from the NNN archives: two suggestive conversations, transcribed

the morning after, we lay in bed till 11 am and make fun of each other.

"this is you last night," he says, breathing La Maze style, rhythmic yet panicky, cheeks puffed out.

"oh yeah? well, this is you!" I screw up my face in a torsion of effort and concentration, lower jaw jutted forward, grunting like I'm pinching a big one.

"oh yeah? yeah? well, this is you!" he throws back his head and emits a string of wily chimp calls: ooh! ooh! ooh! ahh! ahh! ahh! ahh! ahhh! ahhhh!

***

"I'm very susceptible to ideas, did I mention that?"

"I could've deduced it, I think."

"Yeah? How?"

"Well, it's obvious--it's obvious that you desire to be overwhelmed. Taken over. In a swoon."

"What about you, are you susceptible to ideas, too? Is there something distinctive about me, or are you like that, too?"

"Um--what do you think?"

"I think you have your ideas pretty well laid out. You like to develop your ideas."

"Yeah, I was gonna say that. I do like to lay out my ideas, I like to...lay them, rather than be laid by them. I like to...engender."

"Oh my lord. Lordy b'gordy."

frackowack gets a squid

here's a picture of Adam Frackowiak jumpkicking your sorry ass. adam is a friend of ours from high school--or rather, was a friend of ours in high school; I haven't seen him in years. Adam was tall, bespectacled, Polish--his parents were from Poland, so he was fully bilingual--and funny as a motherfucker. we called him Frackowack for short. he hung out with us till around the summer of 1996, when he started getting into Marilyn Manson, at which time he ditched the glasses, acquired a lipring and goth threads, dredded up his hair, and began to amass a squeeing group of female devotees. people had suddenly discovered how cool he was, and he didn't need us anymore (*sniff*).

during my senior year of high school, as a gag I took his freshman year picture--taken when he was still a dork--to one of those stands in the mall where they transfer images to mugs and t-shirts. I had the guy make me a shirt with Frackowack's yearbook picture on the front, and text underneath reading, Have You Seen Me? Missing Since 1995. I thought it was pretty funny, but the shirt seemed to make most people nervous since they assumed it was an earnest attempt to locate a missing kid. Frackowack himself liked the shirt since it featured him, but I'm not sure he really got it (which is probably just as well).

now that I've told you that, the following conversation between M and I will make more sense. immediately after having this conversation we pieced it back together on paper, cause even at the time it was happening we recognized that it was neato--one of those usually uncapturable experiences you sometimes have with someone where you both know you're grooving--and we planned to illustrate it or something. hasn't happened yet.

M: so when I was 16, and goin out with Jes, we went out one time to some Japanese restaurant, where I ordered squid. I ate one of em--they were tiny, some Japanese specialty--

NNN: where'd you go? Austin?

M: San Antonio.

NNN: Tokyo Steak House?

M: I don't know.

NNN: Tea Garden?

M: I don't KNOW! let me finish!

NNN: ok, ok.

M: anyway, I ate one of em and took the other one home, where I put it in a Ziplock bag in my room for like a week, and then took it as a present for Adam Frackowack. [as though talking to Frackowack] hey Adam, brought you something. brought you a bookmark. a pillow, a travel pillow. it's a condom, Adam, for your first night!

NNN: what'd he say? [imitating the Frack] aaaauugh! what the fuck!

M: something.

NNN: and then he kicked your ass.

M: then I kicked his ass.

[laughter]

NNN: remember the time you and Frack got into a mock fight down at the end of the hall, in the morning place?

M: I remember Mr. Stoore, the Research and Development teacher, coming out of his room and lining us up, me and Brent and...and...

NNN: Frack?

M: yeah.

NNN: I remember you guys smiling. and him pretending. giving you a mock lecture. I was there too, though, did you know that?

M: no, I don't remember it...

NNN: yeah, I was standing in front of the window with my eyebrow raised. like...like--look at me--like this.

M: [laughs] really? you were able to do that then?

NNN: yeah, man, always. since I was 11.

M: seems like you wouldn't have done that face then, though. seems like you would have been too depressed.

NNN: yeah, you're probably right. I would've just made a face like this, see? [makes straighline, deadpan face] but underneath I was raising my eyebrow.

M: yeah...and now it's finally coming out.

it's a two for tuesday!

(text reads: "I was thinking about maybe not having a door. It'd be a slap in the face to all the paranoid...I don't know... George Bush worshippers." click for larger image.)

my first offering is another jack-ism (see the entry for September 4th). I'm not really sure what the context was here; I think maybe Jack just said this more or less randomly, as we were standing around waiting for tables or chopping lemons or doing our closing side work. whatever the case, I thought it was funny, and kinda profound--I mean, think of the anxiety it would cause if you didn't have a door, the anxiety that having a door ordinarily conceals--so I wrote it down.

