Kinda funny thing happened at work- one of our operatives in Spain, named Jesus, discovered an error in some of our global technical documents, and reported this to me with a request for confirmation.
So I passed on the information to one of our internal specialists, and in the email asked "can you confirm if Jesus is right?" (I was really tired and wasn't really paying attention to the humor potential)
The specialist was real cute- she wrote me back saying "Well, this question has been asked for about 2000 years now and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to come up with the answer by end of business today..."
Then another specialist chimed in on a separate mail and confirmed "IT'S TRUE! JESUS IS RIGHT!!"
So I guess I have to reconsider my agnosticism now.
I'm big enough to keep, I guess... Denmark just gave me a permanent residency card. It's good because it's going to make it somewhat easier to travel in and out of Denmark, and I don't have to reapply for residency every year now. It's also good because they can't kick me out of the country if I decide to quit my job. So I'm still an American citizen (no one would mistake me for a Dane anyway), but I'm just allowed to stay here as long as I want. Now I just need to learn to speak Danish without as much of an atrocious New York accent.
Fell over sick again on Friday night after a goodbye party for one of my co-workers. Too much smoke, too many martinis, too much stress this past week. It was a really bad week, too much work, no support, and I kept making mistakes, forgetting things, losing my ability to juggle it all. Not much use to anybody last week.
I'm reading George Stephanopoulos's memoirs of his time in the Clinton administration now. I always saw him as a role model, though 10 years ago I didn't think I had the instinctive viciousness and lust for revenge that you need to succeed as a political operative (though my job now is proving that I can learn these things quickly). Stephanopoulos talks a lot about how difficult it was for him to simply survive the pressure, and how elusive the idea of advancing his cause was because it became submerged in the daily struggle.
I can identify a little bit now. His job then and mine now are somewhat similar, though the stakes are certainly different and I have no illusions about having any positive effect on the world with my work. I'm about as old as he was when he first started with the Clinton campaign too... it just makes me wonder what the fuck I'm doing right now.
So I've been down sick all weekend and am now trying to pick up where I left off, but it's difficult. It's getting harder to balance this crazy job with everything else I need to do to hold it together (a creative outlet, some kind of contact with the rest of humanity, sleep).
Sara and Rick sent me a care package from the US for my birthday, some "I feel sick" art-house comic books and some music- Laswell, Soup, Low, Flux of Pink Indians, Depeche Mode remixes. I need some comfort music now though so I'm playing Stereolab ("We want unconditional, unconditional rebellion... We thought you were sensational, would you just smile back at me"). It reminds me of a dream I had back in San Francisco that was linked to that song somehow, and it got me on a literary kick to document the crazy scene we were in then, the whole sick crew... That plan collapsed quickly, so I settled with the concept of "experience as art." A cop-out, sure, but the scene was fun while it lasted and there was just no time to document it.
The idea lived on though in one of the scenes of this thing I'm writing- my reporter gets involved in an experimental art collective and gets spun in a different direction than he intends. Nothing to do with the San Francisco crowd except for one on-stage scene, but it's there. Or will be when I finish it.
The comic books Sara sent have me thinking about the creative process again. It's good because need a kick from the outside world sometimes to get that critical mass, that level of frustration that forces me to write because I can't just sit there thinking about it. The timing is good too because a long weekend is coming up, there's some kind of Danish holiday so we get a couple of days off starting Thursday. I'll try to use the time wisely.
No time left tonight though, I'm just too sick and too tired. Lots of work to do--need to get myself clear for the weekend.
Yack! Well that was a false rise...
Adult., my favorite band of the moment, is playing some new dates. From their website I saw that they were playing Chicago on "5/7". In Europe, that means July 5 (they reverse it here), which would have been great for me because I have to be in Minneapolis for a conference on the 8th, and would probably be flying through Chicago anyway. I could have called in some favors and flown out early, making the show, and maybe chilling out in Chicago for a couple of days before flying up to Minneapolis.
Then of course I realized that 5/7 actually means May 7, and that I've been in Europe too long. My May is completely blocked off already and there's no way I'll make it out (though I do have Rufus Wainwright tickets for May 8, so at least that's something).
Hannah, you should totally see Adult. when they come. Also, Nicola Kuperus is showing some of her photography the Bucket Rider Gallery in Chicago. Opening reception is March 26th from 6-9pm. You should go and tell me how it is.
