something about fluid dynamics

here is bernoulli's equation:



it's been a long time since i knew how to wield it, but now, officially, i also have very little idea as to what it is used for.

if i cared enough, i suppose that i could do an internet search and find out pretty easily.

...

i am dishing out nearly $300 a month to the bastards that taught it to me. but apparently, bernoulli's equation did not come with a warranty.

mellotron felt duvet

will we be the pleasant, un-pleased, nonplussed, we peasants of afterthought, harbourers of wandered prophets/
optimist quills ink the books we hhave burned, scorn of the disappointed darlings unforgetting such forgotten squalors of kings, scorning myth, now learning the fire of rememberingdragons/
serpent serpent serpent i listen to the hiss in your blood-cold throat.
=

Sometimes I get a sense, or a feeling, that I have not felt in ten years. A colour on the palette which has gone unused, after using up its notorious glory, and its stark contrasts.
When this happens, I get something like a shiver down my spine, except instead of my spine, it’s a shiver in my head, in a hidden corner, or a lost sector that doesn’t happen to be lost, after all.
These are little bursts you have, with just a fragrance of the memory of some strong emotion that was wanting to be the sky, once upon a time. I don't know.

--

Also, my eye still twitches. It has been twitching for nearly two months. It doesn’t twitch all of the time, but it twitches in bouts and batches, several times per day. I did a search for eyelid spasms, and at least one website says that it is nothing to be concerned about, and that perhaps I should deplete my stresses and caffeine.

For our future reference, "deplete" and "replenish" are antonyms.

"Replete" means ‘filled to satiation’, but "deplenish" does not exist.

Also for our future reference, I don't really like the word "monkey". I don't have anything against the actual animals, but the nomenclature is goofy-sounding, and I don't like it. I'm sorry.

LotR !

By the by, Tired Orbit Records is happy to announce that tto-002 is becoming ready. It is by a rock band called Lourds of the Ring.

Lourds of the Ring is special, because I sing the words, and sometimes I play keyboards. Except on all the songs where the keyboards are played really well are by Matt.

Besides me and Matt, there are Curt and John and Scott and Phil and James. But they do not play on all of the songs. Except I think Curt plays on all but two. And actually, Curt is the only one who plays on track #4, which is the one that rivals Jimmy Page's "Black Mountainside".

You should navigate over to the tired orbit main site. The whole thing is available for download. They are even high-quality mp3's. Although the recordings themselves are pretty downtrodden, the lo-fi ethic (and esthetic!) is in full effect.

We are getting a short-run of CDR's manufactured this week, and shortly they will be available for purchase, if anyone has the guts to part with their precious, precious moneys.

Zoinks! I need to go and earn money now.

(hop)s

I have been observing that I have an unhealthy obsession with beers, lately.

This means that I am an impending alcoholic. It also means that I have beerguts.

I used to be a social drinker, only. This means that I never had beer in my refrigerator, and I would only drink them when I was out at restaurants and bars.

Now, I CRAVE heavy, carb-drenched ales. I MUST have at least one every night. My frail persona has given up on nocturnal recuperations. Now, it simply yearns to dull the pain. The PAIN introduced via blunt monotony on a neverending daily basis!

I have good intentions, or at least they will introduce themselves as good intentions, and they will say that I should only drink water tonight. And eat rice and apples. But I cannot deny the craving, and soon enough I am drinking beers and eating something so much more dramatic than rice and apples. Such as pasta. Or steamed asparagus. Or a nasty frozen Stouffers lasagna, zapped to crunchify the nastiness.

On the positive side, I cant remember the last time I had a sugar-drenched Coke. And I used to drink those like I am supposed to drink water.

Odd fact: I have never drank water the way I am supposed to drink water. Eight glasses a day? I may as well install a urinal in my pants..

My impending alcolohism is nothing that my drinking problem won't fix.

Mr. Innocuous

It is especially at times like the present that I am completely insufficient. There are family and friends who are in need of comfort.

