Author: chris

i just spent five hours at Borders Bookstore, waiting for laura to get done with training for her job.  it wasn’t bad.  i read a lot, didn’t spend too much. being there made me think about all the art i want to complete–writing, comics, music–…i work out now.  lifting weights.  one of the things i do is situps with two ten pound weights on my chest.  when you work out your muscles tear, then repair themselves, getting larger.  when i do a full round of 60 situps with the weights i’ll often sit on the couch.  my stomach is kind of squinched up when i sit like this.  i imagine my muscles repairing themselves like this, so that i can’t lie flat.  and when i force myself to lie flat my muscles in my tummy all stretch, stretch, stretch, then snap–POP!–, and there’s a huge soft gap in my belly and it turns blood red as i slowly bleed to death internally.  that’s how i feel right now with writing, need to lie flat and write it out, stretch.  maybe it’s not so much like the belly thing.  but it feels like it is. anyway, i’ve been doing a lot of sketching lately after not having drawn very much at all for a year or more.  i’m planning on turning some of my stories into comic strips.  does this have to do with reading McSweeney’s 13?  maybe.  so what? bite me.

i just wrote and posted the father of communication. yeah, it has words and stuff and no pictures or anything, so that might turn some of you viewers away. literature is dead. 

speaking of people killing literature, why do so many people see fit to worship chuck palahniuk right now?  is it because he wrote fight club?  i’ve read two of his books, choke and lullaby.  the premise of choke wasn’t really that great or even strong.  a guy has a scheme where he goes to restaurants and pretends to choke, a stranger saves him, said stranger feels like the saved guy is their son since stranger saved his life, so stranger sends him money each year on his new “birthday.”  he does this at many many restaurants so he gets many many checks.  now, interweaved throughout this story is sexaholics, weird sexual encounters, etc. 

the most obvious questions is why would these strangers send him money?  chuck’s answer is because they feel like he’s their son.  but…they saved HIS life…wouldn’t…er…why would this even be any sort of outcome whatsoever?!?

anyway, plot aside, his writing isn’t really “touched with psychopathic brilliance” as L.A. Weekly said.  but perhaps the most disturbing blurb is from Bret Easton Ellis: “Maybe our generation has found its Don DeLillo.”  OUR GENERATION’S DON DELILLO?!?!

for those of you who are not familiar with DeLillo…well, i’m one of you.  i’ve only read one of his books, Underworld, so i’m not an expert on him.  but i can tell you this:  i’ve never been a big fan of baseball.   i used to play it as a kid, but i don’t really like watching it.  ever.  in the beginning of Underworld there are about 50 pages describing the events in and surrounding a baseball game.  for someone who is not interested in baseball, this could be very very boring.  but i loved it.  i can’t explain it.  i still think baseball is boring to watch, but seeing how Don DeLillo watches it is not only interesting but captivating…but that’s too cliche a term.  it made me want to go out and buy a yankee uniform and one of those big foam hands (that’s baseball right?) and get a hotdog and follow the team around the country.  this, i think, is what measures great literature.

Choke, on the other hand, made me wonder why i had paid 24.95 for this hardback book, that more or less amounted to a poor plot with sick, sleazy sex scenes (isn’t this the definition of a bad porn??  maybe good porn, depending on who you are).

Lullaby was better in the plot field.  a guy memorizes a poem that kills people when they hear it…and then he can just think it to them and it kills them.  i think…it’s been a while and that detail is a little vague.  another guy also learns the poem.  there are plot holes in abundance here,  no doubt (why doesn’t it kill him when he says it?  why, since he feels a threat from the other guy who learned the poem, doesn’t he just think it towards him and kill him?  i don’t know, and i don’t think Chuck does either.)  but the writing was still…eh.  it was average.

i went to see Chuck Palahniuk give a reading in Austin at BookPeople when he came through town.  it was a very enjoyable reading…not a reading at all actually, he decided to just do a Q & A.  the guy has tons of disturbing stories to tell, and they all sounded true (he did say they were true…but you know…everyone lies) and he seems like a really nice guy, like he’d be a great conversationalist, really easy to talk to.  the amount of ideas he has seems to be endless.  if only he could write like he talked to us.

