Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the_alphabet's LiveJournal:

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Monday, September 20th, 2004
10:09 pm	Do you know how something seems like a good idea at some time, then some time later doesn't seem like such a good idea? Now might be a good time to talk about overeating, how I tend to have a habit of eating sometimes to the point of being really uncomfortable. I remember once I wrote something about associating a particular city, Kansas City, with overeating, but really you can add St. Louis and Boston and New York. So my habits are actually really well traveled. (Comment on this)
2:13 pm	I've been doing this little experiment lately (it seems to be a favorite for more than myself): drinking multiple cups of coffee in the morning, feeling generally alert and good, and then several hours later feeling rather abysmally crashed and depressed. To illustrate this, I'm going to write another entry at about 10:00 p.m. tonight. Hopefully this will produce a satisfyingly pessimistic entry. Wish me luck! (Comment on this)
Monday, September 6th, 2004
10:53 pm	My first words this morning attempted to ask if a certain resturaunt took credit card. Nothing came out. Over the night I'd somehow convinced myself that I'd been healed of my cold. I might have dreamed one of those lying dreams that are supposed to enter through a gate of horn. Things learned: 1. If you don't get enough sleep, you can get a cold in the dog days of summer. 2. The first words of the day are always a sort of test. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, August 23rd, 2004
4:10 pm	For lack of more exciting things to do, I went down to meshuggah the other night and simultaneously drank coffee and read Frankenstein. I noticed it had a bizarre split-level layout (what do people do up there?), and while I was looking for some type of coffee listing and standing there generally bewildered, some customers sitting at the bar passed me a barely-together assemblage of laminated brown sheets. I forgot to mention lately I've been drinking coffee with about one-half milk because I imagine myself to have a stomach that's a little short of invincibility. (Comment on this)
3:13 pm	Swampwater has updated! (Comment on this)
Friday, August 13th, 2004
1:38 am	I saw news about this tonight. I guess we won't need the executive order. (Comment on this)
Friday, August 6th, 2004
6:38 pm	"Could you tell us some of your weaknesses?" It's funny how I seem to actually need praise from people, but when they actually put out, I start thinking I'm more important than they are. Aloofness (and on a happy day, reckless, stubborn, opinionated-ness) follows (after all, one has to find exciting and fresh new souls who haven't yet stooped so low as to bestow a compliment). One realizes, maybe, how having a glorified accomplishment like a successful book or some high-and-mighty piece of art might make someone extremely hard to live with. (Comment on this)
3:14 pm	E M P L O Y M E N T A P P L I C A T I O N THERE ARE A LOT OF COMPANIES OUT THERE YOU CAN CHOOSE AS AN EMPLOYER. BUT YOU'VE PICKED UP THIS BROCHURE, SO YOU MUST BE INTERESTED IN QUIKTRIP. (Comment on this)
1:27 am	Apparently, John Kerry was treated to a view of the St. Louis Amtrak station today. If he becomes president, I wouldn't mind if that image were to stick with him. Not to always be down on St. Louis, but the situation really does merit some kind of wild and unprecedented executive order. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 4th, 2004
1:20 am	Also when I was driving downtown for basically no reason, I listened to Cat Power's You Are Free for the first time in a year. Around the time I bought it, I went to see her at Blueberry Hill with a friend and waited for what seemed a ridiculously long time for her to start. The opening band turned out to be just a single guy called Entrance who played so long I started hearing people make bad puns about when he would Exit. When Chan Marshall finally took the stage, she smiled and drank and noodled around forever, not feeling the slightest bit obligated to actually play a show. She seemed completely ephemeral, impulsive--I'd read an interview where she talked about writing five of the songs from Moon Pix in a single night, and someone was saying he'd heard her play beautifully the night before in Chicago, but St. Louis seemed like an off night for her. She only finished about half the songs she started. (Comment on this)
Sunday, August 1st, 2004
12:44 pm	It appears I've slept through church. (Comment on this)