Today, I'd rather be in Chicago.
Birthday today. Friends and co-workers have been very cool to me the past few days, it's touching.
Thinking a lot lately about taking some serious time off and just trying to write for a while.
I've been going into work late for the last few days, because I'm supporting a lot of operations in the Pacific time zone. So my "real" workday doesn't start till about 5pm now (and finishes when I collapse around midnight). The screwed up sleep patterns are giving me some crazy dreams.
Last night I dreamt I was a reporter, documenting an anti-drug patrol from the back of a US Coast Guard helicopter (my subconscious must've been in an ironic mood), then somehow I was inside the Basilica of Rome, staring at the architecture. I left the Basilica and found I was in Venice, not Rome, and as I walked along the canals, a motorboat pulled up next to me, driven by Ted Kennedy in a kind of white yuppie sailing outfit.
I yelled at him, "Senator Kennedy! You're one of my favorite people in Congress!" (He said something like "Oh, hey, thanks.") Then I walked past a big public swimming pool set up as kind of an outdoors Roman bath, and ran into my family from New York and Florida, including my grandfather who died ten years ago (he looked great). I wanted to tell them about Kennedy and the Basilica, but they told me that we had to hurry up or we'd be late for the rally.
All of us went inside a public meeting hall, and there was Kennedy again giving a speech (still in the same sailing outfit). He was pointing to all these demographic charts and figures on a big whiteboard behind him, explaining how we were going to get our act together for the congressional elections in 2006 and really kick the Republicans' asses.
Whatever. It reminds me of a phase of odd dreaming I went through when I first moved to San Francisco. One time I dreamt I opened a coffee shop in Cancun, Mexico with a pack of cute indie girls, and Aaron Burr.
Suddenly, a lot of my friends in North America are telling me about new and pleasant affairs and entanglements over the last week. It's like the moon changed or something and is sending a blanket of sexy vibes over the western hemisphere. It's great to hear that everyone over there is getting so... inspired!
A lot of good music is coming to Copenhagen... finally! I just put some dates up on the concert listing page... haven't had much to put there for quite some time.
I just watched the Frontline special "A Company of Soldiers". What a wrenching experience... It's a very, very difficult program to watch, and very sobering that the events depicted in this show are happening every day, every single day, while most people in the US are complaining about work or watching Fox News or the Michael Jackson trial or some other insipid bullshit.
I think we were decieved into this war, and I just hope beyond hope that it will turn out to have been worth the cost in the end. There are evil bastards on both sides. But Jesus, I just have to empathize completely with the kids that have been sent out to go get shot at in our name. I can hardly imagine what they have to wake up to every day. This mess isn't their fault, but they're the ones paying for it.
[update on 5 March-- DO NOT WATCH THIS PROGRAM IF YOU ARE VERY SENSITIVE TO GRAPHIC SCENES OF SUFFERING OF PEOPLE AND ANIMALS. I watched this late in the evening last night and spent the rest of the night trying to forget what I saw so I could sleep.]
A month ago I bought a set of new computer speakers and strung them together with my existing speakers that I had moved to the kitchen, the idea being that I could then listen to music or the newsfeed while I was cooking or doing the dishes. I noticed that if I turned off the computer or unplugged the dual audio jack from the machine (like when I wanted to use a headset), the two speaker sets would set up some kind of resonance between them and start spraying out a really nasty humming sound. Didn't know what it was or how to fix it, so I just got in the habit of depowering the speakers whenever I turned off the computer or used the headset.
Since I got back from vacation, I've been working on a kind of techie section of this book I'm trying to write, that involved a lot of research into the very low end of the electromagnetic spectrum, and completely randomly blundered into what's causing the hum in my speakers. I was looking into some material about these people that track ELF submarine communications, and found that there was always a strong band of electromagnetic noise at 50 or 60Hz (European or American systems)... turns out it's just noise from the national power net, and it's the same phenomena that is foxing my speakers.
So when you hook two systems with internal grounds together, sometimes they create a "ground loop" and you get this nasty hum. I'd never have known if I hadn't been researching ELF just now, just this week. It feels like one of those moments of synchronicity, like back when I was living in San Francisco and for about a year--with a consistency that was scary after a while--the jukebox would start playing "Sympathy for the Devil" whenever I walked into a bar.
Anyway, the research and the writing are why I've been a terrible correspondent lately. I'll get back in the game soon but I have to do this now.