snoopy and the red baron

08.26.04 @ 9:43 p.m.

I am rocking the vinyl tonight. I spent yesterday and part of this afternoon making CDs of Who Came First and Two Sides of the Moon, and frankly, my noise filtering is pretty crappy. But that's okay. What I'll probably do is run off with a bunch of good albums, like Son of KRLA (a hits compilation from the late sixties, from the station my mom listened to as a teen) and such. Probably the Rod Stewart albums. (Holy lord, one has "Pinball Wizard" on it. I think I mentioned this earlier, but I cannot state how... well, I can't put it into words.)

Oh dear. I doubt it's downloadable, but the song "Where Did Robinson Crusoe Go With Friday on Saturday Night" represents all that is inane in the novelty song genre. It sounds like Eric Idle should be singing it.

So last night I went to the Tanasbourne Starbucks with Amy and Martha to work on our story. This is an offshoot of a communal story we started with our little clique/group, but after we wrote it (this is quite some time ago, probably around Spring Break last year) we loved it so much that we couldn't let it get contaminated, so Martha copied it into another composition book and we kept it to ourselves. Basically, we're kick ass spies of an unspecified nature. (I am getting secret messages from space aliens through the Shangri-Las' "Walkin' in the Sand." Wait, they might be synthetic gull noises. I haven't heard the song in ages.) Our contribution this week was finishing out a jewelry store robbery, and, after Amy left pleading tiredness, a stunning noir interlude where we had Oliver recount how he met Ena and how they came to be running an opium den. Apparently story-Oliver was a sailor in the Navy and met Ena in a den of iniquity (inequity? Too lazy to look it up) where she offered his innocent self dark and dangerous drugs, and the next thing they knew, they were on the run from the Taipei mafia and Oliver married her to guarantee her entry into the country. We have not specified if it is or isn't a marriage of convenience, but I think we'd prefer to think it is.

Today my mom and I went to the Titanic exhibit at OMSI, which was really great. Not only is it very nice to spend time with my mom, but I have a long standing love affair with the RMS Titanic. I think it was a "Science of the Titanic" thing, because rather a lot of it was concerned with A) the mechanics of the sinking and B) the process of recovery. Also, a ton of information on "rusticles," which are those rust icicle things that are hanging off the wreckage and are apparently an organism of some kind. Or a collection of organisms. They had a steel frame in a tank where they were cultivating rusticles. Everyone who went in to the exhibit got a ticket with the name of a real Titanic passenger, and at the end they got to see if they survived or not. I think a disproportionate number of survivor's names were given out, but maybe I say that because we both got lady tickets (me: Miss Maria Osman, third class - a Norwegian immigrant; mom: Mrs. Richard Leonard Beckworth, first class - she and her husband had been vacationing in Paris and decided to get in on the maiden voyage of the lovely Titanic) and a lot of ladies got rescued. I heard a dad with a passel of kids say "Oh man, I didn't make it." Anyway. There were rivets from the ship itself, steel plating, china... The surprising and very pleasing thing to me is that they had a huge chunk of ice (I thought at first it was a puzzling synthetic iceberg display) and a sign talking about how the water was probably even colder, 28� F and how many passengers had to wait in that water from the ship's sinking around two ish in the morning until near dawn, when the Carpathia showed up. (I am a big Titanic geek and I don't think it'll be long before I check out a book that goes all technical about it.) So, this ice. I hadn't thought about all those people in the water until I put both hands on the ice and had to pull them away after a few minutes because my hand was getting so cold it was painful.

This trip included discussions on death by hypothermia and drowning between my mother and I, and how badass Benjamin Guggenheim was for dressing in his very best, discarding his life jacket, and deciding to go down like a gentleman. (For all his gentlemanly behavior, drowning is supposed to be a seriously awful way to die. Hypothermia, on the other hand, lets you get fuzzy and fall asleep at least.)

Anyway, it was glorious, glorious, really fun, and so great to be with my mom and she she was enjoying herself as well. Also, on the way home, we bought a all-in-one scanner/printer/copier for me since my parents' printer went kaplooey and I had to give them mine.

(Oh dear god, I just listened to all seven goddamned minutes of "MacArthur Park." What is wrong with me?)

We're thinking now that I'll take little Bobby Dylan with me to Eugene for at least a week, perhaps to help me get adjusted to being in an empty house again. Or maybe I'll decide to have him with me all year, or something. It's hard to say just yet.

(Good news: My parents are loaning me their old stereo system for the year, with record player, since they got a new surround sound system. YES.)

My eyes hurt. And I'm out of things to say, so back to the records.

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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