Updates/Rusty Talks
2006

Rusty Zero
(11-17-06) I got a checkup for the first time in like ten years.  First of all: I'm healthy, nothing to worry about, don't panic.  Second (and here's where I blow your mind): I stopped drinking Cokes and eating candy.  Completely.  It's been exactly one week now, so I can reveal the news.

My sugar level wasn't exactly in the danger zone, but it was higher than I and my doctor wanted it to be.  I drank at least five Cokes a day and ate candy all the time between meals, so it wasn't a big surprise.  The ultimate idea is not to cut out sugar altogether, or even stop drinking Cokes and eating candy altogether, but to stop being a sugar fiend.  The idea at the moment, however, is to stop cold turkey.  I had about half a day of a headache (from the lack of caffeine, probably) and I certainly have cravings for candy and Coke, but it hasn't been that difficult to resist.  My guess is that, even though I will eventually "allow" myself Coke and candy in moderation, I won't want it.

I'm also drinking lots of water and drinking a couple of glasses of milk a day.  I'd already been eating pretty healthy for a while, especially since Carrie started cooking for me.  I got tired of fast food, so I haven't done that in forever, and the things I tend to like are healthy and non-fattening anyway.  And, even though I'm the skinniest guy alive, I did have an ever-so-slight pudge on my tummy.  Microscopic, but it was there.  You could pinch a quarter inch.  It's almost gone now, in just a week.  I lost like five pounds.  I know I don't have to worry about my weight and more people would worry about my boniness than my sugar intake, but I wasn't exactly gaining body mass or anything, just a little belly pudge, so I didn't want to be that skinny guy with chicken legs, no chest, and a gut in ten years.

So there you go.  I won't constantly have a Coke can in my hand and I won't eat entire packs of Big Red Plent-T packs at once.  But I have gone through an entire pack of sugar-free Trident at once, so I'm still the fun-loving addict you've always know.

P.S. Every episode on the Stella DVD is really funny, but their commentary is lousy.

Speaking of Paintings
(11-12-06) I'm re-reading Kurt Vonnegut's Bluebeard.  The fictional artist Rabo Karabekian was an Abstract Expressionist whose paintings all (after many years) eventually crumbled and peeled off the canvas, since the brand of paint he was using was defective.  Everyone who owned one of his paintings got screwed over and were left with blank canvases and little flakes on the floor.  It ruined him as an artist, etc.

But it occurs to me that this would actually be the next step in art.  Make a painting -- if you can swing it, a beautiful painting, but abstract will do -- that you can guarantee will disintegrate in about 75 years.  When it's on the wall for the first 75, people can love it for what it is.  After the paint flakes off, people can love it even more.  Rabo should have said he meant to do it, and then everyone would have said: "Ah."

The emperor has clothes on after all.

The Sad Painting
(10-12-06) Lori wanted me to describe to her the painting that made me cry, and I tried, but I'm not sure if I did a good job, so I drew a picture.  You should know that the painting was huge, maybe eight to ten feet tall, and that it circled around in a C shape so that you stepped inside it and walked around to look at it.  The picture I drew is meant to represent some of the images I remember, and lots of these images repeated, with variations on the same theme.  You should also know that, even with my primitive and child-like drawings, the picture is still a little disturbing, pornographic, and definitely NSFW (not safe for work).

You can look here, but only if you want to.

Here's what I was thinking when I woke up this morning:

I asked my three-year-old son what he wanted to be when he grew up and he said "a fire hydrant."  I laughed at him and told him he couldn't do that and he seemed annoyed and disappointed in me.  Twenty years later, he got a job doing voice-over work as a talking fire hydrant on the most successful children's show in TV history.

Why I Haven't Written Stories in a While
(10-6-06) The new Beck album came with a page of stickers.  It reminded me that I once was talking with someone about tattoos and how I wouldn't get one, explaining that I never even had the nerve to put stickers on things.  The person responded by saying, "Sounds like you have commitment issues."  Five to ten years ago, I could have built an entire story around that exchange.  Someone would end up with glittery Hello Kitty stickers all over their tummy by the end of the story, etc.  These days, however, I bored myself to death just writing the last four lines up there.

I guess I'm finally old enough now to say "I'm getting older" without someone laughing at me, so I'll say that I'm getting older now and -- as I get older -- things interest me less and less.  Certainly ideas and funny conversations and epiphanies and easy descriptions interest me a lot less.  The way fiction stories are usually told not only bore me but annoy me.  Especially first lines, like these, pulled out of my ass:  "Jill had always wanted to be a tap dancer."  "I used to pay for my mother's digital cable, but after the baby it became unaffordable."  " 'Get bent,' she said, staring quickly from me to a rainbow-colored puddle that had formed near her 1997 Honda Accord."  "Monday was Robert's day for lying."

Either I write like Dostoyevsky or I don't write at all.  That's what I'm getting at.  Partly.

