cheech

I can't remember if it was Michael Dirda (the Wash. Post book reviewer) or Quentin Crisp who said that we buy books as a way of insuring we will be around long enough to read them all. I was think the other day that I'd been buying bourbon not as I need it but rather to make it so that I'd have parties to get blottoed at, to insure I would be around getting drunk at some point.
Buying records is a whole 'nother thing- buying tons of shitty albums over the years has made me extremely wary of buying albums I haven't heard... and yet I do buy too many albums once in a while, stockpiling, even though I own some that I haven't played yet (hi, Tom Waits's Alice and GbV's Under the Bushes, amongst others... can't remember if my mom bought me this Goldfrapp CD last Xmas or the one before....).

I watched all of the episodes of The Office on DVD last night.... yes, the English version... but for all you people out there complaining they "shouldn't have" made an American version, let me ask you- do you think most Americans would get the Eastenders reference, or the soccer-player references?
I like the show, but... it leaves a bit of a downer tinge to it. I mean, aside from the downer of Tim and Dawn's relationship, it is mostly a show about "sad little men" (a phrase used twice over the six episodes), isn't it? The actors who play Gareth and David defend their characters as being somewhat-likeable in the documentary... and they are, but... aside from the theme song and the fact that it's about a horribly vacuous, unrewarding workplace, and the things mentioned before, it's kinda sad.
My 5 favorite things about the show: 1) David's little smug quarter-second glances at the camera, 2) David's little worried quarter-second glances at the camera, 3) David's little confused quarter-second glances at the camera, 4) any of David's other quarter-second glances at the camera that don't fit into the first 3 categories, 5) the big fat guy in accounting; there is something very cool about how he downplays all emotional response. Also, for some reason, he really doesn't look English for some reason that I can't quite explain.

I am reading a killer book right now that I would be typing a passage from here if I hadn't left it at work; I will have to do that tomorrow or Thursday. I think it's better maybe than Laurie Anderson's book; it might be my fave book since Anthony Burgess's autobiographies....

I am leaving the site at the end of the calendar year, in case anybody doesn't know that already. (I need to put up a big post-it of some kind at the top of my future Journals.)