Ian's Blog II

New Blog is Up!

2008-11-16T08:39:00.001-08:00

On December 9th I'll be headed to South Africa. One of the goals of the trip is to keep an on-line journal of my five week trip, so I've started a new blog here and I plan to do preliminary posts soon. There are no formal posts yet, but if you click on the about tab you'll get an intro about the trip and some very good links.

I like wordpress. I tried to set up a new blog a few months ago and had trouble but today I gave myself plenty of time, and plenty of coffee, and realized that wordpress is easier than I thought. Hmmm...should I be saying this on a blog created by blogspot? Well, blogspot has its merits too, after all it's the provider who got me started blogging in the first place.

As for Ian's Blog II? It's time to move on I think. I haven't posted in over a month as my sister Emily gently reminds me every-so-often (she's such an editor). The trip to Africa is really at the forefront of everything right now, along with tons of reading and papers for school, so I think I'll retire this blog. I like the idea of having blogs end at some point and taking up new ones, maybe because one day I'll be able to mark stages in my life this way.

Don't Straight Party Vote

2008-10-16T08:32:00.000-07:00

Bad formatting, but this needs to get out there. Don't straight party vote. They're at it again!

ELECTION ALERT: Straight Party=20Voting Trap. You may have read about this; Hereare the details and what to do about it:THE PROBLEM: "Straight party voting" on voting machines is revealinga bad pattern of miscounting and omitting your vote, especially if you areaDemocrat. Most recently (Oct. 2008), a firm called Automated ElectionServiceswas found to have mis-coded the system in heavily Democratic Santa FeCounty,New Mexico such that straight party voters would not have the presidentialvotecounted.STRAIGHT PARTY VOTING is allowed in 15 states. Basically, it means that youcantake a shortcut to actually looking at who you are voting for and insteadjustselect a party preference. Then the voting machine makes your candidatechoices,supposedly for the party you requested.Additional details follow, but first: PROTECT THE COUNT:Short video launches Black Box Voting "Protect the Count" project -more to come:Form a Poll Tape Posse - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3_xFb1sWKUHOW TO PROTECT THE COUNT against Straight Party Trap:0A1) NEVER CHOOSE THE STRAIGHT PARTY VOTE OPTION, because it alerts thecomputeras to your party preference and allows software code to trigger whateverfunction the programmer has designed.2) SEND THIS INFORMATION OUT TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN, blog it, root n'toot it outthere to get the word out.3) ESPECIALLY GET THE WORD OUT TO PEOPLE IN THE FOLLOWING STATES, whichhavestraight party voting options:Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, New Mexico, North Carolina,Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, WestVirginia, Wisconsin4)DEMAND COMPLETE AND CAREFUL TESTING OF THE STRAIGHT PARTY OPTION IN LOGIC& ACCURACY TESTS.5) LOOK FOR UNDERVOTES (high profile races with lower-than-average numberofvotes cast) and flag them, post them, bring them to the attention of othersforadditional scrutiny.Details, links to documents, news stories, more specifics here:http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/78367.htmlVoting machine miscounts of straight party votes were proven by Californiaresearcher Judy Alter in the 2004 New Mexico presidential election; inAlabamaDemocrat straight party votes were caught going to a Republican, andWisconsin awhole slew of straight party votes disappeared altogether. Both DRE andopticalscan machines are vulnerable. Private contractors are involved; privatefirmslike LHS Associates, Automated Election Services, Harp Enterprises, Casto &Harris and others will program almost all systemsin the USA this November.ES&S scanners were involved in examples cited, but Diebold has also issuedacryptic Product Advisory Notice in 2006 about unexpected results from certainStraight Party option programming practices. (More:http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/78367.html )

I'm Here

2008-10-10T07:50:00.000-07:00

It’s been close to a month since I last posted. I know, I know, this inconsistency is annoying, especially to me. But in my defense, it’s been several months since I’ve done any academic writing so getting back into the swing of it in graduate school, not to mention the exponentially longer reading lists, has kept me from sitting down to write a coherent post. The adjustment has been difficult, but I think I’m reaching a reasonable stride and I’m learning to accept the roller-coaster of self-image that has me driving to class thinking “I don’t know if I can do this,” and has me driving home from class thinking, “I so rock, what a genius I am.”

Of course when I wake up the next morning and realize I have four hundred pages to read the genius image is nowhere around. Sometimes I make the mistake of reading my past-papers, ones that I went over with a fine-tooth comb for grammatical errors and typos. I still find more! The professors are patient, circling a redundancy or a grammatical error (c’mon Ian you’re in graduate school, grammatical errors?) and writing gracious prompts in the margin. They also write things like “well put,” “good,” “good point, but remember…” and the all important single check mark that shows that my paragraph is somewhat legible. It’s been a while since I’ve experienced what these little carbon marks do to your self-esteem, but I do remember how important it is to keep looking forward and not to obsess.

The graduate-studies building is a huge, brand-new, and somewhat cold monolithic structure. I’m getting to like it, but it’s taking time. Undergrads take classes there too, and you can tell the difference because the graduate students usually have their face in a book (“read, Forest, read!”) while the undergrads chat happily as they flow to and from the dorms. The stair-case always throws me off in this building. It’s designed somewhat like a doubly-helix, two twisting corkscrews that alternate directions at every floor as if the architect had had one to many tequila shots when he designed the building. If you happen to meet someone coming down while you’re coming up it’s like an awkward line-dancing exercise to pass each other without becoming intimate. When I arrive to class after ascending the steps I’m always out of breath and disoriented. The disorientation usually continues throughout the class period.

On my piano at home sit the books I’ve read so far. Before now, if you’d shown me the stack and told me I’d tackled all that heady non-fiction I wouldn’t have believed it. Some of the works are unbelievably brilliant. Some are dense tomes that contain brain-numbing theory. Some are little thin wisps of books that pack a wallop. With all this information being force-fed into my brain it’s hard not to feel like I know less than before because of the shear breadth of material. It's like over-stuffing a sausage until the casing breaks and all you have left is ruptured casing with ground meat oozing out. But something my professor said last night helped. She said that being in graduate-school is like trying to drink water from a fire-hose, if you stand in front you’ll get knocked on your ass, so you should try to stand to the side and take sips.

But it’s difficult to take that approach when it seems that those around you are managing to stick their head right in the stream and come out with mouthfuls of water. I’m taking a class called Atlantic World Colloquium where we look at the historiography of Atlantic history (it’s more complicated than that but forgive me, I’ve been writing, reading, and thinking about it all week and need a break). There are only four other students in the class, all second year PhDs. I’m a lowly first year—first semester—master’s. It is extremely intimidating. Last night I didn’t say a word for the first half-hour, and while I did jump in with some well received points later, it took time to let the brilliant classmates extrapolate from the readings so I could get a bearing and add to the conversation. They are all encouraging, as is the professor, and I love the class (in the way you love something that decides not to kill you but mercifully lets you live instead), but it’s a bit like going to class with five professors. They all have a much larger frame-of-reference than I do at this point, and when they start explaining about how our understanding of Atlantic world can help them in their particular areas of interests, which they are so knowledgeable about, I have to sit back and listen, a little in awe.

This graduate school business makes you tired. Sometimes the fatigue is overwhelming and feels a little like exhaustion, but sometimes it’s not all that entirely unpleasant. It’s manageable fatigue (at least that’s what I think now, get back to me later) and when you drive home at the end of the day you know you’ve worked hard, your brain feels a little like corned-beef-hash but you allow yourself to listen to low-brow rock and think about what you might have said had the class gone on just a bit longer. I’m used to being tired, but this is the first time I’ve felt this mentally fatigued since I was chef. Of course that job came with overwhelming physical fatigue as well, but I realize that the concentration it took to cook for large numbers creates the same brain-drain that graduate-studies does. I feel numb in the same way.

I cooked for fifteen years. A master’s takes two. I can do this, and, believe it or not, I can enjoy doing it. One thing I have in common with the PhDs is we are all tired. It shows on all of our faces at times, probably on mine more so, but we all acknowledge how painful this process is. Part of me wants to worry that if I go for a PhD it will be more of the same. They all teach, and I don’t even know what that experience is like so that’s a whole other set of disciplines to test my stamina. But I don’t think it’s productive to worry about that right now, I just need to watch the typos, grammatical errors and try to contribute something worthwhile.

When will I post again? I can’t be sure. I always forget how cathartic this process is, just to be writing for myself. Getting this out of my head feels a bit like being cleansed, although I wish it acted more like a week-long-lasting-energy-drink. I need to get passport photos made today, and I’m already seeing myself being gurneyed on the plane to Africa in December. I can’t wait for that trip, and it’s acting as a motivating catalyst right now. So I hope to keep rambling on this blog from time to time until then, and hopefully it won’t be a month until my next post.

Quick Update (one day I'll have time for consistency)

2008-09-17T05:29:00.000-07:00

Here is a quick update until I can manage a real post.

1)I’ve been offered a graduate assistantship for the fall which comes with money.

2)I put in my notice at the Public Library which is regretful, what a great job and great people!

3)The Africa trip in December is all squared away. Got the tickets last week and saved $500 because I’m flying on a Monday instead of a Friday. Plus I’m flying KLM which I hear is a good airline.

4)Love life: We’re not going there (don’t ask) :I

Five Ways in which Graduate School is Different from Undergrad

2008-09-08T17:27:00.000-07:00

This is a short piece, but I've only been in graduate school for two weeks. I don't even know if you're suppose to hyphenate graduate school. Plus my dog as been couped up all day and is looking dejected so I have to go out and throw frisbee for him. As I chug along this semester there may be more on the transition from under-grad. Note to literallists: this piece is entirely tongue-in-cheek.

The chairs are more comfortable. The chairs in graduate school swivel and lean back. When you’ve made a particularly concise point that you believe has changed everyone’s conception of the subject, you can lean back and rock with your fingers inter-locked pretending to listen to the next comment appreciatively, although secretly you’re congratulating yourself for being so wise. At least until you realize that next comment is a complete rebuff of your argument and the speaker, unlike you, is actually using evidence from the text. Then you can lean forward quickly and try to find the page number, hoping that no one else in the room is listening to the argument.

You sit around a conference table. This is to make you feel more professional. Gone are the days when you would cram yourself into a little chair/desk thing like an NBA player at his 1st grader’s parents day. No, now you get to feel what the big shots feel when they “confer.” Of course, there is always that weird table-leg that positions itself between your legs, making your manhood feel compromised every time you shift your weight. The vast faux-mahogany table demonstrates the gulf between you and your peers, but it also demonstrates a loose community, kind of like holding the Zimbabwe election negotiations in the back room of Dennys.

You are committed to one field of scholarship and one field of scholarship only. Now, if reading about Atlantic trade agreements has got you cross-eyed, you can no longer go sit in a dark room afterwards gaining four credits for watching “Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill!” for Cult Cinema. You must, after all that reading, go to another class and discuss Atlantic trade agreements. In fact, Atlantic trade agreement might permeate your dreams, causing you to dream you’re making a trade agreement with a unicorn from Brooklyn named Vinnie, who mysteriously turns into your fourth grade social-studies teacher.

You discover that you are extremely adept at the art of BS. Because that social-studies teacher disguised as a unicorn dream left you unable to sleep, you read Calvin and Hobbes until dawn, forsaking the reading you need to do for class. By class time you’ve read the prologue, the epilogue and the good part about the Indians rampaging against the settlers. With the well-honed skill of BS you acquired in under-grad, you can turn this small amount of reading into a long-winded discourse on the conceptual differences of clashing cultures and the wave of Euro-centric hegemony colonial trade brought with it. Don’t forget the hand-gestures, the head-nodding, the lowered voice for dramatic effect, and the brilliant regurgitation of your first point disguised as a new point.

People are better at sniffing out BS. So, that round of BS didn’t go so well. People take your claim apart piece-by-piece. A tag-team of students quotes from several points in the text that claim the opposite of your statement. Don’t worry, they could be BSing too. It’s all open to interpretation right? This should be your mantra, “everything is open to interpretation.” Say it over, and over...and over.

Photos

2008-08-31T19:16:00.000-07:00

Because blogspot is very iffy about letting you embed video (and I'm too lazy to figure it out) I'll just post a link to this photo video I made with a cheap movie application. That's me singing folks.

The Stories We Could Tell

Staphylococcus Redux (part 2)

2008-08-24T12:58:00.001-07:00

Sometime that afternoon, after seeing very little life except macaws and possibly a monkey or two, we came upon a battered jeep that had been parked in the mud beside the road. We heard voices in the forest, and I determined that we should try to hitch a ride with whoever this was, because by this point my foot was screaming out in full distress. Swelling began to appear from the toe up to the ankle, and the area around my toes was beginning to show a fuchsia tint. At the time I was willing to beg for charity in any form we could get.

My companions, still less interested in my problems than I though they should be, gave uncommitted consent to my proposal. We trekked into the woods a way and found a man and a woman shooting a sling-shot into the trees. This did not seem odd to us; it was common practice for biologists in the rainforest when collecting samples. The slingshot, with fishing line attached, would send a weight over a branch. A chain saw blade would then be raised up and over the branch, and, by using ropes connected to the blade, two people could saw a branch off without leaving the safety of the forest floor. This practice required some trial and error but with practice a botanist could come away with some rare or uncatalogued specimens.

This was obviously what this couple were up to. I told them of my situation, but they were fixated on their gathering. They told us they could take us a few miles up the road, but they would be travelling in another direction once we reached that point. Fine, I thought, a few miles was better than nothing.

But they kept on gathering as my foot throbbed and burned. Putting pressure on it at this point felt like knives shooting through my shin. I found a stump on which to sit while I waited for the scientists and began pondering the wisdom of this trip to Costa Rica which I was dourly regretting at this point. What was I thinking in coming here? This was the most inhospitable natural environment on the planet. People weren’t meant to live in this place, the insects were in charge down here. I kept having an image from one of those time-lapse photography pieces, where it looks like the insects strip down the carcass of a horse in a matter of seconds. That’s how I felt, like that disintegrating horse, being eaten by something small and ruthless, returning me to the cycle of life and assuring I’d never walk in the Costa Rican mud ever again.

When the couple finally decided they were ready I struggled into the back of their Jeep. The ride was bumpy which added to my discomfort, but at least I wasn’t walking. For a few minutes anyway. The couple dropped us off unceremoniously, and as they drove away I saw very little hope indeed. We still had five or so miles to go until the next camp-site, and I was averaging about half-a-mile an hour.

There is no way of knowing how I made it that far. At some point we finally reached the coast. We had traveled roughly 50 miles in four days and may have made it back to the expedition’s camp that night if my foot hadn’t held us up. We never did make it to the intended camp-site for that last night however. By this time K. was becoming more concerned with my situation, possibly because now there were tears streaming down my face. She had also gotten a look at the foot which was in full purplish bloom. For the first time since I had met her she looked alarmed. We had only one option, and that was to stop at the quasi-resort run by the shady Texans.

We had met these folks earlier in the expedition when they zoomed up in a boat to check us out and let us know of their presence. There were three women, a mother and two daughters who had married Costa Rican men and came off as people who weren’t in Costa Rica to bask in the glories of the rainforest. Their activity had a reputation up and down the coast as not being totally legal, and they swaggered with an air of ex-pats who, for whatever reason, might not be totally welcome in their home country anymore.

But, they had beds. And they took travelers checks. This night was by far the worst of my life as far as illness and pain go. After a dinner where I could hardly comprehend any conversation I put myself to bed for a night of agony. Any sleep I managed was fraught with devilish images involving feet, toes, Texans, and mud. The Texans kept a party going into the night which made my visions even creepier, with loud cackling and drawling whispers. There was very little sleeping and a lot of writhing, cursing and not a small amount of praying.

By the morning I knew I couldn’t walk another step. The Texans came up with an idea; they would take me back to the expedition camp in their boat. I saw hope in this suggestion and actually felt optimistic for the first time in days. I began to like the Texans; they had saved me, I took back anything I’d ever suspected them of and realized that there is charity in this world, and, that humans, when need arises, are truly altruistic beings.