And that I'm just not interested in as much, in general, as I used to be.  Like these web pages that I've been maintaining for over ten years.  I started them when I was twenty years old.  Twenty!  How did I not hit delete a long time ago?  It was novel in the beginning to have this information on the web.  Someone might write a little review about a song you'd done.  Whee!  I'm getting exponentially less and less interested with certain things.  Only a few months ago I really liked my little online mix tape, but I'm thinking it's too much trouble just for someone to hear the new Fergie song.

My newest big interest as far as "things" go is Werner Herzog.  I'm watching all his movies.  I've watched fifteen so far.  I consider him "the real deal."  How long will that last?  What will happen if I no longer consider him the real deal?

Some things I consider "the real deal."  (I can't exactly give a definition of what I mean by "the real deal," by the way.)  Here:

Punch-Drunk Love.  At least half of the Herzog movies I've seen.  David Lynch himself, most of what he is and does.  Maybe most Errol Morris movies.  Lars Von Trier himself, his movies, and ideas.  Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (perhaps the only rock album I'd call "the real deal").  The latter Dostoyevsky.  Moby-Dick.  Some Harold Pinter poetry.  Peter Pan, more or less.  William fuckin' Blake, especially his art.  Yeats' "The Second Coming."  From what I remember, George MacDonald.  Jean Rhys, pretty much.  Certain Peanuts comic strips.  That's all I can really think of, as far as "things" go.

This list would have been huge ten years ago.

If I were to think of the realest of real deals as far as things you can actually look at and experience (besides people), I'd say mountains.  You can't get more real deal than mountains.  From a distance, anyway.  If you're actually up in one, who gives a fuck?

So: people are still great.  I dig people, like talking to people.  It's the mediums between us I'm growing less interested in.  (Curiously, however, I like movies a whole lot more now than I did ten years ago.  Then again, back then I had Blockbuster and now I have Netflix.)  Ten years ago, I probably would have said I didn't like too many people either, but I was wrong.  Everyone is interesting... everyone.  You'd just never know it.  Instead of talking to each other for real, we're putting on little plays for each other.  I do, anyway.  Occasionally I don't, and then I do good.  Or someone doesn't put on a play for me, and they do good.  Also, I should say, I like the plays pretty well, so this isn't a complaint about people being "fake" or anything.  I like fake and real people, either way, but sometimes the plays we put on falsely give the impression that we aren't interesting, and that's just not true.  Our stories might suck, our movies might suck, our little plays to each other might suck, our jokes might suck, and our hair might suck, but every one of us is interesting as shit.  Which is why it's a shame that we can't honestly interacting more often.  With strangers, I mean.  (Hard to do.)

Of course, when you can blend this honest interaction with a good version of a medium between us, if you can put on a little play and provide some sort of show while being interesting and honest and real and all that, then that's magic time right there.  Some of my best memories are these magic times.  Playing games is good for this.  It's probably the easiest way to achieve it (though still hard).  One of my students should write a paper on that.  (Some of you are bound to be reading this.)  Playing music together is even better, but not as a dumb "band" or whatever.  I'm talking 'round the piano kind of stuff.  Tony Odom coming over after church and playing on your piano, teaching you to sing tenor to your father's bass.  Christmas often does it.  It's easy with people you already know.  Family is special not because they're special but because you know them the best.  Anyone can be as close as family if they're forced together.  Would arranged marriages work?  Yes, why not?

In conclusion, Beck stickers.  Only one painting has made me cry, but its title was so long that I can't remember what it was called.  I don't remember the artist, either, but I know she was a woman, and I think she was black.  I could kind of describe it for you, but eh.

Stroszek
(9-21-06) If you want to see how I remember my childhood, my very early childhood of the 1970s, watch Werner Herzog's Stroszek, especially the final fifteen minutes or so.  I have a memory, I'm not sure if it's real or some dream I had, of going almost straight up a hill in the middle of some regular town on a chair lift.  One night I need to make a collection of some of my earliest memories, because they're all pretty bizarre, as if they couldn't have actually happened.

Initials RS
(9-20-06) I finally got a Serge Gainsbourg compilation.  It's about as good as I'd hoped it would be.  The next Strawberry Explosion song will probably be in French.

Caveh Zahedi
(9-12-06) I had high hopes for I Am a Sex Addict when I saw the trailer for it while doing my Movie Prejudgments.  And I had high hopes for Caveh Zahedi as our generation's Woody Allen.  I saw the movie today, and I think I'm pretty much right.

A Riddle
(8-30-06) You stand before two identical women.  One of them is Shakira and one of them is Evil Shakira.  You know for a fact that the real Shakira's hips don't lie.  You also know that Evil Shakira's hips never tell the truth.  What question would you ask either of the Shakira's hips in order to find out which is the real Shakira?

DSL-full
(8-12-06) I was DSL-less for about a month, but now I'm kickin' it again.  So is Carrie, for the first time on her computer.  First the modem didn't bring up the internet, then it did.  Then the router didn't work, then it did.  Then the wireless adapter didn't work, so I got 100 feet of network cable, like a real man would.  My penis became engorged as I strung it around the house, tucking it behind beds and CD racks.  It really didn't, but there is something kind of manly about 100 feet of network cable from Radio Shack.  Thanks to Noby for being my tech-support for like six hours on the phone.  No thanks to the actual tech-support I called during this two to three day ordeal.  Thanks to Carrie for watching hours and hours of Project Runway and The Dog Whisperer while I took her computer away (and took myself away).

