new years eve playlist s'il vous plait!

assuming you're french and a fan of my musical taste and in need of a new years eve playlist, you may have found this choice of a title appropriate. otherwise, please ignore. okay now that i've gotten that off my chest, let's get cracking on forming your tune selection for the evening. i am attending a house party in which my ears will be at the mercy of the host, but if you plan to do something more lonesome like spend the night by yourself on the roof of a building that overlooks an urban skyline (see also: this is what i would ideally be doing), this may be right up your alley. and so:

blue jeans-lana del rey
i still don't really know who lana del rey is or why i should care and/or shake my fist at her. i do know that i enjoy her music, though, even if the music video that everyone was so jazzed about for 'born to die' was one of the more terrible things i've ever seen. if i were celebrating new years eve in the desert huddled around a burning trashcan, i would most definitely choose this as the opening track. i would also probably do a lot of shifty sideways glancing at the other people standing around the trashcan. they would be wearing fingerless gloves and we would all look unhappy as a group. and we would probably throw 2011 in the fire and give it a lot more importance and attention than it really deserves. see also: i still went grocery shopping and sat down in 2011.

i go deep-jim rivers
this is what i would listen to while getting dressed and trying on three thousand different outfits and realizing that i have nothing to wear. and i'd also realize i didn't even really want to go to this party, or maybe i did though, i wouldn't be sure. so i would sit down and stand up and pace and repeat and i'd finally end up going to the party. it'd be a decent time.

in the dark places-pj harvey
this is what i would listen to if i were looking in the fridge for more beer but then got distracted by all the weird condiments in the side of the door.

mer du japon-air
this is what i would listen to if i got invited to a party where all the men were wearing black suits and had five o'clock shadows and bright white teeth (you would never see them smile with their teeth, but you still would know they were bright white). they would not be wearing ties. the lighting would be greenish, and you would be in a swanky apartment full of floor-to-ceiling windows. see also: i would never get invited to this party unless i was reincarnated as an earring worn by a female party guest. she'd be wearing a long dress, probably red.

with every heartbeat-robyn
this is what you would listen to if you were stuck in traffic in the ten minutes before midnight. it would still be possible to arrive on time, but that window of opportunity would very quickly be closing. you'd be bouncing your knee and and chewing your nails and gripping the door handle. you wouldn't tell us if you got to the party or not, but we would assume the best for you.

coastal brake-tycho
i would listen to this while confetti was falling and champagne bottles were popping in a mix of slow and fast motion.

goodbye-ulrich schnauss
i realize this may be overkill as i posted the youtube video just a few days ago, but this is definitely the kind of song that i would like to be listening to at the stroke of midnight in a crowded room of happy strangers. in this scenario i would also be invisible, and the music would drown out all celebratory sounds. as an aside, i also think this song would make a lovely movie trailer for an action-drama.

high school lover-air
more air! see also: air is a very good new years eve band. anyway, this is what you would listen to at around 4:47 in the morning. everyone would be passed out, and there would be empty plastic cups and bits of colored paper littered on the coffee table and the ground. you would be sitting in the middle of the couch. someone spilled a drink on the cushion to your right. you'd be hunched over with your head in your hands because you just realized you forgot something really important like your wallet or your kid in 2011. and now that it's 2012 you can't go back through the door to retrieve the thing you left behind. you probably try to pour yourself a glass of champagne to feel better about this horrible error, but all the bottles will be empty apart from a few droplets. so you sigh and return to your former head-in-hands position.

flowers bloom-high highs
maybe you listen to this closer to 6 in the morning, probably near the edge of some woods in the backyard. the sun is coming up but the sky is that terrible gray and yellow colour that makes your stomach feel cold. you realize that all your attempts at successful resolutions for 2012 are futile, but you feel okay about it.

ambitions-donkeyboy
this is playing as you leave the party in the morning. you high-five everyone in slow-motion. somebody's got marker on their face.

see also: does anyone think i'm a weirdo yet?

"unspiritual, unphilosophical, devoid of art, clannish to the point of brutality, aiming relentlessly at tangible successes, they stand between the hellenic culture and nothingness. an imagination directed purely to practical objects was something which is not found at all in athens. in a word, greek soul--roman intellect; and this antithesis is the differentia between culture and civilization. nor is it only to the classical that it applies. again and again there appears this type of strong-minded, completely non-metaphysical man, and in the hands of this type lies the intellectual and material destiny of each and every 'late' period. pure civilization, as a historical process, consists in a progressive exhaustion of forms that have become inorganic or dead." -spengler (1918)

2012: the year of the real mattress (?)

don't look back. never look back. i mean it.

bukowski on toenail clippers and shoes.

"you know, somebody ought to invent a decent toenail clipper. i´m sure it can be done. the ones they give us to work with are really awkward and disheartening. i read where a guy on skid row tried to hold up a liquor store with a pair of toenail clippers. it didn´t work there either. how did dostoevsky cut his toenails? van gogh? beethoven? did they? i don´t believe it.

...strangest thing, i think, after people die is looking at their shoes. that´s the saddest thing. it´s as if most of their personality remains in their shoes."

