This Man is Not Dead

Next week my birthday arrives. I've always enjoyed my birthday, not so much for the obvious reasons (presents, parties, cake), though they certainly factored into the equation back when I was, you know, a cake-fiend — but because of the actual day: November 1^st. Putting aside its status as All Saint's Day/Dia de los Muertos^1/2 (both being neat things that I take no part in), the day has always felt mystical, and that's a good thing in my book.

I think it's all those ones. In elementary school I imagined how cool it would be in 2011 when I would finally get a chance to write 11/1/11 on an essay. (Apparently I had been convinced of undiagnosed mental retardation by my older brothers and assumed I'd still be writing lame essays about why eating the entirety of my candy-cache in a week was bad for my teeth.) I'm not sure if I took it any further than imagining the act of writing my extraordinarily homogeneous birth date, but four years from now I fully anticipate something awesome to happen when I pay my cable bill on my birthday.

Anyway, being that it's my birthday, I get to add a single digit to my age. Seemed to me that by 23 I would've been feeling like an "adult" — meaning I've got a week to take my maturity game to the next level. Yet, knowing what I know about myself and all the world around me, I secretly suspect there's no higher rank to attain. (Sorry, superego, can't guilt-trip anymore. Asshole.)

Except Good Parent, the absolute greatest achievement of mankind; Good Parents, be proud. Every Good Parent in existence deserves a Nobel prize, MacArthur grant, and Sainthood. My parents are some damn Good Parents, and when I get to hang out with my nephew I get the distinct impression that my oldest brother is a Good Parent-in-training, excusing his past as a Shitty Older Brother.

I don't intend on being a Good Parent any time soon (thank you, Biomedical God of Contraception), but some day. And when I die, I hope that my Good Parenting inspires a Good Paragraph (or two) about how I was the most awesomest Good Parent that ever did read a bedtime story.

All the ladies say I read well.

Things I Consumed Recently (and How They Compare to a Slim-Jim)

The Darjeeling Limited

1. Duration of experience longer than expected or desired
   
2. Unpleasant aftertaste
   
3. Lingering sensation of emptiness
   

In Rainbows

1. Cheap
2. Variety of flavors
3. Texturally enticing

⁄ ⁄ ⁄

Bit of a stretch? Hmm, yes, well, I'm quite limber.

Darjeeling isn't a bad movie—visually stimulating, less-witty-than-usual-but-still-pretty-good dialogue, interesting (if superficial) characters.

"Slim-Jim" attributes are derived from plot concerning vacuous, rich eccentrics attempting to regain the humanity that they may have lost after the death of their father. Depending on the viewer's empathy, this absence of intangible goodness ("soul") may or may not effect you.

It got me down.

⁄ ⁄ ⁄

In Rainbows is good.

That's the reserved reaction of someone who had never listened to an entire Radiohead album before Tuesday (Kid A).

I think that considering the quantity of Radiohead diehards, and the various stages of Radiohead's development that they could have entered at, In Rainbows should satisfy all but the dourest of loose-tongued curmudgeons.

If the title means anything, I'd say that it refers to the album's spectrum of "Radiohead", ranging from the British jangle-rock of The Bends ("Faust Arp") to the ambient glitch-rock of Kid A/Amnesiac ("15 Step"). But it's not an entirely regressive or retrospective act, hence the rainbow reference, which depends on a 7th, entirely new, element to be complete.

My harshest complaint is that I'm not sure the world needs anymore Thom Yorke piano ballads. But that's not really a complaint, more a statement of satiation.

Numerical Value: 14/22 Macho Mans