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07.04.04 @ 11:29 p.m.

I'm all gunpowdery from finishing the annual Barnhart Family Fireworks Extravagaza (i.e. me setting off a bunch of storebought, pussy Oregon-legal fireworks, everyone oohing and ahhing and me being mildly unimpressed.) One of the dogs, Stratocaster, was still out in the pen next to my grandma's patio, which is where we always do the fireworks. When Buddy was still living, that was his pen and we made sure to put him inside. Er, whoops. He escaped and we rounded him up. Then dad figured he'd be okay for the last few and put him back, and I watched him wriggle back out under the fence. The funniest thing was my dad when we set off the last two. See, one called "T-Rex" was absurdly huge and we (read: I) started getting paranoid that we'd burn Grandma's house down. So we set it off in the driveway instead and once it started, Dad suddenly ran to the tailgate of his pickup and yelled "NO!" and stood there the whole insanely long time the firework was going, shielding his car with his body from the sparks flying around.

(I'm listening to Quadrophenia because I'm making a tape of it to keep in my car--I'm making a bunch of "All Else Fails" tapes, which is to say albums I like and am always willing to listen to, like Q and The Story of the Clash and a few mixes I intend to put together, like a "Best of Pete Townshend." I reckon I can get a full Who album on each side of the longer tapes, maybe a Who Sell Out/Who's Next, because though they don't go together, I like them both. But it won't all be Who. My POINT (and belive it or not, I have one) is that listening to the short and chaotic end of Jimmy's life/youth is not conducive to happy-joy feelings. Except in the appreciation of music, I guess.)

It's like being just down the road from a major WWII battle here. It's the loudest Fourth we've ever had, I think. It's just a constant hum of rumbles and bangs, and it's driving my poor dog crazy with fear.

Speaking of cars as I was a few paragraphs up, I'm going to go bloody crazy if my dad does much more of the stupid car pampering that he does. "Did you notice anything about your car today?" Um, should I have? Because I didn't. "Don't you even look at your dashboard?" No, I can honestly say that I don't. I drove today, so I looked at the road instead. "Jesus, you aren't very observant, are you? I shined it! It was so dry that it took three coats of Armor-All!" Um, thank you? Am I just singularly unenthused about driving? It's kind of scary, and though I'm fairly confident when I do drive (or so I appear to my faintly astonished mother), I'm not in a mad rush to practice as much as I can. It's not like it's so hugely oppressive here that I have to get out. Also, it's my fucking holiday weekend. I want to do nothing more stressful than play the Sims and mess about on Dumbrella. Maybe read a book.

I finished reading High Fidelity this weekend, and only kind of just realized the pun/double meaning of the title, which feels slightly stupid. Good book. Good movie, too, but I like Nick Hornby. (OMG, people, read About a Boy, it's quite a bit better than the movie (in my opinion, possibly because I finished reading it mere minutes before watching the movie. Also, I cast Ben Saunders as the main character because it was just too fucking perfect.) Much better. And set in 1994 so as to feature the impact of the death of Kurt Cobain.) In fact, I bought HF at Powell's because I'd wandered down to Hornby's section to buy a used copy of About a Boy, but decided to go to the one I never got around to reading. I have vague plans to pick up one or two of Helen Fielding's non-Bridget Jones novels from the library at some point. Mmm, books. I suppose I have One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest to read or Henry Fielding's History of Tom Jones: A Foundling to read at night and not break my Stephen King timelimits since one of my summer goals is to read the Dark Tower books. Then again, I've only got as far as Roland losing his fingers at the beginning of The Drawing of the Three this week. Eurgh, the Lobstrosities are creepy.

Any kind of serious pretentious English major and maybe aspiring writer should maybe not say that King is awesome, but, well...

King is awesome.

My mom and I are not optimists, it seems. Today in the kitchen we made up this depressing future for ourselves, in which my grandma goes blind and has to move into our house, so my parents give her the downstairs bedroom and fix the adjoining bathroom which has basically been a little room with no floor or furniture/plumbing fixtures for years now. They would move into the upstairs, where they would allegedly have to claim the entire space, both bedrooms and living room, for their own. Now me, I'll be out of college but absolutely broke. In heavy debt, in fact, from student loans. Hurrah! Where will I live, apart from "at home"? Ah, that's where, brilliantly, I move into Grandma's house, where, I add pessimistically, I'll live for the rest of my life because I'll have to take care of the dogs when Dad's knee goes out all the way. If you saw my grandma's house, you'd understand the horror of this prospect. It's really bad. It's all packratty downstairs (the upstairs has been appropriated by my dad for studio and office space; that will just have to go) and her refridgerator... oh, the horror. I hate eating food from her house because I suspect everything of being spoiled. Her fridge is stuffed full to the door, which means that nothing can get cooled because no air can move around. Plus the laundry room has shelves full of canned foods and other things, like seven or so bottles of ketchup, several of which have been opened and used halfway. A jar of pickles with MOLD FLOATING IN THE TOP. It's so nasty. I suppose if we were good, we'd clean it for her, but I think she'd get upset with us if we did. I wonder if it's some kind of Depression era hoarding urge. Mom and I followed this up with a discussion of interesting crazy people we came across at college. Her stories are a million times better than mine, since she worked at the Neuman Center at Berkeley, which is a Catholic campus ministry thing. They had showers they made available to the homeless twice a week or so. Stories of crazy naked guys breaking windows, two men who called themselves General Wastemoreland and General Hershey Bar, the first of which came to my mom all apologetic once because a member of a South American activist/liberation group that was meeting there put his cigarette out in a holy water font. She was sad that she couldn't really remember them all that well anymore, since once upon a time she toyed with writing them all down and maybe writing a play about them from the point of view of the receptionist (read: her). It's a bit sad to find out that your mother's ambitions were not always dissmilar to what your own are and know she didn't get there. Not that she doesn't love what she does; at least, I think she loves it. Likes it well enough.

This is quite long and I think I've said all I need to say for one day. No work tomorrow, thank god.

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Previously

fuck it @ 08.01.05
fanciful imaginary sea voyages to come @ 07.20.05
*dies* @ 07.19.05
more ootp @ 07.17.05
harry potter: driving our children into devil worship @ 07.17.05