Then they told me their price. $100 for a twenty minute boat ride. Another $25 to cash a travelers check, plus what we owed for the rooms. Most of this came out of my pocket, although I seem to remember the other two chipping in a generous amount. I didn’t care how much it cost though, I just wanted to get back to camp.

The boat ride was horrific, every wave we hurdled brought with it unbearable pain. I spent the ride with my eyed slammed shut and my head buried in my shoulder. When we finally arrived and bid good riddance to the Texans I wanted nothing to do with my travelling partners, trekking, rainforests, sand, rivers or mud. I staggered to my tent and picked up the old guitar someone had sent the camp. I started plucking and found some comfort in my old friend music.

Soon I saw one of the expedition leaders coming out to my tent. K. had told her about my trauma, and since this team leader was a registered nurse it was her duty to check on all illness and injuries. I don’t know why I didn’t go to her first, I suppose I was in the mood to lick my wounds away from everybody. I was not in a very good place mentally at that point.

She took a studied look at my foot and determined that if I didn’t get to a hospital that day my foot would be gangrenous by morning. I complied with everything she told me and soon I was being helped into a boat for a three hour boat ride with the same characteristics as the fore-mentioned boat trip. Waves, pain, waves, pain…

Finally, at the hospital, I watched as they lanced and cut away whole parts of my foot. It wasn’t really a hospital in the American sense; it was more of a clinic. I was on my own here too, with no one to translate. At one point they injected me with something and, though I’ve always hated needles this injection was not bad at all, a small prick really. I realized soon enough that this was to test to see if I was allergic to penicillin. The real needle came out and I took it old school, bent over a gurney while the nursed admired my bare white ass.

The entire workforce of this clinic came from every desk and examination room to witness the cutting, lancing and dressing of this rag-tag gringo’s foot. After it was over I felt as if I’d been put through several wringers, but the pressure on my foot was relieved somewhat and the nurse told me I would have to stay off of it for a couple of weeks. This suited me fine. I returned to camp with these doctor’s orders and tried to pick out what novels to read while I convalesced.

Within three days the infection was back. I didn’t necessarily heed the doctor’s advice on staying off the foot. I cooked 4th of July lunch for the camp and the locals and in doing so aggravated the infection. After that, K. made sure I took my antibiotics regularly and every morning and evening she would change my dressing and wash my foot. Soon I was on the way to healing, and one morning one of the team members insisted that I return to work. I acquiesced.

It was an experience which will stay with me until I’m dead or in, what my father calls, the gaga garage. Why it was necessary to leave camp, which was uncomfortable enough, to go “rough it” in the interior still escapes me, but I’m sure it served some purpose if only to provide a long story written on a Sunday afternoon in the mid-Atlantic U.S. The episode didn’t kill me so, if the saying is true, it theoretically made me stronger. I don’t know about that. I’m also not sure about the “personal journey” theory where you find your inner strength through this sort of thing. I don’t see much in the story that indicates strength of any kind. All I know is, in retrospect, that I wish I had stayed on the beach that first day, basking in the sun, eating coconuts and reading novels.

Interlude

2008-08-22T05:39:00.000-07:00

I start classes on Monday, so it’s hard to tell how much I’ll be posting. I really want to keep up the momentum of posting regularly, so we’ll see…

Orientation for history majors took place yesterday, with information and an open house at the head of graduate studies house. Interesting. I almost walked through his screen door but caught myself just in time. Very dynamic group of people.

Hopefully I’ll rap up nailing down the Africa trip within a week or so. Christmas in Africa. Last time I did that was at Vic. Falls and we were on budget of three rand a day. We had Christmas dinner in a fast food place.

I’ll finish the staph-infection story this weekend, to all who want gory-details there’re plenty more on the way.

Staphylococcus Redux (Part 1)

2008-08-18T15:57:00.000-07:00

It seems that my posts have all been about trauma and sickness lately. This is probably because I'm about to start a new challenge and I need survivor stories to bolster me and send me forward. Here's one of my favorites, the one about the purple foot.

Earlier this month I wrote about my summer in Costa Rica. One of the many stories which arose from this trip is the one I’ve told to friends and relatives countless times, so many times in fact that when I start the tale I sometimes catch a brief rolling of the eyes and almost, telepathically, perceive an “oh God, here we go with the staph-infection story again.” Rarely deterred, I launch in, and appropriately embellish where embellishment is needed and appropriately pause where dramatic effect might illicit the most sympathy and awe. When telling the story it’s best to look forward or up, but not directly at the face of the recipient, who might erode the illusion of total engrossment through a poorly concealed yawn or a snore disguised as a snort or chortle.

So let’s try it in writing for once. This way, the reader might react in anyway they please, possibly reading three convoluted sentences before surfing off to see how the US is doing in underwater synchronised kayaking in Beijing. Also it means that I can have it all down on paper for once, and at Thanksgiving (my favorite holiday for captive audiences) I’ll just whip this version out and read it as documented proof of the suffering I endured at the hands of tropical trench-foot.

There was a sado-masochistic ritual our troupe took part in during that summer in Costa Rica. This ritual was a required forced-march through the interior of the country. The criteria for this hike was not written in stone, but roughly the trek had to be three days to a week long, could not involve luxury hotels or anything labeled first-class, second-class, third-class or slightly bareable-class, and had to be with a small group, preferably people who would start to get on your nerves in, say, the first half-hour of the first day of hiking. The final, non-negotiable stipulation was when you returned you had to be covered in your body-weight with black Costa Rican mud.

My group consisted of three people. Eric, who was a bicycle courier in D.C., K. who I’ve written about before in this post, and myself, a self-proclaimed leader who felt leading was all about just walking ahead of the other two . At the time, a magazine reporter was at our camp doing a story on our work, and within the article there is a picture of the three of us starting out on the trek looking like seasoned hikers on a mission from God. We just looked that way for the camera’s benefit, we would of all much rather have been sitting on the beach reading novels and eating coconuts.

The first day gave us an idea of what we were in for. The hiking was hard. The entire day was spent trekking along a narrow beach which offered no solid surface on which to walk. At the end of the beach hike we were required to cross a river-mouth with a rushing current and rumored alligators swimming upstream. I literally had to carry K. across on my shoulders because, if not, she would have been swept out to sea. But beds and hot food awaited us on the other side, and soon our moods improved. The day had put a strain on my interdependence with K. who had trouble keeping up on the beach walk. We had three more days of this to go, and I wondered how she would do in the mud of the rain forest on days much longer than this one. It turns out that it was probably her that needed to be worried about me.

The second day had us debating on whether we should stay at the camp for the next four days and just “say” we went on the trek. But the camp, which was an eco-tourism station, charged for each night you stayed, and by that point I had used most of my funds on beer and, well, beer. Besides, we definitely could handle whatever was to come next. We’d had a good night’s sleep and were relatively buoyant by the time we set off that morning.

This day was equally as hard as the first but for different reasons. The trail followed the river into the interior of the Osa Peninsula, and the river, while shallow, had to be traversed literally dozens of times. The river-bed consisted of shaley sand and the traverses had us slogging through the water from shoal-to-shoal. We spent the entire afternoon doing this, and it was then I started to notice a slight scrape on the fourth toe of my right foot. I say “notice” because it was part of a series of uncomfortable maladies I identified on my body that day. Sunburn, muscle-ache, fatigue, and insect-bites all added to my discomfort, so the scrape from a piece of grit lodged between my toe and toe-nail was just a part of a long inventory of complaints. At the time I thought little of it.

It wasn’t until that night when I awoke to a persistent throbbing from my foot that I realized there might be a problem. I spent the rest of the night in a fitful sleep, my toe becoming the center of my dreams, shouting out for urgent attention, becoming a grotesque character who sent shock waves through my restless unconscious. When I awoke I wondered how I would walk that day, but a few tender steps had me believing I could go on. I alerted the others to the problem, but not knowing how bad it was myself, I had no way of gauging how urgent I should make the issue. Besides, abandoning the trek was nearly impossible, we were nowhere near any form of transportation and even if we had been, this would cost money which, as we know, had gone mostly for beer. I decided to see how it went, at this time there as no swelling to speak of and the pain was relegated to my toe only, my foot was still able to take the weight of my body. The toe, I was sure, would get better.

But this was Costa Rica. A small cut could become infected within a matter of hours in the humidity. One of the words we used often in the camp was “festering.” Infection was such a problem that once our the entire camp came down with conjunctivitis within a week. It was probably not the best idea to take a “wait-and-see” stance at this point, not in this climate, but there was really no other choice.

But pain makes you go looking for other choices when there are none I found out. The next day was the mud-day from hell. With every step we sank up to mid-calf in a thick brownie-batter of crud. The pain didn’t really start until mid-morning, and I remember reading a passage from “Sometimes a Great Notion” to my half-interested trekking partners in order to ease the monotony of the walk. But as soon as we hit the real mud, all I could think of was the pain which bulleted up my spine every time I sucked my foot up from the mire. By this time I was trailing far behind the others and it was my turn to shout “wait!” By the afternoon I had fashioned a crutch for myself and fancied myself a rebel retreating from Richmond. The pain was beginning to make me frantic and delirious.

(end part one)

Cool Link

2008-08-18T12:45:00.000-07:00

Check out this link which grades your neighborhood on its "walkability."

I got an 83, not a bad score but you have to figure in the prostitutes and drug-dealers.But they're a lovable bunch once you get to know them. Well, not lovable in that way. Still proud of my hood though.

Ian's List of Worsts (Whine and Cheese)

2008-08-17T13:05:00.000-07:00

Worst Concert: Grateful Dead in Charlotte, 1995. This show was devastatingly awful. With a terrible set-list, apathetic playing, a depressingly old looking Jerry Garcia and annoying deadheads everywhere, I have to say my worst concert was by one of my favorite bands. They redeemed themselves the next night in Atlanta though. Runner up: Toto (the tickets were free.)

Worst date: In high school I asked a girl to the homecoming dance. I spent the afternoon detailing my car. I decided for some reason to dress in sort of a grunge-meets-gomer outfit, with layered flannel shirts and old jeans with enormous holes in the knees. (What the hell was I thinking?) When I picked her up she was dressed to the freakin’ nines. I looked like I just got off work at Goober’s gas station. Luckily she had a change of clothes for the party after the dance and, believe it or not, the grunge/gomer look was kind of in, so she had holes in her jeans too.

Worst hangover: Don’t ever eat the worm at the bottom of a bottle of tequila. I’m just saying this because it's exactly what I did on my 21st birthday. I remember going out to eat the next morning. It was Sunday and all the church people were having proper Sunday lunches. I must have looked like an escapee from the morgue. I sure felt like it. I barely managed to hold down my eggs.

Worst roommate: The guy I lived with in Portland who spent the phone bill money on strip-clubs and drugs. He also gradually moved his wife, step-son and parakeet into our two bedroom flat. The parakeet would start chirping at three in the morning and pooped all over my couch. The wife chain-smoked Misty cigarettes and played solitaire all day. Runner up: The guy who would come home drunk and throw chairs at the wall. Bye-bye security deposit. He was a pretty decent guitar player so he misses first-place by a hair.

Worst illness: I had chicken-pox when I was about 37. You’re supposed to get chicken-pox when you’re a kid, that’s why they gave it that cute name. But I got it in my thirties and let me tell you…it was not cute! Besides looking like someone lowered a wasp-nest onto my head, my girlfriend mistakenly got the wrong type of antibiotic cream which made the symptoms worse. I spent a couple of agonizing nights with a wet washcloth over my face. Physically, I felt like I’d been steam-rolled. I remember watching the Elephant Man on TV and identifying completely. “I am not an animal!” Runner up: Staph infection in Costa Rica. Honorable mention: Whatever that thing was I had for the first month in Africa.

Worst meal: This is tough, I can’t really think of a really bad meal I’ve had although I know there has to be one. I got food-poisoning from a sandwich once, but that doesn’t really count. Oh yea, recently I went to a chain restaurant and ordered eggs-over-easy. The whites weren’t even close to being fully cooked. It looked like the eggs had been precooked and then dipped in warm water for service. Yow! Also, there have been times in my life when economy dictated I concoct meals out of what I had in the cabinet. This is usually a pretty sparse selection. I came up with some scary things during these times. However, I did discover the versatility of Top Ramen.
Actually there’s one more. I once ate a raw turnip on an empty stomach, (it’s a long story). Don’t ever, ever, do this. I won’t go into details as to why, just never, ever do it.

Worst book I actually finished: The Fountainhead. I know it seems like I have an axe to grind with Ayn Rand, but I just hate all that superior social darwinism crap. Problem is, and I don’t like to admit this, the writing was compelling enough to see me through to the end…and, sigh, actually made the book difficult to put down. There, I’ve said it. Moving on…

Worst movie: I learned not to completely trust the movie reviews in The New Yorker with this one. One of the reviewers, I don’t know if it was Denby, Lane or another one, salivated about a movie called Rangoon. Has anyone seen this film? I might have missed the point, but I found it excruciatingly dull and therefore list it as the worst movie I’ve ever seen. All I remember is everyone being very sweaty and damp through the whole thing (the actors, not the audience, well maybe the audience too.)

Worst try-out: In fifth grade I tried out for the school soft-ball team. We couldn’t afford a soft-ball-mitt so, true to fashion, my mother offered to see if a friend who had sons would let me borrow one. It sounded like an okay plan, but I was a little suspicious. The glove that I got was tiny, and looked like it was manufactured around the-turn-of-the-century. (that’s the 20th century young-uns.) Predictably, the try-out went badly. The other kids had their huge non-antique-gloves and were scooping up soft-balls and hurling them back to home-plate with ease. I, on the other hand, couldn’t have handled a golf-ball with that glove and, sadly, didn’t make the cut. Runner up: this wasn’t necessarily a try-out, but I once had the opportunity to play bass with Ben Folds (he had hits in the nineties, remember?) I completely choked, and couldn’t play a note.

Worst moment in a classroom: I went to community college for a while and administration talked me into taking a piano class. It was a good class, but I got the date for the recital wrong and came into it completely unprepared. About fifty people watched me struggle through hickory-dickory-dock and a few other pieces. The instructor had to point at each key before I played it, patiently whispering “that one, then that one, now the black one again” etc.

Worst computer mishap: I was working on the big research-paper that all history majors had to complete when the library lap-top I was using shut-down. When I booted it back up I went to the recovery function and accidentally deleted several pages of my final draft. I was in a library so I couldn’t shout expletives at the top of my lungs, but I really, really wanted to.

Worst job: My first job when I went to Africa was assisting a surgeon with just general daily tasks. On of these jobs was taking photographs of surgery, which was exciting and fascinating. But I also had to do clerical work which wasn’t so great. The worst task assigned to me however was collecting sputum samples from the TB ward. Yes, really, I did that. Runner up: Chef at the Diamondback Café.

Worst fashion choice: I used to cut my own hair. ‘nuff said.

Worst bruise: I had a bruise on my hip from skiing that was the color of a black-hole and was kind of shaped like the Milky Way. Actually it was many bruises layered on top of each other because I kept falling on the exact same hip.

Worst airline experience: Flying from Transkei to Raleigh took four days. They had me on the wrong flight when I got to Johannesburg, when I finally arrived in Brussels there was an air-traffic-controllers strike, I missed the connection from New York to Raleigh by ten minutes and I was suffering from a malady which I won’t name but is extremely unpleasant to those who’ve experienced it. I had to start work at a summer camp on the same day I finally made it to North Carolina. It took me about a month to recover.

13 Years

2008-08-09T08:18:00.000-07:00

I'm running late already, and I'm supposed to be in Asheville sometime today, but I had to write a (very) quick post to commemorate the 13th anniversary of Jerry Garcia's death. If I had more time I would write a long statement that I'm sure would convert the most ardent detractor of this man's importance to the popular culture of the 20th century. But there just isn't time today, and there are far better articles, columns, and books that do justice to the legacy of this icon. "Icon" seems like such a trite word for this, but it'll have to do for now.

I have issue 717 of Rolling Stone right next to me. A very intense Jerry stares out at Herbi Greene's camera in salt-and-pepper magnitude, and all the top caption reads is "Jerry Garcia 1942-1995." My copy is worse for the wear, and when I opened it this morning I found that I had placed clippings from the NY Times, New Yorker, Time, and an editorial from our local paper inside the front cover. As I was flipping through it, I welled up. Dammit, not supposed to get weepy...buck up kid!

