect the innocent): This is an actual transcript of a conversation I had at work today: George: Hey buddy, are you strong? (Larry makes sure that no one is looking and opens the wine. It has a screw top) In the end, Larry decided to trust George. Or perhaps he decided "To hell with it. Let the guy have some wine." It was, after all, only table wine. Either way, the lesson is clear. We are not islands in an uncaring sea, each of us friendless and alone, but boats tethered together with fragile ropes and flimsy bridges, and we float around in a great circle, and, since we are on boats, we can't really grow crops or manufacture anything, so we resort to piracy. We believe that, in our heart, and we intend to pass it on to our children.
Thursday, January 20, 2005 Letter from the Dry City's Heart It is Inauguration Day here in the federal city, and the air is loathsome with the iron taste of dread. We suppose that there are truckloads of ecstatic Republicans from Midland and Phoenix and Rocky Mount out there, stamping in the cold and beaming, but for those of us who still believe in the Age of Enlightenment, it is a dark day made darker by the barriers and police cars and Army trucks and men with snub-nosed service weapons and unfriendly expressions. We understand that there is a danger of the downtown DC area coming under attack by terrorists or hostile space aliens on this momentous day, but we cannot help but find it unsettling to be in the heart of American democracy at such a time and find ourselves literally under the gun. It does not seem the sort of image likely to be commemorated on the currency any time soon. Luckily, however, no one seems to have detonated a suitcase nuke on Pennsylvania Avenue, which ensures the continued survival of not only the President, his coterie of sycophants and hatchet-men, and expensive-carsful of world leaders, but the editorial team of this web-journal. Although we have no desire to hasten our eventual demise, we suppose that nuclear immolation is a good way to go. Quick, clean, bloodless. We imagine there would be an enormous, unplaceable sound, and then a moment of perfect, horrible silence, and then oblivion. We would prefer this to any other sort of violent death (small-arms fire, artillery, knives, bludgeoning weapons, etc.), but such choices are not ours to make. There are a numnber of theories about the fate of the soul after death. Some say that we ascend to heaven, if we are judged right, and enter into an eternal paradise of happiness and harp-playing. Some say that we are reborn again and again, climbing the ladder of existence from earthworm to shrew to pedigreed Weimaraner to blogger to dolphin until we reach complete enlightenment and become one with the indistinguishable cosmos and disappear like rain. Some say that nothing awaits us beyond the veil. Being neither a theologian or a sorceror, we cannot say for certain. We hope that there will be music, and drinks, and our favorite people sitting on green, well-tended lawns under bright skies, but we will settle for someplace out of the cold. The little river is blue and long.
Wednesday, January 19, 2005 Snow Flurries Today's installment of Bears Will Attack will be scant and unhelpful, like clothes made of tissue paper, or a pamphlet about sin. We are spending the day traveling to Washington DC, as we do so very often. We would explain our reasons for the trip, but they are unoriginal, and do not bear elaboration. We are setting our teeth grimly as we think about this trip, as Watergate City is in full lockdown mode in honor of this weekend's Inauguration. Tanks, bitter-faced gunmen, and towering Jersey walls of unforgiving concrete will mark the streets. Our president and his cadre have heard of sunshine and wide avenues, and decided long ago they wanted none of it. Also, our friends there report that there was a man threatening to burn himself in a van full of flammable gas-cans yesterday afternoon, bringing the traffic downtown to a shuddering halt, but whether or not this is related, we cannot say. A trail of shooting stars
Tuesday, January 18, 2005 The Sea Sure As I Martin Luther King Jr. Day has passed, and the cosmic wheel turned to honor his legacy by unleashing a bone-wrenching cold o'er the land. Typically we regret the decision to wear long underwear to work around lunchtime, but today we are gladdened by it each time someone walks down the hall rubbing their ears and cursing the name of God. Our erstwhile readers will be pleased to know that "The Weekend During Which We Will Do Nothing of Consequence" was a roaring success. Aside from some unavoidable social engagements and two trips to the bookstore, we spent much of the weekend watching movies on TV, messing around with HTML coding, and learning Mountain Goats songs. We can report that 'Back to the Future III' is still pretty awesome, this website is probably never going to look really sharp, and all Mountain Goats songs are easy to play. We also went with some friends to see the movie 'Hotel Rwanda', and, while we do not intend to be all preachy and insufferable about how you "must see this movie!", we were saddened, humbled and moved by it. We read at least two books about the Rwandan genocide which made us feel ill-at-heart for some weeks, but we never felt it right down in the gut like we did while watching Don Cheadle protect a hotelful of orphans and refugees with quiet dignity and Heinekens. Fortunately the director did not choose to use Nick Drake songs in the soundtrack, or we would still be at the Brookln Academy of Music theater, weeping for the unspeakable loss of it all. However, as we mentioned earlier, the cosmic wheel turns, and each new day provides another brick of experience in the towering wall of perspective. Our younger brother, who wanders the world having adventures and contracting intestinal ailements, contacted us by email to alert us that he had been robbed in Argentina. Fortunately, unlike the time he was rolled by a French prostitute in a Paris alley, the rogues did not get his passport, so a greater crisis was averted. Also, he seems to have taken up with some Brazilian girl. It is an ill wind that blow no one any good. In honor of our brother's experience, and to shine the brave light of Bears Will Attack on a corner of the world not our own, we will use today's bandwidth to share this picture, taken by our brother somewhere in Peru.
