still crazy after all this year

i remembered that it's been about a year since i started bloggin' on the blogspot.

i wrote this exactly a year ago.

while i feel i've grown more into myself in the past 365 days, i see there are certain aspects of my persona that aren't going anywhere.

i can haz quiet tee vees

dudes. there is synchronicity in the recent death of a celebrity.

brian and i were talking the other day about loud commercials and he told me how it's illegal in france for commercials to be too loud. then i saw an opinion piece on the tribune's site yesterday morning (which i cannot find now, but here's an article about the issue) about lawmakers urging broadcasters to lower the volume allowed of commercials.

then, i'm at a party later, and i get a txt from adam telling me that billy mays, the loudest loudie of all commercials, died. of course, i thought he meant WILLIE mays, and the male brisbins all got stupid txts about it. but once i put it all together (thank you, paulie jo), i realized that the synchronicity of the morning had just gotten even better.

anyway, whatcha think about that?!

(via icanhascheezburger.com)

i'm here, i'm queer, i'm lovin' every minute of it

here's what happened today:

i woke up at like 7 or 730 or something really ungoshly for a non-working day. went running. dork.

went over to wally's and pretended to help him make a quiche. started drinking champagne at 10 am. dorks.

we went to his friend's house to watch the pride parade from her window. i was totally unprepared to get choked up during part of it. i forget sometimes that people are homophobic, since i'm homophilic (is that the word for gay-lovers??), and seeing people being proud of what they cannot help being is really really beautiful. hippie.

this is the gay jews float. see the menorah? i took the photo for jeff, because he is one.


we went out to bars after, i guess. everything is kind of blurry after maneuvering the unrelenting crowd. at some point i ditched and walked home by myself. i guess i fell and i skinned my other knee:


my class and sophistication are also unrelenting, clearly.

all of a sudden i woke up and i was in my bed and in my clothes and my bra was still on and it was dark out and i was SO CONFUSED. also worried, because i gotta open the coffee shop tomorrow. but it's aight, it was only 10 30pm. then i remembered i bought the house more m&ms. the boys are gonna be happy.

now i'm here listening to pavement and blogging. what else you wanna know?

synchronicity and the city

my thoughts on the way home from the gym today sounded a little like carrie bradshaw's externalized internal monologue as she works on her column.

are a man's biceps indicative of how much money he'll spend on you? or are we all just billy blanks looking for our own butch tae bo-practicing life partners?

then i thought i might write a bradshawesque blog post about running into a handsome man i'd been keeping an eye out for but hadn't seen in weeks after a grueling shift at work. i thought i'd write how he said he had been to my place of employment looking for me but i hadn't been there and how i was totally flattered and how when i looked for him to say goodbye as i was exiting the place we see each other he had vanished. like a fallen tree in a personless forest. but i'm not gonna.

THEN i thought about how if sex and the city had started filming about three years later than it acutally had, carrie probably would have been a blogstress like me. THEN i thought about how when i was sick and watched an eppy of SATC i decided that next time i get my hair chopped by a pro i'm going to ask to have it be like sarah j parker's when it was short and curly. i think we have similar hair texture.

then i thought about how i'm really a lot like carrie bradshaw. always brunching with my best girlfriends and talking about all the dates and one night stands i have. my book deal awaits.

then i thought how my thoughts have also kind of sounded like kevin on the wonder years lately. but that's another story.

stop reading this. now.

obligatory michael jackson death post

r.i.p.

in words of kels: happy summatime

summer is beautiful.

the weather is nice. the grass is green. people are tan and smiling and in good shape for bikini season.

then there's me:


the diagonal line is not just to break up the symmetry (though i am an asymmetry proponent). it is from my purse. this is the result of a wild day at the dog park followed by a free show at milennium park with two idiots.


my back is just as pink.


and here's my knee. i totally wiped out while on a way-too-tired run. i got some nice road rash on my belly and shoulder, too. and three innocent nice people got to watch the whole graceful event: from stumble to crazed crying breakdown upon getting on my feet.

i am a clumsy, ill-prepared child when the weather turns. i get too excited!! it's probably for the best that nathan hasn't finished sprucing up my bike for me.

hunks

all of my celeb crushes are coming to/have recently come to chicago.

saw neil gaiman two weeks ago.

david cross will be here this weekend (i, sadly, will not be in his company).

stephen malkmus will sing to me two days before my birthday.

i think that pretty much sums up all of my dream men. i guess if i had to add a sports person in there to round it out, i'd pick JoPo or something. i dunno. i don't really like jocks.

sigghhh ...