I've been listening to a lot of Dead this week. Not really consciously, it just happens that these phases come around every now and then. Now I realize that it is the August solstice, the 9 days between Jerry's birthday, August 1st, 1942, and the day of his death, August 9th, 1995. I've mostly listened to tapes from 1970 when the Dead were part bar-band, part transcendental oracles and part folk balladeers. Jerry drove the majority of these concerts with relentless, some might say endless, guitar solos. But listening to each tape I'm amazed at how many variations the man was able to produce with just five fingers and a dozen or so frets (oh, and yes, probably lots of inhebriants). He could be sweetly lyrical one moment and turn on a dime to produce scary crunchy fuzz, then riff off blues licks and decunstruct everything into feedback and wonking noises and then find his way back to the lyrical melody.

I don't really know where I'm going with this. I just know that I'm remembering this day particularly intensely this year. There is so much about the Grateful Dead that produces fodder for the morality police, not to mention the folks who want their songs to be about love and last no more than three-and-half minutes. Not knocking those folks, but if freedom of speech and expression is still a collective value, the Dead and Garcia proved how powerful that basic human right can be. Furthermore, to many of their fans, they also proved the profound transformative power of this practice .

igoogle (more cool vanity programming)

2008-08-06T08:11:00.000-07:00

There's no doubt about it, librarians are cool. Because I work for a county library system, I get tech training every month or so. Last session we set up our own igoogle account which now opens on my work desktop. You can customize your homepage with literally thousands of options from tropical fish-tanks to stock quotes and video games. Being at work, I have to stick with book and research type options. Each box represents a group of links, so you can catagorize by subject. If you want a group of links to favorite sports teams, you can set that up or you can create a whole new page exclusivly for sports. igoogle also offers a tab called reference that already has dictionary.com, a language translator, wiki and other cool links built in. If this sounds like an endorsement, it is. I just happen to like this application a lot.

Here is my home page as it stands today.
more soon...

Iron Woman/Man Meme

2008-07-30T17:25:00.000-07:00

From the always awesome Charlotte, this meme was one of the most fun I've done

1. My uncle once: made me set off one of those moo-cow noise makers in church.

2. Never in my life: have I wanted to conform.
3. When I was five: I went to England and ate chocolate mousse shaped like a baby bunny.
4. High school was: where I met people I'm still friends with.
5. I will never forget: Ryoko.
6. Once I met: Desmond Tutu.
7. There’s this girl I know: who had her back broken in four places, was in intensive care for a week, graduated from high school on time, and became a hero.
8. Once, at a bar: I beat a friend at darts .
9. By noon, I’m usually: pretty much awake and feeling fine.
10. Last night: I tried to relive my earlier days, went to see a band at a venue miles away from my town, rocked, and feel great.

11. If only I had: everything settled.
12. Next time I go to church: I'll listen to every word of the sermon, I promise.

13. What worries me most: abandonment
14. When I turn my head left I see: a crazy over-stuffed bookcase.
15. When I turn my head right I see: a stereo.
16. You know I’m lying when: The blotch between my eyes becomes bright red
17. What I miss most about the Eighties is: hating Reagan.
18. If I were a character in Shakespeare I’d be: One of the characters who tried to talk reason into all of the misguided idiots in Shakespeare.
19. By this time next year: I'll be me, but a year older.
20. A better name for me would be: Ian Mitchie.
21. I have a hard time understanding: women.
22. If I ever go back to school: I'll let you know when I'm finished.
23. You know I like you if: You haven't been a jerk.
24. If I ever won an award, the first person I would thank would be: Heather
25. Take my advice, never: put a beer-tab in the fuse-box of a Volkswagen in the hopes that it will make the stereo work.
26. My ideal breakfast is: Eggs Benedict cooked by someone who knows exactly how I would cook it, but not cooked by me.
27. A song I love but do not have is: City of Tiny Lights
28. If you visit my hometown, I suggest you: give it chance, a long chance, like about a year, and then realise we're doing the best with what we have to work with, and then...save yourself, move! or not.
29. Why won’t people: stop excepting mediocrity.
30. If you spend a night at my house: do it on a Tuesday, when things are clean but don't still smell of pinesol.
31. I’d stop my wedding for: someone telling me a had a ten record deal with Columbia.
32. The world could do without: cultural assertion.
33. I’d rather lick the belly of a cockroach than: read Ayn Rand.
34. My favourite blonde(s) is/are: and/or/all of the above.
35. Paper clips are more useful than: nuclear weapons.
36. If I do anything well it’s: meander.
37. And by the way: I overhauled my living-room today.

Jeremy. Archie, Emily, Danny, all tagged.

Thoughts on Costa Rica

2008-07-27T17:54:00.001-07:00

In 1991, still reeling from a two-year train-wreck of a relationship, I joined a public service group called Youth Service International. The foundation planned trips to places like Papua New Guinea and the Australian outback to assist with forestation projects and construct eco-tourism camps. The year I signed on, the team was going to Costa Rica to start construction on a lodge in a remote part of the indigenous rainforest on the southwestern coast, a place known as the Osa Peninsula. The expedition would last approximately seventy-five days.

The group numbered around forty. Mostly recent college graduates, the age ranged from seventeen to twenty-five. I was twenty-four years old, in need of a fresh outlook and anxious to experience unspoiled areas of the globe, if there still are such places. In order to go I raised the money myself, somewhere in the neighborhood of four thousand dollars. The two biggest fund-generators were a 120 mile bike-a-thon and a chicken-pie-brunch for the First Methodist Church in New Bern, North Carolina. I learned then that the best way to raise money is to feed people. The brunch raised about a third of the funds in around five hours.

To rendezvous with the other members, who were coming from all over the country, I had to reach Miami International Airport. In any international airport, especially in the late spring and throughout summer, one can see groups like ours strewn around on airport floors leaning up against over-stuffed back-packs and nervously checking passports and tickets. Some are less concerned with documents, reading battered paper-backs or exploring the terminals in search of the bar. Most represent a loose group of temporary expats, dipping their toe in the “other” world for a moment in hopes of life-changing insight or a fling with another culture. Whichever it is, it keeps an underground of back-packing adventurers moving around the globe like misplaced beetles in a never-ending column of ants.

Before the trip got underway, we were all assigned duties to be performed once we reached camp. Because of my background in restaurants, I landed the responsibility of purchasing all of the food for the camp. This was not an easy task, the camp was three hours away by boat from even the most remote town, and the boat trips were few-and-far-between. On top of this, I had to account for the tastes of forty Americans and roughly twenty Costa Ricans (nicknamed ticas and ticos) and all on a strict budget. I learned within a few days what most Costa Ricans think of oatmeal for breakfast. My Scotch ancestry took it for granted that everybody ate oatmeal for breakfast. Not in Costa Rica.

On top of this, I had a boss. Because I was a little late getting the job, the true supervisor of the food supply was an eighteen-year-old lawyer’s daughter from Westchester County New York. I’ll call her K.

I met K on the floor of the Miami airport when the YSI leader introduced us and claimed me as K’s assistant. She was small, ninety pounds maybe less, wearing over-alls and a deep scowl. She was about as impressed with me as she was with the spot on the wall she went back to staring at as soon as the inconvenience of shaking my hand was over. I tried to strike up a conversation, but this provoked only monosyllabic grunts. Still, she was pretty, I thought, and that helped.

K liked control. She didn’t know the first thing about supplying food to people, but she new a great deal about being bossy and difficult. This took her far on those first couple of supply outings where she would either ignore my suggestions outright or purse her lips and stubbornly contradict me. I had to just accept it for a while, she was in charge.

The trip soon created its own rhythm, and as we settled into the camp K became more comfortable with my help. I made some blunders yes (oatmeal) but I worked very hard, building a BBQ pit out of rebar and organizing a fresh coconut assembly line so we could have the delicious coconuts that were in never-ending abundance on the beach. Almost every morning fishermen, fishing in some of the best game waters in the world, would unload their throwbacks on us, mostly yellow-fin tuna and wahoo. The high energy arroz y frijoles and handmade corn tortillas always augmented these local gifts. I learned to make tortillas from the locals and in return I gave them some very bad but entertaining English lessons.

The insects were the drawback of the trip. Vicious sand-flies plagued any exposed skin, and one would have to wait until they bit to swat them because of their speed. In the forest, large bees would zero in and sting-at-will. An afternoon shower could bring on the hatching of millions of flying termites who would frantically fly and fornicate all over the camp, sending all inhabitants running for cover. I once found an intimidating scorpion on the inside of my shirt after pulling it off the clothes-line.

Infection was also a problem, with the smallest of nicks turning into a festering sore within a couple of days. At a later date I plan to write about the staph infection on my foot that came very close to becoming gangrenous, but that will require a whole new post.

K and I managed to become close. I built a little home-away-from home down the beach from the main camp. In a palm grove I pitched my tent on a platform made of material I pilfered from the construction sight. The platform at least kept the ground-dwelling bugs away. The tent was usually hot, but at night, with only the screen up, the breeze coming off the crashing waves of the Pacific would lull me into a light sweaty sleep.

In the camp was a mess tent with a long picnic table where the whole expedition would cram themselves at meals and play cards into the evening. I never considered the things I would miss from home until I reached the camp. One of these was chair-backs. Leaning forward over a picnic table for two-and-a-half months made me long for a lawn chair, a high-back chair, or even a church pew. So on my platform I made a porch of sorts. It was two twelve-by-fours hammered into the form of a bench. A bench with a back. Here, before dinner, I would watch the surf, drink a beer, or crack open a coconut for K and I to share. Often some others would join us and I’d pluck away on an old guitar I was teaching one of the ticos to play.

K moved into my tent not long after I finished the platform and the bench. She stayed there every night for the rest of the trip. We became friends despite the uncomfortable living conditions and differences on how to supply the camp. One night, when the entire camp had come down with pink-eye (yep pink-eye) except her, she led me like a blind man to the main camp in the dark so I could wash out my burning itching eyes. Something, possibly my habit of humorous complaining, got us laughing. We both were in hysterics over some inanity, laughing desperately while the giant indigenous trees listened and the insects kept up their relentless onslaught. It seems such a long time ago, but these things rarely leave the forefront of my recall for more than a day or two. I realize now that this is what I was looking for in Costa Rica.

So much about that trip transformed me into who I’ve become today. It was the briefest of periods, less than three months, less than a semester, less than a single season of football, less than a forth-of-a-year. Not long after, I went to Oregon while K went to Africa, at my urging. Sadly we lost touch, but as this entry suggests I haven’t forgotten her. Maybe it’s the same with her.

The dynamics and diversity of that group influenced me so positively after a period where I had foundered in the negativity of my home-town, that I felt spring-boarded forward. Now, when things are tough, I console myself with the never-ending mantra, “Well I survived Costa Rica, I can survive this too.” Its things like these that teach what you’ve really got inside of you.

Post Script:
This is Companario. Our group was the second to go down and start construction. None of what you see on the website was there when we started. Makes me want to go back.

Another One in a Row

2008-07-02T09:10:00.000-07:00

I paid a long overdue visit to Archie's Archives today. One of his posts sent me surfing for Ron McKuen Poems. This is one I particularly like. Blogspot is no friend to the poetry format, so the full effect of the poem is lost from lack of proper indentation. The words are still brilliant.

ANOTHER ONE IN A ROW

Even wrinkled water stretches out

along its roadway to the sea.

A blemish under sunlight fades,

or darkens,

changes anyway as all things change

the more they meet the Elements.

Only the nightmare, one in a row,

is constant under Nature's gaze.

Lean or weighted down with weight,

everybody I see now is eloquent

In true proportion.

Dreams have taught me

to turn my back on nothing

that might be something.

Something being that other one

one always needs to compliment

the given hour.

Who knows how many dreams

die out of season

reaching for some added darkness

or twisting upward where the sunlight

sits on haunches in the tops of trees.

There are no ordinary dreams.

Every nightmare is extraordinary

and compared to bodies, every body,

the dream is truly plain.

The nightmare is nothing.

I am, of course, excepting my own body

which needs a little/lot of work

No mirror told me that.

Not seeing my reflection in an other body

was looking glass enough.

While looking down

above a dream some times

I do see my old self rolling in another's arms

And oh the sight is dazzling.

---Rod McKuen 1998

Concert Meme

2008-06-27T09:09:00.000-07:00

Here I start the catching-up phase of my blogging summer. I'll start with a meme. They're easy, and they appeal to my self-involved side. There's opportunities for bragging-rights for this one. It's a meme that has you naming the bands you have seen in concert. The asterix show how many people who've done the meme before you have seen the same band or performer. This branch will have to end with me unless someone considers themselves tagged. Any who read this--you're it.

Dar Williams*** — Dar’s my second cousin. We saw her in Charlottesville with my parents and she did a shout-out to my dad. She said she always imagined her southern cousins running around barefoot all the time. Pretty accurate.

Sting ***—three times with the Police and once solo.

David Bowie* – Saw Bowie twice on the Serious Moonlight Tour and the next tour which was Scary Spiders or something. Serious Moonlight was great.

The Grateful Dead* –about 15 times before the real en, and several times in their post-Garcia incarnations.

Queen* – First concert ever. Pretty amazing from what I remember.

R.E.M.** – 6 times maybe? Backstage twice, once on the day after my high-school graduation.

Wilco—saw them at Bonnaroo in 2004. I was amazed at their live act.

The Rolling Stones—in 1992. Mick was about 70 then, right? He still worked the crowd like a master. One of my top five shows of all time.

Taj Mahal—once in downtown Winston where the drunk frat-boys didn’t get it at all, and another time at Bonnaroo while standing in the longest ATM line on the planet.

Bob Dylan—several times. Usually people think his shows suck. I don’t know why, but I always enjoy them because he doesn’t care that most people think his shows suck. Best time in Durham standing within arms length of the guy who wrote all those songs.

Wynton Marsalis—I saw Wynton in the auditorium of Guilford College. His band was an hour late, he only played for an hour, he did no encore, and still it was the best 25 bucks I’ve ever spent (50 if you count my girlfriend). The high-note he hit during the New Orleans dirge was worth $23.50 by itself. Saw him again at WSSU. Branford strolled on the stage about halfway through to help finish the set. Unbelievable.

David Byrne—I never had a chance to see Talking Heads but Byrne came to my burg several years ago and put on this amazing creepy show with Talking Heads and solo stuff and a lot of artistic sets. All at a club that looked like a place you’d hold a barn-dance.

Phish—I think I saw this band about three times. The first time was good, but the other times I kind of lost interest sometime during the 29th guitar solo.

Dave Mathews—not the DMB but Dave Mathews with Tim Reynolds and Trey Anastasio. Trey spent the whole concert trying to upstage everyone and Dave looked like he was trying to keep the peace. When Trey started playing the drums during Reynolds’ guitar solo all magic was ruined for me.

Doc Watson—I’ve seen Doc Watson about four times. He always puts on a good show, and he’s in his 80s!

The Radiators—I love the Radiators. I saw them in Eugene and at Bonnaroo 2004. It was on Sunday and we were feeling very worse-for-the-wear. The band revitalized us and we continued on with our revelry.

NRBQ—I saw them in Connecticut in 1991. I didn’t really appreciate them at the time, but now I love them. They always do amazing things with their guitars.

Cracker--I got a little over-excited, i.e. inebriated, at this show and burst into their dressing room before the encore to convince with them to do an encore which they were planning to do anyway. Dave Lowry wanted to know where my girlfriend was--he was kind of a jerk.

Concert wish list, post-mortem: Frank Zappa, Muddy Waters, Thelonious Monk, The Clash. I would have liked to have been at the Beatle’s rooftop concert.

Concert wish-list: REM, again, The Pretenders during their heyday, Talking Heads, Bruce Springsteen and many more that aren't coming to mind right now.