i didn’t mean for this to be a book review.  i mean, who cares about books? literature is dead! burn them!  burn the stinking books!

it’s been drizzling all day.  i’m wearing grey shorts, and the drizzle collects on them and is easily seen.  it looks like i peed myself, only in very small, restricted amounts, and all over my shorts.  i show this off with gusto when i enter a store.

i ate tofu last night.  laura is becoming a vegetarian and, though she promises me she won’t try to make me one as well, she’s only making vegetarian food.  i’m not surprised, this is how it happens, right?  jules knew it.  tony knew it.  and antone shoulda better fuckin’ known better.  oh wait…

anyway, i’ve always thought of tofu as, you know…semi hard diarrhea.  only…lighter.  and not so smelly.  not even brown really…so not really like diarrhea at all.  but something else that’s gross. but she mixed it with some pesto sauce and it was really good.  now i think of tofu as hardened air.  lots of vegetables…i think my stomach was vomiting on itself.  it was more vegetables than i had the entire month of may.  as soon as we cleaned the kitchen up and laura went to bed i tore open the freezer door and ate a t-bone like an icecicle, couldn’t waste the time to cook it.  too hungry for meat.

if you haven’t already, you need to go buy McSweeney’s 13.  McSweeney’s is usually a literary journal with short stories and such, but good short stories, but 13 is different.  it’s entirely made up of comics and articles on comics.  if you aren’t a comic fan, you should definitely get it.  it will make you appreciate them more.  if you are a fan, get it. it’s a great anthology.  http://store.mcsweeneys.net  don’t resist the temptation.

do you ever watch daria?  the only station that i think it’s on is nogin.  it’s a very creepy station to me.  it’s on late at night in a segment called “the-n.”  i think it’s for early teens.  they have a show called degrassi, the equivalent, i believe, of a teen pre-pubescent soap opera.  i’ve never actually watched it though (i swear…i haven’t) but the previews are always on between daria.  that’s another creepy thing…all the previews and ads are for and about the station.  there’s no training bra commercial, no anti suicide or drug commercial, it’s just nogin.  nogin is a vortex.  after every daria they have a music video. only one.  this is another reason nogin is creepy.

the x-files are on now.  i miss my sisters when i watch the x-files.  when we’d watch it religiously every sunday, if there was every a suspenseful moment, like a door opening, or mulder or scully hearing something out of place or if they were just looking for who was in the room, we’d always shout “IT’S AN ALIEN!!”  do you even get it?  i dont’ know.  there were so many things that i really think only my two sisters and i got.  everyone else tried to play along like they knew, but it was just like how us losers would laugh when the cool kids said something that we thought was funny.

what ever happened to those two kids in The Others?  i really liked them.  it’s an alien!

i just posted suck and fat. i’ve been working on it for a while…part of it was written about a year ago…and then i’ve been finishing it for the last week or so.  i like it.  i was afraid i wasn’t going to have an ending, or be able to tie it all together.  but then i started writing the last few sections and realized there really was a good ending.

went to Laura’s graduation and was sharply reminded of the reasons i’m glad i’m out of high school.  i don’t know how Laura survived in that place.  the majority of the people are so stupid and they talk crap ALL THE TIME.  the valedictorian gave a speech that was long, confusing, self-indulgent, and petty.  this, i believe, sums up most of the students who listened to her, i think.  maybe it was better suited than we all think.  besides, none of them were listening to her anyway.

i’ve been collecting pictures for my overgrowth series for the last few days.  i’ll be putting them up soon…some of them, or one of them, tonight. maybe. 

what is it about summer that makes you so bored and makes your website hits drop dramatically?  don’t college kids have computers when they leave school?? worthless ingrates.

i have added overgrowth (one) to my site.  first in many to follow…i have a few more pictures that are almost ready to post, and many more ideas.  all i need to do is remember to take my camera with me everywhere i go.