***

for my second offering, two lines I thought would go great in a story that itself never materialized, two orphan lines jotted down on a napkin in bleeding pen:

who wants to steal anything out of a truck that has shitty fruit in it?

and

our kicking, dangling legs over the side of the porch--as though off a pier--silhouetted against the trees, shadows swinging eerily

pachelbel's canon

I'm writing this post as I take my qualifying exams for PhD candidacy, if you can believe that shee-yot. it's important to prioritize, no?

anyhoo, in the last couple of weeks M has been downloading versions of Pachelbel's Canon in D like a mofo. we probably have about 10 different arrangements. but he keeps on downloading more because, as he says, none of these arrangements is "the right one."

what is the right arrangement, you ask?

well, a couple of days ago he emails me. before I go on, I should preface my posting of his email here with a little context for our exchange. a couple of weeks ago I came across a reference to Pachelbel's Canon while studying for my exams. the book I was reading was about the politics of popular culture and made the argument that the distinction between high culture and low culture was neither fixed nor secure, as seen in the case of cultural forms that move up or down in status over time. for example, shakespeare used to be part of a shared, common culture but now is regarded as "high" (tho even this immediately has to be qualified--witness the film O, or that remake of Romeo and Juliet from a couple years back, the one with Claire Danes). likewise, the book went on, Pachelbel's Canon in D was once part of elite culture, the court culture of the aristocracy, but now has become the best selling piece of classical music of all time--has effectively become pop culture. I mentioned this to M, given his interest in the song, and a couple of days he emails me from work:

"You were telling me how it's pop culture...I just wanted toverify that by telling you a little story...

"When my sibs and I were growing up, my dad & mom were pretty excited about computers. For a long time we had Atari computers.Then at some point my mom got a Tandy. Then she got a Mac (we had both at the same time, at that point). Then she got a $400 eMachine, after the divorce. The rest is history. But anyways...

"Tandy kinda looks like a modern computer, and some of them had Windows on them. But they were made by Radio Shack, and some of them had their own proprietary OS on them. If I recall correctly, I believe this one had its own OS. But I digress...

"It had MIDIs on it, but the only one I remember,because I liked it, was Pachelbel's Canon.

"I'm sure I'd heard it before then, but that was the experience that made me like it. And I wish I could hear *that* version again. :P

"Unfortunately, I don't think we have the Tandy anymore. Though we still have the Ataris."

his email reminded me of a parallel experience of mine, so I wrote back:

"interesting: because when I was little, my folks (well, mostly my dad) were also into computers, and in 1984 my dad bought the apple IIc that we had until I graduated from high school.

"the computer came with several floppies--one with a word processing program on it, another with games on it, and a couple others that I don't remember but would be interested to see again (my folks still have the computer and its accoutrements up in the garage attic).

"when I was a kid the games floppy was my favorite for obvious reasons. it had a menu with different activities you could select. there was a space invaders type game and a game called lemonade stand, which was a text-based game that moved from day to day giving you the weather (if it was rainy it would play a little electronic snippet of "rain drops are fallin' on my head" and a different song if it was sunny, I don't know what because I didn't recognize it as a kid) and prompt you to key in how many glasses of lemonade you wanted to make that day and how much you wanted to charge for them. the object of the game was basically to balance supply and demand in order to stay in business and turn a profit--not to make too many glasses on rainy days or charge so much for them on sunny days that you lost money. so after it would give you the weather for a particular day (the game's calendar started June 1st) and you typed in how many glasses at what price, it would take you to a page that told you how many you had sold and how much you had made. pretty simple game, but I liked it.

"but the point of all of this is: another activity on the floppy that I remember wasn't a game at all. similar to your Tandy's Pachelbel, you could listen to a MIDI version of a Mozart song--I don't know the title, but if I heard it now I would recognize it. what was interesting was that if you selected the song option from the menu, the computer would take you to what was pretty much a blank screen except for the words "Now playing: Mozart's Symphony no. 4" (or whatever). and you would sit there and listen to it without doing anything else: your whole attention would be absorbed by the music playing functions of the computer in the same way that your whole attention is now absorbed by a word processing program.

"what's interesting to me about this now is the way that a technological limitation (computer can't carry out more than one complex function at a time) was not perceived as such, in fact was received as an amazing thing: wow, look at what the computer can do! it can play music! I distinctly remember this, remember my dad bringing the computer home in 1984 and setting it up and then my mom, dad, and I gathered around as the computer did its Mozart thing, and we were all amazed... whereas now music is just a background function of computers, what you do while you're doing something else. mundane.