Excuse #457

2008-06-27T07:00:00.000-07:00

Excuse #457: I’ve been pretty busy. Too busy to dig down and find enough energy to write a post that would be worth a d**n. But—things will ease up starting next week and I hope to make up for lost time. My statistics have gone south, with an abysmal 17 visitor average. This is what happens when you don’t post or comment. I need to start making the rounds again. It was different when I worked at the reference desk, lots of free time to write. On Sunday I’ll definitely have time to sit down and produce something. If any of the 12 visitors (you know who you are, three sisters and the guy from Slovania) that view this post want to help me decide what to write about here are some things I’m thinking about:

Why the new REM album has restored my faith in human kind

The weird people who live in my town (present company included)

The Rooster that used to live in my neighborhood

A new mock-meme

Anyway, see you later…

Graduation Photos

2008-06-17T10:14:00.000-07:00

Better late than never: Graduation 2008.

The Happy Graduate
With the Proud Parents

Dog-Walker

2008-06-15T16:40:00.000-07:00

There’s a dog-park not far from me and I took Booker there for the first time today. We (back when we were we) hired a dog-walker who comes three times a week to carry an ecstatic panting black animal down to the large fenced-in-area to socialize, sniff, and fetch. The dog-walker has been controversial of late because of his habit of throwing a handful of dog food on the ground over which the dogs compete. All this was reported to me second-hand by someone who watched as Dog-Walker was confronted by a concerned owner who was probably afraid that her little dog might end up mauled. Seems reasonable. Dog-Walker could be bi-polar (he is a residual of my ex-girlfriend’s restaurant) or may have some other psycho-malady, but whatever it is he doesn’t like to be told when he is wrong. Words exchanged, shouting ensued, the injured and indignant Dog-Walker, martyred and defiant, defended his position dramatically as, according to the witness, Booker sniffed on unfazed. Crises—I needed to make a decision.

True to habit, I decided to wait and see. I haven’t actually talked to the dog-walker since then because he picks up Booker when I’m gone from the house. I really don’t want to hear his side of the story, not because I’m uninterested but because he tends to get over-excited and loud. He speaks very fast. Talking to him is one of those moments when I find myself repeating “yea…but…I know…but…umhmm…yep…but…” throughout any of many one-sided conversations.

Once he took on a group of Jehovah’s Witnesses outside of my house. They had approached me earlier, and I gave them my usual stock spiel about how I had my own beliefs about the creator and that I respected theirs and wished them luck. Dog-Walker chose the moment they were walking off my porch to pull up in his blue Plymouth Volare. The Jehovah’s Witnesses, two very gracious but indoctrinated and dogmatic ladies, made the mistake of asking about the acceptance of Jesus Christ in Dog-Walker’s life. I, by this time, had begun to return to whatever I was occupied with before the door-bell rang, but soon was interrupted by something that sounded like a high pitched re-reading of Orson Wells’ sermon in Moby Dick. “Do not presume to tell me who MY God is!” I heard. “I know who MY God is and he accepts me as I AM!” By the time I got to the street Dog-Walker was brandishing a crucifix at the terrified ladies, the silver neck-chain taught as he asserted his claim to a Christian God that the Jehovah’s Witness’ could only hope to know. When I intervened, Dog-Walker was out of breath from ranting, and he was also hurt that I had not come to his aid. He couldn’t believe that my aversion to loud religious exchanges in front of my house won out over any loathing I might have for creepy religious pandering.

All judgments withheld after that. Life went on. I had seen how agitated Dog-Walker could get, and I’d pocketed another odd story about my neighborhood. But even with this new incident there is something now that’s keeping me from cutting Dog-Walker loose. His relationship with Booker.

Let me just indicate first that Booker loves me. He does the Dino Flintstone when I come home from work and, if it’s been “one-of-those-days,” he senses it and calms down quickly. But if he senses that it’s been a good day, and usually it’s because I’m singing some stupid made up song about checking the mail and feeding the cats, he charges around grabbing his Frisbee and wagging his tail furiously. He’s a good dog.

But when Dog-Walker shows up it’s a different scene all-together. Firstly Booker knows the sound of Dog-Walker’s engine. In the winter, when the front door is closed, he jumps literally three feet off the ground to get a glimpse of Dog-Walker through the glass panes of the front door. Dog-Walker’s entrance into the house is a sort of ritual, with Booker doing a hind-legged dance as the leash comes down from the coat-rack and the humans exchange greetings. A mad rush to the kitchen to retrieve treats might be followed by a taunting invitation with the Frisbee. If not, it’s out the door and into Dog-Walker’s front seat as the two toodle down the street like an old married couple on a Sunday drive. It’s kinda weird and kinda sweet.

There is no doubt in my mind that Booker is as good for Dog-Walker as Dog-Walker is for Booker, mainly because Dog-Walker tells me. These are the conversations I don’t mind. This is a man who’s been dealt some very difficult cards in his life. Life can’t be easy for him, but time with Booker seems to be one of his high-points.

So I went to the dog-park today just to get an idea of the surroundings—where these two go every Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. I met a good group of people who love their dogs. The majority of the dogs are rescue dogs. The owners proudly tell of the traumas, and joys, of finding and caring for them. A heated confrontation at this place, between two-legged animals anyway, seems like an anathema. Owners sat casually under the shade trees and watched each other's dogs while a canine greeting party was organized and sent forward for every new arrival. Booker lead a couple of these.

It seems to me that the initial trouble at the dog-park is with the food that Dog-Walker is dropping on the ground. If he stops this, there could be a resolution. This is how I’ll handle it:

If it looks like Dog-Walker’s getting his gander up at the mention of changing any of his habits to satisfy a few heinous and unreasonable dog-owners I’ll simple remove the food from the cabinet and hide it. Another solution is to always make sure there are dog-treats, not just dog food so there won’t be any dispute over kibbles. The Dog-Walker can keep a milk-bone handy to give to Booker only. People are very particular about what their own pets eat, and I should try to respect that.

One plus of the whole saga, it got me down to the park. There is a fantastic place for Booker to swim, not just wallow, and the company of strangers felt right. Dogs are, among other things, conversation starters, and meeting, greeting, patting and admiring each other’s dogs quickly put all at ease. I met all shapes and sizes of people and dog, and Sunday (still a tough day for me, possibly the only one left) became tolerable and happy.

So Dog-Walker stays, as long as things return to normal. More instances like this and I’ll have to revisit my thinking on it, but I know that I have a new place to take Booker. New avenues are good for me now, and it took Dog-Walker’s indignation, and possibly his obliviousness to reason, to get me to this one.

What to Read

2008-06-08T08:42:00.000-07:00

I have a dilemma on the reading front right now. On August 25th I’ll be starting graduate school, and I’m having trouble deciding how to plan my reading for the summer. A part of me wants to start exercising my comprehension muscles right now, reading deep analytical tracts about Antebellum culture and Liberian colonization, but the other part of me recognizes that once I’m immersed in graduate work it may be a while before I can read completely for pleasure again. It’s not necessarily that reading about my subject of interest isn’t pleasurable, but neither is it exactly the type of reading where you can throw your legs up on the porch railing while waiting out a hot day.

What’s making the dilemma worse is that while I’m working at the library I get to see the best-sellers circulate on and off the shelves, and it’s piqued my curiosity about all these current authors. James Patterson is our most popular author and, from what I can tell, you can easily read his books in a day, or an evening even. I picked up one of his books recently and just opened up to a middle chapter and read the first line. It was short and perfunctory but kind of enticing too. It seemed unapologetic. After one sentence I imagined that I could tell what sort of reading experience the book would bring me. But I have to use caution with these assumptions. I’ve started books that I was all excited about and later hurled them across the room at around chapter nine. Patterson’s portrait on the back cover doesn’t help either; he looks like the kind of guy that would have you removed from his yacht for wearing the wrong sort of loafers. But you know what they say, you can’t judge a book…..well, you know the rest.

David Baldacci is another one who’s widely read. We get veterans coming in for W.E.B. Griffin a great deal. Daniel Steele is still at the top of the list along with Robert Parker and, to my horror, Pat Buchanan is writing history books (aaaargggg) and Newt Gingrich is writing historical fiction. (Well actually, Pat Buchanan is probably writing historical fiction too but he’ll never admit it.) One encouraging detail, Barack Obama’s books are some of the most heavily circulated.

I’m wondering if I should give any of these authors a try, like having one last fling before settling down. Should I go on a Nora Roberts binge or finally start reading Harry Potter? I’ve got less than three months before I’m researching day after day. Is this the last time I’ll get to discover that prolific woman who writes about African detective agencies? All of these books come highly recommended by fine people who can’t get enough of one certain author or another. One of the most common comments I get is that the patron can’t remember if they’ve read the book they’re checking out or not. Some of them trundle off with bags stuffed with books claiming “this should hold me for a week.”

It’s probably going to reach the mid-nineties today. There are some things I could get done today, but in all fairness to me I worked a long week last week, six days between the county, the college, the film class and helping prep food for a wedding on Saturday, plus three band practice sessions (we’re practicing more because the bass player is available in the evenings now). I just walked out on the porch and that lucky, but oppressive, ‘ole sun is dialing up another scorcher. Reading seems like the ticket.

But there’s one problem. I locked my book in my desk drawer at work. The key broke off in the lock and it probably won’t get fixed until tomorrow. The book is Barbara Tuchman’s history of British and Palestinian relations Bible and Sword. What’s worse is that my graduation pictures were in the book too. I was planning to scan them and post them to this very website, but that will have to wait for a later date. My mother and father are also reading the book and I thought it would be fun to discuss it with them. Now I’ll be behind. But no worries. I do have to realize though, that a mistake like this could be disastrous once I'm in grad-school.

So what to read today? I don’t have any of the above mentioned popular authors at hand. There are some books that were given to me as presents but they don’t seem to be calling me either. Wait, I’ve got it….there’s one Patrick O’Brian on the bookshelf I haven’t read. I think the glorification of England’s empirical dominance in the early 19th century makes for a happy medium between graduate study and James Patterson. Anchors away, see you on the front porch.

The Evil Twin Meme

2008-06-04T18:58:00.000-07:00

I did everything to try to stop this, but it seems my long-lost third-cousin-once-removed has surfaced and posted (how did he get the passwords?) on my blog. He's also placed a block on this post, so I can't remove it...I just have to let it ride. Twadrick was brought up somewhere south of Sausalito, where he was left on the door-step of an assistant professor (MA, PhD w/o dissertation) at a small experimental liberal-arts college. He worked his way up through the ranks, attending Oxford at 9, Cambridge at 11, and The Phoenix Institute at 37. In 1998 he received the Nobel Special Prize for the Most Pretentious Person on the Planet. He now resides somewhere in Yemen where he retains the coveted "price-on-his-head" status.

1. Name the singer/band/performer you are most embarrassed to admit you actually paid good money to see in concert.

I went to see Franciscan Monks perform Gregorian Chants at the chaste age of 10. The eunuchs were quite controversial at the time, and I remember blushing as the acoustics of Glastonbury Cathedral echoed their voices back to me. I ponder, ‘twas it was the incense?

2. Which reality TV show have you watched more than once (come on. I don’t believe you if you say “none,” unless you don’t own a TV)?

Why buy a TV when you have perfectly good entertainment in The Complete Works of John Donne to keep you warm on a blustery day in an academic town where folks play cloak-and-dagger over department chairs? I mean really.

3. Which complete trash novelist have you not only read but enjoyed enough to read more than one book of his/hers?

Joyce. When no one was watching I would hide on the Chippendale love-seat and devour the works of this trumped-up hack. I guess I have a little of the devil in me, because as much as my elders warned me of the intellectual damage I was doing, I couldn’t get enough, even though everyone knows Ulysses is only a thinly veiled retelling of the timeless classic Curious George Visits the Zoo.

4. What sappy musical could you watch over and over and over again?

I just cannot believe that no one has claimed this one. I mean Die Walküre anybody? Move over Mary Poppins, this is the feel-good musical of all time.

5. Who was your first celebrity crush?

My nanny.

6. Who is the most embarrassing celebrity on whom you have a slight crush today?

Stanley Fish, with Foucault a close second.

7. What movie that everyone else and his cousin and even his dog has seen have you never seen?

When I was around 13, every one of my friends went to see a film called Entr'acte. It was the biggest box-office grossing filmof all time for film-night at the Melted Clock Café in Sausalito. Since then I’m ashamed to say I’ve never seen it, but I’ve read every article about it ever written. In fact, it was the subject of my dissertation. At cocktail parties I bluff.

8. What were you drinking the first time you ever got drunk?

41 year old scotch.

9. Which old re-run will you still pause to watch if you’re flicking through the channels and see that it’s on?

Hmmm…..Dobey Gillis? I used to turn the sound down and make up my own dialogue, replacing conversations about the stolen van with revelations on Sartre and Jung. Wait, that was undergrad…sorry.

10. What book/movie/t.v. show that only a fifteen-year-old would think is funny makes you laugh?

Guernica: a Study in 24 Essays and The Complete Works of John Dryden. Anything about malignancy.

Like I said, he's truly a ne're do well.

Emily Supplies Another Great Meme

2008-06-02T16:57:00.000-07:00

This is an original meme by Emily and I had a great deal of fun doing it. Emily, if all the other things you do in your life weren’t enough, now you’re supplying me with material for my blog. And don’t worry, Mr. Green Jeans will call…if he’s still, you know, alive.

1. Name the singer/band/performer you are most embarrassed to admit you actually paid good money to see in concert.

I paid good money to go see a southern rock band named Molly Hatchet. They used to play the hit single Flirtin' with Disaster on the radio every hour or so in, oh I guess 1981? One of the reasons we liked the band was because of its album covers. They were by a guy named Frank Frazetti (not sure of the spelling) who also did the covers for Conan the Barbarian which featured impossibly buxom, half-naked warrior women stretched out over extreme terrain while Conan was cutting a man-bat in half or something. At the concert, we were expecting to see bar-brawls and bikers but there was a pleasant family of six in front of us and very few crazed fans.

2. Which reality TV show have you watched more than once (come on. I don't believe you if you say "none," unless you don't own a TV)?

This might be a little revealing but I, now that I think about it, watch my fair share of this terrible TV genre. I know they choose the most spoiled and extreme people to represent a “true” cross section of the population because the more confrontational fire-works the better, and really I should know better, but I think I have a little train-wreck-itis in me. Mainly I watch the cooking shout-fests featuring Gordon Ramsay—Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares and Hell’s Kitchen—but I watched a couple of seasons of Survivor and The Real World too. The other night I found myself watching a show where women try to win a farmer as a husband (if you can name this show, shame on you). Something about entitled whiney women in daisy-dukes appeals to me I guess.

3. Which complete trash novelist have you not only read but enjoyed enough to read more than one book of his/hers?

I can redeem myself here. Although I don’t claim to be very well-read, I really don’t read that much trash either. I grew up in a house that had its own special Barbara Cartland bookcase (I have three older sisters and a Mom). Today paper-backs with pastel front covers showing lustful embraces beneath the willow still knee-jerk me toward regurgitation. (Funny how the Frank Frazetti covers do the opposite.) Steven King might be the closest to trash, but come on—do we really want to say that about the guy who wrote The Shining? I used to read Ann Rule too. She’s true-crime and might fall into that category.

4. What sappy musical could you watch over and over and over again?

Don’t want to generalize here, but this meme is looking more and more like it’s geared toward the opposite sex. I don’t like musicals but I can admit when they’re good. Singin’ in the Rain is a good one. Do Gilbert and Sullivan count? I loved The HMS Pinafore when my sister’s school did it when I was around six. And…yes…begrudgingly, The Sound of Music. Julie Andrews: my first crush.

5. Who was your first celebrity crush?

I think I just answered this, so I’ll give the second crush. There is absolutely no way to beat Emily’s one-in-a-million answer of Mr. Green Jeans, but I had a very strong crush on Tatum O’Neil after Paper Moon. This is odd because I just read today that she’s been busted again for drug possession. I’m not usually attracted to the bad girls. “Tatum…I can fix you…”

6. Who is the most embarrassing celebrity on whom you have a slight crush today?

Besides the fore-mentioned entitled whiney girls on the “I Want to Marry a Hayseed?” Hmmm, I have to think about this. Oh, got it. Easy, Dana Perino. Sorry, but if this woman was at gitmo trying to get me to talk I’d fess up to everything I’d done, everything I might have done, everything I might consider doing at a later date, and anything I might not consider doing but if she says so…well that too.” The only thing Bush has done right in his life.

