Gross Intake! #1

Howdy ho, Blogodomes, and welcome to a new segment I like to call “Gross Intake! Things My Dog Tried to Eat Off the Sidewalk in Allston.”

(Past favorites have included: A chicken bone! Poop! A dead rotten sparrow! A cockroach! A used condom! And my personal fave, a pickled sheep foot!)

Our inaugural, first-edition, #1, collectible post is a doozy:

Frozen vomit. Yes. Frozen vomit. It was caked in some snow. Don’t we all love the end of winter break.

For future “Gross Intake!”s, stay tuned right here. The sundry BU kids, indie kids, bums, crazy people, restauranteurs, and freelance artists of Allston are always dumpin’ new and exciting waste on the sidewalk, the garbage men are always failing to pick it up, and Tucker’s stomach continues to be shockingly resiliant.

Another Friday night in Allston

Today was an unusually collectively drunken Friday night in ol’ Rock City. I mean, every Friday night in Allston is collectively drunken, but tonight is one the nutsiest I’ve seen since the BU kids moved back in August. Maybe everyone’s still celebrating election fun? Who knows.

Anyway, having just returned from my jerb–seeing a play, that is (btdubs-Pinter is so badass)–I was not in on the boozelry; but I did get to overhear some singularly classic lines whilst walking Tuck around the block. A sampling:

GUY: …And then I said to her, ‘I may suck at flip cup, but you suck at life.’

—–

DUDE 1: Dude, we’re gonna rage so hard.
DUDE 2: We’re gonna rage SO HARD!
DUDE 3: We’re gonna rage even HARDER, because we know there’s pictures being taken!

…and then my dog tried to eat a condom off the sidewalk. Like I said, classic.

…….

Went to see the Decemberists last night at the Orpheum, which was about exactly as totally amazing as I had hoped it would be. Colin Meloy was in an uncharacteristically jubilant mood, on accounta happy-yay-election-future! It was an experience, watching the swarm of hipsters in the audience slowly learning to square themselves with all this newborn optimism.

Having tossed a life-sized cardboard cutout of Obama into the audience midshow (“He belongs to the people!”), the band closed with “Sons and Daughters,” a sort of let’s-all-run-away-and-build-a-utopia song. It was written smack in the middle of the Dubyah tenure, but now it’s got a whole new color: let’s-all-stay-here-and-build-a-utopia! I was up in the balcony, but I watched Colin call the floor audience onto the stage, where a massive sing-along of the refrain (Here all the bombs fade away) ended the night. I’ll admit, I got pretty choked up. Oooh, someone got it on tape:

OK, OK, I swear I’ll stop with all this Obama mushiness and return to our regulary-scheduled snark n’ bile next post.

I like the sound of that… Snark n’ Bile. That should really be a dog food brand or something.

***BLOCK’D!!!

Listening to: “Boys of Melody” – The Hidden Cameras

I have to say–I’ve had some pretty bad writer’s block in my day. But this? Dude, this is just bad. An entire weekend spent staring hopelessly at my computer screen. I wonder if my mood’s brushing off on Tucker. Writers are supposed to have cats, aren’t they? That kind of curl around their typewriters and gaze artfully out the window, calling to the muses.

Eh, fuck cats. Even if Tucker doesn’t understand my writer’s block, he can empathize. If that isn’t a gaze of brute intelligence, I don’t know what is:

So last night I tried booze to fuel my creativity–didn’t do the trick. Tonight, I’m trying tea. Doesn’t seem to be helping either. Maybe I’ll go back to booze.

I finally came up with a title for my apocalypse party story: World’s End. Don’t know why it never occurred to me before. I had already decided that Alex and Ned live in North London, so it was a quick leap to the World’s End neighborhood in Enfield–London’s northernmost borough. Wish I had patron like in olden times; then I could fly to England to check out the area and write it off as a “research trip.”

I know what the story needs is an upping of the drama; but I sort of think the reason Alex lasts for so long is because he flies under the radar, stays apathetic, avoids drama. ‘Course when you get bit by a zombie, no matter how small a zombie, the remaining hours of your life are bound to take on a different color.

I like the idea of “fact” and “fiction” blurring in the apocalyptic world. Goes back to that whole Philip Pullman theory about storytelling as a sort of religion–or a moral code anyhow. Or something. I could never put it as eloquently as he does. Where’s Professor Flesch when you need him?

Did I have a point? Oh yes, the man in Mile End who may or may not have become a black hole. One of those stories. New myths. Linking, perhaps, with the old myths Alex’s grandfather told him about the hidden worlds and layers of history beneath London.

“The heart of modern London contains a vast clandestine underworld of tunnels, telephone exchanges, nuclear bunkers and control centres… [s]ome of which are well documented, but the existence of others can be surmised only from careful scrutiny of government reports and accounts and occassional accidental disclosures reported in the news media.”
~ Anthony Clayton, Subterranean City: Beneath the Streets of London

Ooo speaking of… just did a bit of poking and found this website about London’s abandoned Tube stations.

Alright, now I’m getting inspired! Just not to do the work I’m supposed to be doing.

I wish I could draw. Better, I mean. Sometimes words stop working well. <—- [like just there]