We are a global concern, here at Bears Will Attack, and though we fail again and again, we try to be aware of the thin-ness of the webs that keep everything together. And the sea sure as I
Monday, January 17, 2005 Hotel Rwanda Regular readers of this web-journal will have become accustomed to our occasional descent into complaint. We were sad about a girl, our van got broken into, our job is often unchallenging. 'Law & Order' is not always on when we want to watch it. And so on. However, rest assured that we are aware of our colossal, unimaginable good fortune in being born in this country, where we have the luxury to worry about things like that. If you have the time, please go and see this movie.
Saturday, January 15, 2005 A Life of Possibilities We are at work on Saturday, once again, toiling away at our desk like a petitioner crossing the vast fields of Elysium, uncertain as to his purpose or destination, carrying a jade box in his hands filled with the ashes of his king, and bearing a shield and spear in case he should be set upon by the shifter wolves, who flicker in and out of reality when they run and whose fangs are made of iron. We are feeling responsible today, like a real-live grown-up, since, for once, we spent Friday night like someone who has to work the next day, rather thank like someone who was out on a two-day furlough from prison. Drinking only two drinks at our friend Troy's birthday party, and heading home by 1:15 in the morning to get some sleep did not help our reputation as a man of daring and mystery, but it has made our Saturday far more pleasant and bearable than it might have otherwise been. (Since we are tight, we will share with you, hawk-eyed readers, our latest accomplishment, which is a website we gave our dad for Christmas. Christmas has come and gone, but laziness, pressing travel plans and technical ineptitude combined to delay the official "launch" of this fine website until this morning. We urge all of you to visit, and to consider our father's work for all your oceanscape photography needs. Although born inland, his veins run salty, and it is from him we inherited our desperate need to travel repeatedly to the edge of the sea. ) We were also glad of the chance to get out of the house bright and early this weekend, as we were lost under a black cloud all last week. It may have been a mild seasonal depression, or a particularly subtle and vengeful cold, or a malevolent coctail of poisons slipped into our drink by one of our many enemies. We suspect it was just a bad case of exhaustion, but whatever it was, it seems to have passed, and there is the faint sound of trumpets ringing major scales and daring changes in the air, somewhere nearby. Outside the opera house in Sydney,
Friday, January 14, 2005 Climbing on Your Art Like a Shield We are all out of wisdom, romance, vituperation, opprobrium, chutzpah, derring-do, melancholia and wit today, here at Bears Will Attack. This may be due to the grey and sullen cast of the day, or the rain, or iron deficiency. It is hard to say. At any rate, we will use this opportunity to inform you, our loyal readers, about some things of which we are fond that you may be unaware of. Superchunk Cupcakes from Buttercup Bakery in Manhattan The Untouchables [REDACTED] Digital Cameras Having No Work to Do at Work The day wears onward, and the weekend is nearly upon us. We are looking forward to it. We could use the rest. Also, we need a haircut and some new pants. You won't even recognize us. Here we go in spurts, the colors fairly burst
Thursday, January 13, 2005 Kittens / Rainy Streets We apologize for our absence from the blogosphere yesterday. We were laid low with bodily aches, tiredness, and feelings of malaise. Coming into work two hours late this morning seems to have done wonders, however, and we feel much better, thank you. Also, it is a beautiful early-winter day here in New York City. The sky is clear, the taxicabs are hurtling through the streets with something less than their usual life-threatening violent speed, and optimism is in the air. We suspect there may be drugs in the water, but who are we to complain? Every time we have left the house in the last several days, the streets have been wet, as if from recent and terrible rains, but we have never seen it. It may be deliberately avoiding us, which troubles us not at all. To make amends to those of our readers who depend on this web-journal for emotional sustenance, we offer the following pictures of precious kittens sleeping in an adorable little heap, curled up on a computer mouse, and being held up at gunpoint:
Those litte rascals. What won't they do for a laugh? We cannot stay and chat today, dolorous readers, as we have a lot to take care of. We will be less frazzled after this weekend, which we have already set aside as "The Weekend During Which We Will Do Nothing of Consequence". We intend to sleep late, return library books, make some sandwiches, and catch up on those movies we have been recording on the DVR ("The Untouchables", "You've Got Mail" and "The Mummy"). But even though we will SEEM lethargic and pointless to the ignorant eye, we will actually be a churning maelstrom of daring plans, which we will share with all of you as soon as it seems wise to do so.