7. What movie that everyone else and his cousin and even his dog has seen have you never seen?

This really is the hardest question. Well right now, and get ready for the cop-out, the new Indiana Jones movie. I know that there are still plenty of people who haven’t seen it, like in Java and places, but I always profess to being such a big Raiders of the Lost Ark fan and, after reading Ebert drooling pop-corn all over his lap about it in his review, I had really planned to see it over Memorial Day. But going to the movies has lost some allure for me. But I still plan to see it soon.

8. What were you drinking the first time you ever got drunk?.

Strongbow Cider when I was twelve. Yep, that’s right folks, twelve. Did you know that in England the legal drinking age is five if you are on your own property under the supervision of parents? We would go to dinner parties and watch a thirteen-old-get drunk at the table to everyone’s amusement. I thought I’d give it a try and, sorry to say, wasn’t as amusing. It was the first time I embarrassed everyone, but not the last.

9. Which old re-run will you still pause to watch if you’re flicking through the channels and see that it’s on?

Good Times. John Amos and Esther Rolle rule the planet.

10. What book/movie/t.v. show that only a fifteen-year-old would think is funny makes you laugh?

Tommy Boy. But there are so many more. I think part of my development halted at age fifteen. I like the humor of Will Ferrell and Chris Farley. Physical slap-stick, if it’s done well, is my favorite gut-busting form of humor. I like the guy who bangs his head on a pipe and is okay physically and emotionally afterwards.

Question: I know what they say about ending a sentence with a preposition, so how bad is it to end a blog post with one?

Reading List and Others

2008-05-25T12:16:00.000-07:00

I’m out on the porch this morning after spending a few hours listening to Handel’s Water Music and reading Philip Roth’s American Pastoral. Not exactly a cheery tale…one where the seemingly perfect American family is shattered by identity-issues and domestic terrorism. Roth’s prose never sinks me into despair like other writers who expose dark truths about human nature. I think because he graciously provides protagonists who I can sympathize with and even like. Sure there are gray areas, and often hopelessness, but there is also an underlying wit which implies ample affection and forgiveness for the messy lives of people.

Things have been chugging along on the home front. I’m missing somebody, but this hasn’t caused me to curl up in a fetal position and stay in bed for three days. The bounding around is helping, staying busy is helping, and looking forward to the future is helping. I’m TAing a World Cinema class this summer…for real money—wow! We watched Miyazaki’s fantastical masterpiece Spirited Away last week. The Japanese fantasy/realism (is that the correct term) film After Life is next. I previewed Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle the other night—it’s an amazing film which incorporates elements of Singing in the Rain with Who Framed Roger Rabbit. How’s that for a combination of influences?

Okay I’m definitely rambling this morning. I bought a new coffee maker and coffee-binged a little; the caffeine hasn’t quite worn off yet.

So I’m a couple of weeks late to the party here, but I lifted this from Emily, a meme/list of classic works of literature I’ve read (or haven’t read.) This exercise should do one of two things, prove that I am more well read than I thought or inform me that I haven’t even scratched the surface of all I plan to read in my lifetime. Even though I’ve been blogging for a few years now, I still don’t know how to cross things out, so I guess I’ll put a :( next to the titles I hated.

bold = what you’ve read,
italics = books you started but couldn’t finish
:( = books you hated
* = you’ve read more than once

1. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell- This is not a good sign, right off the bat it’s one I’ve never heard of.

2. Anna Karenina – Phew, okay I’ve read this one. I got all caught up in Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky in my twenties.

3. Crime and Punishment – When I finally finished this book I felt I had accomplished a major life achievement. I’ve tried to reread it, but I always get bogged down.

4. Catch-22 – Just couldn’t make it past the infamous first 80 pages. I love the movie.

5. One Hundred Years of Solitude – After a few tries, this novel finally captured my imagination when I was living in the rainforest of Costa Rica. It was the perfect setting (except for the wretched insects) for reading this, one of my top five.

6. Wuthering Heights – Are you kidding?

7. The Silmarillion – I’m finally getting over the Tolkien mania from the past five or six years, and would like to try a Peter Jackson-free reading of Tolkien sometime.

8. Life of Pi – Another top five, was reading this when I received a little black puppy I named Booker. I just listened to it on audio-books.

9.The Name of the Rose – I love Brother William. I’ve read this 1½ times.

10. Don Quixote – I did a tongue-in-cheek review of this on Youtube where I claimed Don Quixote was Italian and butchered the pronunciations, all in the accent of Piedmont North Carolina (think Andy Griffith). People took it seriously and I started getting comments correcting the information—they didn’t get it, I guess I was a little too convincing. I posted comments stating that it was a joke, and then I got this really nasty comment from someone who was convinced I was that dumb saying my disclaimers were just excuses. I ended up pulling the video off. I learned something about humorlessness through this.

12. Ulysses – If I had time, money and resources I might try climbing Everest. It’s kind of the same thing with this work.

13. Madam Bovary – I’d give it a try, but don’t know that much about it.

14. The Odyssey – Sad to admit it, but I’ve not read this.

15. Pride and Prejudice – In high school, at age 17, not really my favorite work.

16. Jane Eyre – Nope.

17. A Tale of Two Cities – I read this a couple of years ago and enjoyed it a great deal. It’s the only Dickens I’ve finished.

18. The Brothers Karamazov – During my Russian novel phase, I remember reading this at the beginning of an ill-fated relationship.

19. Guns, Germs, and Steel: Who would have thought the germination of wheat could be so darn fascinating. My mind wandered a bit, I’ll have to admit.

20. War and Peace – The granddaddy of all literature, and I read the whole thing cover to cover—in about three months. I have the new translation and want to take a vacation where there are no re-runs of The Office and Hell’s Kitchen so I can one day say I’ve read it twice.

21. Vanity Fair – There seems to be a whole genre of fiction that I either avoid or ignore, probably to my peril. Vanity Fair is one of those works that I know very little about.

22. The Time Traveler’s Wife – hmmm, sounds interesting.

23. The Iliad – Shame on me, no Greek epics...not one.

24. Emma – The only Jane Austen I’ve read is Pride and Prejudice.

Note: I’ve just read ahead in the list and there are several titles that I’ve not read, these are: The Blind Assassin, The Kite Runner, Mrs. Dalloway, Great Expectations, American Gods, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.

31. Atlas Shrugged – The main character was about as dynamic as a steel girder.

32. Reading Lolita in Tehran – I haven’t even read Lolita.

33. Memoirs of a Geisha – Never had much interest in this one.

34. Middlesex – I should know about this one, but, well, next please.

35. Quicksilver – Okay, I’m definitely seeing that I’m woefully under-read.

36. Wicked – Emily said this one disappointed her so I’m glad I haven’t read it.

37. *The Canterbury Tales – finally. Three classes which looked at this work extensively. Good, I feel a little more adequate now.

38. The Historian – Is this the one about vampires? Can’t it just be about awesome history-geeks?

39. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – Read this in high school too. Found out later it was one big allegory about masturbation. Anyhoo... moving on now…

40. Love in the Time of Cholera – I can’t believe I haven’t read this. I should add it to my short list. Wait, hold on, I think I did read it in Portland.

41. Brave New World – Another one I’ve always meant to read.

42. The Fountainhead – I remember when I was reading this I moped around sullenly all the time. It required Ken Kesey’s Demon Box to snap me out of it.

43. Foucault’s Pendulum – Eco requires commitment, but I might be ready now.

44. Middlemarch – Okay this is the sequel to Middlesex right? I’m kidding…please no corrections.

45. Frankenstein – I’ve not read many romantic monster novels.

46. The Count of Monte Cristo – It seems like parts of this were read to us as kids, but I’ve never actually read the novel.

47. Dracula – Emily’s read this more than once, but me? Haven’t even cracked the binding. Dark, gothic, creepy things make me claustrophobic, but I should never say never.

48. A Clockwork Orange – I carried this around in my back pocket when I was in tenth-grade. I assume this means I read it.

49. Anansi Boys – I haven’t heard of this.

50. The Once and Future King – I loved this one. I read it Scotland.

51. The Grapes of Wrath – This one affected me when I was twenty. I read East of Eden the same year.

52. The Poisonwood Bible – Frustrating and disturbing, it’s stayed with me. The Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux involves similar themes.

53. 1984 –read it in 1984.

54. Angels and Demons – I like the title.

55. The Inferno – can you believe I’ve never read it all? I named my band after Dante.

56. The Satanic Verses – The only thing I remember about it is two characters falling forever and ever and discussing something. Oh, and all the stuff about Rushdie going into hiding.

57. Sense and Sensibility – Okay, I’m going to get in trouble for this, but isn’t this list just a little female-centric? There are six Austens on the list (unless I missed one). :)

58. The Picture of Dorian Gray – Hate to admit it, but I know little about this work as well.

59. Mansfield Park – this is the Austen that I’m really anxious to read. It apparently explores themes relating to my focus in history

60. *One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Required reading for Deadheads. I wish Sometimes a Great Notion had made the list.

61. To the Lighthouse – Haven’t heard of it.

62. Tess of D’Urbervilles :( - an excruciating way to experience springtime in a beginning lit. class.

63. Oliver Twist – A must read for me.

64. *Gulliver’s Travels – this was tough but I’ve read it a couple of times now. Like the satire, but it does go on and on in places.

65. Les Miserables – Started it numerous times but couldn’t make it to the end.

66. The Corrections – I’ve had a love/hate relationship with this novel since reading it some years ago. Stunning narrative about a family of selfish assholes, which would be fine if Franzen didn’t seem to champion them so.

67. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay – almost got to the end of this one. Why do Pulitzer Prize winners often seem to fall short for me? I’m starting to realize that the fore-mentioned genre that I’ve chosen to ignore might offer me something that many modern novels are lacking, brilliant character development.

68. The Curious Incident of the Dog at Night-time – I love the title, I’ve seen it in the library, must investigate.

69. Dune – Not interested in the least.

70. The Prince – Why oh why have I not read this? I always get it mixed up with the Little Prince.

71. The Sound and the Fury – I remember coming to the end of this novel after placing blind trust in Faulkner for several mind-boggling hours and thinking “Oh, my God! I actually understand what happened…it’s a miracle.” Never has a book so challenged and rewarded me. A top five.

72. Angela’s Ashes – Not really sure this one would be for me.

73. The God of Small Things – This is another one I know very little about.

74. A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present Day – No to this one.

75. Neverwhere – Never-read.

76. A Confederacy of Dunces – Just thinking of this one makes me smile. Another one high up on my list.

77. A Short History of Nearly Everything – Sounds exhausting.

78. Dubliners – I’d like to give this one a try.

79. The Unbearable Lightness of Being – I must be the only person who was college-aged during the eighties who didn’t read this. To busy with Karamazov.

80. Beloved – I just felt Morrison borrowed too heavily from Faulkner on this one (with some Styron thrown in.) It’s a shame because I know what a great work it is. I liked Song of Solomon better.

81. Slaughterhouse-Five – That reminds me, I should reread this one.

82. The Scarlet Letter – “You haven’t read The Scarlet Letter??!! You can’t be serious.” Yep, I’m serious.

83. Eats, Shoots and Leaves – This is on my nightstand. I’ll check it out. It comes highly recommended by an editor-type.

84. The Mists of Avalon – Another one I want to read. My list keeps getting longer and longer and longer….

85. Oryx and Crake – No idea.

86. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed – Is this another Jared Diamond? I’m still trying to understand how the germination of wheat led to the extinction of the Plains Indians.

87. Cloud Atlas – I avoid titles with the word Atlas in them. It’s Ayn Rand’s fault.

88. The Confusion – I get confused often enough when reading, so a book called The Confusion might induce complete melt-down.

89. Lolita – Should a middle-aged man really read this?

90. Persuasion – More Austen, I’m going to lock myself in a room with my mother’s special Austen bookcase and get it over with. Freudians, stay away from that last statement.

91. Northanger Abbey – Two in a row? This is brutal.

92. The Catcher in the Rye :( – Holden Caulfield is the most annoying of all American fictional characters (except maybe those sickos in The Lord of the Flies). I knew a guy at school who wanted to emulate him, can you imagine?

93. On the Road – I read this under the delusion that it was a novel about freedom and self-discovery. I found it heartbreaking and fatalistic. Kerouac is a master at provoking gloom. Liked Big Sur better

94. The Hunchback of Notre Dame – “The Bells, the Bells…” This was probably never a quote in the book, but I like saying it.

95. Freakonomics – Sounds like the parking lot at a Dead show.

96. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – This was the one book you were supposed to
read as a young adult. I don’t know why, every time I started it I dozed off. Maybe it was a ploy to make the youth more complacent. Give me Kerouac’s depressed-state any day.

97. The Aeneid – I keep a copy in my living room. Does this mean I’ve read it? It does not.

98. Watership Down – Talking Rabbits? Bugs Bunny please. I like the Wind in the Willows. The Rabbits are kind of the chumps in that one.

99. Gravity’s Rainbow – No, but I slogged through Vineland. Pynchon’s writing ability is so far ahead of my reading ability.

100. The Hobbit – I actually enjoyed this one many years before Peter Jackson’s assault.

101. In Cold Blood – I tried it years ago. This one might be ruined by the handful of good movies dealing both with the events of the murder and Capote’s involvement in writing the book. But then again it Capote writing in the true-crime genre makes it a must read.

102. White Teeth – A sequel to Jack London. Just kidding… don’t believe I’ve heard of this.

103. Treasure Island – No, ‘fraid not.

104. David Copperfield – Must read more Dickens…must read more Dickens…

105. The Three Musketeers – Not really interested, but if there was nothing else.

I’ve only read a measly 31 of these. Sigh…must get busy. 'Til next time, happy reading.

Excuses Excuses

2008-05-20T14:47:00.000-07:00

I've been terribly negligent of my blog. The blog that helped me write my way to peace-of-mind after a difficult break-up, the blog that provided me with an outlet for griping and ruminating, stroked my ego through comments from readers (a very important group, as people I've mostly never met go), and has actually allowed me to improve my writing and sense of humor.

So what do I do? I go and run off with another, Facebook. It's an addiction I tell you. Getting out of bed at three in the morning to see if anyone has written on your wall or commented on the Pretenders video you posted is not healthy behavior. It feeds too heavily into the desire to be accepted, and that desperate guy who strove to fit in at high school (actually blowing the majority of his Christmas money on clothes from Chess King--anyone remember that store? Think 80's neo-gangster), is reborn as he strives to collect "friends" from a pool of people who he more-than-likely just sat next to in one class.

Yes, I'm ranting. I knew I was too old for this stuff, but I tried it anyway, and now I've become cyber-space's version of that old creepy guy that sits at the end of the bar at the club and tries to act hip. A cyber lounge-lizard. Lindsay--the song was prophetic I tell you.

Another reason Facebook creates anxiety is that unless you only allow your aunt Gladys to view it, many people can get an idea of the "real" you by checking out your profile. That means if you write something like "I'd rather be listening to Bob Marley and smoking ganja right now" your minister and probation-officer might read it at the same time. Sure it's the same with blogs, but with blogs you might have to wade through paragraphs about how your porch swing is listing to the left before you ever get to the good stuff. Also, people in this day-and-age are more than ready to jump to any conclusion that agrees with their Access Hollywood frame-of-mind, so a brief salutation on Facebook might be regarded as a sign of a torrid affair that's left eight or nine love-children stashed around the country.

Facebook has this feature where you can state what you are doing at that very moment. When you do, all of your friends can get a glimpse at what a cool, smart, interesting life you lead. You rarely read things like "Ian is having a prostate exam," or "Ian just found himself in a compromising position with a Brazilian transvestite"(although admittedly,that would be interesting). Since college students and grads are the primary users, these statements usually read something like this: "Edgar is having dinner at The Trellis and then going to the Bergman film festival," or "Nasuru just based-jumped and is enjoying hummus."