3:23 am	On Friday and Saturday nights, it's really easy to strand yourself using the Metrolink. The street in the Loop gets pretty quiet around midnight, apparently, even on nice warm summer nights like this one. I had thought, surely, public transportation will still save me slightly after midnight on a Saturday night in the Loop. But when the city started to get that empty feeling, I started to feel like I was wrong. I didn't know any numbers for taxis--you would think I might be able to ask around for a phone book and then wait, frustrated, for two hours while a taxi finally got around to picking me up (I've had several recent experiences with this), but I really didn't have the patience for it. I'd parked in the Central West End, and I used to run that distance when I lived on West Pine, so I started running like a deliriously-drunk frat-boy or like a banshee, I don't know which. As it turned out, a guy from Collinsville saw me running madly as a moose on Des Peres and gave me a ride. We made conversation. He seemed confused as to why I was running in Forest Park at midnight. He told me he'd recieved a placement from the Japanese government to teach english in Kyoto, Japan. I told him I was wanting to do the same thing. So he ended up giving me some helpful advice. Everything turned out surprisingly well, but I'd hate to have to explain my actions if someone were to ask. I'd hate to give satisfyingly conventional reasons for why I'd even gone out in the first place. Searching out new places to read, I guess. Mostly with coffee. And brooding. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, July 26th, 2004
2:38 pm	It’s possible that after reading a certain passage from My Antonia and being manipulated by Cold Comfort Farm, The Manchurian Candidate, and several Hitchcock films, I came to see traveling by train as romantic in more than one sense. Stories like these seem to be practically unwitting Amtrak commercials for unattached writerly types who like to stare out the window and describe the sun as a “fiery orb.” From my experience, though, these advertisements aren’t totally accurate. Instead of meeting some witty, twenty-sixish British girl, I wander into the lounge car and meet a passenger whose obnoxiousness has made him a train-wide celebrity, and he feels the need to warn an “educated fool” like myself about the coming judgment foretold in Isaiah chapter 13. All the volcanoes in the world will erupt, and the destruction will start from the sea and travel inland to the coasts. He insists I need to “drop everything” and become a drifter. To dispel some of his seriousness, I drop my hamburger in playful mockery, but this only makes him madder and more talkative. Finally he leaves, and an Amish couple from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, tries to console me, and also make sure I didn’t believe anything that man just said. When I’m alone, though, stuff like this bothers me. There’s no one to joke with. Later I even check Isaiah 13 to see if the man had any idea what he was saying, but he appears to have chosen the number 13 only because of its unluckiness. On the way to Portland, Maine, I get bored and take some pictures of myself. They make me look weary and discomposed. Each of my two eyes seems to be looking in separate directions. Later, in Boston, someone is wondering why I would ever travel such a long distance on Amtrak. “Did you meet anyone?” she asks. I avoided the issue. I met the people I sat by, I said. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, July 25th, 2004
11:52 pm	Tonight some friends and I sat on some blankets spread on the non-Skinker side of Washington University's improbable castle and watched an orchestra concert. Afterwards, I walked around a little and saw their strangely inhuman "The Thinker" type statue. The last time I walked around the Wash U campus after dark was when I was in junior high and obsessed with astronomy. I remember walking with my dad past lushly-ivied buildings to a lecture hosted by the local astronomical society. As it turned out, the lecture was way above my head. I soon became tired and sick and wandered out and looked at the stars. Actually, that isn't quite what happened, but it's not every day one can cast one's self in a Whitman poem. This is the second time tonight I've made this allusion. I felt silly the first time, too. (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 22nd, 2004
12:50 pm	"...my mind returns to a prayer of invocation at a political party convention which I attended as a delegate. There would have been nothing wrong with asking for the gifts of wisdom and correction of error, but the minister had a different idea. After long droning preliminaries, he sucked in his breath and roared out his impious demand. "God!" he bellowed. "Lead your party to victory!" Awakened, the delegates cheered until the sunlight from the skylights seemed to dance. Who would have thought that so many believed in God! And how exhilarating to know to which party the King of the Universe belonged!" Sigh. (From J. Budziszewski's The Revenge of Conscience) (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 15th, 2004
