i love the idea of the essence of a thing distilled. like seeing a movie in the blue light on the walls of an apartment, or the fumes out of the vents of a restaurant—those from Lyon have always smelled very true. imagine if a restaurant critic had to, you know, go to the bathroom, before they could finish their review.

was watching basketball, spurs vs oklahoma city thunder, game one of the western conference finals, and i'm amazed by how exciting that stuff is. i forgot about basketball. 

i had a fun time in portland. now i'm back and i just gotta make lots of money and not get lazy when i have free time so i can work on this thing about the self storage industry and indict excessive stuff-having.

i'm all sweaty and it's wonderful. i'm incandescent! i think to touch somebody, to have sex or something wonderful like that, you can only do it when you're overflowing with heat. skin is so flush and plump—touching is just the saddest thing when one's cold. 

earlier today i was picking up robert under the arms and flinging him up into the air. then i'd take a break and eat some lunch. then he'd come running, smiling with the stupidest, purest joy, and i'd do it to him again. except each time i set him down to take a break he'd return sooner and sooner to demand i resume until pretty much as soon as i put him down he was nearly ready to throw a tantrum. when he has a tantrum he jumps up and down. it's really funny in retrospect.

tomorrow i will go to arta and laura's barbeque!

yojimbo!

that movie was fucking terrific. rarely is anything so ambiguous (at least for a while). it is actually unclear whether this guy is flat out evil or actually good. he's sneaky about getting things done. he straddles an evil world and lashes out in every direction. no good deed goes unpunished, hilariously. but since everything redounds on evil it's all good. BAD ASS MOVIE!

and the soundtrack is fucking fantastic, it's like some james bond shit, thumping and brass. kurosawa's got this really funny way of deploying sound, it might as well be slapstick fart noises tacked on. he'll just drop some music on for a few seconds, just for a single gesture. it's quite tacky, really, but since it's happening in a movie like this it's just adds to the unique glory. honestly what a fucking great thing. i loved this. i watched it with matt on the couch here eating popcorn. there's a lot of salt on the middle cushion and i've been trying to wipe it off but the couch is kind of salty now. i have to get to bed so that tomorrow isn't terrible

the barbarian invasions

quebec! this movie is way less good than the decline of the american empire. there's one amazing shot at the beginning of the catholic nurse through the hall bringing the communion wafer. that was amazing. besides that there was cheap banter and a man reminiscing about sensual pleasures. there are token gestures to the misery caused by remy's spectacularly selfish sensuality but this movie is ultimately a mawkish toast to cuisses, bouches, etc. the bulgarian nurse's rubdown? get the fuck out of here.

it should be thrilling when middle aged women talk about administering hearty blowjobs, but not when the movie lacks the courage to pan over to the wife. it makes its argument about people and sex by setting up a puritan (capitalist capitalist capitalist!) straw man and then unleashing gorgeous women to make out with him. it's an easy movie, a cheap movie. the decline of the american empire absolutely astounded me, but maybe i really was that puritan straw man three years ago. i wonder if it'd still be something special.

i appreciated the little vignettes, i found that really elegant and appropriate.

chairs

Why so many chairs? Why does every architect design one? Why is that the fundamental object in design? (it is, isn't it?) Enough with the chairs, enough with the sitting. There's got to be something else out there to design that isn't so guilty in the affliction of butts and backs everywhere, so complicit in offices.

What're these people striving for with all these chairs? Hopefully posture. Posture's kind of the one and only thing-- make chairs that are impossible to sit in if you aren't ramrod erect. I wonder if that's even possible though. I'm thinking of everyone in school, of finding so many ways to puddle and slink and wilt in a chair, worming down the back of it, their heads poking up less and less at an increasingly sharp angle from the rest of their body, seeking the place of least resistance, the 180. IDEA: put sandpaper or some such horrendously frictional thing on the seat of chairs. The difficulty, the energy required to not slip your butt forward and your torso down is the great difficulty.