August 2004 Archives

i did not have coffee today. i am drinking tea. black tea.

coffee can be black as night and bitter as hell. tea can hit the spot. some contrast, huh?

sigh. why do i do these things to myself?

why, you ask, why give up coffee? um. not really sure. something about the stomach, the jitters, the brain fuzz, the diabolical plot of juan valdez to rob me of my precious natural sloth.

i sit in front of oxenrose, drinking an odwalla for lunch. i'm reading about giant pythons and feeling generally icky when this somewhat disheveled elderly woman comes up to me. she's shadowed by a matronly woman with an apologetic smile.

the elderly woman leans over and whispers, "i have a present for you. it's complicated so make sure you read the directions." i say, "no thank you," but from her clutched stack of cards and wrapped gifts she takes a medium sized present and places it on the chair opposite me. the matronly woman smiles and nods to say it's okay so i say, "thank you very much" and let them both wander back off up hayes street.

i leave the package there while i continue reading my book, drinking my odwalla. eventually i stand up. the present is still there. i pick it up. it's light. i peek under the edge of the faded santa claus wrapping paper.

anyone want to play Yahtzee? i've got it now. it's complicated though, so we'll have to read the instructions.

what can i say. weird shit just happens to me. it is also, as marina points out, a full moon.

i would like to ask you all to join me in picturing my three year old niece telling my brother-in-law as he walks out the door to work:

"mess 'em up, dog."

'cause i hear she did that.

i'm all irritated today, but madhavi just bought me flowers. 'cause she rocks. and jason invited me to his birthday party which is pretty damn friendly. so i guess i'm just in a bad mood for no reason.

maybe i'll go mess 'em up, dogs.

i bet you think i'm going to go all hippie on you and talk about how everything in my life has suddenly settled into focus and i know where i'm going and the birds are singing and my new leprechaun friend and me will go skipping off hand in hand towards nirvana or taco bell or something.

nope. i got a new (used) tv and now everything is so clear!

i bought one off craigslist for $150 that:
a) has a flat screen
b) has s-video and component inputs
c) has a remote with a frickin' MUTE button! yea mute button!

my old tv was crapalicious. i got it in trade for something, but can't remember what. i will now bequeath it to lisa and kathrin. or maybe get them to buy me dinner or something for it.

boy. moving sure takes a lot out of you. once again, i went to bed at 10:00 last night.

in defence, madhavi had to be up at dawn's crack this morning to go diving and we still haven't hung any curtains so it's supa bright in the morning. (if you want to skulk around outside our place you could get a glimpse of my boo-tay.)

plus, we finished setting up the office and tried to make sense of the living room last night. it feels like we have a ton of furniture but none of it is quite right. want to trade?

there was all this stuff i was gonna blog about but now i've forgotten what it was.

i did get these groovy new headphones after some trial and error with other totally crappy ones. they're earbuds that come on a little zippy spool so you can pull 'em out and then they zip back in when you're done rocking out.

i'm not the best judge of sound quality, but they sound good to me. and i really hated always getting my headphone cords all tangled up.

gosh that's dull.

i am no longer a dumpster.

nope. nu-huh. i used to live in the dump, ergo i was a dumpster. now i do not. now i live with madhavi in a cute two bedroom in a part of town we just learned is called The Castro Alps.

hah! the castro alps! that's fooney! har-dee-har har har!! even better, i just discovered an absolutely perfect name for the neighborhood i used to live in, which wasn't quite mission dolores, wasn't quite the mission, or the castro, or duboce triangle, or mint hill, or middle market: nope. 15th and Church is best known as Doloresque.

where do lisa and kathrin live? Doloresque!

pay attention, because this is very very very important. you are reading this because you googled "lev kushner." LEV KUSHNER. you, i dunno, think writes a foxy email and figured before you decide to send him your cell phone number, home address, anthrax, whatever you thought you should google him. you've come to the right place. i'm here to help. being his older brother, i thought i should volunteer to give you the good and bad news right up front. so go ahead and ask me. also, be very certain to look at this picture, which i've entitled, gimme a kiss. he's the one on the right.

yes. sometimes my brother wears his underwear on the outside. he's like that.

we now return to our regularly scheduled blog.

today i got the new issue of kitchen sink. for some reasion a few months ago i thought it would be a good idea to write an article about blogging so i did and they published it and now there's this published article about blogging and, more specifically, my blog.

this blog.

hi. if anyone is reading this after reading that kitchen sink article, hi. i'm zack. i'm an idiot. if you happen to work with me, or are related to me, or rent me an apartment i would like to clearly state now that this is a work of fiction. i am, in fact, not even zack. i am someone else entirely.

somehow in the middle of the night, i retwisted my ankle.

