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08 April 2006

if you don't ask me out to dinner i don't eat.

in the artwork for the airbag / how am i driving? ep radiohead has a whole bunch of neat stuff. it's one of my all time favorite album artworks. it's formatted like a product questionnaire, i guess, only next to each checkbox are these sentences. my favorite is the one that says "if you don't ask me out to dinner i don't eat."

i've been told more than once (and sometimes incredulously) that my songs are all about girls. well, i guess mostly that's true. it's not on purpose though. it's just that i can't really help it. i'm not a great songwriter. i can't write a song about a party or a weeklong bender or a baseball game or a turtle crossing a highway. i do seem to be able to put thoughts down about girls once in a while though. i don't know why i beat myself up over it. lots of people can only write well about one thing. you have to be a real genius like springsteen or wesley willis (rip) to write songs about whatever you want.

but nothing i've ever written really sums it up as nicely as that one sentence.

it's a big city, new york. you can go out and you can meet new people every single night, if you want. and you can make small talk and you can buy drinks and you can get phone numbers and dance until 5am, if you want. this sea is full of fish with spikey heels and designer jeans and haircuts that cost more than my first guitar. fish are cold blooded.

last night i stayed up late screaming into a microphone to try to finish "a viking's funeral" and i did finish it but then my computer crashed before i saved. that song has gotten too big. too many tracks, too many layers. my computer really can't handle it. but i'm not willing to compromise. i might be buying a really fast computer soon.

i don't predict it'll be anyone's favorite song. it sure as hell isn't mine. but i've got a sound in my head and i'm not stopping until i've made it happen. an excercise in excercise.

some cool things have happened for me lately that i haven't really mentioned on here.

when you sit down to write but you don't know what to write about, i guess it comes out looking something like this.

a long while back i mentioned developing some old rolls of film i still have lying around. well, i finally did the first couple. taken circa 2002.


it's not super easy to tell, but this is a picture of how someone (we never did find out who) puked behind my friend victor's door all over his jeans. it's funny how you can forget all about something until you see a picture to remind you. that was so gross.

4 comments:

  1. aaaaaahhhhhhh. that is the sound of me shitting my pants.

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  2. aaaaaahhhhhhh. that is the sound of me shitting my pants.

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  3. dude. i remember the morning after, vic was sitting in his butterfly chair. he was sitting with his feet on the edge of the chair. he farted, then cupped the air at his crotch, and pulled his hand to his face.

    he took a whiff and gagged. and then he said, "why'd i do that?"

    i'll never forget that.

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  4. hi there. Hope your song writting is going well. I a poet and struggle since being happily married, take creative liscence and lie.
    anyway, you don't know me; and yes, commenting on a stranger's 6 yr old post is a bit odd but fuck, like I said, i'm a poet. We stray.
    I wanted to send my sincere thanks. When I was still in high school I had "if you don't ask me to dinner..." written in large red sharpie caps on my wall. (sort of a middle finger to my now-husband). I am compiling a hall of words: a long hallway filled floor to ceiling with lovely letters; poems, quotes, lyrics, lines of script,etc. So many things said much earlier and much better than my mouth could ever form. Things to inspire,remind, chide, uplift, relish in, and enabelling conversation and crazy looks.
    that quote has never left my head, but for the life of me, I could not figure out where or why it was said by thom yorke.
    MUCH TOO MUCH LATER... Many, many thanks! It was driving me crazy & now I'm gonna see 'bout getting a poster of that album art.
    if so desired, you may email me a lyric of yours or another and I will script it to fitting paper and stitch it in with all the other word reminders to keep on :)

    i'm not crazy,

    e

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