Monthly Archives: September 2009
This Be The Verse
| September 1, 2009 | Filled under Internerd |
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
— by Phillip Larkin
More here.
Wilshire Village
| September 1, 2009 | Filled under Internerd, Photo Album |
Then:
Last month:
Now:
Way to preserve your history and a charming little part of the city, Houston.
See also the death of Washington Ave.
Bicyclette
| September 2, 2009 | Filled under Video |
This is utter madness:
Will be stuck in my head ALL DAY. (Via Austin Two Wheels)
My candidate
| September 2, 2009 | Filled under Internerd |
My dog could run this state as well as Rick Perry. — Kinky Friedman, who I will be voting for (again).
The red pen
| September 2, 2009 | Filled under Shorts |
Read two short stories yesterday for my creative writing class. The first, “A & P” by John Updike*, was awesome and most excellent. I highly suggest you click that link and read it.
The second was “Stitches” by Antonya Nelson, who happens to teach creative writing at U of H. Here is some of my marginalia from that story:
- I hate this writing
- Electra. Or just weird
- Oedipal
- honesty?
- weird
- uhg.
- is that all it was?
- disgusting
- gross
- wtf is this?
- WTF?!
*The whole time I’m thinking, “This is the guy who wrote ‘The Jungle’?”
Hey look
| September 5, 2009 | Filled under Shorts |
My Marquesan tattoo was chosen as a favorite in a slideshow by the heavily-tattooed music listings editor and art director at the Houston Press. My life’s work is now complete.
Worth it
| September 10, 2009 | Filled under Blog |
I watched from my ex-pat residence in Korea as Anderson Cooper stood on the streets of New Orleans in the days after Hurricane Katrina. And three years later, I sat in a hotel room in Berlin and watched as he stood on the shores of Galveston Island, wondering if my house would be flooded when I got back from vacation.
I was lucky to not have suffered damage in either storm, and to have missed out on the weeks of power outages, roads clogged with debris and subsequent flooding due to our city’s wonderful civil engineering. But I wouldn’t have complained. It’s all a part of living in Houston.
That’s the idea behind the Houston: It’s Worth It ad campaign, and if you live here you already know all about this. But HIWI is a nicely subversive way to answer all those people in other parts of the country who love to tell me how much this town sucks (99% of whom have never lived here or even visited).
HIWI has released a book, HIWI:Ike chronicling our beloved city’s adventures with Mother Nature in the shadow of the other “big storm” a state over and a few years before. Ike made landfall in Galveston on Sept. 13 of last year, but many of the small beach communities along the Texas Coast were hit far worse (and received far less help) than Galvez Town.
Tonight, DOMY will host a sale and booksigning with the creators of HIWI. Check my friend Bargas’ contribution to the book on page 149.
Flower Gardens
| September 21, 2009 | Filled under Video |
My blogginess, it ebbs and flows. But I have a good excuse. I have been here, doing this:
Read more at the Houston Press and see all my pictures on Flickr.
Down to there
| September 29, 2009 | Filled under Blog |
For the past couple of years, I have been obsessed about hair. Mainly since I decided seriously to grow my own out. I am obsessive about other people’s hair, asking how they style it, what they wash it with, if they color it.
I’ve has short hair pretty much all my life. When I was 12 I got my hair cut into a chin-length bob, and a year later I got it all chopped off. For the following decade plus, I never wore it longer than a MIa Farrow-style pixie cut (often it was straight-up shaved). When I started to grow it out it grew back curly, which it had never been when I was a kid.
Having short hair for 2/3 of my life meant I never knew how to properly style it. I still don’t. Now that I have longer hair (it’s the longest it’s been since I was 6 or 7), all I ever do it wear it in a ponytail. I can’t stand it, I don;t know how to fix it, and it take forever to dry. I’ve been dying to get it cut off again because I know it looks good that way but I’m afraid I’ll regret it, and also, CLH is absolutely against that (not that he can stop me). Every time I see a cute girl with short hair I remember the compliments I got on mine. Just looks at how cute Michelle Williams looks. And then I imagine how much easier, for example, running 20 miles a week would be if I didn’t have to worry about fixing my hair after each job.
But. There’s always a but. But it’s cooling off in Houston. And my hair is longer than it’s ever been. And I’m chicken to chop it all off again because suppose I hate it that way? So last night I made a deal with CLH. I’ll let my hair grow through the winter, and if I still hate it when summer returns — say, by the time I turn 30 on May 16 — then I’ll chop it all off again.
Women’s restroom, English building, University of Houston
| September 30, 2009 | Filled under Shorts |
If you go home with someone, and they don’t have books, don’t fuck them. — John Waters
