fickle little machine

Larry scored a DJ residency at the swank downtown bar Boltini on...

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 17:15:38 -0500

Larry scored a DJ residency at the swank downtown bar Boltini on Wednesdays, starting tonight. No cover, 21+. He’ll be spinning lots of funk, soul & hip-hop records and it will be SO FUN and I will be there too so I’m not sure what more you could ask from a Wednesday night, really. Starts at 9pm, goes til 1am.

Just your everyday blog post

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 18:35:00 -0500

I’ve started the official GRE to grad school process.

And so begins the Googling of my name from the legions of bored administrative people.

Anyway, gotta get back to my regular life of being intelligent, verbose, self-motivated and hard-working.

Photo

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 18:32:55 -0500

@ the spine institute. this old lady’s shoes are...

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:43:35 -0500

@ the spine institute. this old lady’s shoes are exceptionally fly.

syd took this. (via lindsey j. hooray)

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 10:39:44 -0500

syd took this. (via lindsey j. hooray)

"I’ll watch it, but I don’t approve."

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 22:09:04 -0500

“I’ll watch it, but I don’t approve.”

- Larry on the Miss Sister Italy contest

Today I was running errands for work and stopped by a CVS Pharmacy. When I got back to work, a phone...

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 19:13:28 -0500

Today I was running errands for work and stopped by a CVS Pharmacy. When I got back to work, a phone call came for me, and it was my mother, saying that CVS had just called her after finding her contact information in my phone that I had accidentally left at their counter. After work I drove to CVS and picked up my phone, only to see that I had a missed call.

From my mother.

Who had called my cell phone to let me know that I left my cell phone at CVS.

Wokka wokka wokka!

"I came across a letter in a magazine today - it was a letter referencing an article titled..."

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 19:11:27 -0500

“

I came across a letter in a magazine today - it was a letter referencing an article titled “The Skinny Sweepstakes” that had run in the previous edition. It read:
“Why do we women willingly choose to damage our bodies? … Because when we were told we could be anything, what we really heard was ‘You have to be everything.’”

And I just keep thinking about that last part. I think it could pertain to more than just women. I think it could pertain to generations of sensitive, imaginative souls who love to explore and reach and feel unsuccessful because they have not seized the whole world yet. And why haven’t they? The world is their oyster, isn’t it?
‘You have to be everything.’
It just keeps running through my mind.

”

- from Nicole’s Livejournal.

This hits home for me.

Video

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 12:34:01 -0500

"that's the multiverse." i think about this all the time.

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:53:00 -0500

And I wanted to stay in Senegal. It was the mix of sun in the air, mostly, but it was also the people, the pace, the sea.
“I want to marry this country,” I said.
“It’s a good country,” Hand said.
“I want to spend a lifetime here.”
“Yeah.”
“I could do it.”
“Right.”

And my mind leaped ahead, skipping and whistling. In the first year I’d master French, the second year join some kind of traveling medical entourage, dressing wounds and disseminating medicine. We’d do inoculations. We’d do birth control. We’d hold the line on AIDS. After that I’d marry a Senegalese woman and we’d raise our kids while working shoulder to shoulder—all of us—at the clinic. The kids would check people in, maybe do some minimal filing—they’d do their homework in the waiting room. I’d visit America now and then, once every few years, in Senegal read the English-speaking papers once a month or so, slow my rhythm to one more in agreement with the landscape here, so slow and even, the water always nearby. We’d live on the coast.
“Sounds good,” said Hand.
“But that’s one lifetime.”
“Yeah.”
“But while I’m doing that one I’d want to be able to have done other stuff. Whole other lives—the one where I sail—”
“I know, on a boat you made yourself.”
“Yeah, for a couple years, through the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Caspian Sea.”
“Do only seas. No oceans.”
“Yeah but—”
“Can you sail? You can’t sail. Your brother sails, right?”
“Yeah, Tommy sails. But that’s the problem. It could take years to get good enough. And while doing that, I’m not out here with my Senegalese wife. And I’m definitely not running whitewater tours in Alaska.”
“So choose one.”
“That’s the problem, dumbshit.”
We passed two more white people on ATVs.
“You know quantum theory, right?”
This is how he started; it was always friendly enough but—
“Sure,” I lied.
“Well there’s this guy named Deutsch who’s taken quantum theory and applied it to everything. To all life. You know quantum theory, right? Max Planck?”
“Go on,” I said. He was such a prick.
“Anyway,” he continued. “Quantum physics is saying that atoms aren’t so hard-and-fast, just sitting there like fake fruit or something, touchable and solid. They’re mercurial, on a subatomic level. They come and go. They appear and disappear. They occupy different places at once. They can be teleported. Scientists have actually done this.”
“They’ve teleported atoms.”
“Yeah. Of course.”
No one tells me anything.
“I can’t believe I missed that,” I said.
“They also slowed the speed of light.”
“I did hear that.”
“Slowed it to a Sunday crawl.”
“That’s what I heard.”

We drove as the sky went pink then barn red, passing small villages emptying in the night, people standing around small fires.

Hand went on, gesturing, driving with his knees: “So if these atoms can exist in different places at once—and I don’t think any physicists argue about that—this guy Deutsch argues that everything exists in a bunch of places at once. We’re all made of the same electrons and protons, right, so if they exist in many places at once, and can be teleported, then there’s gotta be multiple us’s, and multiple worlds, simultaneously.”
“Jesus.”
“That’s the multiverse.”
“Oh. That’s a nice name for it.”