i took this picture about a month ago.  i had to set the camera on a tripod because i couldn’t hold it steady.  the tripod is old, and we got it with an old camcorder we had while i was growing up.  the camcorder weighed about twenty pounds and took regular sized vhs cassette tapes.  the camcorder no longer works, but the tripod is fine.  but when i grabbed the handle to the tripod a sticky blue substance attached itself to my hand.  it was all over the handle.  it didn’t have any smell but i could swear it was burning me, burning right through my hand. this could have just been in my head.  i kicked the tripod and went inside to get a paper towel to wipe off my hand and wrap around the handle.  then i took the picture when the cat walked in front of the camera.  i kicked the cat and took the tripod and camera inside.  on some levels i hope the picture isn’t too big on your computer.  but on other levels, i hope it is, so you have to wait in anticipation if you have a very slow connection, like myself.  then you find out all it basically is is a picture of a blurred cat.  but i don’t think it’s too big.  maybe even a little too small.

after hearing so much about Iron & Wine, and after reading the guy’s interview in some magazine, and after seeing all my friends, both of them, listening to it, i finally got it for myself.  it’s pretty much what i was expecting it to sound like, but in a good way.  the first thing that comes to mind when listening to it is Nick Drake.  and then “designer vagina.”  thanks to Iwanttoleavemybody, i’m constantly running that phrase through my head, and in my head i’m laughing hysterically.  sometimes on the outside too.

i believe i said yesterday that i’d post a picture of my girlfriend laura.  maybe i didn’t.  but i meant to.

i’m at home for the summer, and when my mom saw the picture she said, “chris! she’s in her PAJAMAS! you can’t put that on the internet!!”  it reminds me of another internet related episode with my father.  he was on the computer, then all the sudden starts screaming at my mom to come look.  she runs in there to find a picture of a half naked woman on the screen.  “look at this!” he said.  “it just popped up!  can you believe this is on the internet?!”  thank god the woman wasn’t scantilly clad in her pajamas.

my internet has been down for the last three days.  it’s up for an hour.  then it’s down for twelve hours.  then up long enough to think that i can check my email, and then it gets disconnected.  how annoyed am i? very.

i bought a game for my playstation two.  i don’t have very many games…not a very big game person…but i play it on occasion.  the game was XIII.  i’d heard a lot about it, and it does look pretty cool, but i have no idea why anyone in their right mind would choose to have a first person shooter on PS2 than on the PC.  you can get much more accurate aiming on PC…with a PS2 controller i feel like i’m just running around waving my guns all over the place, spraying bullets everywhere hoping one of them hits someone. they usually don’t and i usually die.  i guess this is why i’m not a game reviewer.  that and since i was twelve i haven’t found it possible to play games for extended periods of time. 

my girlfriend laura is the salutatorian for her graduating class this year.  she’s lying on the floor behind me writing her speech.  her graduation is in a week on friday and she has to get her speech proofread tomorrow.  she’s on her first line.  procrastination.  this is why she is my girlfriend.  she just got mad at me because i was reading it. i sometimes wish i had actually tried to be valedictorian or salutatorian in high school.  then i could have written a killer speech…only it wouldn’t be written.  i’d just bring a copy of something like naked lunch or on the road and go on a rant interjecting quotes from one of these books into the whole thing.  spit would be flying everywhere and all you’d be able to hear would be gasps from the parents and school board (the students by now would no doubt be bored comatose). 

when i was in high school i was artist of the month some time in my senior year.  (it wasn’t really a high honor…my art teacher knew the seniors got pissed off if they weren’t artist of the month at some point.  i didn’t really mind either way).  artist of the month means you get to display a bunch of your work in a case outside of the art room with your bio.  i wrote my bio and then cut it in half right down the middle, vertically, and put one half on one side of the case and the other half on the other side of the case.  a whole lot of people didn’t get that it was all supposed to be read together, so they’d read one line on the left one and then go down to the next line, and you could actually see their brains imploding when the sentence didn’t fit.  i’ll post it sometime soon if i can find it.  i believe it’s tacked to my wall.

i’m reading fear and loathing in las vegas again. watching the movie really made me want to read it.  so i am. i bought this copy in London, England, at a Waterstone’s a few years ago.  i think it’s kind of like a Borders is here, except much smaller, all the workers i spoke to actually like to read, and the books all had different covers than they do at Borders.  though this had more to do with the fact that it was great britain and not america.  it was on a 3 for 2 sale.  not buy two get one free.  why?  because the british are smart; there’s nothing free in this fricking world. except maybe fear and really bad drugs…the brittle kind. with urine soaking it.