"and yeah, I think, like you and Pachelbel, it was that early experience with MIDI mozart, plus Amadeus which came out the same year, that even today makes me think Mozart is pretty fucking catchy compared to other classical stuff, most of which leaves me cold."

so I'm posting our email exchange here because I thought it was neat. I love it when you experience shit you read about in theory. :)

inaugural entry

welcome to the inaugural entry of NNN, INCORPORATED! this blog is brought to you courtesy of a couple of recent developments:

1. my partner M just recently started up a blog--check it out here--and after a few days of watching him joyfully transmitting his random thoughts and cool webfinds to the world, I soon began to salivate

and

2. underscoring my desire for a forum for the posting of random tidbits, I today came across a file cabinet folder labeled "misc. personal", basically a folder created for items unable to be filed away anywhere else. alongside letters, birthday cards, and cartoon clippings I rediscovered an inordinate amount of written miscellany: funny conversations hastily transcribed while at work, weird dreams, fragmentary observations or analyses that never got incorporated into longer pieces--stuff that accumulated over the years 'cause it seemed too insightful or funny to chuck, but also too isolated to do much else with than keep and occasionally revisit and laugh, or marvel, or whatever.

looking through all this stuff today, though, I felt like it deserved an audience of some sort. but what should I do with it? maybe make some kind of zine? turn it into comix?

I still might do that.

but until then, there's NNN, Inc.

bringing you the best in marginalia.


***

today's offering is a brief conversation that I wrote down on a guest check at a restaurant I worked at about three years ago, an artsy Tex-Mex place located in an affluent part of my hometown of san antonio, texas. this particular conversation took place between me and a co-worker, a college kid who at the time was about 20, a little younger than I was. I liked this guy a lot. it wasn't sexual--we just clicked for no reason that I could put my finger on. probably because, like me, he was socially awkward and disdained by the restaurant's repressive owners. whatever the reason, I found him really easy to talk to.

anyway, he was kind of quiet and conservative looking, but he had this daredevil, prankster streak and a shitload of crazy stories to back it up. he shared an apartment with his best friend, a dude named Eli, and they were constantly daring each other to do outrageous things. once, when Jack and Eli worked at Marble Slab Creamery together, Eli dared Jack to suck on an old work sponge--and if you've ever worked food service, you know the kind I mean: the kind that sits all day in a bucket of dirty, bleachy, greasy water; the kind that you'd never, never use in your own house but since it's just Marble Slab or McDonald's, well--fuck it. so eli dared him to suck such a sponge, and jack had obliged. in another incident, jack had vomited into a large ziplock bag, sealed it up, then lain it flat inside the freezer. once solid, jack had removed the frozen sheet of puke and slid it through the open car window of an enemy: when they returned they'd find vomit all over their seat--and they wouldn't be able to figure out what happened!

jack and eli were also both vegan, although they detested vegan sanctimoniousness and rejected the label. (once a quasi-friend of jack's--resented for his indie rock good looks and secure position at Whole Foods, which had refused to hire jack--came into the restaurant wearing a shirt that read "vegan". the v-word, jack had shuddered.) once, after work, he invited me back to his parents' house to watch a video he had rented, a french animal rights film from the 1940s whose title I can't remember. in one grisly scene, a factory worker butchers a live cow strung up by the ankles, a torrent of blood raining down upon him as he slits its neck. a business major, jack dreamed of becoming the CEO of a company that tested on animals: once in power he would liberate the animals and then destroy the company from within. his politics were definitely the politics of sabotage, and above all else he valued being hardcore.

hence the following conversation, which I quickly transcribed on the only paper I had access to at the time--a guest check from my ticketbook--because it was amazing to me, because even at the time I recognized that it captured the jackness of jack, his quintessence. it was a late winter evening around february, I guess, because we were talking about Lent:

jack: so are you doing anything for Lent this year?

NNN: nah, I'm not catholic anymore. why would I do something for Lent?

jack: you don't think Lent is a celebration?

NNN: a celebration of asceticism, maybe.

jack: what's asceticism?

NNN: self-denial.

jack: you don't think it's a competition?

NNN: yeah, between you and you.

jack: no--you don't think it's a competition with Jesus? to show him that you can be just as hardcore as him?

NNN: (reflective, appreciative silence)

jack: you think I should go balls out this Lent?


***

man, I miss fucking Jack. last I heard he went out to Colorado.