(…)
“So about the multiverse,” I said.
“Oh.”
“It’s irrelevant. Who cares how many universes or planets there are when they don’t intersect?”
“Who said they don’t intersect?” he asked.
“Do they?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t read anything about that. But the thing you’d like is that with the multiverse, you have basically every option you want—really, every option you’ll ever see or imagine—and one of your selves somewhere has taken that option. Pretty much every life you lead would conceivably be lived by one of your shadow selves. Maybe even after you die.”
“But it’s useless,” I said, “if you don’t share any consciousness.”
“Sure, I know. But then again, maybe we’re not dying. If you combine the quantum physics paradigm with the idea of the subjectivity of time, we’re basically all alive in a thousand places at once, for a neverending present.”

It did sound appealing. Consciousness or not, to be alive, always, somewhere. And what about dreams? That’s got to figure in—but what I wanted, really, was every option, simultaneously. Not in some parallel and irrelevant universe, but here. I wanted to stop and work at the field hospital and fall in love with the local beauty, but also be home in a week so I could do so many other things, fifty life-directions all seemed equally appealing and possible—shark wrangler! Whatever happened to training to be a goddamned shark wrangler?

—from You Shall Know our Velocity!, Dave Eggers.

(almost) home again home again.

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 15:28:05 -0500

(almost) home again home again.

Mojitos & spinach dip at my Atlanta layover. Luv u vacation

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 13:07:16 -0500

Mojitos & spinach dip at my Atlanta layover. Luv u vacation

brb, goin to disneyworld

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 07:03:23 -0500

brb, goin to disneyworld

omg, omg you guys

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 11:22:00 -0500

The universe this week was immeasurably cruel to a good friend of mine. I don’t want to adopt her tragedy as my own, but I will say that I allowed myself one night of lying in bed feeling completely vulnerable, stuck together with twine and bubble gum, letting the feeling that I could lose everything at any time wash over me. I put on headphones like a teenager, crawled into bed with all my clothes on and thought: Larry could leave me. My family could die. Larry could die. I could die just to try and deal with the thoughts, for starters.

Jesus. How do you measure tragedy and sadness? How do you pull the plug on the universe and say hey, wait, this is too sad for one small, good person. And then how do you wake up happy to see another day after the world has proven it is not particularly on your side? I know sometimes, or I think I know, and then I forget, then remember, then forget.

So, we get through it like animals, I guess. Burrow, cry. Crawl out for food, crawl back for sleep. Then get through it like a human: put on clean clothes and clean sheets. Think the worst thoughts and then think, for lack of anything else, well, okay. All the worst things might happen. Wake up, decide to wake up, decide to keep living. Let someone you love lift up the covers and kiss your cheek.

Last night we had a spectacular dinner. We are on our second year now of living in our house. Tomorrow at this time I will be on a plane to Florida, to buy Mickey Mouse ears with Frances and Sarah. People keep walking by the front desk and crowing DisneyWorld! What? Go to DisneyWorld whenever you can. Lucky, lucky and happy.

Elsinore, Wooden Houses (from The General EP) This is the song...

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:11:18 -0500

Elsinore, Wooden Houses (from The General EP)

This is the song Ryan sang to his wife at the altar. It’s very soothing, which has been good lately. I listen to it at work while craziness ensues around me.

"oh, hey, see you guyz in disneyworld IN A WEEK."

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 10:49:58 -0500

“oh, hey, see you guyz in disneyworld IN A WEEK.”

- email from sarah to frances and me. SO STOKED

So here is a church door I find ominous

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 18:07:04 -0500

So here is a church door I find ominous

I finished a new zine, called YOU ARE AMONG FRIENDS yesterday. Meant for pre-teen/teen girls, very...

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 10:16:15 -0500

I finished a new zine, called YOU ARE AMONG FRIENDS yesterday. Meant for pre-teen/teen girls, very pro-optimism, pro-masturbation, pro-empowerment. If you want a copy for you or someone else PayPal $3 to meeeee lalalindsey@gmail.com w/ the mailing address. I’ll set up something more official soon.

"I wish I had drive like her. When I got out of school, all I cared about was partying. Damn the..."

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 17:20:00 -0500

“I wish I had drive like her. When I got out of school, all I cared about was partying. Damn the ’60s. …and the ’70s. …and the ’80s. …and part of the ’90s.”

- Jim the janitor, on Erica studying for the GMAT

"i’m all screwed up about love right now. when i try to figure everything out, that’s..."

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 16:17:12 -0500

“i’m all screwed up about love right now. when i try to figure everything out, that’s the only conclusion i can come to: i can’t. i feel sometimes like i am slowly becoming cynical about love, but maybe i am also just slowly becoming realistic. now the trick is to figure out whether or not that is the same thing, and the trick after that will be to figure out whether or not i’d rather ignore reality and just throw my ass in anyway. i think that the simple fact that you’re so worried about your relationship with hannah means that your relationship with hannah will work. actually, forget what i said at the beginning of this paragraph about not knowing anything; because here’s something i’ve learned lately: IF YOU BOTH WANT IT TO WORK, YOU WILL WORK FOR IT TO WORK, AND IT WILL WORK. that’s not me being flippant. that’s me telling you what i really believe.”

- something I wrote to my friend Aaron two years ago today. I don’t feel screwed up about love, or much else, anymore.