Posts

Posted on

The Car

Unable to find work in LA these past four months, I now have to move back East. The following are thoughts I should be dissuaded from…

  • The value of having a car is c, which is undefined.
  • Flying back to Maine costs about $201.
    • A flight from LAX to BOS costs about $160.
    • One checked bag costs $15.
    • The bus from Boston to Portland costs $26.
  • If I get the asking price, I will lose $600 on the car.
    • I paid $1900 for the car.
      • The purchase price was $1150.
      • The new radiator, belts and tires cost $750.
    • I am asking $1300 for the car.
  • Driving back to Maine would cost a minimum of $562.64.
    • Replacing the rear struts would cost about $310.
    • Gas would cost about $252.64
      • The average fuel price is currently $1.855/gal.
      • The driving distance is 3,158 miles.
      • A 1991 Geo Prizm averages 23 MPG highway.

QED: If I sell the car for $1300, I will lose approximately the cost of the trip, plus c.

Unfortunately, this decision has more or less been made for me; whatever I can recover on the car is cash in hand that I’ll need to get through the next few months in Maine. On the other hand, if I’m still unable to find a buyer after another week or so…

Posted on

Freezepop’s Future Future Future Perfect Album

I’ve got moods for Freezepop, and I consider that progress as a human being.

Future Future Future Perfect is their latest album. “Do You Like My Wang?” and “Afterparty” are absolute abortions, “Ninja of Love” and “Brainpower” are merely tired, “Do You Like Boys” and “He Says She Says” are cute enough, while “Swimming Pool,” “Less Talk More Rokk,” “Pop Music Is Not a Crime” and “Thought Balloon” are each excellent.

Freezepop is gen-x (anyone who got to ride the dotcom bubble) smitten with hipster (mop-topped little douchebags) — kids older than me crushing on kids younger than me. It is a little creepy, and at its best that’s why it works. There’s an undeniable distance in line two of “The music is loud/ The kids are so young/ All over the world/ They want to have fun.” It’s the sense of loss of a geeky girl who got cool too late in life for her dancing queen moment. The game of scenesterism has the same rules as Logan’s Run.

The juxtaposition of self-awareness with cutesiness is inherently pathetic. (You’ve been reading the Space Toast Pages.) “Frontload” gives away a desperation musically that the simple take-me-out-tonight lyrics try to conceal. “Swimming Pool” paints a nostalgia so heavy it smothers. The sense of being in the right place spatially but not temporally is what rescues Freezepop from its more precious moments. Future Future Future Perfect is at its best when it acknowledges that cutesy self-awareness really betrays a painful desire to be wanted.

Posted on

Darwin in Love

“In September of 1837, Darwin suffered palpitations of the heart, which would plague him throughout his life. Recuperating in his home town of Shrewsbury, he was introduced to his cousin, Emma Wedgewood, who mended his heart, and then won it. Charles Darwin and Emma Wedgewood fell in love, but ever a man of method, he drew up two lists. One called ‘Marry,’ one called ‘Not Marry,’ and he worked through the pros and cons. He concluded that ‘A constant companion and a friend in old age’ outweighed ‘Less money for books’ and ‘The terrible loss of time.'”

–Melvyn Bragg, from “In Our Time: Darwin, Part 2” on BBC Radio 4

The Darwins had ten children.