There is the sisters with hardships, and life's cruel jokes on top of them. There is the brother at the front lines, all of this time. Nerves frazzled, put to the test in every waking hour. He only talks to my Mother, and only if she asks. If I knew how, I would make a phone call and de-energize some of it with my listening and conversing skills.

And there is Uncle Fred in a hospital bed in Medina, with his kidneys and the rest of his body finally shutting down, after maybe two or maybe two and a half years of terminal cancer. Uncle Fred may as well be my uncle. Uncle Fred really is Chad's uncle. Gary is Uncle Fred's brother, who has played stoic and nonchalant all of this time, but yesterday he was not holding it together, any more. Uncle Fred has exceeded his six-month life expectancy by two years, so far.

I do not know what I should be doing, for my part. I don't think there is anything. I am a thousand miles away from everyone. There are others doing the supplying.

So this morning I will make a list. Lists are good things to make, on days like these. My list today will be for my favorite musics of last year. I usually make one of those lists every year, but I haven't had the chance for 2004, yet. I have the chance, now.

I am not going to go into details about my list items, or my feelings about each individual item, because I do not really feel like doing that. I want to make my list cold & distant. Some things are at face value, even if you take them that way.

I will make it a top sixteen list. I will start from sixteen and work my way to one, which will be my favoritest musics of 2004. I always clarify that they may not be the best musics, but they are the ones that I have come across and became lusty for.


16. Guided By Voices "Half-Smiles of the Decomposed"
15. A Silver Mt. Zion "Pretty Little Lightning Paw"
14. Mono "Walking Clouds & Deep Red Sky, Flag Fluttered & the Sun Shined"
13. Morrissey "You are the Quarry"
12. Shockwave Rider "The Shining"
11. Dungen "Ta Det Lugnt"
10. VHS or Beta "Night On Fire"
09. Lansing-Dreiden "The Incomplete Triangle"
08. The Walkmen "Bows & Arrows"
07. Secret Machines "Now Here Is Nowhere"
06. The Decemberists "The Tain"
05. The One AM Radio "A Name Writ In Water"
04. The Arcade Fire "Funeral"
03. Joanna Newsom "The Milk-Eyed Mender"
02. Interpol "Antics"
01. The Killers "Hot Fuss"

What is surprising, is the lack of a sadbastardmusic majority. There is a lot of "Dancey Post-Punk". There was a ridiculous amount of great records last year, actually.

I also got William Basinski's "The Disintegration Loops" earlier in 2004. It did not come out in 2004, but that's when I heard it. William Basinski had recorded ghostly, subtle bits of sounds, like cellos or orchestras or pianos, and he did this in the early 80's or the late 70's. On September 11 2001, he was in his NYC apartment, he had dug out the old tapes and was in the midst of recording them into his computer. As the loops played over and over again, the iron oxide on the tapes, which were over twenty years old and brittle, began to crackle and fall off, into bits of powder. The loop continued to play, and became grainier, more fragmented, more ghostly. The loop was dying. The planes crashed into the World Trade Center buildings. The world was ending. Eventually, all of the iron-oxide fell off of the tape. The loop played an unnerving silence. It was done. I played the loops while I slept last April. One after another, while I slept, because it was ambient and was good for sleeping to. I woke up to a phone call and was on a plane two hours later and I did not know if my grandmother was still alive. Her heart stopped beating eight times on that day. After the ninth time, my Uncle Donn agreed that he would sign the papers.

It was a miracle that there was no ninth time. I have not played the Disintegration Loops since then and I guess I never will, even though they are very tragically beautiful. I cannot be logical all of the time. I will not be the one to tell William Basinski that the most terrifying and horrific things happen when his loops are played.

I'm sorry that this didn't have anything to do with the top-sixteen list, but it was on my mind. So that's why.

So even if I'm not a dispirited place sometimes, the world certainly can be.

Oh, carry me home, fast car you're the only one for me.

Jason says that I need to lose the Saturn. Jason says that I need to invest in a ZX. Or a bunch of other variations of letters and numbers that I do not remember.