Not to knock it you understand, but I just don't want to get totally immersed because I've never been one for moderation. Many people use Facebook like they drink. Some folks (I stand accused) don't know when to leave the party until they start talking about old times in Modern Art Class with a guy they only actually said two sentences to. Others are very conservative, they ask how the newborn is and give gardening tips. Others bound about checking on everyone's status like a host refilling glasses and picking up used napkins. And all the while you are trying to add more friends to your profile, pump your numbers, be the guy with the most little pictures of people on your laptop. It's like Fantasy Football. It's Fantasy Friendship.

The wall is where I get into the most trouble. The wall is this message board that everyone gets where you can leave messages like "yo, what up dude," (I know that's outdated language but I'm dealing with a generation-gap here). This is where the cyber-lizard kicks in full force. I'll leave messages like, "What up buddy, when we gonna get tgthr and prtay yo." Michael Scott's got nothing on me. I don't know why I try this stuff, it's kind of like gambling, you think you'll win the pot somehow but you end up going back to Iowa having lost the farm.

Yes I know, it's a great networking tool, this is true. Whenever I need the guy who showed up drunk to Political Science class to write a reference letter for me I'll be in luck. I feel like I've been behaving like a freshman since I've signed on. Committing faux-pas, or should they be face-pas, and learning as I go. I'm thinking of trying to go the wine-and-cheese route from now on, networking with connoisseurs, or at least people who know how to spell connoisseur (I don't, spell-check saves the day again). The shout-out isn't me, it wasn't me when I was twenty, so why should it be now?

So back to my blog. The Facebook hangover is almost over. I hope I can make up for lost time. Maybe I should change the blog's name to "Tales from the Doghouse."

2008-05-15T15:12:00.000-07:00

He kept getting lost on the way to the airport. She didn’t notice until he turned around, and then he had to admit it.

“I went the wrong way” he said.
“Haven’t you been to this airport before?” she asked.
“Yes, but they’ve changed the roads so much since the last time,” he bluffed. “They’re always fucking around with the entrance. It seems like it changes every time I come.” He regretted swearing, especially that word. She had put up with so much free cursing from spoiled American co-eds, he didn’t want her to associate him with them. She once told him to stop saying shit.

Soon he became sure he had missed the turn into short-term parking and swerved into a Marriot driveway in order to circle around again. When he discovered the road was one-way, straight to the departure terminal, he continued forward. She made no comment about his ineptitude. Instead she gazed at him with the look of a small child hypnotized by something on TV, just standing there in front of it while the rest of the viewers crane their necks around and call for her to move. The stare was so committed and immobile that it unnerved him a little, but he never wished for it to stop. Always self-conscious, he glanced at her and said, “You’re looking at me.” She answered with a quick nod, a single up and down motion of acknowledgement, turned away for a second, and jerked her head back to continue the stare.

A haggard, falsely-jolly ticket agent greeted them at the counter. There was a verbal exchange about how the automated ticket system was going to put the agent out of a job, followed by a transfer to another airline due to the cancellation of her flight. It worried him that she was getting into New York after midnight, having to find her way to Brooklyn at such a late hour, but he scolded himself for being protective. She was an adult, she had flown all the way from Tokyo, and she could handle it. Still…worry.

Filled with the needs of an entire year abroad, her suitcases teetered on tiny wheels, straining his shoulders and accenting his awkward lope. He wrestled them down to the far-end of the terminal where he was able to hand them over to equally harangued baggage-claim-attendants who spouted out travel information with detached impatience. He wouldn’t let his embarrassment for his country-men shine through at this moment, and he was thankful for her limited understanding of nuanced American griping because at least he was able to spare her that side of him.

They sat on a bench in the corner and watched as security personnel prompted passengers to remove their shoes and lap-tops for inspection. Soon her stare was back, and he tried to hold it for a moment this time, but the intensity made him look away and mumble something about calling him when she arrived in New York. She turned her face away from his, and he felt helpless to do or say anything that would relieve the gravity of that moment. He felt he knew what was coming, and he dreaded it. He wished he could reverse time and freeze it there, Tivo it: to the baseball game where she patiently sat with him swallowed up in his coat, the walk around the campus where he would attend graduate school, the library where he often hoped to see her standing there in front of his desk; there to relieve his boredom and insecurity.

She turned to him with an expression of someone who, in the split second between calamity and physical pain, is about to burst out in tears or screams. But she did neither, instead holding her expression as the corners of her eyes became wet. A tear rolled down her cheek. His existence ended then. He couldn’t bear it, and all he could supply to relieve her sadness was a cliché, “C’mon, don’t cry.”

He asked her to get out her camera. They’d taken plenty of photographs together, digital photography supplying what the old photo-booths used to for couples and friends, an immediate viewing of the shot. His bulbous blotchy head, a product of too many bad habits, always seemed a bizarre contrast to her smooth complexion and camera-friendly smile. The camera appeared to mock his poor-self image, accentuating his features and making him look older than his years. He didn’t look this way in the mirror, but something about a camera caused him to stiffen and distort, as he became phobic of the most innocent of snap-shots.

She took a few shots of him, declining when he asked her to delete them. She was smiling now though, and he took the initiative to make himself as ridiculous as possible to elevate her mood, to send her away from that place which plunged them into the act of prematurely missing each other. They took a shot together where he raised his eyebrows and puckered his lips as she stuck out her tongue. It worked beautifully, she was laughing now.

In the next shot he blew out his cheeks and crossed his eyes as she maintained her friendly smile. He couldn’t remember what this reminded him of, this clown juxtaposed next to this beauty. Was it Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft? Did Mel Brooks ever look this ridiculous? Whichever, she was doubled-over now and laughing harder than he’d ever seen her. There were still tears, but now they were from joyous hysteria. “This is better,” he thought.

They set up a shot where they both gave the most serious look they could manage. These too brought peals of laughter, but this time he was joining in, crouched over with her in blissful, ridiculous giggling. Security officers glanced their way, curious at this young woman and her red-faced…father is it? Adopted? Surely they can’t be together.

In the final shot she smiled warmly. He, meanwhile, made the most expressive face he could muster. He threw his head back, closed his eyes, and made a face that reminded him of the photographs of volunteers on their last night before going off to the trenches of WWI, shit-faced on champagne and singing a loud patriotic hymn to blast out the thoughts of the horrors they would soon be facing. She was in uncontrollable hysterics by this time and he began to worry if he hadn’t caused another problem. Which would be worse, a young woman crying tears into the shoulder of his shirt, or a young woman pissing herself before departing on a domestic flight to New York?

He then realized he needed to put change in the parking-meter. On his way back he stopped into the gift store to see if he could find anything worthy as a parting gift for a friend like this. He searched in vain, nothing was suited, so he began walking to the other end of the terminal. She was running toward him.

She told him they were boarding her flight early and she had to go. They hurried back to the security gate and hugged deeply. As they parted he noticed that the tears were back, and her frown cut through the features of her face, returning the dark spot to his heart and forming a twitch in his neck that he was only just able to conceal. He stood with his hand on the hollow aluminum rail, trying to look upright and supportive as she followed the maze to the metal-detectors and X-rays. She was in group of fellow passengers now, all being thoroughly checked for contraband and explosive devices, and as she followed the curt directions of the security officers she looked back at him continually, each time welling-up again. He stood as straight as he could and watched her, and each time she looked back at him he blinked several times.

It took a number of minutes for her to pass through security. She then entered a corridor which would lead her to her gate. She stopped before turning the corner to go and just stood there, looking down, her black hair hanging about her head like a shroud. She looked up at him, crying gently, and he didn’t know how to walk away. He passed a large barrier and saw her a final time, standing at the corner watching him. He let his eyes fall to the floor and started walking.

Sunday Bullets

2008-04-27T12:32:00.000-07:00

Sunday Bullets

Here is a quick recap of last week’s events. Things are moving along with lots of choices and things to do, and, meanwhile, spring has sprung!

I found out yesterday that I’ve been accepted to George Mason for the masters in history. This poses an interesting dilemma, but I’m kind of having fun trying to figure it out. I’ve already accepted UNCG’s offer, but George Mason, to me, has the more appealing program. GMU is in Fairfax, Virginia which means renting my house and relocating, but they offer research fellowships at the freakin’ Library of Congress which houses my great-grandfather’s papers. He was Washington architect and a great subject for a research project. On the other hand UNCG is an excellent program with a strong tie to their English department which has an amazing creative-writing degree (I’m thinking hard about another cross-disciplinary scholastic experience) and it’s practically in my back-yard. No moving, I keep my jobs, I keep playing music with the guys, and I continue to nurture new and old friendships alike. Hmmm… a tough one. I’ve given myself a week to think it over.

I broke two necessary household appliances in a matter of two hours. First was the washing machine. I loaded an extremely large comforter (seriously, this thing is too large for a king-sized bed—do they make emperor-sized beds?) into the ancient old Maytag that I inherited when I moved into the house fourteen years ago, and after a while I smelled a burning electrical odor. I had toasted the washing-machine’s motor. I gave it a day to cool down and tried it again, but to no avail. The worst part is it burned out when it was full of water. So now I have a soaking wet giant comforter to deal with and I’ll have to bail out the washing machine. I figure I can wash cloths by hand for a while—the dryer still works—until I can get the washer fixed or afford a new one. I’m trying to fit this into the ecochallenge somehow, using less electricity for the sake of the environment.

The second appliance I destroyed was a borrowed lawn-mower. I had just started it, but I couldn’t figure out how to lower the blade. I turned it off and investigated the under-side and then tried to start it up again. But it wouldn’t start! I tried several times and finally gave the pull cord one enthusiastic yank which caused the cord to break off. No lawn-mowing for me. It distressed me because my friend Ryoko was coming over and I wanted to impress her with a kempt yard. She didn’t seem to mind though. If the lawn mower was mine I would get it fixed, but now I just have to pay to get it fixed and return it to the owner. But I’ll work this into the ecochallenge as well. I’ve always wanted one of those rotary mowers without the motor, and now I have an excuse to buy one. No gas, and no noise pollution.

I read two very powerful graphic novels/comics this week. The first two volumes of the Barefoot Gen series by Keiji Nakazawa. The works are Nakazawa's autobiographical story of the bombing of Hiroshima. His life was spared because he was standing with his back to a concrete wall, but his brother, sister and father were all killed. These books are some of the most disturbing I’ve ever read, even more so because of their form. The Manga-like caricatures of life in Japan during the war do little to prepare the reader for the descriptive images of the atomic bomb’s aftermath. I found supreme irony in the fact that the cartoons borrow heavily from early Disney drawings—especially the eyes. I’ve been thinking long and hard about my county’s choice to use the bomb on Japan and am finding little to nothing to justify it in my mind. All those innocent citizens!

I continue to transcribe letters to the Meetings for Sufferings of the Society of Friends. The letters tell of the plans for removal of African Americans to Haiti and Liberia in the 1820’s. I really enjoy this assignment; it’s giving me a broad concept of the efforts toward colonization by Quakers. I try to withhold judgment from my safe-haven in the 21st century, but the whole colonization movement seems more-and-more like forced exile under the guise of freedom. Much to think about.

The library job is going well so far. Librarians are amazingly committed. They’re also really nice. So different from the kitchen world.

In keeping with the theme of war and atrocity in comic form, I bought both volumes of Maus by Art Spiegelman. It was a gift for myself for getting an offer from GMU. I probably don’t have to describe this one, but most know that this was the 1992 Pulitzer Prize winning story of the Holocaust. Another moving and distressing graphic work which doesn’t give one much confidence in the benevolent nature of man. This story should never be forgotten.

Ryoko turned me on to Edward Said. I’ve been curious about the literary theory of Orientalism; we didn’t get into it in my English courses. She gave me Representations of the Intellectual and signed my name using Chinese characters on the first page. A cherished gift.

Well, I think that’s about it. I just heard thunder, and if we get a storm I want to be out on the porch reading Maus.

Plugs

2008-04-23T16:22:00.000-07:00

Two new blogs that show great commitment to life. One is a food blog that has darn-near turned me into a vegetarian. The author is a fellow alumnus of my college.

parsnipsaplenty

The second is from the irrepressible Emily. Get ready to show your commitment. Emily is in charge of the environment now :I

ecochallenge08

Remember, green is the new blue.

Seven Weird Facts about Me

2008-04-20T09:02:00.000-07:00

I’ve been putting off the “Seven Weird Facts about Me” meme that Danny tagged me for because I couldn’t quite formulate seven weird things that wouldn’t make me look too weird, only endearingly flawed. It’s taken me two weeks to find this equilibrium.

I just had a twenty-ounce cup of black coffee and a bear-claw, which was way two sweet, so I’m feeling slightly nauseous. I hope it wears off soon because it’s Sunday and I don’t want to spend the-day-before-Monday feeling sickly and unmotivated. I was productive yesterday, cleaning the back-porch, kitchen, living room and fixing the screen-door. My friend Kevin came by last night and we worked on three new cover-songs “Under my Thumb,” Dwight Yoakum’s “I’ll be Gone,” and the unplugged version of “Layla.” It was encouraging to be playing well through the P.A., and the two of us became quite enthusiastic. We’re trying to bring ourselves back up to gig-readiness. But I feel I’m stalling here…

So, without further adieu, are the Seven Weird Facts about Me.

1) I have a phobia about the number 13. I’ve mentioned this in posts before but maybe I can go into some depth here. A couple of years ago I started realizing/imagining that every time I looked at the clock it would be 13 minutes past-the-hour. (seeing the number written in this post is actually starting to freak me out a little.) For a while it seemed that I would only happen to glance at the clock when this was so. The 13 would predict a bad day, and this was at a time when I was having a string of bad, if not self-inflicted, days. So the number still causes anxiety, but for some reason the occurrences of it appearing on the clock have diminished—let’s hope forever. My rational side thinks this is all about my body-clock, which is conditioned to prompt my brain to check the time based on years of scheduled patterns, if that makes any sense. This is what I tell myself when it happens several times a day. I also tell myself that in some cultures the number 13 is extremely lucky. I need to go join those cultures.

2) Numbers divisible by 7 are my heroes. Okay, here’s where it gets really weird. (“You mean it gets weirder?”) If I look at the clock and it is, say, 7:21, I feel relieved and encouraged. If it says 7:14 I feel doubly so because I was born on the 14th. For some reason I really like it to be 28 minutes past-the-hour. And who says I’m no good at math? You just need to bring irrational fear into the picture and I’m a whiz. (Boy am I glad that this meme is seven weird things and not thirteen!)

3) I’m extremely un-photogenic. When someone pulls out a camera I turn into the Wicked Witch of the West—the part where she’s melting! I don’t consider myself a bad looking guy, I’ve seen myself on video and I don’t come off too repulsively, but when someone takes a snapshot of me my teeth are out, my eyes are closed and young children start to scatter. I think it’s because I hate to have my picture taken, and this shows in my expression. It’s a catch twenty-two because the more terrible pictures taken of me the more I hate having my picture taken and the more it shows in the next picture. Or maybe I’m getting paid back somehow for all those family pictures I ruined by making funny-faces. I’m thinking of posting a few of my worse portraits, but I seriously don’t want to remain single the rest of my life. I really need to embrace amateur photography.

4) I’m Zen Buddhist about killing flying insects. Okay, this one might get me labeled as the mayor of Flake-ville but I try not to kill bees, wasps, yellow-jackets etc. that are unfortunate enough to fly indoors. I try to scoop them up with a towel and let them outside. Flies don’t count—any insect that craps every time it lands on you is not participating in my idea of the cycle-of-life. Mosquitoes as well, I like my blood and want to keep it in my body.

5) I don’t own a cell-phone. This is becoming more-and-more of an inconvenience. I was on the phone with a customer-service-representative the other day and she was practically appalled to find out that I had no cell-phone number. I calmed her down and tried to convince her that I was part of the living and not some throw-back ghost or time-traveler lost in the future. She told me she didn’t even have a land-line. I plan to get a cell, but I’m not much of a phone talker and I’m still prejudiced against the ruder aspects of the device. Having a date check her text messages during dinner is enough to keep me away for a little while longer.