Tuesday, January 11, 2005 Searching for the White Whale Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago. We have been considering the state of things, here at the home editorial offices of Bears Will Attack, high on the ninth floor of an enormous building on the weird and improbable island of Manhattan. The very fact of spending all these days in an office building is getting to us. It lacks any sort of romantic appeal, inasmuch as it is a warren of smallish and inelegant rooms filled with fabric-covered boxes where people sit with computers and photographs of their boyfriends. Any workplace is bound to seem stale and unappealing after awhile, we are sure. But we would like to see the light of day more often than we currently do. Unfortunately, we are lazy at heart, and lack the will to do things like go running in the park or build a raft out of logs and sail it down the Rapphannock River with our friend Edward, which was one of the things we really meant to do last year. It's possible that some of our disaffection with our work is due to the conversation we just had with one of the head communications people for a prominent government agency, during which we were forced to say the following thing with total seriousness: "Yes, I understand that you wanted this distributed to the media two hours ago, but as I explained to [name redacted] in my email earlier, the contact list you provided us only contains names and telephone numbers, and, as I'm sure you realize, we can't send a document of any kind to people's telephone numbers." This sounds snarky when laid out in told typeface, but our tone was one of great understanding and compassion, as if to say "Yes, it's *almost* possible to send documents to people's regular voice-only telephone lines, but, alas, just not quite." Given these factors, and countless others too trivial to mention, we were scrolling through the classified ads yesterday, and rather than look for the same sorts of things we always look for ("Editorial" and "Newspapers/Magazines"), we searched for: "International Yacht Captain", "Maritime Security", "Vampire Hunter", "Seed Delivery" and "Causer of Useless and Beautiful Disturbances". These searches returned few results, and the jobs we did find were well outside what might be charitably referred to as our skill set. But the one useful trait we inherited from our father's side of the family is tenacity, and we can tell that something better is out there, just beneath the placid surface of the water. We will look harder next week. Now it's a noisy noisy night
Monday, January 10, 2005 A Nerd's Day Off We have been complaining about our exhaustion lately, which does not make for scintillating reading, even on a blog. To remedy this, we are using our day off (today) to sit on the living room floor watching old episodes of ER on television, checking our email, and reading the Sunday New York Times. It is a hard life. We deserve a day off. Not only did we spend the entire last three weeks speeding from one city to the next and sleeping on an assortment of sofas, we spent the weekend in constant motion as well. Saturday night we played bass for the Debutantes at a hole-in-the-wall bar on the west side. It was a temporary gig, as their normal bass player was unable to play the show. We did our best to learn a dozen songs in a couple days, and we managed to learn eleven of them. We played the twelfth one anyway, and no one seemed to notice. It was in the key of E-major, we think. We meant to rest up yesterday, but there was a big D&D game. You probably understand. We have a few romantic thoughts on our mind, as well as a few tales of doom, but we lack the heart for such things just at present. Here are a few of the best lines from yesterday's game for your enjoyment: Who knows something about the Glorfens? I bet you do. There was also this great part where Dave's character dressed up as one of the Feldist temple-guards and tried to bluff this high-ranking priest, and Jacob's character was outside the window climbing up the walll, and the guy totally knew. It was awesome. I've got the Dungeon Master's Guide
Friday, January 7, 2005 There Should Be a Light That Never Goes Out We are still recovering from great weariness today, much like those famous people who are always being treated for "exhaustion". Except, in our case, we were exhausted from doing too much and getting too little sleep, and not from abusing heroin. Also, we recently became an executive, which is somewhat at odds with our view of ourself as a working-class hero. True, we work in an office, and have little professional exposure to the people, but that does not mean that we side with the vast, malevolent indifference of the corporate world. We personally think that General Mills can go straight to hell, whether they make Pop-Tarts or not. There is a John Cusack line in 'High Fidelity' on this issue that we like: Sure I want their money and clothes and jobs and opinions. And I'd like to have advice on jet lag, but that's not it. I mean they're not bad people and I'm not a class warrior, it's something else. This may conflict somewhat with our earlier opprobrium, but we think its' important to stay grounded. Rich people aren't bad people, we know. On the whole, they are no