Saturday midnight…Memories of this night are extremely hazy. All I have, for guide-pegs, is a pocketful of keno cards and cocktail napkins, all covered with scribbled notes. Here is one: “Get the Ford man, demand a Bronco for race-observation purposes…photos?…Lacerda/call…why not a helicopter?…Get on the phone, lean on the fuckers…heavy yelling.”  Another says: “Sign on Paradise Boulevard–‘Stopless and Topless’…bush-league sex compared to L.A; pasties here–total naked humping public in L.A….Las Vegas is a society of armed masturbators/gambling is the kicker here/sex is extra/weird trip for high rollers…house-whores for winners, hand jobs for the bad luck crowd.”

-Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

i wrote blue lava in the receptacles of giants this morning around 3 and just posted it. sometimes i write the title to the story first. not often, but i do. that’s what happened with this one. i drew this picture:

and came up with the title after looking at it. i made it my msn screen name for a while. i didn’t know that it was because i was planning on writing a story with that title, but in hindsight i guess it was. i’ve had the name since the end of march.

we saw Troy the other day. i liked it. in the fight scenes things actually looked real. i don’t know how they did it. the sword thrusting into the guy’s shoulder actually looks like a sword thrusting into the guy’s shoulder. the spear going through the guy’s neck, the half decapitation(s). ahh, beautiful. but what i liked best was there wasn’t a definite evil side and a definite good side, so you weren’t really sure when you were happy and when you were sad.

i wanted a sprite during the movie but all they had was sierra mist. so i got it. if the correct measurement for soda pop is one part soda syrup one part carbonated water, my sierra mist was at about 10 parts soda syrup one part carbonated water. perverse sweetness mixed with popcorn topped with delicious yellow chemical sludge is not a good mix.

Laura said she doesn’t like going to movies with old people (of which there were a lot at Troy). they often get their wife or husband to repeat lines in the movie because they can’t hear, and they don’t attempt to whisper at all. i don’t mind so much, but that’s just because i’m looking forward to being old and doing this very same thing at movie theatres and annoying younger people like me. i also want to carry around mace and spray them for fun

[i was going to put the mace quote from Kill Bill Volume II here but i couldn’t find it and i didn’t remember it.]

i wrote and posted wax traps this morning at about…one or two i think. it’s the first sort of free consciousness writing i’ve done in quite a while. i think it turned out very well.

i was watching Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on tv when i wrote it. in my opinion the movie is not as good when dr. gonzo is dubbed over saying “i’m gonna goldurn kill you you crap face [mouth moving no words coming out].” but at least they didn’t edit the interesting stuff. like raoul’s little gems: “a drug person can learn to handle such things as seeing their dead grandmother crawling up their leg with a knife in her teeth. but no one should be asked to deal with this trip.” i read the book before i saw the movie…i think they did a fantastic job. and i’m glad i read the book first. someone needs to by the dvd for me…

i believe the movie influenced wax traps…at least at first. a little. maybe not at all. wax traps is a little more coherent than the movie…

i highly recommend “Brushing Brushing” on cora’s (drivelautumn) blog. it’s the may 16 post. she’s stealing my ideas before i even get them! she also found an interesting site, engine heart. the author has more poems than me, and writes good short stories. it needs to be viewed, even if you hate reading. the site layout is worth it.

i just put the drawing of the ram up on my site. i think it looks good. i didn’t know this until now, but i’ve always wanted to have a drawing of a ram on my site.

i went to a site, PEDA, people for the eating of delicious animals. it’s making fun of PETA, people for the ethical treatment of animals. some of it’s funny, and i know the guy, so i sent him a sarcastic e-mail. here’s what it said:

hey matt. this is chris. chris hopf. got your blog address from
cora. i laughed my ass off just at the name peda. but i wanted to retort:

death of an animal is a horrible horrible thing. want proof? peta
happily distributes a free video of slaughterhouse conditions. watch it. they promiseit will “change your life.” it sure changed mine. when you’re done watching it come back and finish this email.

