\ \ s h i f t l e s s / /

Saturday, December 1, 2001 01:38 p.m.

i really feel like i update this thing more than i actually do. why is that?

visiting my parents, friends, and cat over thanksgiving was really nice. getting away from los angeles and being around things like trees and being able to breathe clean air can be good for you once in a while, i suppose. for thanksgiving dinner my family and i went to a vegan restaraunt (suggested by them) in san francisco called millennium. it was the best thanksgiving dinner that i can remember having.

dan and i hung out one day and went to almost every record store in sf and berkeley; both of us finding some really good stuff and at the same time trading in a lot of bad promo cd's for credit. dan's new house is all he's been saying it is. it's a very cool house in oak-town, even if dan doesn't know how to spell "oak-town" saying, "we don't type it we just say it" like any other hard core g.

on the drive home i was lucky enough to spend over 8 hours on the freeway from sf to la in so much traffic that i was able to retrieve a drink from my trunk on the i-5, somewhere near modesto.

last night me and a friend went to see the man who wasn't there. the cinematography in the movie is so unbelievably well done that every single frame of the movie looks like some amazing, perfectly exposed black & white photograph from the 40's in some raymond chandler-like parallel universe. plus it also takes place in santa rosa where i went to school for a semester. my only problem with the movie was that there was some fucking bullshit pro-american propaganda commercial before the movie started. is this a new thing now before movies? i haven't been to the movies for a couple months. do they think people who are seeing a coen brothers film want to see that shit on a friday night when most people go to the movies to escape the things going on in the world outside the theater for a couple hours? enough with the flagwaving and patriotism already, people need to start thinking about what is going on. up by where my parents live in marin, all of the small businesses have this new flyer on all the windows with a logo of an american flag with shopping bag handles on it! an american flag with one half-circled line coming out of the top pretty much saying "america - it's for sale." it's so perfect for people who think that if they just buy shit and contribute to the economy, they're making things better for everyone. the government is just gonna figure things out for you and eventually someone from the white house will deliver a speech letting you know how you're supposed to be feeling at the moment. to quote marc maron, "make sure you get something between you and your feelings before they lead to questions". if you just turn your brain off and don't ask questions things will be ok. never mind that every single arab who came to the us in the last two years is going to be questioned by the government and that hundreds and hundreds of people are in jail as a potential terrorists and people's rights are being violated and that people are actually rooting for government agencies to use violence against those arrested in order to obtain information. shh, go to sleep, uncle georgie will figure things out by the morning. all you really have to worry about is how happy you're gonna make your kids on christmas morning with all the harry potter toys you got them.