Connecting The Dots That Make My Head Hurt

​Last week I went to catch a movie with Su. In the six years since we've been hanging out, we had never seen a movie together. We saw LoTRRotK, though I'd already seen it with foxthepoet. Before I met her, I wanted to pick up a new discman, as mine has seen better days. and I had a BestBuy giftcard to kill (thanks OB). Long story short, I got on the wrong green line train. I saw Cleveland Circle, and thought I remembered the Best Buy being on that line. Turns out my only previous experience with the Cleveland Circle train is hearing it referenced in Oz's "Raindrops" poem. When I realized I was on the wrong train, I got off and saw a used CD store. I'm not in the same position I was last year when I could frivolously sritter my money away on CDs, but I thought I'd check it out. Lo and behold the Bob Marley box set Songs of Freedom which I have had stolen from me on three different occasions (and Melissa Plummer was not involved in any of them) was for sale used for $10! Four Cds, $10! Schaweet. I almost tested my karma and went to Newbury Comics, but I didn't have my Newbury Comics g.c. on me.

Today I hit Newbury Comics in search of the new REM double disc. The website said it had rarities, and ever since I lost (no one stole, I lost) my Automatic for the People Disc 2 CD, I've been trying to track down their version of Leonard Cohen's "First We Take Manhattan." Unfortunately, it's not on the CD. Fortunately, I found the Leonard Cohen tribute CD for $5 (*does the happy dance*), which saves me from spending an extra $20 for a bunch of REM tracks that I already have. With the leftover cash I bought a used copy of Sean Lennon's album, and a new copy of the first Gorillaz album, which was actually cheaper than a used copy for some reason.

On the way back home I stopped at Barnes & Noble to special order poetry books (which I never pick up, thus forcing them to stock copies of Daphne Gottleib, Jeffrey McDaniels & the like) & was appalled to find they had not a single modern poet that I liked. No slam poets, no Martin Espada, no Mark Doty, no Nikki Giovanni, nada. They had Billy Collins, but I'm pretty sure that's a law right now. As I angrily turned away from the poetry section (which is the most fun way to turn) I saw that sandwiched between about thirty five copies of those damned Heartsongs books was a copy of Tony Hoagland's new collection, What Narcississm Means to Me (*does the happy dance again*). I also picked up the 5th Dark Tower book. Woo-freakin-ha.

During my trip tonight I walked around various Boston streets that I haven't walked around in years. I've walked around them, but haven't hit the side streets. Tonight I walked by Charley's the restaurant where I had my first blind date with a boy. After we'd sat down and established that he was a student at Emerson, and I was a music store manager he remarked that he'd never dated such an older man before. I had turned 19 two days before. We, uh, didn't hang out much after that.
I also wandered around Jamaica Plain just because I only ever have once before, and that was with kidbomb. Going by myself gave me more time to just sort of look around, and not make conversation. Also I got to spit curses at The Junebug Cafe for firing thisisstar and all their other employees.

I ended up with a much more complete mental map of Boston than I've ever had, and the only part of my body that froze was my bottom lip, which you could probably shatter with a nerfball right now. Thank Dad for gloves, and Thank Mom for my jacket.

If anyone in the Worcester area has nothing better to do tomorrow night, I'm doing a feature at the Worcester Arts Guild Youth Slam. Love to see some familiar faces there.
Current Mood:  bouncy
Current Music: "I Can't Forget" - The Pixies from I'm Your Fan
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 Leave a comment | 6 comments
Wed, Jan. 7th, 2004 06:22 pm (UTC)
lowhumcrush: yayWhat Narcississm Means to Me rocks!!!

welcome back to the right coast.
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Wed, Jan. 7th, 2004 07:19 pm (UTC)
akamuu: Re: yayThanks, good to be back. I may be seeing you next week if you're at The Bowery. I really want to check out radioactiveart's feature. Plus I want to perform "What Hookers Make" for Taylor.

I'm starting to work on the meme you posted, but I don't think mine will be nearly as interesting.
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Wed, Jan. 7th, 2004 07:40 pm (UTC)
lowhumcrush: Re: yayno kidding.
twenty things is about as ridiculous. it was, first, fifty, but i declined.

this is even more fascinating to me, though:

the fundamental group of a space means that any map of a circle into S3 can be extended to a map of a 2-disk into S3. And you can (with some work) build a 3-manifold with the same homology groups as S^3, but with non-trivial (finite) fundamental group. 

It is an amazing little fact, however, that the Poincare homology sphere is the only known such example (and is conjectured to be the only one!). If you are willing to have a manifold with the homology of the 3-sphere but infinite fundamental group, building such a space is fairly straighforward, using Dehn surgery on knots; they're called integer homology 3-spheres. 

It is one of those not-very-well-known facts that the fundamental group p1(X) used to be denoted by p(X) (before we learned to number them), and was called simply the group of a space. Do you know why we use p to denote it? That's right, it stands for Poincare!!

slam THAT!! 

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Wed, Jan. 7th, 2004 08:36 pm (UTC)
akamuuMy brain hurts.
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Wed, Jan. 7th, 2004 09:14 pm (UTC)
radioactiveart: If I get this column done in time...I'll be there. 

And it's the Worcester Artists' Group, dammit.
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Thu, Jan. 8th, 2004 05:51 am (UTC)
happinesstogo: 2 things:I also enjoy that Leonard Cohen tribute album you purchased and thank you for letting me know that Tony Hoagland has a new book out. I always look for him in poetry sections and never see him. Perhaps now I will.