(september 30, 1991)

"mankind, however, has no aim, no idea, no plan, any more than the family of butterflies or orchids...these cultures, sublimated life-essences, grow with the same superb aimlessness as the flowers of the field." -oswald spengler (1918)

with every christmas card i (don't) write...

let me preface this by saying that i fully support the right to send an annual christmas card. what i don't support, however, is that small (and/or large) percentage of people who abuse this right. everyone knows who i'm talking about here. they're the people who use the christmas card as an opportunity to write short novels about why their lives have been so fantastic for the last twelve months, and they do it to 1) make you feel inferior, and/or 2) make themselves feel better about living in places like kansas. if you're unsure of who i'm referring to, you're probably that person. you can double-check by asking yourself how many times you write the word "blessed" in the body of the card; the minimum is usually at least three times.

ordinarily the christmas card from hell is a non-issue for me; i've been giving friends and relatives the address of the dunkin donuts down the block for as long as i've lived in my current apartment. however, i was visiting someone yesterday and not one but TWO of them arrived in the mail. naturally we had to read them in a variety of dramatic styles including but not limited to oprah's "please welcome (insert special guest name here)" voice. (i highly recommend doing this as it helps lessen the unpleasant side-effects that christmas cards from hell tend to induce, which can range from migraine headaches to violent bouts of nausea.) and since i'd forgotten the true agony that is reading a ten page document about endless triumphs and impossible feats, i was slightly taken aback. i realized that these christmenaces must be stopped. and i realized that the only way to do that would be to one-up them in my own christmas card. so i got writing, and here is what i've got so far:

"well, can you believe another blessed year has gone by? how fortunate i am to have been so blessed; i can only hope you have been as blessed as i these last twelve months. and i bet you are wondering what i have been up to all year, so i will tell you.

i've had my fair share of adventures since last holiday season (perhaps most notably a hang-gliding excursion off the coast of narnia), but despite all the jet-setting, i've settled in nicely to the new york city lifestyle.

i live in the very first apartment in brooklyn (and possibly the world) to be constructed entirely from cotton candy (a material that is famously bedbug resistant, and which provides excellent lumbar support), and on tuesdays i play badminton with woody allen on the ceiling of the guggenheim.

my main mode of transportation around the city is the garfield balloon from the macy's thanksgiving day parade, but sometimes anna wintour and i split a town car when ballooning conditions are exceptionally windy.

with regard to my dietary staples, i have a magical banana split dispenser in my cotton candy apartment, so i mostly eat those all day every day. coincidentally, i also have a rare condition where i can't get fat.

in terms of intellectual growth, as of yesterday i am fluent in seventy languages, the most recent addition being xhosa. i've also discovered the formula for gold, and i'm currently in the process of single-handedly resolving the euro crisis.

i was recently elected mayor of new york city but i politely declined the offer. instead, i sing opera at the met and get manicures three times daily. i could keep going on and on, but i'm running late for a private tour of outer space that was arranged for me by justin bieber.

again, hope your year has been most blessed. blessed be. ta!"

i encourage everyone to write these kinds of christmas cards as a form of nonviolent protest. no more yuletide braggarts, thanks. oh and also, for the record, i only wish that your sneezes are blessed.

how do you like and/or dislike my new blog header? see also: this was a rhetorical question. the photo is a close-up of the moss on a rock i sit on sometimes in central park. (coincidentally, the moss is named kate, and it has a similarly questionable reputation.) i took the picture with a kodak 35mm disposable camera on saturday at about 7:30 in the morning after a period of roughly sixty-five hours' consciousness. and now you know it.

there's (not) a bluebird in my heart.

people go to the circus. to magic shows.

must be able to work independently.

"everything is indeed permitted if god does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself. he discovers forthwith, that he is without excuse. for if indeed existence precedes essence, one will never be able to explain one’s action by reference to a given and specific human nature; in other words, there is no determinism – man is free, man is freedom. nor, on the other hand, if god does not exist, are we provided with any values or commands that could legitimise our behaviour. thus we have neither behind us, nor before us in a luminous realm of values, any means of justification or excuse. – we are left alone, without excuse. that is what i mean when i say that man is condemned to be free." -jean-paul sartre (1946)

a country that's somewhat not affecting us.

chronicling a compulsive liar part three.

"i was never particularly inclined towards mathematics. in the first place, i found something about the shapes of the numbers to be a bit off-putting in general, which, when they were positioned next to each other in even the simplest equation, caused me a variety of unpleasant physical side-effects, ranging from migraine headaches to fits of laboured breathing. i found the entire subject intolerable on the whole, and i was excused from further advancement starting as early as the third grade.

i'm told mathematical studies are highly applicable to a range of disciplines, right down to the most everyday tasks. it is, however, still beyond me why one would wish to calculate the square footage of a room, the final price of a pair of trousers on sale, or at what point train a will meet train b if they are both traveling at a velocity of x, y, and/or z.

despite my aversion to the field of mathematics, i wouldn't say the issue is an irreconcilable one. if mathematicians and other numerical enthusiasts would simply abandon the deplorable techniques of pythagoras and fibonacci, instead focusing on how to calculate more worthwhile figures, such as the degree of sarcasm hiding in a seemingly-friendly remark, or the projected amount of gray hairs i could expect by the time i turn forty-three, then i would gladly take up the subject with a renewed fervour.

as it stands, however, i find there to be no other option but to continue to abstain from mathematics in its entirety, even on a most basic level. so to answer your question, although it's a bit of an understatement, i suppose maths would qualify by default as my least favourite subject in grammar school."

religion is the opiate of the masses.

"what happened was a slow and gradual change, a shifting of values in the consciousness of men. what seemed to be all-important to a greek of the classical or hellenistic period, or to an educated roman of the time of the republic and of the early empire, was no longer regarded as vital by the majority of men who lived in the late roman empire and the early middle ages. they had their own notion of what was important, and most of what was essential in the classical period among the constituent parts of ancient civilization was discarded by them as futile and often detrimental." -m.i. rostovtzeff (1929-1930)