better or worse than any other subgrouping of people. It's just not a healthy way to go through life, we feel, like being addicted to painkillers or wearing a bag on your head. However, this email came down the pike yesterday at work, along with a brief and somewhat muddled congratulatory speech by our notoriously absent-minded boss: Brian Minter is promoted to Assistant Managing Editor. Please join me in congratulating our friend and colleague who has done such a fine job guiding our company through some great years. I am pleased we can recognize his leadership with this well-deserved promotion. Please give him your full support, energy and enthusiasm as we head into our 20th year in business. The place where we work is actally much less corporate-minded than that paragraph (or "graf" as we say in the news-editing game) makes it sound. Also, as far as we can tell, this promotion comes with no additional responsibilities, requirements or renumeration whatsoever. We don't even need new business cards, since we never personally encounter any living people in a professional context. Still, being referred to as part of "management" has upset our view of the world and our place in it. We wish we still had some sort of outlet for ill-informed sociopolitical ranting, but the BWA Campaign Blog has been retired for several months now. We could start it up again, but the election is over and the exact wrong sort of people carried the day -- abolishing the less-controllable sorts of freedom, establishing a Ministry of Truth, and issuing constant assurances about their vigilance and church-going forthrightness from arrow-slits in massive federal bunkers made of mortar casings and repurposed tank iron. Things seem to have run down a bad lane lately, but we cannot seem to find the best way to light the way back. Send us your best idea. So take a sigh
Thursday, January 6, 2005 If Only Some Rain Would Fall We are exhausted today, storm-wracked readers, our eyelids drooping down in a comical, cartoon-style manner and a little row of Z's escaping from our mouth as we doze on our keyboard. We might attribute this state of affairs to some sort of sleeping gas released into the air-filtration system of our office by powerful corporate and political interests bent on silencing this web-journal to further their complete and total ruin of the American dream; or it may have been the long and terrible drive we made from Washington to New York late last night in the sleet and the rain. It was foolish to leave DC at 10 o'clock at night in the teeth of a storm, and we considered this as we drove slowly up the New Jersey turnpike in the company of vast, ghostly eighteen-wheelers and the half-glimpsed wraiths of snow flurries. We considered it at greater length when we pulled off and slept for 45 minutes at the J. Fenimore Cooper Service Area, our winter coat pulled over us and our stocking cap smooshed up like a pillow. We seem to recall some fell and darksome dreams of horsed riders and thousand-foot-high thunderheads rolling across the plains, but it has all vanished now, and good riddance. At any rate, it is all we can do to get through the rest of the day, so we leave you now with nothing but the weather reports and the faintly-heard strains of bombastic indie-rock music, which is what we always turn to when the going gets tough. If only some rain would fall
Wednesday, January 5, 2005 Postcards from the Outlands We are still recovering from the last 72 hours in Washington, as we tend to pack our days here with an endless series of social and rock-related obligations. As always, we could use a vacation from our vacation. Speaking of rock, we have been quite the hired-gun lately. In addition to our usual gig playing keys for the critically-acclaimed Meredith Bragg and the Terminals, we have been drafted to play the electric bass for DC's brave and talented Olivia Mancini, and New York's hardest-rocking redheads the Debutantes. Having (mostly) given up our dreams of indie-rock stardom years ago, it is nice to be suddenly in demand as the East Coast's most handsome and well-dressed sideman. Having spent all this time preening and selecting outfits, however, we did not have time to compose a suitably-thoughtful and enlightening blog entry today. Fortunately for us, our narrative topic of choice is the endless, fascinating parade of freakishness and singularity of the world, and nowhere is this more apparent than the vast, lawless blogosphere. Blogs hosted at Blogger.com, as you may know, have a little link at the top that reads "Next Blog". If you have a few moments to spare, or if you are researching a graduate thesis on general weirdness, we recommend this option. Here, in no particular order, is a random sampling of chatter from across the wires. (Names and web addresses have been omitted to protect the innocent, the guilty, and the guy who wrote "Yeah, I was totally freak that time.") I realized today that Amy is just a taller, extremely thin version of Niki with the same length (usually up) dirty blonde hair, and Niki has the same hair as Maria, except Maria has really long hair. Kind of a strange comparison, but I noticed Amy and Niki have the same facial structure. Then I remembered Niki telling me she was part German, part