1:35 am	Here are some quotes I found. I didn't know the word "polyamorous" until today. I disagree with the views of human sexuality presented in these quotes. "One challenge that polyamorous individuals need to contend with is the label of deviance (Knapp, 1975; Mann, 1975). They may be shunned by members of some conservative religions, and (as in the example of the triad whose custody of their daughter was challenged) they are subject to legal discrimination. Polyamorous unions are not typically recognized by church or state, and spousal health benefits are not available for one's non-married partner. Many of the discriminations that the gay community faces are concerns for the polyamorous community as well (Browning, Reynolds, & Dworkin, 1991)." "...and at times, among gay male relationships, the openness of the contract makes it more likely to survive than many heterosexual bonds. Some of this is unavailable to the male-female union: there is more likely to be greater understanding of the need for extramarital outlets between two men than between a man and a woman; and again, the lack of children gives gay couples greater freedom." (Andrew Sullivan, Virtually Normal) "He, on the other hand, caught up in his excited passions, was eager to live out his theory of "free love," encouraging Claire's affections. In the early part of 1815 Percy's friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg came to stay with Mary, Percy, and Claire for six weeks, during which time Percy urged Mary, despite her reluctance, to reciprocate Hogg's sexual overtures." (Comment on this)
Sunday, July 4th, 2004
1:32 pm	Nervous around other children: I remember my dad at one point telling me to relax. "You seem uptight," he said. "And when you're uptight, it makes other people uptight." I didn't know quite what to say to this, so as usual I didn't say anything. (Comment on this)
Saturday, July 3rd, 2004
11:57 pm	Today we were leaving the Kirkwood fireworks after I'd grown somewhat snobbish, amused, and nauseous at spaghetti straps and bad CCR covers. We had to wait for a train to pass on the way into the park, and as we walked out we got caught behind another one. My sister was laughing about the resulting "collective groan." I was reminded how she usually takes pleasure in being part of a group, even to the point of wanting to define herself by what communities she happens to be a part of. And I was reminded how I'm not like that at all, how I abhor labels because I rightly or wrongly and perhaps arrogantly think others with that label are lemmings, and how I've developed this highly original theory that in groups people tend to act in certain ways just because they're following the crowd. I think about how in this world, things are subject to decay, and if anything is subject to decay, it's the action of the collective, even if it's merely a groan. I'd like to say this is my precise reason for not laughing with her, but really it was mostly because I was feeling really tired and gloomy. (Comment on this)
Friday, July 2nd, 2004
10:49 pm	The latest Harry Potter movie is at the Omnimax in the St. Louis Science Center. My sister is a fan, so we went to see it this afternoon. We arrived a little late, and when we asked if there were still tickets available, the man at the ticket counter told us there were, but the seats wouldn't be very good. We told him we wanted the tickets. At the Omnimax theater, the film is projected on the cieling. How could some seats be worse than others? The answer to this question, we found out, has something to do with craning one's neck in new ways and with looming objects like the spires of old churches looking wrongly curved. (Comment on this)
Saturday, June 19th, 2004
7:27 pm	I went to the "Friends of the Library" used book fair today and walked around dreamily and quietly, with a measure of gloominess, aloofness, and listlessness. Maybe all these words could be condensed into "broodingness," and then I could explain my mood and demeanor at most book fairs with a single word. I picked up a thick My Antonia with large print, an even thicker Middlemarch with small print, and a chinese cookbook that drew my eye with the word WOK printed boldly on the front cover. Grand total $1.50. With great broodingness, I decided to walk, not drive, straight to the library from the book fair. At the library I picked up a book and found a funny letter to a young Allen Ginsberg from Marianne Moore: I have been thinking about this manuscript which you left me. I am sad to find that it reflects hardship. You have ability, and that means responsibility, does it not? There are in writing, a few technicalities to think about; but the thing that matters is our sense of awareness; this comes first. What are we to do about it? I am not satisfied with your solution of the problem. (2 Comments |Comment on this)