Monthly Archives: September 2003

Ass Kickin' Fat Kid

I’ve been a fre­quent read­er of the Tool FAQ for a while now, even though it has­n’t been updat­ed in more than two years. I remem­ber read­ing a long time ago about Maynard’s side projects and find­ing out about his fake band Titannica for the movie Run Ronnie Run. I had no idea what this was at the time, but have since been intro­duced to Mr. Show by Jackee and seen Run Ronnie Run. The fake band fea­tures Anthrax gui­tarist Scott Ian and Hole sub-drum­mer Samantha Maloney as well, and only has one song out called Ass Kickin’ Fat Kid. The song comes on dur­ing one of the best scenes in the movie, an over­ly pro­duced fight scene involv­ing a rather cor­pu­lent video game play­ing teenag­er.

Why, Vera?

I just fin­ished read­ing A Hero of Our Time again. It’s the book I’ve read the most in my life, and I’ve lost count of the num­ber of times I’ve gone straight from cov­er to cov­er through var­i­ous trans­la­tions. Every time I’ve read it for the last eight years, I’ve grown a lit­tle more. Certain parts that I may not have under­stood before become clear and relate­able.

One par­tic­u­lar pas­sage struck me this time; Vera’s final let­ter to Pechorin.

For three hours now I have been sit­ting at the win­dow and await­ing your return…But you are alive, you can­not die! The car­riage is almost ready…Farewell, Farewell! I am lost — but what of it? If I could be cer­tain that you will always remem­ber me — I say noth­ing of lov­ing me, no — only remember…Goodbye! Someone is coming…I have to hide this let­ter…

I now ful­ly under­stand Vera’s final wish, hav­ing since wished the same thing myself. Yet it’s some­thing I can­not explain, even when I myself share this feel­ing. Why this need to not be for­got­ten? Why does remem­ber­ing mean so much?

Is it the need to know that I am impor­tant to some­one, even if it was some ephemer­al rela­tion­ship or some per­son­al mis­take? Is it so that I can believe that I was so spe­cial as to be unfor­get­table, an ego­tis­ti­cal or per­haps inse­cure shroud to fool myself? Is it to give my life mean­ing, a sort of pur­pose to know that I can indeli­bly change the lives of oth­ers? Or maybe it’s to know that the feel­ings I expe­ri­ence, how­ev­er bathet­ic or affect­ed, mean some­thing to some­one. I usu­al­ly pride myself in being able to per­fect­ly under­stand the feel­ings I go through, but this idea has left me at a loss. I won­der if oth­ers have ever felt the same way. I remem­ber not under­stand­ing this desire in myself at the time, but believ­ing that I would even­tu­al­ly.

Now I’m not sure if I ever will.

When Winter Begins

The best weath­er of the year has final­ly arrived. The cool­ness of the autumn is in the air, along with the grey-washed skies that mark this time of year. The odi­ous sum­mer has left, and I can wear my turtle­necks and sweaters. Dolly can now resume her perch at my A/C free sill, and I can open up my win­dow to let the fresh­ness of the air inside. I miss the bril­liant white win­ter, but still find myself wish­ing that this weath­er would last for­ev­er.

I Should Have Paid Attention In Class

I should be catch­ing up on years of poor marks in French class right now. Since the gov­ern­ment tech­ni­cal sup­port spe­cial­ist jobs are all bilin­gual imper­a­tive, every­one is required to have BBC/BBC lev­el reading/writing/oral skills in both English and French. The read­ing and writ­ing tests are this Thursday, run­ning at about an hour an a half each, et je ne suis pas prêt.