rock over London. rock on, Chicago.

I would love to go to a rodeo.
there’s one on TV right now. it’s out in Vegas. the ones on ESPN are always in Vegas. just watched some asshole get stepped on during the saddle bronc competition. I enjoy this in the way that some people watch hockey for the fights.
but they don’t do a lot of that around here, in Virginia. hockey. or rodeo. but hockey kind of sucks, anyway. 
you know, I get it. the circus maximus, the colosseum. I’m on board. bloodsport is fucking awesome, man. have you ever seen ‘Ben Hur’? or anything starring van Damme? shit, if cockfighting was legal in this country, I’d go and see it.
now, lots of people say that it’s cruel to watch a living thing go through so much physical punishment, or even death, for simple amusement. to these people, I point to A) American football and B) factory farms.
yes, that’s right, factory farms. that’s a pretty simplisitic response to a question that raises all sorts of ethical flags, but it still works. if you’ve ever eaten a hamburger in this country, chances are the cow that brought it to you lead a pretty shitty life in order to bring it to you. it may have never gotten laid. it probably hated high school, probably had an inferiority complex. it didn’t go to community college for it’s associate’s degree in IT. and now it’s your Monster Thickburger, and you paid six bucks for it.  
to those people who don’t eat meat on ethical grounds, well, I’ll concede: I’m a piece of shit, and I’ve got no answer for you. I really like dogs, though. and if I had one, rest assured I’d never kick it. that’s The Real. I love dogs.

I was supposed to go up to DC today, but I bailed, and I sat on my ass and watched football and did laundry and applied for jobs. if there is a god (and I think there is, kind of) then she will get me on board here. for as much as I despise copy editing — don’t do it, kids! — if I can get on at a job at a semi-polynesian paradise that pays me substantially more than my current position, well, I can gut it out for another year or two.

the auto bailout isn’t going well for the domestic auto industry. and I’d like to write more on it, but I’m tired, and I need to better educate myself before I start spouting poorly informed bullshit. except, know that I have an opinion. so please, come back and read it. oh god please come back.

I got the first season of ‘The Wire’ in the mail today. when I think of Baltimore, I usually thought of going to Orioles games and the National Aquarium, but apparently, it’s a violent, drug-ridden hell hole. who knew?

I’m going to a public liquidation sale tomorrow. some rug store’s going out of business. so I’m gonna try to buy a nice rug on the cheap. how much do rugs cost; a lot? I want a good, heavy rug. something to put in the other room. to muffle the noise out, and warm this freezing house.

and: pretty picture.

I got ‘The Queen’ from Netflix. Helen Mirren plays Elizabeth, and it’s about the falling out following Lady Diana’s death.
my grandmother loves this shit, royal family stuff. I’ve seen more television movies about Princess Di and her inbred ex-husband than I can remember.
but I’m looking forward to it. Helen Mirren had a pretty big role in “Gosford Park”, and I thought that film was pretty rad.
that’s right, I wrote: “I think ‘Gosford Park’ was pretty rad.” I’m sure a lot of people have written lots of stuff about lots of things over lots of years, but I bet no one’s ever written that. 

per our corporate office’s instructions, all of the production types at work have to fill out detailed timesheets of everything that goes into our days. when we pull stories, number of edits, time it’s placed on the page, etc. they are running an “efficiency study”. that means they want to cut a couple of jobs. it’s very Office Spaceish. my boss, who drives me fucking crazy, he quotes that movie all of the time, so there’s been a million ‘Office Space’ references in the last two days. “don’t forget to file your TPS reports” has never been less funny.
so with this is mind, I applied for a job with the International Herald Tribune tonight. for kicks. if I hear back from this, I will literally shit my pants. I will. or I’ll pass out and hit my head on the way down. but if I get a job interview for a post in Hong Kong, well. well.
well.

tomorrow, library. I borrowed a book on this man, Josiah Harlan, a Pennsylvania Quaker with some serious wanderlust who, in the 1820s, raised a private army and got himself named the prince of a province in Afghanistan. I need to renew this book.
books like these make me restless. and they make my problems, my issues, pale in comparison. for instance: I might get laid off from my desk job? it’s possible. but at least there isn’t a platoon of hyper-violent Pashtun mercenaries in my service who all agree that I don’t pay them enough.
I’ll tell myself this tomorrow before another eight hours of insensitve jokes about torture and due process, because it’s important to keep things in perspective.

genuflection is a great word.

edit #2: all I ever need is a pep talk. which is why I’ve deleted half of this post and turned it into the most cryptic garbage this side of the New Yorker.

treading water
all I can bring myself to do is complain about it all. that’s all I ever fucking do, is complain. fuck, look at me; I’m complaining about complaining.
I need a slap.

at least we got the stars, though. right?

edit: talked to Mar. I’m gonna make it.