Jason says that girls will not like me when they find out I own a Saturn LS1.

Jason says this every day, at lunch time.

I haven't asked around yet, to find out if it's true or not. About girls being elitists about cars. I bet that, if and when I do ask, they will deny it.

I don't know if I will go to the car dealership this weekend. I think that a ZX car is expensive, but I am not sure.

At any rate, I don't think I will lose my Saturn LS1, because I am not done with it yet.

-

This morning I woke up with bug bites on all of my exposed skins and parts of my body not covered by blankets. Which means my neck and my biceps and a little bit of my forearms. I don't know why just a little bit of my forearms, and not a lot of my forearms.

I do not know where the bugs came from.

Except that I did sleep with my window open last night.

I do not know where the bugs went. I did not investigate to the fullest of my abilities, but I did not find any obvious evidence of bugs infiltrations. I have a screen in my window.

It is January and I have twenty bug bites.

-

I have decided that tonight I will make my first foray into the downtown Orlando area. I must seek the company of the meek, amidst the bustle and cigarette smoke of an indie rock club.

Orlando lacks feebleness. Everyone is bold. Or maybe that is just what I have decided to think. I should make friends. Friends who are not cocksure, and do not get upset if they cannot think of a proper opinion at the moment, maybe later.

Yesterday we ate lunch at Firehouse subs, and there were televisions playing the inauguration. And after the president was allowed to continue being president for a godawful amount of time again, a lady behind me stood up from her chair and clapped fervently and shouted "woo-hoo!".

I did not act surprised, though.

Maybe she doubted that he would get through it as successfully as he did, and was extremely relieved, with all of the essence of her soul, when the ceremony wrapped up without any issues. I dont know why else.

Maybe people like to have other people pay attention to them, even if none of the other people know their name and would not necessarily care to ask for it.

Attention is like a girl who likes you for your car, I think. Temporary and shallow, and ugly things like this.

Anyway, tonight a band called "Aloha" is playing a show.

Why not?

I am listening to Art Garfunkel. Nobody can sing a phrase like "frosted fields of juniper and lamplight" like Art Garfunkel can.
And then she said "Not the red baron not charlie brown think i got the message figured another pilot down and are there devils with halos and beautiful capes taking them into the flames taking them into the flames not judy g not jane jane jane with a hollowed heart i see that screen go down in the flames with every step with every beautiful heel pointed i said not the red baron i'm sure not charlie's wonderful dog not anyone i really know just another pilot down maybe i'll just sing him a last little song many there know some girls with red ribbons the prettiest red ribbons."

Astronomy Domine!

Huygens is on Titan.

Yesterday, I was on Earth, and while exercizing I learned that my breaths should be pulled until there is no further capacity. But just as important, the waste oxides should be exhaled in a way similar to the blowing out of a candle.

Endurance has everything to do with breathing. If you breathe correctly, you can run until you quit out of boredom, rather than quitting out of lethal exhaustions.

I have learned this, and maybe some other things.

And another thing...

Why I am drinking red wine is none of your business.

Now that I am twenty-eight, I have to resort to worrying about serious issues such as high cholesterol and prostate cancer, and maybe that is a good enough reason.

Some say. It May. Help?

After all of the whiffs have been smelt...

in my new life that is eight days old, i don't do anything except exercise and read books and write annals in my journals and practice musical instruments for my secret project and pass through crowds of people unscathed and quietly, and sometimes i even watch a little television like a normal person for god's sake.

one of my terribler secrets is that i turned twenty-eight last week, if you believe in birthdays. i considered it less symbolic because it meant that i was 10,228 days old, which isnt a number to eat cake about.

plus, i don't know if i like being twenty-eight. everyone else who has ever done glorious things, did their glorious things by the time they were twenty-seven, so i think that means that i am not destined for glorious things. what's even worse is that i can't even think of what those glorious things would have been.

i hope that if i do glorious things, that they won't really involve turbines. that would be a dumb way to be glorious.