My next project is putting up speaker mounts on the wall for the home theater and stringing even more wire around doorways.

DSL-less
(7-11-06) For like a month and a half, I'm not going to have DSL, just dialup.  Feel sorry for me.  Anyway, this is your warning about a possible lack of clever updates.

Things That Have Happened, Are Happening, or Will Happen
(6-9-06) Carrie received her PhD.  Carrie got a job at Pan Am with me; we'll be colleagues now.  Carrie has "moved" to Texas: her stuff is still in Mississippi, but she's more or less a resident now.  She's banking here at least, and she's got a Hastings card.  We're looking for a house to rent, or maybe a big apartment.  We did a lot of stuff to see if we could buy a house, and we decided that yes we could, but it wouldn't be the best idea right now.  We did buy bikes.  Mine is red and white and Carrie's is pinky purple.  I have named my bike the Bebar 31K.  I'm teaching a summer class.  I like it.  Carrie is in Los Angeles at a conference.  She's away from me for four days, and it feels both normal and weird.  Normal because her being away is what I was used to, and weird because her being here is what I've gotten used to.  Soon we will both move for reals.  Nobers is going to help us.  We'll consolidate our books, CDs, and DVDs.  The deal we arrived at is this: she can organize the books however she likes (with her gay-ass way of putting all the hardbacks together) and I can organize the DVDs my way (with my gay-ass way of alphabetizing by director); the CDs we don't seem to have a problem with (except that I'd like to take the CDs out of her box sets and put them on the shelf so we can get to them easily).  We've raised our Netflix to five movies, and we got a "cozy" to keep the envelopes in.  We bought the big pack of Swiffers.  We will have four DVD players and three VCRs.  We'll network our computers so we can play deathmatch and co-op in Quake.  We're going to watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy, loudly--but not too loudly.  We might take some pictures.  Carrie met Audrey at the Taco Olé.  We'll teach over 100 students apiece per semester so we won't be able to go out to eat anymore without a student running into us.  Which is fine.  My student delivered us a pizza the other night.  I had slicked-back shower hair.  Stephen Colbert recognized the Balrog from the calendar on CNN.  Jen Ben and Kel Bel continue to rule my world.  Brangelina's baby-bump turned into a baby and now it looks almost exactly like a baby.  Spellman.  Rusty Car.  I clipped that one long eyebrow hair.  Ignorance of subject matter does not equal suspense.  "What's going to happen?" vs. "What's happening?"  The toilet paper debate rages on.  Charmin is my clear winner, but it cannot be.  Cottonelle didn't work out.  Northern isn't faring so nicely.  Where are you, happy medium toilet paper?  Must we be reduced to his 'n her dual spools?  This was on the front of a hearse.

Peeple
(4-26-06) I like the people that people who don't like people don't like.

Headline: Buster Keaton Did Not Roll In Grave
(4-24-06) One of the art organizations around here asked me to provide music for the silent movie The General with Buster Keaton and it showed last Friday night.  It was cool to be in an auditorium with the big screen and surround speakers playing my stuff, even if there were only a handful of people there (apparently the kids don't go out on Friday nights for silent pictures like they did in the 1920s).  During several moments, I pretty much figured I was a genius.

New Bands, Listen Up
(4-6-06) If you need a band name, here's one: Skinny Peter Jackson.

Quote for the Day
(3-30-06) "I'm a goddamn happy person." --Carrie Hoffman

Sometimes I Like To Say Obvious Things
(3-21-06) The score to The Godfather is beautiful and moving.  You go, Nino Rota.

Parody: Beyond Plato
(2-15-06) It came to me just now, the reason why everything I do is a parody, and yes, finally, everything .  There's nothing I do that isn't anymore.  I believe I must feel that life itself is a parody.  This notion naturally leads to the Platonic ideas of the ideal, since there has to be something to parody.  In the Allegory of the Cave, the shadows are not only be representations, but outrageous jokes.

I have no problem with this, but it does make me wonder: if there is something "real" out there, is there a need for jokes in that place? My guess is no.  I don't have a problem with that either.  Jokes are the saddest thing in the world.

MySpace Commandment
(2-8-06) For those using MySpace (aka "The Fad"), be cool and delete the creator of MySpace (Tom) from your friends list.  He's not your friend.  Then when people see that Tom isn't on your list, they'll know you're in the Delete Tom Club (aka "The Delete Tom Tom Club," because there's a joke in there somewhere).  I've done it, and I'm cooler already. 

Coretta Scott King
(2-7-06) Best... funeral... ever.

Here's What Needs To Happen
(1-28-06) Rick Ruben should produce Paul McCartney's next album.

Tips for Saving Money in 2006
(1-19-06) Here's a way to have free blank paper.  1. Go get a hold of a lot of free magazines and newspapers, like real estate magazines, free college newspapers, classified ads, etc.  2. Put them in your scanner and scan them.  3. Go into Photoshop and erase the images you've scanned.  4. Print the results.

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