your life is changed isn’t it? after seeing it, i turned off the video and watched some tv. i came to a horrible realization.

my tv was on the discovery channel, and what gruesomeness did i
witness? there was a cheetah MAULING a zebra. it was devouring its flesh like the horrible beast that i once was before i saw the peta video. i was apalled. but there is something we can do, fellow peta brother.

it’s not just cheetahs. birds kill worms, ants kill grasshoppers,
snakes eat rats! they obviously have not been taught the true virtues of life. there is an easy solution.

in a clockwork orange, they strapped the guy down and forced his eyes open so that he’ll watch violent films so it makes him sick and he will no longer commit such violence. this is all we have to do to get these animals to see that what they’re doing is wrong. strap the animals down, force their eyes open, and make them first watch a young zebra prancing around with his friends. then cut to the next scene, a DYING zebra, presumably the same one, with its guts hanging out of its belly, trying to crawl to his mom. but where is mom? SHE’S IN THE STOMACHS OF THE OTHER CHEETAHS. as he comes to
this realization a cheetah bites into his neck and causes blood to spray forth like a geyser. the animal being forced to watch will realize that he’s made one bad mistake after another, and will leave the building a new animal.

i know that you must agree that this the only solution to such a
horrid problem, because you too saw the terrible treatment of animals in the peta video. i’ve tried to contact peta about conducting “Operation Animalsave,” but i have yet to hear back from them. i’ll keep you posted.

chris.

i thought it was a vaguely funny e-mail. i don’t really put much thought in peta, or really in peda for that matter, and i’d rather think about other things. but matt didn’t get the joke, and i suppose he takes peda very seriously. he replied saying that peta is stupid, don’t call me a peta brother, etc. for a while, i thought he was playing along, because i couldn’t really see how someone could take my email seriously. but, he didn’t, and he said he’d post my hatemail on his site.

well, it wasn’t hatemail, and it wasn’t posted, because he got the joke after i told him it was a joke. so i posted it so others may join me in Operation Animalsave. come on now. Operation Animalsave??? who could take that seriously?

ecstatic. this is me. for a few reasons.

1. i wrote and posted a new story, germaine’s poor. this is always exciting for me…filling up my site with stories makes me feel like i have worth; that i’m accomplishing something. writing something also gets that special something out of me that keeps me sane. for some reason i see this story as more of an experiment for me…i think i tried to write it a bit more consciously than other stories, and i think it worked out well for once. i wrote it in about fifteen or twenty minutes while my mom was listening to African acapella in the kitchen.

2. before giving the next piece of information, to fully appreciate it some background information must be given.

2.a. my freshman year in college i made two Ds, four Cs, two Bs, and one A. basically you can throw the A out, because virtually anyone who takes that course (a “welcome to college” six week course that everyone must take) is guaranteed an A, even if said person is comatose or partly comatose. so after leaving my freshman year, my gpa was at 2.08. i think we get put on some kind of academic probabtion if we go below 2.00. (this wasn’t a big threat…my neighbor had a gpa of .50. i’m not exaggerating. she had been enrolled in college for three years (couldn’t enroll for one semester i think) and was still considered a freshman. she dropped out and got pregnant. so “probabtion” is just a made up word trying to sound scary. but still…i didn’t want my grade to be so crappy.

2.b. the first semester of my sophomore year had me in better spirits. i made four Bs and one A, making my gpa 2.50. there was much rejoicing.

3. now we come to the new news. i just checked my grades: two Bs and three As (i dropped one class, computer science, and dropped that major because i’m not a computer scientist. i’m a writer. so now i’m just an english/creative writing major). i’ve checked several times to make sure i’m logging in correctly, if maybe someone has taken the exact same courses as me and i’m just looking at their grades. but i’m not. and it’s mine. all mine. my gpa now stands at 2.75. i’m not just here to burn money anymore!!

4. i used to think that only extremely inteligent people, or people willing to trade sex acts for grades, or people with enough money, or people who had no life outside of studying, or people who belonged to the mexican mafia could possibly make so many As. now i realize that any underachiever who often believes they have better things to do than to study can make such grades. this is possibly the best and most rewarding news i’ve learned all day.