Now listening to The Long and Winding Road on Let It Be: Naked, which is almost listenable. Correction: it’s head and shoulders above the crap Spector-ized version on the original cut. Eff the ess: I’m gonna delete the original album. Naked it is.

I’m getting sick. Ugh. It’s weird spending a lazy Sunday going from unsick to sick, slowly getting sneezier, snifflier and stupider. A tear rolls down my cheek as I type this. I’m not sad — it’s just my head hemorrhaging.

Despite my oncoming illness, I’m feeling relatively peachy and productive. I cooked dinner tonight and shared it with my roommate: sauteed lemon pepper chicken, couscous, and baby carrots. We watched part of a very strange movie by Andy Warhol called Ciao Manhattan. Watching a discontinuous film reminds me why continuity is conventional: it’s disruptive and distancing when the audio is slightly out of place.* For instance, there are several phone conversations in the film where the camera is on the person who is speaking yet their voice sounds like it’s coming through the telephone. Were it the reverse (the voice of the person not on camera sounding like they’re coming through a telephone), we wouldn’t notice. Conclusion: we are between the conversation, not next to it.

Speaking of mildly interesting cinetechnical matters, I took Walter Murch’s advice and raised my desk so that I could edit standing up. (I bought a drafting chair for when I tire of standing. If you’re looking for a good, cheap chair, check that site out — it’s the bomb.)

Before that, I raised my loft — queen-sized loft — a foot. By myself.

I bought 8 cinder blocks, borrowed the Lumber Store’s handtruck to get them to my place, lugged them into my bedroom, set them down and thought, ‘now what? I’ve got no one to help me do this.’ I couldn’t stand the thought of not getting it done that minute, however, so I decided to give it a go — possibility of crippling injury be damned. I stacked two blocks at the base of each loft post, essayed a few trial lifts, hastily removed everything (else) that might fall on my head, and gave it a Hulk. Standing with my back against the brick wall, I pushed upwards with both hands, tilting the loft (and boxspring and mattress) to a precarious 30° and kicked the cinder blocks beneath one post with the side of my foot. Hurriedly, I got the other post on that side of the bed lifted and secured. Before I did my final Hulk, I wondered if was about to get a bed dropped on me.

Hulkily I Hulked the pitchéd posts. Kick, kick. Success! I am a god.**

06.08.2004 update:

Ladder lengthened. Taking my dad’s advice, I used carriage bolts instead of screws. I cut off the extra thread with a small hacksaw while listening to Can, (who are really, really good and it’s a wonder more people don’t know their music).

* in the interesting territory between diegetic and non-diegetic sound.

** Well, perhaps the son of a god. A demiurge, à la Hercules, son of a golden shower. Of course, most gods (even demiurges) don’t live in 8′ by 10′ bedrooms and have to climb into their bed by standing on the dresser. I must get a footstool to put beneath the now-too-short-by-1′ ladder.