one of the other things that i am doing in my new life that is eight days old is i am preparing healthy & thoughtful meals. yesterday, i had an orange roughy fillet with penne pasta and some zesty mmarinara and even some steamed broccoli, but i have a lot to learn because today my new apartment of three days has a godawful dead fish smell, and so that's why i bought the glade plugins today. or whatever they are.

they plug into an outlet and release vapors of extracts. this means that there is no open flame and i cannot make a big mistake unless i try very very hard.

i also brought along my little felt bag of shiny rocks. although i'm not sure if you can call them "rocks" if they are shiny. when i think of "rocks", i think jagged and rough and dull. except when someone is referring to a diamond. as in "you have a beautiful rock on your finger which is where you keep all of the love." but i don't like referring to diamonds as "rocks".

digression is a bitch.

i have arranged my "polished stones" (shall i say) on top of my new bookshelf. i keep all of my books in the drawer of the bedside table, though, and not on the bookshelf. instead, i keep my binders of compact discs on the bookshelf. i have five big and fat binders worth of compact discs. i own too many compact discs, it is true. i have explained this as an uncontrollable addiction to music, in conjunction with an urge to buy things when i am bored, or lonely, or sad, or happy, or angry, or awake. and i think this explains rather well why i have five huge binders full of compact discs.

anyway, here is a picture of my carefully arranged polished stones.

'tis nothing my drinking problem can't fix...

Having broke several long-standing world records on my way to Orlando last Sunday, everything seemed to be looking up. It Was The Start Of Something Completely Different!

I made it here in just over ten hours, and it wasn't bad. It was an extended car sing-along session. You should have heard me sing the intense part of "Black Flame" by Renaissance. I hung in there with Annie the whole way. "I AM THE BURNING IN YOUR SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUL!" and whatnot.

I decided that the song would be the finale on my next mix.

I also fiddled around with AM radio, for the first time since I tried pulling in a Maple Leafs game from the bench, during a soccer game versus Holley. In that instance, I thought I was being discreet, but you cannot fool Duck O'Day.

This time, I needed not be secretive. I pulled in the NFL playoffs, and I listened to the Colts embarass the Broncos.

All of this listening made the time pass quickly and pleasantly.

But then I got to Orlando.

And despite my CONFIRMATION NUMBER and CREDIT-CARD GUARANTEED RESERVATION, my motherfucking hotel could not find a record of my plans. Their computer had crashed around New Years', they said. They had no rooms for a whole week, they said. They were terribly sorry, they said. I ended up in a weird-smelling motel room a few miles away. It was slightly larger than the inside of the car I had spent the previous ten hours in.

With all of the moving around I've done over the last week, I know that I have exactly four and a half luggage carts worth of stuff with me. Four and a half luggage carts is a lot of luggage carts, when you are talking about stuff that you are traveling with. And if I knew I was going to have to pack it all up and down stairs and in and out of rooms three times already, I probably wouldn't have brought as much. Or else I would have hitched a BOOM TRUCK to take along.

There's no denying, I was a mad mad sonofabitch last Sunday. I almost got "snippy" with the lady at the front desk, who informed me of my housing dilemma. I was conjouring levels of assertion that I have never even contemplated before.

Usually, I am PATIENT. And I tend to LAY LOW. I found these things exceedingly difficult to do, last week.

All that said, I have now moved into my true hotel. And I am completely unpacked for the first time since I've got here. And it is homey. Home-y. Something.

And I am content. I am a content, prissy little man, who needs space, stuff, and accomodations.

I would totally take a nap right now, if it weren't 7:30PM.

Intra-anatomical home-making

You have just been swallowed by a whale.

Don't worry. Gepetto was, too. Once.

Flux capacitance

I wanted to document that today is the first day that I feel better instead of worse. I feel alive instead of barely. I feel energy instead of drainage.

I actually feel rested. Even though I have a cold, right now I feel more like a human being than I have in months.

I think it had a lot to do with taking just enough melatonin and xanax last night so as not to overdose. And then I slept for thirteen hours straight. And I had three-dimensional dreams, wherein I thought that I was half-awake and manipulating a dreamy storyline, making my dream-me talk in an eloquent, Shakespearian-prose, uttering heavenly bits of poetry, my half-awake me thinking that I really must remember to write all of this down as soon as I woke up.