i was spending perhaps my last night in madhavi's loft. a loft i will not miss. and the pain woke me up. it was all ow-ow-ow. i finally got up and wobbled down the stairs and took me some mo-fo advil.

it was an intense night. madhavi finally got ahold of her moms in oz-trailer and listening to her tell her mum about us moving in together THIS SUNDAY made it all sink in to alert level red.

are you here for the rest of you life? tickets please! thank you. come right in.

i want to fill the world with silly love songs.

that's what sir paul sang to us at ajax's par-tay. his soft rock par-tay. it rocked, in a very soft way. but i guess someone squealed to his co-worker who was there about his blog so he had to take the blog out back and shoot it.

let us take a moment of silence for ajax's blog. now how will we know what happened at yogurt? nobody likes a rat.

i think one must ponder the existential questions inherent in mingling a blog habit with work. is this wise? i mean, i know some people i work with read this and anyone i work with could google me and find this... and yet i work and blog and blog about work. smart? no.

i finally got around to posting the pictures from my mexico trip.

It is Friday today. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, FriedEgg!

I think that I have absolutely nothing of interest to share with you today. I am like that guy you sit next to on the plane, with nothing of interest to say, who talks to you the entire way from Phoenix to Salt Lake City.

Really, all you want to do is read your book. But since you are at work, and you are reading a blog because you do not want to work, I will help you.

I am sooooo helpful!

some really nice guy i don't know just sent me some mp3s. he saw what i wrote on monkeySARS and sent me the songs i am missing! now i am listening the The Red Rooster.

"i got a little red rooster (twang twang), too laaaazy to crow for day."

i have been invited to a party! one of my blog friends is having a jell-o wresting hoedown without any jell-o or hos which are down. actually, it is a soft rock party. perhaps i will go and meet all sorts of people i do not know. this is appealing because madhavi has left me again to slaughter innocent treefish for the weekend.

i thought i'd tell you an old story. i don't know which one yet, tho.

so come get your graham cracker and warm milk and we'll see what comes out.

this weekend we went to chicago. we being me, my moms, my dads, the lumpiest brother lev, and madhavi.

yes. that is correct! family vacation with the girlfriend. we're pushing the envelope here, kids! new boundries!

it all went well. madhavi survived my father in travel-mode, which is a relief, and my parents only got all misty-eyed about having her along eight or nine times.

we went to a wedding. my godfather's daughter.

yes. it is true. i am now the proud almost-neighbor of two wiener dogs.

the place is supra-fine and you will all have to come over for cocktails and cocktail wienerdogs.

perhaps i will write more later. perhaps not.

the coffee is good today. also, after just missing it many times, i finally got to ride on the vintage 1912 SF streetcar. inside, it's all varnished wood. the seats are covered in woven wicker.

woven wicker! man. that's class.

there are also sliding doors inside to seperate the car into three different compartments. one for the elite, one for the secretaries, and the one in the rear for the CFOs. no no. of course i'm kidding. the CFOs ride on the roof.

oh. the shame!

i am that guy. i am that guy who brings a cup of coffee on the bus and then spills it. really. ever since i left madhavi's place it's been one of those mornings. (note to self: never leave madhavi).

first, i realized that i hadn't gotten the new fast pass and so i needed to buy a cup of coffee so i had a quarter when the snarly bus man said, "hey pal. that's a july pass." which happened. so i paid for the bus then almost missed my stop because i was reading about captain cook in hawai'i and then, 'cause my fingers are all stiff because i'm an old-freakin' man, i spilled my coffee. like on the floor glugglugglug.

luckily, i didn't really get it all over anyone and the guy next to me was all, "hey. no harm done."

but the shame.

c'mon gang! let's get all soaped up and wrestle!

this blog post is gonna be porn-y! or corny? or, yawn, something-y!

i've got this huge backlog of stuff to tell about, but really -- eleben days is too much post-blogging to write or read. i just checked one of my blog-stops and man! blogblogblogblogBLOG! i had to just decide to NOT KNOW how it went 'cause i need a bowl of popcorn to read that much.

so i will spare you. but i will give you some blather with lather.

ta-da!

the mp3 blog i'm helping to host is all officially up and stuff.

check it out.

it's called monkeySARS and it's catchy. tell your friends. tell your enemies. scrawl the url on bathroom walls. and for the love of mike, send me good music tips. i gots to represent.

i'm back from mexico.

it fuckin' rocked, dude.

duuuuudddddeeee.

my brain is still feeling kinda squidgy from the diving/plane/relaxo/bliss but i wanted to say hi. and let you know that you should watch the Dark Crystal in spanish, dive into underwater lakes when you're already underwater, try swinging beds in three walled treehouses, avoid this guy named craig, go to otero's for tacos de pollo, and please excuse me if i get this weird smile when were talking and refuse to explain why.