... and the customers still asked me questions i couldn't answer with a nod/shake of my head. half of them thought it was just another t-shirt. a few asked if it was a political statement. i said it kind of was, in solidarity with my iranian brothers and sisters. but mostly it was so people wouldn't make me talk, since it hurts.

take a picture, it'll last longer

forgive the squishiness of this video. i need to just suck it up and pay for video editing program that is more advanced and will let me publish my videos in a format other than avi or wmv.

a photo i found from ally brisbin on Vimeo.

anyway, the day after i flimed this vlog, i found more photos on my walk to the gym. this time they were ripped!


i had wanted to do a stop-motion animation thing and reconstruct some of them, but it looks like i only have about a third of the pieces of the photos. someone is so over their prom date, from the looks of these.

you look really fat in that

i figured out what one of the top three best things about living with dudes is.

it's the rare occasion when one of them says, "does this look okay?" he brushes off shirt. pats his pants. inspects the toes of his shoes. does an awkward, vulnerable dance-of-sorts in the hallway under bad lighting.

few things boy roommates do are cuter than asking outfit advice. and what makes it so cute is that it doesn't happen often.

karma:

i made fun of a coworker who has been sick for about a week. i said, "ha ha, marc has swine flu!!"

since yesterday i've felt like someone (God?) has been doing something terrible to my brain stem. and i woke up unable to swallow.

total karma.

waxing moon

i had a really cool thing happen to me two nights ago.

shawn and i have a favorite activity that is sitting in a booth at DAs and judging people. we give them names and make up stories about their lives. sometimes we end up getting to know these mystery men/women. sometimes we don't. it's usually best if we don't because imagination is mightier than reality. this has proven true a few times over.

for some reason i only have photos from one night of this activity, and photos from this set are repeatedly posted to kitchen synch:


two nights ago i went to see some music. i like going to see shows by myself. there are many reasons it is superior to going with company: 1.) if the band(s) suck(s), i can leave. 2.) conversely if the band is awesome, i don't have to leave (maybe a companion and i have different tastes). 3.) i don't have someone blabbing in my ear while i'm trying to get my face melted.

anyway, there were 3 bands playing. i came specifically for the last band. after living in chicago for a week, i went to a show on my own on a whim and this band was opening for another band and i had such a great time and both bands were freaking awesome.

so, i had to hang out during a mediocre first band and a slightly annoying hipster band. a weird old dude started talking to me and wouldn't stop but he bought me a drink and so i went outside at the end of the second band and texted, in order to avoid weirdo. as i was txting, this girl and two dudes came up to me and asked if i was going to dance. they had been watching me during the first band and they thought that i wanted to dance but just wasn't feeling the music well enough.

i ended up hanging out with them for a while. they were a little nuts but nice. nuts in a good way. i think. one dude was smoking grape swisher sweets, though.

anyway, over the course of hanging out with them, i found out that they were making up stories for most people in the room. JUST LIKE ME N SHAWNA LEE. i was so happy to be their story-come-true. the feeling was akin to the brotherhood and humanity i feel when someone i don't know well informs me of a cameo i've made in their dreams. it means i'm not alone!

also, the lead singer of the band i like (a chick with totally awesome red hair. the band is a brother and sister. they're both musically talented gingers.) stood about two feet diagonally ahead of me during a song in the first band's set. the grape swisher sweets smoker said he thought we were gonna have a curly haired dance-off.

the night included passport synchronicity. i found two passports on the ground, a few hours apart. one was returned to its rightful owner. the other was given to a bartender in hopes of a reunion with its owner.

you don't have to read this one

a recent anonymous comment has inspired me to rewrite a mission statement for this blog. since its inception, i've gained a lot of new readers. some who may not even know why i started blogging in the first place.

the title "kitchen synch" is in reference to synchronicity. a concept that has a big place in my life. it gives me validation that i'm moving along the right path, along the lines of religion.

to boil it down, synchronicity is a meaningful coincidence. when i regale y'all followers with stupid stories about seeing a frog and then eating frog legs for dinner, it may not seem like a big deal. but it is to me. therefore it is synchronous. humor me, people. if you click on the link above, you can read more about synchronicity.

so basically my aim in writing this blog is to share my synchronous moments with whoever feels like reading/looking at/watching them. i enjoy hearing back from friends, family and strangers about synchronicity they experience. brotherhood!!

sometimes i stray from the intended focus of the blog but it's my blog and i'll stray if i want to.

thanks to everyone who reads this and comments. it makes me happy. even if you're not saying something nice. i'm all about participation and interactivity.

i'll miss you beans

i'm still figuring stuff out on this vimeo site, but it seems pretty cool. and the uploading process was error-free, which is more than i can say for youtube.

check out what happened yesterday at work:

Bird Death from ally brisbin on Vimeo.

sweet synchronicity

i had two favorite synchronicities today. one involves shawn's self love. the other involves chocolate.

i bought a copy of a collection of comics by womyn from the 70s and most of them are from a feminist perspective.


i was reading it today and one story is called "first lover" and a woman cooks herself a manicotti dinner and takes a bath and then masturbates.

i talked to shawn on the phone today (she looovvveessssss to take baths) and she said she went to the store to buy ravioli and beer for a date she had with herself tonight. i bet she totally wanked.

the chocolate synch is that brian txted me this photo today:


i didn't see it until i returned home from buying more m&ms. we've been emptying and refilling a jar of m&ms all week. it only stays full for about a day and a half.

also, i shot and edited a video today. stay tuned.