Italian, and part Canadian. So she's got Italian hair like Maria. I asked Amy if she was German, and that explained it. It's time that values two dimensions. -living in the school is useless(but common, i wont die 1 la.. still got alot to do) everytime SIANZ SIANZ SIANZ.. really hope ya by my side.. really... if ya read this, maybe u treat this as some useless paper in ur mailbox.. but to me, i writing down all my love things... haix... tell ya also useless de... what can i do?? Today, my wife and I went out into the country. It was cold and snow was spread everywhere beneath the bare trees. We spent some time at a Buddhist Prayer Center located deep in the woods. Later, we traveled to a bookstore overlooking a river, where green water churned madly about ice-laden boulders. Then, we came home. When is the last time the United Nations thanked the United States for anything? Just something. When Florida was slammed by Hurricanes did the United Nations or any other country send one dime to help out? They may have, I just don't remeber it. Saat paling manis ialah saat2 bersama orang tersayang... Look, agree with it or not, the porn industry always seems to be among the fist movers in embracing new distribution methods and new technology. Back then, several years before, I was almost a loser. I didn't know why I should live and how I can fulfill my life in a better way. I knew a little how to communicate with others and I was very afraid facing this world. Pothetic huh!Yeah, I was totally freak that time. This "blog" has been created for all my students. I hope you all may enjoy this site as an instrument to improve your learning and to enhance our friendship. Sometimes things may seem very difficult. Nevertheless, never give it up, no! Fight back! That's the key to success! We agree, in one way or another, with each of these sentiments.
Tuesday, January 4, 2005 A Unified Theory of Everything / Christmas Porn We are a blog of the people, here at Bears Will Attack, and all are welcome upon our crowded but generous shore. We are pleased that we can serve as a beacon in troubled times, a place where the world-weary, the lame, the questioning, the sexually-confused and the irritable can find answers. Although the new year is fresh upon us, a number of strange and mysterious web-searches have led internet-trawlers to this website in recent days: brian minter Some of these make more sense than others. Some of them make no sense to us at all. What makes even less sense is that our number-one search result for the month of December was the phrase "christmas porn". Nineteen people typed "christmas porn" into a search engine, scrolled down through dozens of pages of links with an unhappy, dissatisfied expression on their face, found this website, and came directly here, pleased that their search was at an end at last. What did they find? What was going through the vast, alien machine-mind of the computers when they sent them here? What is "christmas porn", exactly? It's a mystery. But, as we have remarked before, we believe very strongly in the fundamental interconnectedness of all things, and we suspect that this means something profound, as does "haircut clippers barber short terrifying". We have no word for that which we seek, just as fish have no word for water, but it will be breathtaking in its elegance, and we will know it when we see it. Candy left over from Halloween
Monday, January 3, 2005 I Don't Feel Any Different Welcome back to the regular world, sinful and redeemed readers. While we were all away, a new year arrived on horseback, gold-plated harness glittering in the noonday sun, with the distant thunder of cannon on the ridges. (We feel that 2005 will have a Napoleonic War feel to it. In case you are wondering, however, we have cast ourself as the intrepid Duke of Wellington, and NOT the short, luckless Frenchman, doomed by history to the role of comic failure.) Our New Year's Eve and surrounding days were eventful, and were we to take the time to tell you all about them, you would be shocked, enthralled and dismayed. We have work to do, however, and cannot fritter the entire day away in foolish gossip-mongering. Suffice it to say that we wore a black suit and a red tie, consumed foolish quantities of alcohol, forced a strange man and his girlfriend to drive us to Fort Greene under the assumption that he was a car service driver, slept three mornings away, drove a minivanful of people from New York to DC, took pictures with our new digital camera, ate lots of Thai food, and had a New Year's Eve date so beautiful that her after-image is still burned onto our eyes, as if we had been staring at solar flares. (Note: The preceding are listed in no particular order.) We are recovering from all this back in Washington, where the news anchors are stern-faced and the streets are quiet. We came down to play a rock show, and to see our old friend The Sad-Hearted Marxist Professor, who inspired us to change our New Year's resolution from "Be a more responsible and upstanding citizen" to "Live off the grid." Do not bother to look for us, Treasury Department. We are already gone. So everybody put your best suit or dress on I wish the world was flat like the old days
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