"In Vienna I knew a guy who had an old circus bear he sort of looked after, and I looked after the bear on weekends when he went away. I knew what they were like and to what degree they were trustworthy and to what degree it was not safe to think of them as just a kind of big dog. The thing I remember most vividly about the bear is that it is a dangerous animal for many reasons, but principally because its face is always concealed. Its face is enduringly expressionless. It's not like a dog that will raise its hackles, not like a cat that will sort of narrow its eyes and flatten its ears. It has this huge head and a furry face and very small expressionless eyes that don't change. Its eyesight is very poor so it's always sort of squinting at you (he squints) and its sense of smell and its hearing are very keen, so it always has this expression the most terrifying aspect of which is: "Who are you? What are you?" And the judgment of what you are can suddenly change. Because it doesn't see you clearly. It doesn't know what you are."

nice desktop, el fagtastico. but check out the skin on my browser...

i think i'm a John Barth fan. i'm finally reading COMING SOON!!! which i've had since like, march, and after slogging through the first fifty pages or so, which is a bit of a chore, it starts to get pretty entertaining. i was looking at critical reviews of it online and almost all of them panned it as cryptic smoke-and-mirrors bullshit. i think the thing i hate about critics is that they're so dismissive. they just toss whatever they're reviewing out the window at a moment's notice. movies and novels and albums and comics, these things take time and effort and energy, and usually SOMEBODY has put their heart and soul into whatever it is, and i'm not even going to exclude like linkin park or whatever, because fuck, maybe somebody in the record label machine hierarchy cares deeply about linkin park or shakira or whatever. it is to cry, really. i weep. linkin park makes me weep with empathy. not really. i've never even heard a song by linkin park, as far as i know. so anyway, i got a few more reviews of hopeless savages #2 at the fourth rail and randy is a little less dismissive this time, which i guess is nice.

my new thing is, don't buy my comic. especially if you don't read comics. it's really hard to start. it's really confusing and i mean, seriously, you should just go buy a book or something instead, go read "a heartbreaking work of staggering genius" or something. buying comics is more trouble than it's worth and you have to join the whole secret club and all. it's really a big tough chore. so don't buy it. if you know me, i'll give you a copy for free. when the collection comes out, then maybe you can buy that. that's a little better, a little different, a little more valid and permanent. single issues of comics are like, i mean, they're what moms buy for kids to get them to shut up while they're in the drugstore deciding what moisturizer to use. so, in closing, don't buy my comics. i'll tell you when lost at sea is in beautiful trade paperback bookshelf format.

last paragraph: i bought CDs today. used CDs. beulah - when your heartstrings break. it is a nice little perfect pop album. their newer album (i forget its name) is really not nearly as good as this. most of the songs on this album are just great. even my sister might like it. side note: i was listening to this and reading COMING SOON!!! and in the cast of characters one of the characters is called Beulah. hoo ha. other cd: the beta band - the three EPs. ryan has this and i've listened to it a few times and it's been in my head occasionally. and i mentioned the beta band in a song that i wrote recently. and it was pretty cheap. so i got it. i haven't listened to my copy yet, but like, it's pretty cool. ryan recommends listening to the EP segments and pausing in between (4 songs each), which makes sense, but you can also listen to it all the way through if you're conceptualizing it as 3 EPs. ok? yeah. good. try that.