Seeing my face staring back at me from main page will take some getting used to.
by krisis
For those of you who didn’t realize that Philadelphia was the sexual technology Mecca of the East coast, check out this msnbc story about two women who were arrested for running a “sex dungeon” out of their residential “computer solutions” storefront. This local flavour story was brought to national spotlight [sic] by my local NBC affiliate, who didn’t even bother to blur out the number on the store’s sign. Good job, guys.
Philadelphia’s NBC10 news crew is the largest local collection of yellow journalists and hyperbole artists that i’ve ever had the opportunity to witness in action, and their newscast tends to be aimed directly at people who circle Access Hollywood and Wheel of Fortune in their teevee listing every week (which is a double whammy, because not only are those two syndicated gems typically aimed at the lowest possible denominator possible, they tend to be on at the same time every night and thus don’t generally require circling). Lead stories on their news teasers feature (in this order) (without fail) death, fire, breaking news on weightloss, & NBC-centric entertainment news. This station followed each NBA Championship game with a half-hour of local coverage featuring reporters standing in every sports bar in the Greater Philadelphia Area rather than run the normal nightly news or the NBC post-game show. They break into soap operas to report a dusting of snow that had been forecasted the night before. Their anchors are local glamourpusses who marry local politicians and are in-turn reported on by local gossip columns. In other words, it’s a quality all-American news organization that focuses on the subject-matter that an alarming number of Philadelphians actually care about.
Please don’t fail to take note of the wholly unspecific and incidental (though ironically written) reporting on this story by Lu Ann Cahn, who recently reported on a “Flash Fire” at Drexel that was really a small propane tank explosion. Aside from her tantalizing lead-in mention of the women possessing a “large knife,” there’s the explicit name-dropping of “medical bondage.” Unless Lu Ann has mistaken “bondage” for the ever popular “masochism” angle of S&M, i can’t imagine what she meant by “medical bondage” other than maybe wrapping ace bandages around unusual body parts. My favourite part of of the article was, without a doubt, friends and neighbors who didn’t mind the (apparently) openly operated sex shop as long as “they would be dressed real nice” and that their customers were “guys in Mercedes.”
B&D, S&M, E&P, and the shocking news about your favourite Friends star’s personal life, tonight on NBC10 at 11! And, for more unsual explorations of sex and computers, head over to Ernie at LYD, who blogged the article all the way from California.
I am searching for inspiration.
Monday nights in Peter-land are nap nights, because i always stay up way too late on Sunday nights (in this case, harrassing Ernie and posing naked for my only appearance on Bertie‘s SurvivorCam). So, last night i had my standard 16-hour sleep-a-thon during which i got nothing done other than sleeping. And then came today. And then comes tomorrow.
This summer definitely has a very sweeping quality where it just pushes me along and i don’t entirely realize that time is passing. The Madonna concert is in 19 days and i’m not even close to freaking out. The new Garbage album comes out next month. I have to register for classes. I’ll be 20 soon. I’m afraid that somehow i’ll fall asleep tonight and wake up tomorrow to everything in my life happening all at once like a thousand cannons all firing across the span of a field that i’m standing in the middle of. Or maybe that was today.
But, as i mentioned, i am searching for inspiration; not any specific kind of inspiration, mind you, but a more general sort of inspiration that can motivate me to do any one of a great number of things that i should probably be doing. The thing about inspiration is that it has to offer you something that the present does not, or otherwise you’d be content rather than inspired, and i think that’s nearly what i am right now (which is not to imply that i’m happy… i suppose i meant “complacent” more than i meant “content,” but complacent makes me think of lazy slothful people and i actually paid bills and rode a bike this week so i’m surely not either of those).
(I’m glad i cleared that little confusion up; imagine… me, content? That would sorta defeat the entire purpose of this, wouldn’t it?)
My mother breezes through the office on the way to the seashore and she is famous. Administrative assistants fawn over her. Tour guides smile politely. I understand people being ungodly nice to my family as if they actually liked me when i’m there to witness it, but the fact that they did it while i was safely hidden away in the bookstore makes me think people here actually like me. She was gone in a flash-bang of blonde-streaked hair and bandages on her arm before i could really talk to her much, and i came back to my office to find this sitting on my chair.
Naturally i assumed that it was provided by my mother… with phrases like “Others find it difficult to accept your domineering and, at times, argumentative manner” that fit well with our generally contentious yet friendly relationship (“there is little demonstration of sentiment, appreciation, sympathy, or encouragement”). However, the piece of paper in question was placed not by mommy-dearest but by Izabelle, fellow admissions employee and all-around partner in crime.
Now, i’m typically the most critically skeptic person i know about these personality indicators, but i think there’s something to this one only because of the combination of my first and middle names. Peter apparently predisposes me to be “not inclined to merge [my] opinions and viewpoints with others” and to be “invariably quite direct and candid, and lacks the moderating tone of tact” (in highschool i was known as the boy who wholly was lacking tact). I find it “difficult to find the right words.”
Right. Which is why i talk so fucking much.
Meanwhile, the more interesting determination is the flavouring given by my middle name: “Your pleasant manner attracts people to you with their problems and you are capable of offering practical advice, though you would probably not follow such advice yourself.” Right. The thing is, the majority of the names i look up have summaries that obviously aren’t applicable to the people they represent in my life, and a quick browse through the site reveals the same sentences used in combinations again and again in different opposite seeming names. So, it just happened to get the combo right in a way that it really struck me. That’s how scam-artists work (they want you to pay them for a more exact description).
Oh, yeah, and “weaknesses in the health caused by [your] name center in the head.” Heh.
I keep putting off my initial trip into the studio, but as a result i have forced myself to commit to a roster of 40 songs to make my attempts from. It’s just too damned hot. Of course, the more i procrastinate the more this is going to involve sick days and barricaded studio doors, so i should probably be producing some sounds this week. The first cover for the project has been confirmed, but it might only wind up a beeside. 25 songs + beesides… i’m turning into Tori Amos. All of my friends have heard about this and they seem generally unimpressed, which just goes to show that i am so musically omnipresent that they just assume recording two albums in one month must be old hat for me by now. Ha!