Friday, September 29, 2006

andrew moves to robbins

in september of 2000, i joined jonathan, brady, and danny in a two-bedroom attempt at apartment life. like any self-sufficient city-dwellers, we cooked in our own kitchen, lounged in our own living room, and squatted on our own toilet. very adult of us, we thought. but despite our self-reliance, i've since decided that our apartment was the collegiate equivalent of a half-way house. in order to lessen the shock of independent life, the university furnished each apartment with a security blanket--well, really it was more a security rug than a blanket, and it sat in the entryway, a metaphysical appendage of our front door. indeed, it was the dorm doors of robbins that kept us insulated from darkness of the real world.

forgive me. i just finished thomas pynchon's the crying of lot 49, and i'm afraid that his wacky, nonsensical style has somehow seeped into my blog. let me offer (and then dismiss) a quick spu tutorial.

students at the college of queen anne often refer to their school as the spu bubble. they lament the university's cultural composition (primarily conservative caucasian girls) and urge one another to pop free of the campus confines and explore more diverse seattle haunts. while at spu, i worked across the lake at a market research center in bellevue, and because the phone-room at northwest research group (it's sad...i still remember the number: 1-800-545-5909) was a haven for cultural diversity (and crazies), i never felt too passionately about spu's lack of hetergeneity. still, when speaking vaguely of doors and their ability to separate one from the real world, i understand that most spu-affiliated readers (after shrugging their shoulders in bewilderment) might speculate that i am satirically referring to robbins as an academic hotel california. the doors hem you in; they are everywhere (everywhere!). you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. or something like that.

they'd be wrong.

(note to self: don't employ this trick again--it's word-wasteful to spend so much time talking about what you don't mean).

(beth's note to myself: stop preluding)

during the past three years i've lived in a house and a pair of apartments. i've chatted with my neighbors about soccer, stolen cars, and Jesus "being some crazy, mixed up sh-t, man," but i've never peeked inside their homes, stared at their fish, or even considered stealing their milk. in robbins we were protected from the anonymity of this real world. the doors in robbins were always open, inviting us into communion.

and it was there that i finally met the other andrew....


andrew david. "jello 1 -- basi lays the trap" robbins, seattle, wa.
by the way, those are matts not andrews.

total robbins apartments (i.e., neighbors) that i entered unannounced: 6+
total post-spu apartments/houses (i.e., neighbors) that i have entered unannounced: 0

Monday, September 25, 2006

weather report

the seattle forecast for tomorrow is sunny. expect bright blue sky and temperatures in the mid to lower 70s. some fall leaves may tumble to the ground and crunch beneath your feet, but don't expect any rain drops. indeed, it will be bright and sunny well into sunday night when the 3-0 seattle seahawks will bring rain to the sad city of chicago.

andrew david. "dude waving hawk flag" seattle, wa.
SEAHAWKS 42, GIANTS, 30 - and i was there! but i'm not sure about this guy...

Sunday, September 24, 2006

book club

dear book clubbers (and out-of-town blog-readers to whom this may not pertain),

august has come and gone and we still haven't book clubbed. i suppose it's about time. when would you like to me meet? where would you like to meet? in what type of flannery o'connor activity would you like to partake?

and what would you like to read next? if you won't be attending the fo'c book club but are interested in next month's (hah!) meeting, this is your opportunity to give suggestions.

by the way this isn't a picture of me. i think that's supposed to be flannery o'connor. i borrowed the picture from the online oxford american magazine.


Friday, September 22, 2006

another excerpt of my writing...

hey, i just remembered another time that i was published online. as i began my freshman year at spu (1999), i discovered that the temp service for which i'd been working offered a small academic scholarship. cool, i thought, i'm a shoe-in. and that wasn't cockiness: my high school transcript was impressive, i met the employment criteria, and, from what i'd seen, the other temps tended to be esl workers or unemployed corporate types, not aspiring undergraduates. but then i skimmed the application's essay prompt and groaned: write some nonsense about how your time at nwstaffing (for you money-seekers, it appears that they now offer 4 scholarships) has prepared you for excellence. because i had an honest streak, i found it rather challenging to describe my days at the artificial crab packing plant, tire company, and fabric store as particularly inspiring, but somehow i managed to win the cash. the cute photo and this euphemistic quote appeared on their website:

"...Perhaps the biggest advantage to working through a service is this unique ability to test a variety of job scenarios. As an agent of NWStaffing, I have gained experience I would otherwise lack. Temporary work has served as a measuring stick with which to gauge my skills. Hidden talents such as interviewing complete strangers, evaluating customer service, data entry, coding, grunt work and other business-like tools have sprouted during my employment. In addition to learning my strengths, my time as a temp has also exposed me to areas that would not necessarily fit my interests. This is especially important as I begin to plan my college major and intended profession."

ha! thanks again, nwstaffing, for helping to suppliment about 0.25% of my tuition.