6) I used to love watching cricket. I believe it is known as the most boring sport on the planet, but I got hooked while watching one-day-test-matches in South Africa. It’s been so long that I’ve forgotten any rules I grasped at that time, I just remember the Pakistanis being the team to beat. Their bowlers were comparable to the Atlanta Braves pitching staff during the 1995 season (subfact: I’m a slight baseball geek). They don’t show cricket in America, at least in my neck of the woods, but on the tennis courts down from my house I’ve seen East-Indians practicing their bowling recently. I’m anxious to find out if they have a league.

7) I’m not really all that weird. Does this count as a weird fact? I’m often silent, or boring even, but extreme weirdness eludes me. I grew up in a fairly normal home, I was a lazy, slightly dyslexic student, who worked hard later to redeem himself, and I continue to work in fits-and-starts to maintain the life I lead and possibly improve it. I love my family and friends; I get justifiably pissed sometimes but try to keep it in check, and I halfway buy into the American dream. I hate injustice though, and narrow-minded arrogant people get my blood up. For all this, I think I’m pretty normal.

So those are the Seven Weird Facts about Me. Not exactly a concise list, but one I can live with. Weirdness is a good thing in my opinion as long as it doesn’t infringe on other’s rights to be weird in their own way. Think of all the great artists who were and are weird. Without them, life would be boring and, well, pretty Republican. Now no one in their right mind would want that!

No tagging…just do it.

Emily: REM post in the next day or so.

Sunday Bullets

2008-04-13T07:42:00.000-07:00

Since consistency appears to have left me temporarily (damn ye Facebook) I will try, I mean really try, to post bullets on Sunday to list developments and such. We'll see how long it lasts.

I'm accepted at UNCG for the master's in history. I'm debating whether to defer for a year (if they'll let me) because...
I've been granted funds by Guilford to go to Africa in the next year. Starting grad school and planning a trip to Africa while working full time seems like it might make my head explode say, sometime around early November. Deferment seems practical. The only misgiving I have is that I'm ready to keep moving on this degree-earning-path so I can start making the big bucks;) No seriously, I'm not getting any younger and I feel I need to keep plugging to make up for lost time. But I in no way want to jeopardize this opportunity to return to Africa after 21 years. My proposal is to research and write fund-raising material for our friends' medical mission in the Eastern Cape. An online travel-log is also planned. These things will take a certain amount of preliminary planning and follow-up and juggling them with school and work, for someone who is a hopeless procrastinator, seems a little tough. Wow, that was a really long bullet point.
I'm two weeks into my job at the public library. I can cautiously say I love it. I'm sent to all nine branches, which relieves tedium and gets me familiar with the county, and I've rediscovered that libraries are well-springs of positive energy. Except one incident with a shredder--pretty bad but it got resolved (never try to put more than four pieces of paper in at a time)--and the fact that telling a date you work at the library has the ability to shut down conversation permanently, I'm enjoying the job. But I'm only two weeks in...so stay tuned.
Booker's breath has become unbearable, but other than that he's still catching frisbees and tennis balls and can still distinguish a cheese rapper from any other food wrapper that I open. He wants me to walk him more though.
The archive job is great. I'm transcribing letters regarding the manumission of slaves by Quakers--this is right up my alley, the period and topic of my historical interest. The medium--correspondence of the Friends Meeting for Sufferings--appeals to me because stories, to me, unfold through letters better than any primary source.
I haven't finished a book in a month or two. I've got three going, The Peculiar Institution, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, and I've just started Walking the Bible by Bruce Feiler. I'm dying to read Animal Vegetable Mineral but four books at the same time might be too much. If I could just curb my curiosity for a while and stick to one topic.
The Office is back finally. Phew.
I downloaded the new REM and believe it is their best work since Life's Rich Pageant. I plan to post on it soon.
That's all I can think of right now. I sincerely hope this will be a regular event, but looking at my track-record of late I'm just happy to be posting something today.
One last one. Blogspot is such shite that bullets don't come out correctly. I can't figure out how to put spaces between points.

Recurring Dream

2008-04-08T12:30:00.000-07:00

I used to have a recurring dream years ago. It wasn’t quite recurring because I believe I only experienced the dream, in a couple of incarnations, two or three times. It is also unknown whether there was a measurable amount of time between the dreams; all I know is that out of all the strange dreams attached to my conscience this one is still with me in vivid recollection.

The dream starts somewhere in the basement of the house I grew up in. It is the normal arrangement I remember as a kid—short green shag carpet, cinderblocks painted white, a record player playing “Mama Told me not to Come” by Three Dog Night. In the back corner is the furnace and water-heater, and beyond that a little wooden door that leads to the crawlspace. There was an actual tombstone that we discovered as children under our house toward the dark shadows of this dirt and plastic cave, and as if in a strange nightmare already, we would take expeditions with nervous childhood friends to view it and ponder why it was there.

The dream guides me to this door, behind it anxiety and adventure, and the sensation is one of running away and escape. Someone, my sister Emily probably, is urging me on, and this prodding leads me to discover a trap-door just above the door to the crawlspace. I push through loose bricks and mortar and crawl up into a tunnel which quickly turns into a rickety flight of stairs. Following the stairs I am presented with a cavernous high-ceiling attic, also like the one in our house growing up except a number of times bigger with large windows on either end that channel in ample light.

The attic is full of crates and boxes, steamer trunks, furniture, standing-floor globes, mirrors, portraits and bookcases. Whoever was with me in the basement is no longer there, and I eventually open one of the trunks to examine its contents. In it are nautical charts, diaries and personal effects of an unknown ancestor. As I rifle through the artifacts I realize that all of the boxes and crates are full of such things—all there for my perusal. As my excitement builds I, annoyingly, wake up.

I’m almost convinced I dreamed this dream as a child and have kept it with me for the three decades since. If this is not the case, and how in the world will I ever know, I’m positive that it was many many years ago since I dreamed it last. I remember having similar dreams in my youth, ones that had to do with bottomless boxes of matchbox-cars or a daily allowance of a hundred bucks, but those dreams rarely connect to my point of view as an adult male going kicking-and-screaming into middle-age. This particular dream endures because it keeps recurring, not as I sleep, but while I’m wide-awake, as the strangest sensation of deja-vu that I know.

I started working at my college’s archives last August. The first order of business on that first day was a tour of the collection. At the end of the tour we ended up in the rare-books room, a locked-down receptacle of leather-bound volumes, minutes from forgotten meetings, portraits of prominent dignitaries and much of the things I feel comfortable around—namely, old stuff.

As we walked up the stairs and into the rare-books room the attic-dream swamped my recall. Here in the organized stacks of a southern collection of historical artifacts was my dream coming true, albeit in not as romantic terms as the reverie from my past. This isn’t the type of collection that contains buckets of musket balls or Great Uncle Wilson’s wooden leg, but the idea of things that people used, wrote, held all kept carefully in one place prompted a consideration of the prophetic nature of the attic-dream. It was a reversal of the sensation of deja-vu which says "I feel this has happened before but don’t know why." Instead, this sensation was saying, "I knew this was going to happen, the dream predicted it, and here it is."

Admittedly, many of the details between the dream and the experience in the rare-books room are divergent at best. The room has no windows. It has a low ceiling and things aren’t strewn around in dusty chaos like they are in the dream. It is a stretch to believe the dream to be a pinpoint prediction of a future moment in time, but rather a prediction of an eventual course in life, a discovery of a trapdoor perhaps.

Last weekend I was visiting my parents and had the chance to carefully examine the contents of my Grandfather’s steamer trunk. The trunk, lead-lined to prevent damage from moisture, is a record of a life from a very young man who fought in the trenches in France, Turkey and Palestine during the First World War through his career in the British Foreign Office and ending with a note to his daughter expressing his wishes that the contents be preserved for the posterity of the family only. His wishes were that the trunk would act as evidence, to tell a story in the way he would have told it had he the chance. There are important documents and certificates of merit, speeches and maps concerning world-events, and I feel I am doing no injustice to his wishes by relating these items only in the broadest of terms.

But below all of the evidence of permission into the halls of foreign-policy is a small notebook not 4” by 3” large. In it, written in pencil in neat sure hand, is his journal of the last year of the war. Everyday is represented, and the entries are short but telling. He had endured France (there is a map showing the stale-mate of the Western Front in all its bloody rigidness) and was now in Turkey. Casualties recorded time-saving brevity, the death of a fellow officer explained with no urgency but perhaps a heavier script, and details such as a tedious Christmas at the officer’s club or long marches with little water somehow reveal the character of this man I was never privileged to know.

While digging into his personal effects the attic-dream was definitely present. The steamer trunk was, as in the dream, full of maps influenced by the military movements of men. But another sensation prevailed over the first, one where my grandfather peered over my shoulder.

My grandfather was, to some acquaintances' recollection, a tempestuous bully at times. I can’t say—I never had the chance to experience this. Since my mother probably knew him best I can be sure, according to her accounts, he often betrayed an impatient nature, dressing down a young officer for returning his daughter home five minutes past her ten o’clock curfew. So as I carefully removed items from the trunk, it wasn’t necessarily as if a kindly old gent leaned forward to experience his grandson’s discoveries from a benevolent ethereal perch, but rather a red-faced product of the Empire leaning over my shoulder and shouting “for God’s sake, be careful you bloody fool!”

So this is why I like digging around in dead people’s things. Old photographs of people I never knew peering back at me lead me into the dangerous but fascinating practice of trying to identify their character. The diaries and letters certainly aid in this, and a trunkfull of personal effects is like having that person over without having to offer them a glass of wine or a snack. Thinking about it now, the attic-dream probably just reinforced my desire, made me realize what I enjoyed. Many people, and I know plenty of students who feel this way, would consider being trapped in an attic with dusty old “stuff” the worst nightmare imaginable. Not me, this is where I thrive.

In Brief

2008-04-01T10:48:00.000-07:00

I've only eaten a small bowl of cereal today and I'm starving. I found out that I got into graduate school yesterday. I'm on the waiting list for funding. I'm excited and a little disoriented because I started a new job this week as well. Now I'm at the reference desk and my stomach is growling. Things are a little crazy right now as my world is changing before my eyes and new roads are opened. More later.

John Adams

2008-03-25T12:52:00.000-07:00

WordPerfect just made a 1 millimeter top margin my default setting for no reason. I notice it does weird things like this from time to time. Oh, there we go, in print preview it gives the regular margin setting. Still, this is very distracting while I’m writing.

I’ve been watching HBO’s John Adams miniseries for the past two weeks. There are a couple of reasons for this. I would be blacklisted from my family for not claiming the first reason to be that my brother-in-law is an extra in a few of the scenes. Dan, I haven’t seen you yet but I’ve been looking. Dan spent weeks going back and forth between Nelson County and Richmond, Va. where much of the series was shot. He chatted with Laura Linney and stood around with Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti. If these details are slightly incorrect Dan don’t correct me, I’m trying to live vicariously through you.

I’ve also tuned in because I read the set design has a remarkable authenticity—that the film gets very close to what life was like during the actual time-period. The series depicts numerous instances from 18th century existence; from gnarled old salts straining to make 10” thick rope to the novel horror of early inoculation practices. This is American history that you won’t find on the tour of Colonial Williamsburg. Because the miniseries is based on David McCullough’s biography of Adams, the filmmakers have designed the film to emphasize McCullough’s insistence that the hardship of colonial life showed in every aspect of the physical and intellectual character of the people.

For me, this is an alluring premise. (I can’t help it, I’ve always liked the gory details.) Paul Giamatti’s Adams is constantly sweating, spitting, and stomping around like a runt gelding pissed at his lot. Some people argued Giamatti/Adams as the miscasting blunder of the year, but I’m finding he plays the role with depth and believability. The contrast between a starched and powdered early 19th century presidential portrait of Adams and Giamatti’s cropped and un-wigged head may require a stretch of the imagination, but the power of such a real figure playing one of our most mythologized historical figures is extremely effective. I never fail to be charmed by Giamatti, who can play the underdog like no one since…help me here somebody, I can’t think of anyone else who had a series of underdog roles as diverse as American Splendor (one of my absolute all time favorites) Sideways, and Cinderella Man.

I have to say something about my brother-in-law’s buddy Laura Linney also. Her role as Abigail has finally brought me around to her talent. I always, somewhat snootily, rejected her acting in Mystic River as melodramatic and overplayed, and it was a while before I could open up to this current performance as well. But lately I’ve realized how important facial expression is to the art of acting, and Linney’s expressive mix of joy, relief, and love upon hearing of Cornwallis’s surrender at the end of Sunday night’s episode converted me for good.

The casting of Tom Wilkinson as Benjamin Franklin had me worried, but this was also unfounded. To my plebian eye he and Giammatti seem born to act together. I’m not going to pretend I know a great deal about this period of history (although I hope to), but the inter-play between Wilkinson’s popular Ben Franklin and Giamatti’s frank and stammering Adams in the court of Louis XVI is one of the most absorbing features of the series so far. While I have limited knowledge of the customs of late 18th century French aristocracy, I have a feeling the powdered opulence, off-set by yellow rotting teeth, are, at least, more close to the reality than Sophia Coppola’s version.

Word on the street is that there are huge liberties (NPI) taken with the actual historical events, partly due to Adams’ own self-mythologizing and partly due to the old Hollywood practice of turning history into entertainment. I have mixed feelings about this, I mean, Shakespeare anybody? I think it’s important to take these things for what they are intended, recognizing the flaws but appreciating the highpoints—as long as there are any highpoints. If at some point I want the real scoop on Adams I won’t consider watching a marathon session of this miniseries, I’ll turn to the scholars, but on Sunday night with a new week looming I’m alright indulging in this kind of historical escapism.

HBO seems ever to be on a roll. Ending what, to my mind, was the best police drama/city politics drama/drug culture drama and hell, all around drama drama of all time, The Wire, they have followed up with an engaging, if not a wee bit biased, (okay way biased), historical drama. As Sunday’s episode ends, we watched Adams writhing around in delirium as his beloved republic broke loose from the empire, too sick to reap any moral reward for his efforts. The authenticity of the scene goes far toward off-setting any historical inaccuracies, so this week I’ll be parked on the couch once again waiting to be lied to and enjoying every moment.

Bite the Bullet

2008-03-21T09:15:00.000-07:00

Time for the cop-out of cop-outs. Bullet points on what’s been going on.

1)I didn’t get into the first three choices for graduate schools. This isn’t quite as disappointing as I imagined because a) I’ve spent months preparing for the news and b) there are all sorts of financial and logistical problems with relocating (which is what I would’ve had to do)this year. All three programs were in at least the top 25 in the country so very competitive. This doesn’t mean I have to stop trying, I’ve still got time in life, and if I’m persistent I’ll bet they might give me another shot. I was worried about being a little fish in a big pond also so all in all, not too bad.

2)I got a new job. I’m working for the county public library. It couldn’t have come any sooner—I actually broke down and bought five packs of Raman Noodles the night before I got the job. I haven’t eaten them and I hope I don’t have to.

3)To celebrate the new job and ease the blow of rejection letters I went on a spending spree at Borders. I bought the Bob Dylan Newport Folk Festival DVD and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72 by Hunter S. Thompson. I’ve always wanted to read this but never had the chance. Just judging by the introduction I think I’m going to love it. I watched the Bob Dylan from beginning to end last night. It seems more like an archival historical document than a concert film. This is the first time I’ve fully appreciated Joan Baez. She is absolutely beautiful and a little tough. She and Dylan together, at that age, are fascinating to watch, combining a mix of earnestness, confidence, wit, and innocence. I’m watching it again tonight.

4)I also downloaded the Talk to Me soundtrack from iTunes. This is a masterful mix of the golden age of R&B featuring Eddie Floyd, Sam and Dave, Otis Redding, Clarence Carter, and James Brown. Put it on the car stereo and turn it up. Instant mood elevation.

5)I’m worried about Obama. Lately the issue of race has come up on the campaign trail and it occurred to me how vulnerable the Illinois senator is to the crazy racists in our country. If history teaches us anything it is that hate can take the best men away from us, although I hope the generation that fought so hard against civil rights is starting to die off. I also hope that if I write about this concern I will make it null and void and nothing bad will happen. This is an instance where I really want to be wrong.

