— tapioca world tour

The boys left. That’s them, leaving: Jay, Ry, James, and Matty. Driving 24 hours straight in a packed van to North Carolina. I wish I could go with them.

This was my evening. The kids. The cats. Weeks ago I told E. stories of roaches in the oven of my 1999 Fenway flat, and he’s recounted every detail about seven times since I first talked about it. That kid forgets nothing.

G. is spinning down the street tonight, but I’ve no one to go with and I don’t know if I feel like paying $5 to say hello, drink a $3 ginger ale, then leave. Actually I definitely don’t feel like it, but he chewed me out earlier for not attending his DJ-ing events, and I’m supposed to be perpetuating our conceptual post-breakup friendship, which I suppose includes congenial gestures like walking 7 blocks at 1am solo into a chic club where I won’t drink and won’t dance and where we can’t talk, and where I’ll leave after a short period of time and watch the snow turn from slush to mud at the tips of my boots.

Ryan is leaving with J. and J. and M. tomorrow for the 5-week tour. He made me a key today but it doesn’t work when you try it in the lock. I of course interpreted that as a larger sign of some gross foreboding, but as usual, I’m probably just reading too much into everything again. We drove around Arlington buying guitar strings, Harvard buying pizza and travel mugs, and then I had to leave. If I think about his loooooong trip on which I cannot tag along, if I think about this long winter and these long days, if I don’t lose myself in books and FCP tutorials by B., I will get quite sad with the knowledge that my foremost friend is far away and will be for a long time. Because at that point I will realize that I truly have pushed myself into such hermidity that I really do not have a social life.

I can live with that, though. There is much to be done.

Redaction (noun)
1 : an act or instance of putting something in writing or adapting it for publication
*2 : a work that has been adapted for publication : edition, version

“Redaction” is from the Latin verb “redigere” (“to bring back” or “to reduce”), which was formed by adding the prefix “red-” (“back”) to “agere.”

Example sentence:
Tina was introduced to a number of literary classics as a child via age-appropriate redactions, sometimes in the style of comic books.

Back to words of the day, yes. It’s been an unproductive few days, relatively. This snow vacation is nearly over and I’ve just now, finally, gotten into my redaction of 2004, Love in the Time of Cholera. George and I continue to plot out April’s film production, I got a Patagonia liner fleece & scarf, and any minute now Ry will walk in the house, satiated from a long week of snowboarding, performing, and finally meeting a girl he’s really excited about. I would have picked him up at the airport were it not for the two cars blocking me in the driveway and the 2 feet of snow all over the van, not to mention the rest of the neighborhood.

At church tonight, oddly, our reader gave a testimony and quoted an old old archbishop who once said: Humility doesn’t mean having a low opinion of yourself, or thinking others are better; humility just means not thinking about yourself.

Isn’t that poignant?

I should have flown to Peru this week and shot documentaries about Lake Titicacca with Lapsed Modernist instead of babysitting, eating ice cream and sleeping til 2p every day at Ry’s. Seriously man. We’ve had no work all week, based on my office’s “if Cambridge schools have a snow day, we all have a snow day” philosophy that I’m learning to love.

As R. in Baltimore says:
> i really want to go on a cruise, or something. what do you think,
should i get a job this summer? kind of don’t want to. pretty lazy. i might
try to write a book like the da vinci code, and make millions of dollars.

If you knew R., you’d understand that she could totally write a book and make a million dollars in one summer. And then go back to teaching astrophysics to teenagers like nothing ever happened. I have some secret plans of my own, but it involves more financial loss than financial gain. Also got an offer to be a VJ with B. and learn FCP asap. Look at all my acronyms!

Very excited about the 48-hr Film Project this year. My team is back, compact, and better than freakin’ ever. This time we’ve got a sick technical set-up: suped up audio, a mobile FCP pro editing suite, a new DP with an HDV camera, and me shooting B-roll on my PD170. And I might recruit the Wiinikka-Lydon boys to join the ranks in acting/writing/set directing. Word up, produxion!! Holla back!

I love everything.

I really find it difficult to comprehend how any Americans would be against an end to the occupation of Iraq. The larger question is who would be in favor of this terrible terrible mess we’ve created? And now there’s no water at all? Read the latest from Riverbend on Baghdad Burning:

I’m sure people outside of the country are shaking their heads at the words ‘collective punishment’. “No, Riverbend,” they are saying, “That’s impossible.” But anything is possible these days. People in many areas are being told that if they don’t vote- Sunnis and Shia alike- the food and supply rations we are supposed to get monthly will be cut off. We’ve been getting these rations since the beginning of the nineties and for many families, it’s their main source of sustenance. What sort of democracy is it when you FORCE people to go vote for someone or another they don’t want?

They say the borders are closed with Jordan and possibly Syria. I also heard yesterday that people aren’t being let into Baghdad. They have American check-points on the main roads leading into the city and they say that the cars are being turned back to wherever they came from. It’s a bad situation and things are looking very bleak at this point.

It’s amazing how as things get worse, you begin to require less and less. We have a saying for that in Iraq, “Ili yishoof il mawt, yirdha bil iskhooneh.” Which means, “If you see death, you settle for a fever.” We’ve given up on democracy, security and even electricity. Just bring back the water.

First, TAPIOCA has been updated, thanks to the snowstorm and my own new commitment to intense productivity. Feel free to check it out and read up on all my cool ambitious video adventures.

Inspired by a renewed displeasure with River Street, I plodded through the snowdrifts to Ry’s house tonight, despite the fact that he’s in Utah playing gigs during Sundance. He called earlier:
“Dude, you would love it here. You totally should have come.
There’s lots of film people and famous people and it’s like Mardi Gras,
it’s one big party in the streets… Next year you can come along, promise.”

I picked up some toilet paper, bagels, frozen pizza, juice, cream cheese, apples, soup, granola and dark chocolate truffles, just in case I get snowed in here. Very resourceful, eh? I think secretly — or perhaps admittedly — I would like to get snowed in here. I mean hell, the heat works, the fuses don’t blow everytime you plug something in, the kitchen is large, the toilet works, internet connections are functioning properly, my video stuff is here, I’ve a van at my disposal, and Ry’s stereo is awesome. What’s not to love? Anyway it certainly didn’t help that the girl I replaced in my current flat ended an email today with: hope the house holds up for the rest of the winter ;) cheers

I really hope winter ends quickly and I start seeing returns on all my imagined investments outlined below.
I don’t even want a boyfriend. AT ALL. With 98% of my East Coast friends being guys, I’ve got all the testosterone exposure I need. Why do all the girls move West, or to other countries? So sad.