Thursday, September 21, 2006

nearly an introduction

last week i promised a post about the brain of the other andrew. i didn't share this, but he was to be the test case for my online obituary idea (see yesterday's post). however, after a day's reflection, i've decided that even a bucket of laud isn't worth the sham of a fake obit. besides, i faintly recall that when dave eggers tried it in a heartbreaking work of staggering genius*, his thoughtfully humorous memoir was nearly overtaken by dull monotony and post-modern pseudophilosophy. so, in an effort to avoid anything that might make me a wealthy contributor to mcsweeney's (the brainchild of mr. eggers) or scare my friends, i think i'll introduce the other andrew in a more ordinary fashion:

i first met the other andrew during my freshman year at seattle pacific university (spu). although andrew shared a room with some sophomores in a remote area of my dorm floor, i can't recall a single conversation with him from that year**. therefore, this introduction will resume with events that occur sometime after the 1999-2000 academic year.


andrew david. "
african dancing" puget island, wa.
andrew david. "the best modeling mug" shekinah, saskatchewan.

*that is, when he tried writing about writing a mock obituary. by the way, nick hornby has now transformed the heartbreaking work of staggering genius into a new line cinema screenplay

*
*there are several explanations for this seeming lack of discourse during early y2k: (1) perhaps there really was no lack, perhaps we actually had several notable conversations, but they were wiped from my mind by the events of the following years--as manyone will tell you, my memory's not that great; (2) while andrew was a fellow 5th hill-er, his room was in another galaxy of the floor--i can't even remember where--it certainly wasn't close enough to borrow sugar or to be lured in by dumb and dumber, counterstrike, or the brassy sounds of chicago; (3) andrew is tall, and i've recently discovered that i don't like tall people (i.e., individuals who are taller than me). last week as i edited a PTSD manuscript for daniel conybeare i looked up from a dangling modifier and realized that i really was looking up. "this isn't right," i thought. "i didn't realize you were taller than me," i said. and here's some more anecdotal evidence: if your name is nathan white, jonathan skeith, or john brawner, you'll notice that i haven't called you in quite some time. no disrespect, but you're just too tall.

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

too creepy?

someday i'd like to write an obituary for a living friend. this might sound morbid but think about it for a second, good obits extol their subjects; they highlight the happy anecdotes of life; they find the meaning, the miracles, and untold legacies of our beloved. it seems a bit silly that we reserve all this potential for encouragement until after our friends are gone. but then again, i'd hate for an obit to turn prophetic.

i'm tired and want to go to sleep, but all my underwear is in the dryer.

Saturday, September 16, 2006

in case you haven't noticed...

warning: this post is the kind of thing you might see on myspace.

i have a friend (we'll call him john brawner) who occasionally sends bulletins to his 93 myspace buddies. the topics of john's bulletins range from silly surveys to updates on the state of his myspace page. i find it humorous that he keeps us up to date on the background of his myspace page, but now i'm following suit. i've upgraded to the new beta blogger; this means that some of the links on the left should be easier to navigate, that there's a new label feature at the bottom of each post, and that i'm still unable to post pictures. on the bottom left you will find a list of EVERY label that's been used in the 17 point scale, so if you were interested in finding out more about john brawner, you could simply ctrl-f "john brawner," click on the link, and then see every post where brawner is considered a topic of interest. (if i've used your search term as a label,) this actually works a lot better than the default blog search mechanism at the top of the page.

the other more significant addition to the 17 point scale is a linked list of every book and film that i've experienced since mid-july, 2006. in some ways, this list represents the first fulfillment of the 17 point scale's original design: it uses the infamous 1-17 scale to provide a qualitative rating for each of these works.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

keyword analysis

mari asked me to report some of my creepy site-visitation stats:

drill down2 25.00%girlhood spoiling porn site (ack! both these hits were from a user in turkey who spent about 2 min looking around)
drill down1 12.50%the 17 point scale (google attributes this hit to a surfer in fayettville, arkansas....)
drill down1 12.50%blue scholars lyrics 17 point (san jose, california)
drill down1 12.50%ousta lyrics veggie tales (a googler from a college in south carolina)
drill down1 12.50%marigrace becker (the same user visited from the unscene before googling mari; san francisco?)
drill down1 12.50%blue scholars lyrics (spokane, wa. this user didn't seem to stick around very long)
drill down1 12.50%mismaloya catastrophe (buenos aires, argentina. 1:08)

these 8 searches all occurred in the last five days.