And then realizing that there was no half-awake me, when I really did wake up at 11:30 AM. Hence the three-dimensions. Or three-tiers. Or maybe that's two-tiers, as far as dreams go. With one-tiered being the standard. Anyway, it was absolutely the most surreal and difficult-to-explain thing that's happened to me in sleep in far too long.

All day, thinking to myself. "Wow. I am not tired and rundown. I do not need a nap. I can think, and then act accordingly. I am not a zombie, today. I am a human being."

I am a human being. This is great news.

I don't know what chronic fatigue syndrome is, but I'll bet it's saying "Aww, shucks..." right about now.

Now, if I can only find a way to discover my spiritual enlightenment and my libido, I will be completely fulfilled.

Brrr

This year already kind of hasn't gotten off to a very decent start.

Point-in-case: I returned to my apartment on New Year's Eve, for the first time in a month, to find that I had no natural gas service. Which means no heat, no hot water, no stove, no oven, no dryer.

And it being New Year's, and the weekend, there were also no natural gas dudes available.

And then yesterday I get the idea that taking a cold shower might invigorate me and make me tough. In reality, it was simultaneously excrutiating and strangely invigorating.

But then, by yesterday evening, I had developed a bitchin' cold. And I feel like the totality of ass. Despite keeping my esophagus full of vitamins ranging from the popular "C", to the oft-overlooked "A", to the completely inexplicable "Lysine".

And tons of water.

And I had chicken soup for lunch yesterday! Even before this cold started! What gives?

But do not despair. I am sitting contently here this morning, waiting for the natural gas man. If he doesn't make everything better, he will at least make a lot of things better.

And then I will have hot water, and heat, and stove and oven, and a dryer. For four days, before I leave for five months.

Luxurious.

2005, and still no hovercars

2005 means that I will appreciate numbers. 2005 mustn't be another 2004.

Things must change. I haven't felt so spiritually stagnant, and so emotionally vacant, maybe ever, as I've felt in 2004. It's an awful, awful bore. I mostly feel half as alive as I was just a year ago. I think I have pinpointed a fault in the chemistry. I think I have reprimanded myself, and repented in-turn. I will prepare for the little bouts of vertigo. I will be as God intended me to be. Simply un-fooled around with.

Writing things down in journals over the past year or two has been painful for me. I am such a bore, I cannot cope. I almost wish I could obsess over miniscule details again. I am in dire need of recuperating my flow.

A change of scenery always helps in an act of rejuvenation.

And so in seven days I will have my car packed far beyond its capacity, and I will commence driving. I am moving to Orlando next week. I have a regular, 40-hour-per-week sort of job. Where I can come back to a place of my own in the afternoons. And I can spend evenings and weekends doing whatever I would like to do. Whatever catches my fancy. Fancy that.

My life and times will be spent there for the next five months.

I could even have a social life, maybe. If I manage to become interesting within this next week.

I'm also going to try to take Linus back. The place I'm staying allows pets. And Linus has had it way too good for far too long. He's my cat, and he needs to suffer through insufferable changes along with me. He needs to get disgusted with Orlando's culture of superficiality and the urban sprawl and the Mickey Mouse bullshit, too. He needs to take up his slack.

It's just a matter of transporting him. He has only been out underneath the infinity of the sky twice (whilst being carried from my apartment building to the car, and then from the car to my parent's house), and it completely fucking terrified him. I thought he was going to shake into pieces.

He will look out windows, but he will not trespass that boundary which defines the outdoors. You can leave all the house's doors open if you want. Linus isn't going anywhere.

Linus is completely agoraphobic. He is the only agoraphobic cat I have ever known. He is the penultimate indoor cat.

-

But for now I will just speculate on what I should pack. Take a nap because I am always tired, always with a slight headache.

I will have a quick dream about forcing a point about purpose. How's that?