back page: heart of darkness

VIII.
heart of darkness by joseph conrad

8/12/01
"powerful descriptions drive these dark tales into picturesque dead-ins, as i can't manage to grasp the central themes in any meaningful or real way."

one of my favorite schizophrenia researchers is sean meichle. i've heard girls (i.e., kate simpson and kris purganan) refer to sean as metrosexual, but in my book he's a rather typical guy's guy. he's a tennis-shoes and jeans ally in my quest for casual work dress; he's an espn regular and a loyal hawks fan; and he prefers dominoes pizza to that crappy real italian nonsense that they serve you at tuta bella. however, there is one odd thing about sean--he can't handle used books. now this isn't necessarily a feminine trait, but when sean spots an old book he reacts like beth to bugs. the taste, touch, or smell of a used book is enough to make him jump. as a lover of all things cheap (and books), this is tough for me to understand. a used book is a loved book. it's a book with character. and in this sense, i love my books more than most folks. indeed, if you visit my library in greenwood, you will find that i scribble all over my books. even when i'm lost (like the first time i read heart of darkness), i still ink 'em up. anyway, for some strange reason (known as practical crit with chris chaney) back in 2003 i transcribed many of my heart of darkness comments in a Word file. so, thanks to the internet, if you have book ocd like sean, you can now see what it's like to read one of my used books without freaking out. just follow this heart of darkness link.

Monday, September 11, 2006

help! i don't know what to write...

i don't really know what to blog about at the moment. it's been about a year, and perhaps i'm running out of things to say. here are some ideas that i've had in the past -- if any of these sound interesting let me know:

1. the james philosophy of life (and drugs)
2. the world breathes shadows
3. lectio divina ("these days we conduct church a lot like the late show...")
4. an exploding candleholder ("a candle just exploded. a loud crack...")
5. marriage a la alex
6. annoying noises while in the bathroom
7. shawshank redemption stuff
8. thoughts on life, flatland, and my grandpa ("i remember edwin a. abbott as the wicked writer of '96")
9. the superbowl ("i hope you will pardon one last moment with the seahawks...")

and some newer ideas that i had in the last 30 seconds:

1. 30 minutes of thinking a day, the other andrew way
2. the seahawks o line and today's trade
3. another first essence poem
4. 48 h saturation: getting to know you
5. racoons and walruses
6. okay, this is getting ridiculous


andrew david "a handshake from whitney" puget island, wa.

Sunday, September 10, 2006

seahawks 9, lions 6

Thursday, September 07, 2006

barred from my own blog

by reading this blog you could be making a grave error. it's just one step from the 17 point scale to an online morass of vice and debauchery. i'm warning you because it almost happened to me.

you may have noticed that i haven't posted for a week. like most americans i spent the weekend as far away from my cubicle as possible: i wake surfed, conversed with a great dane, and grilled burgers. i pitched tents, moved pianos, and caught a cold. once labor day passed, a lingering sore throat kept me at home in my bed. but it was neither vacation nor illness that kept me from my beloved blog, it was my conscience, or more precisely, my unconscious conscience.

in an attempt to rid my computer of licentious pop-ups and porn, i recently installed a trial version of contentprotect on my home computer. many of you are probably familiar with programs like contentprotect--they may prevent you from watching march madness or downloading hip-hop tunes to your office desktop. in my case, an override code can be used to unblock these potentially perverse websites.

one reviewer of the program advised that it is best to have a friend set the password; that way the user can't be tempted to barrel onward through the warning into a waiting cesspool of internet sex. "hmmm" i thought, "that sounds wise."

but it was 1am. i wasn't about to call someone up and say, "errr, sorry to wake you, frankenberg. wanna' stop me from looking at porn? no, what i mean is...." so i devised an even better plan: pick a nearly random string of numbers that i would never remember and use them as my password--perfect!

well, my plan worked. the next day, i clicked on the firefox icon and received a startling message, "you are being blocked from viewing the17pointscale.blogspot.com for content of the following types: intimate apparel; adult/mature." for several days the 16 digit access code to my blog was lost in space, and i was spared the corrupting influence of my blog.

then, when i finally recovered the number, it was with great fear and trepidation that i ventured back. what provocative pictures might await me there? how might my moral compass be shattered by a peek at my own writing? tonight, i invite you to disengage your contentprotect and join me in this immoral journey through the 17 point scale.

(enough of that. just an fyi: this new version of blogger is prohibiting me from posting pictures. but unless google is in league with contentprotect, this should only be a temporary glitch)