6)I’m on Facebook. Someone convinced me that you can’t live in this world without it. In a moment of weakness I believed them. I was on it for three hours that first night. I was able to find a couple of long lost souls out there so it definitely has its merits. It is a great networking tool they tell me.

7)The patio project 2008 is back on. I worked on it most of the day on Monday when I started putting down flagstone. It’s still kind of a mess but you can get the idea of what it will look like when it’s finished.

8)There is a hint, a rumor, and a ghost of a chance that I will be going to Africa in June. It will be 21 years since I was last there. This actually is the best development to come my way in while, but it is still up in the air so I won’t go into details yet. But everyone cross their collective fingers for me.

So that’s it for now. I’ll write a post with more insight next time.

Oh yea, I forgot, I went to Hooters last night. How's that for insight?

A Slow Day at Reference

2008-03-18T11:43:00.000-07:00

One of my jobs on campus is to work at the reference desk at the college library. Today is painfully slow. After a mad dash across town during lunch to get yet even more transcripts, I returned to the desk with not much else on the agenda for today. The Spring offensive has begun and I started on the patio project again which means I'm as stiff as a board today. While I was at the desk this afternoon I resorted to an old pastime to relieve the boredom, doodling.

Like, Whatever

2008-03-14T12:32:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I’ve only posted twice this month (which is almost half over) and my boss is out of the library so I’ve challenged myself to complete a post before she gets back. I can’t promise it will supply any great insight or even make sense, but I’m going out of town this weekend so there won’t be another chance to post until next week.

There is a gaggle of female faculty and faculty wives chattering over by the computers. One is expecting, and the conversation is about the cost of C-sections and private schools. Someone help me with the math here. If there are three people in a group and two are talking at the same time what will the person not talking hear? I’m a guy, and we’re pretty slow, but I can only listen and digest what one person is saying at a time. How do women seem to manage to hear what all three are saying even while they are talking as well? It seems supernatural.

They’ve broken up now and two are wooing over someone’s wedding photos on one of the monitors. It’s as if they’re collaborating on a dissertation about wedding planning. It’s interesting just to listen to the hum and try not to hear any words. There will be a prolonged silence and then both will start talking at the same time, probably provoked by a new image. Their conversation is overlapping so they start talking at the same time, but soon one concedes to the other who then finishes her thoughts. The process repeats itself several more times until silence falls over them again.

I realize that if I ever get married and have children this is what I might have to get used to. Happy endless chatter about women stuff. This isn’t criticism you understand, just respectful curiosity.

Warning: there is absolutely no transition here.

I’m amazed at how the word “like” has integrated itself into American speech. Did this really stem from the Valley Girl explosion of the 80s? I’ve been trying to count the times someone says, “and I was like,” “and it was like,” “and we were all like,” etc. I actually welcome the usage. It has to be post-modern. Absolutes reside in the realm of the past now, so the word “like,” in the form used more and more these days, is a great expression of the ambiguity of life. Instead of saying, “I told him ‘you’re a rude selfish driver who should be buried in a dungeon somewhere until you learn to drive properly,’” I can say “and I was all like, ‘you’re a rude selfish driver who should be buried in a dungeon somewhere until you learn to drive properly.’” This way I am absolved from complete accuracy, and if the subject happens to show up and say “no you didn’t, you said ‘you’re a rude #$%$@#$%$ !@#$$%%^ **&^%$$ who should ^%^$$#& and *&&^^%$#$ your (*&^%$%$ you ^%#%&^%--%^&%$ mother!!!’” I won’t be held to the actual "facts" of my first statement.

“Whatever” is another one I enjoy thinking about. Why are so many people prejudiced against this fantastic expression of passive-aggressive behavior? (reader, please know that I have gone strictly into tongue-and-cheek mode here, which is something I have to spell out occasionally to those who don’t know me.) “Whatever” is the absolving term of all absolving terms. It is also a word that is very hard to write about because it is difficult not to read it for its original meaning. I’ll try to use what I believe is its original meaning in a sentence. “Whatever I do, I can’t seem to open the cheese packet without swearing out loud at the people who made the cheese packet so hard to open.” Okay, so here is the new use of the word. “When I complained to the guy from the cheese company about how hard the cheese packet is to open he just shrugged and said ‘whatever.’”

People seem to have taken the use of this word to extremes. Like (see how I use the new form of "like") if you tell your roommate that the rental furniture will be repossessed if you don’t pay the bill, and by saying “whatever” the roommate automatically makes that statement untrue. (reminder: I’m still in T&C mode, I don’t have a roommate and my furniture has long been paid for). I’m just wondering, if “like” has become the term for unaccountability in speech, has “whatever” become the symbol for denial?

This post is definitely convoluted and confusing, and I didn’t finish before my boss got back.

I missed the chance to do this when I was doing my English degree, but it would have been fun to write a paper on the emergence of these expressions and what they mean in our way of communicating. All kidding aside, I think both of them will be around for at least a little while longer, and I can’t help thinking that they may become permanent because they convey a new type of behavior in our culture. We needed something to express the slack unaccountability of consumer culture and what better way than using words that already exist? This way you don’t have to all that trouble of creating a brand new expression, we can just borrow one—on credit of course.

Are you Kind?

2008-03-12T17:12:00.000-07:00

Out of a lack of inspiration I’ve been tardy on blog posting lately. But thanks to Emily and Litlove I don’t need to come up with a subject—I’ve been tagged for a meme!

This is the Kindness Meme:

1. List five kind things you do for yourself.

1) Have my shows: Now that I’m off most nights I actually have a TV schedule. Here it is: Sunday: HBO—they just finished what just might be my favorite all time drama series, The Wire. I love Flight of the Conchords as well. Monday: Top Gear, Tuesday: nothing on except reruns of The Office, Wednesday: South Park—I’ve rediscovered its crude mockery of shlock culture. A new episode airs tonight. Thursday: Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares (the British version. I’ve realized that the idiot Americans they sign on at FOX make Ramsay appear like a watered-down phony), The Office (at least until the writers strike caused it to be preempted by Trump’s latest embarrassing reality show) and 30 Rock. Friday: Usually I don’t have to resort to TV on Friday. Saturday: Same as Friday.

2) Chinese Buffets: I love the idea of endless supplies of egg rolls. I limit myself to three trips to the buffet per visit, and one of those is for sushi, so usually I can actually walk to the car after the meal. Another kind thing I do for myself in the area of food is Bojangles fried chicken with dirty rice and coleslaw. Don’t tell the American Chef’s Federation.

3) Give myself a pass. Actually I do this more than I should, but when I have some task looming over me I allow myself to just forget it temporarily. Just temporarily, you understand. I learned somewhere in my twenties if you do this permanently society pretty much ostracizes you, and then they shut your water off.

4) Read anything I want and ignore most recommendations. Does anyone feel like me when someone recommends a book, that no matter how good it is it still feels like an obligation? I like the idea of an organic reading map, where one avenue of interest sends you off in a new and unexpected direction. So much of life is about following certain overly-trodden paths; I like the freedom of following my own mental curiosity.

5) Lower my expectations and lower my perceived expectations from others. A great deal of my social anxiety comes from imagining what others expect of me. Lately it dawned on me that there is no real way to know all that is expected of you and much of what we do know is exaggerated. Of course, I have to take into consideration things that really are necessary like what’s expected at work and so forth. But imagining someone’s image of you and trying to be that person instead of yourself is crazy. I’ve also reduced my expectations of others and am surprised at how much I get from them anyway. I think I’ve reached a truce with the world-at-large, except when I’m driving of course.

2.List five kind things you do for your closest friend, partner or child.

I’m going to do this for closest friend, altering it to closest friends.

1) Listen. I am an awesome listener. I can make eye-contact, nod appreciatively, ask the right questions, sympathize, laugh, console and collaborate like nobody’s business. I’m curious by nature, and not exactly an overbearing personality, so long-winded-types sometimes gravitate towards me, but close friends can expect a strong listener. Just one thing I ask, don’t ask my ex-girlfriend to verify that statement.

2) Allow them to be who they are. I used to form resentments toward some of my close friends based on their behavior. This would often cause tension. I have a friend who wears his whole life out on his sleeve. That means a lot of what pops into his head comes out of his mouth. This can be innocuous enough if the subject isn’t me. If it is me I can learn a whole lot about what I could be doing better in life, like fixing my lawnmower or itemizing every receipt I receive from the gas-station. I’ve learned to agree wholeheartedly with all of his suggestions and then go on being my slack-about-yard-work-and-taxes-self. Passive aggressive? Maybe, but without the aggression.

3) Flattery. It gets you everywhere apparently. I make sure to try and identify what people are proud of. This is genuine by-the-way, because when you’re curious about people the best way to get to know what makes them happy is to see what causes them pride. I make a big deal about my friends’ pets, projects, life-works, children, accomplishments and general stuff-of-identity. This usually gets them talking, and then it’s time for the listening to kick in.

4) Make them laugh. I’m pretty good at this. This isn’t necessarily a cognitive decision on my part, plenty of my friends and relatives can go toe-to-toe with me on humor and initiate hilarity, but so many of my close relationships are based on laughter and a co-recognition of the absurd.

5) Cook for them. A couple of my friends are complete philistines, thank God, so they wouldn’t know a filet from a French fry. But I occasionally get to cook for those who appreciate it, and that’s a good feeling. Oops, I almost did that Martha Stewart thing didn’t I? I think she used to say, “It’s a good thing.”

3.List five kind things you have done for a stranger.

1) When I was in South Africa I was with a friend and we came across a dog who was crying out in pain and struggling to get on its feet. Everyone was walking by and ignoring it. The dog was letting out some agonizing yells and I just felt that we couldn’t walk by. I picked the dog up and carried it to the house where I was staying, quite a substantial distance. We gave the dog some water and food but it wasn’t interested. We stayed with it until it died about two hours later. Then we buried it in the brush beyond the garden. We managed to make it comfortable until then, so it wouldn’t die in the street. A dog is a kind of a stranger, isn’t it?

2) My brother-in-law Dan taught me this. We were walking through the old part of my town known as Old Salem. Dan waved at every dad-gum car that came by. Every single one. Sometimes they waved back. I walk through Old Salem about three or four times a week and now I wave, say hello and smile at the majority of the people I meet.

3) Listen respectfully, and sometimes engage in meaningful conversations, with the Christian groups who often canvas my neighborhood. These folks show up on Saturdays every now and then and usually start out with a question like “have you excepted the Lord Jesus Christ into your life?” I always say “yep” although I don’t really know if I have or I haven’t. Once they asked me the question “if you were to die today do you expect to go to heaven?” I said “yep” and then we got into an interesting discussion about their religion’s ground rules for getting into heaven. Turns out, buy their standards, I wouldn’t get in. Not even close. It’s certainly good to know that. They told me I could learn more if I were to join them at their community supper next Thursday, or was it Friday, I forget. I thanked them and told them good luck.

4) I bought a beer for a guy at a rock concert who had just somersaulted about three hundred yards down a steep embankment (don’t ask me why he did it, but the crowd loved it). Of course I had just knocked the first beer he was drinking out of his hand while exclaiming what an amazing stunt it was, so I guess it was just pay-back, plus his friends looked kind of surly and angry and something told me I had better replace the beer.

5) I saw a guy go into an abandoned house near me the other night and I wondered if I should call the police. I had the feeling that he was just getting in from out of the cold. I thought about it and decided to ignore it. I have no idea if this was the right choice, there have been some break-ins in my neighborhood recently and who knows what the guy was up to. There is also a single mother with a young child who lives right next door, so this was a tough one. I would hate to ruin a guy’s night, and tie up city resources, for a simple trespassing. But in not doing anything I may have been putting people at risk. I don’t know, if you comment, let me know what you think.

4. Have fun!

Okay!

5. Tag five people.
Froshty if she hasn’t been tagged. Linser, you could email yours to me I could post them here. Anyone else, go for it!

Blogspiration

2008-02-28T12:14:00.001-08:00

You know, I spend a great deal of time searching for inspiration that will reinforce my motivation. It’s not that I necessarily actively seek it out, but when I’m reading a statement or quote that jumps off the page, I might start thinking about how it relates to me and how I can employ the idea into my expectations and desires. Sometimes this works in the opposite way, and something negative I read about someone or something taps into my insecurity which, in turn, causes me to worry. But lately, happily, I have been experiencing the former more than the later. The biggest kick is when an idea jolts me into a new way of thinking. These ideas often stick with me and add to a sometimes prolonged period of well-being. I’m experiencing these more often now, which is odd, because I’ve never made less money than at this moment, I’m operating on a relatively strict budget, I live alone for the first time since I was twenty, I’m waiting in graduate school, scholarship and fellowship limbo, and it is gray February which, although it is the month that both my mother and my sister Emily were born, usually finds me low and moody.

But not right now for some reason. I don’t want to tempt the Gods of the Depressed State but these days I often feel downright giddy. It could be the regular exercise. Booker has discovered the joys of slobbery-tennis-ball-retrieval, and the other day I actually ran stairs at the amphitheater at Salem College. I haven’t lost any weight to speak of, but I haven’t gained any either so I’m seeing it as a good thing. (I think they say that you have to exercise and eat right—I’m only doing the first part). My house is clean (the downstairs anyway) the bills are paid (the ones that absolutely have to be) and most of the urgent personal matters are being kept consistently at bay.

But there are always opportunities to procrastinate. This leads me back to the original point of this post, inspiration. Today I received it from two sources, both within several minutes of each other. The first came from the fore mentioned February’s child Emily, who wrote about the 5 stages of denial we experience when putting off a required but unpleasant task. She explains, through dialogue with herself, that once she sits down and makes herself do the task she finds out that it’s not that bad after all—even enjoyable in some cases. She shows that the hardest part of these things isn’t figuring out how to start, often the hardest part is just starting.

The other point of inspiration came from the beautifully thoughtful piece by Litlove about choosing schools for her son. In thinking about her own schooling she said this:
“I learned to like work purely for itself. I might have been hungry for praise but I never expected it, and I enjoyed the sense of competing only with myself. It was in many ways a solid foundation for graduate study.”

What a fantastic approach toward study and achievement, competing with yourself with little to no expectation for praise, always trying a little harder than you did last time. This is easier said than done for me, but a goal worth striving for.

So I took these two pieces of inspiration and I applied them to my early morning slide toward procrastination. I had already begun to talk myself into believing that the pressing letter that I’d been putting off writing could wait another day and the follow-up calls to graduate schools didn’t really need to happen either. That’s when the words of those bloggers kicked in, Emily saying, “it won’t be so hard once you get started,” and Litlove saying “why don’t you try just a little harder than usual and get that letter finished?” I took both pieces of cyber-advice and completed both tasks, plus a couple of others. I feel very self-satisfied now, congratulating myself at great length. So it’s not always the Faulkners, Obamas and Mandelas that inspire me but often the lesser-known but equally brilliant philosophers-at-large. Sometimes these people even have blogs. Sometimes they’re even your sister!

Geekfield's Guide to English Lit.

2008-02-23T10:56:00.000-08:00

Last semester I took a lit. theory class. We had an assignment where we could do anything we wanted as long as it demonstrated something about English literature and theory. I started out making a CD, a song cycle of original material that would include major movements all set to the rhythm of a drum machine. What a bad idea. I still have the rhythm tracks but thankfully abandoned the project when the lyrics took a decidedly cheesy turn for the worse.

I ended up doing a comic book. I read enough of them as a kid to know the genre, the problem is my drawing skills are limited at best. But I plugged on ( I had to, I had waited until four days prior to the due date to get started). Let me make it clear that every other assignment I completed during undergrad was written in a very adult and academic style. If anyone wants proof I can send them a copy of my paper The Warren Court: Baker v. Carr and Reapportionment (Snooze!)

I will say that this was a very demanding project. I didn’t realize this until I was a couple of pages into it. It gave me great respect for graphic artists (the real ones) and cartoonists.

To view the comic, point and click on each image. If your browser is compatible it should create a larger, readable image. You have to backspace and repeat the point and click to get to the next page. I wish there was a way to improve the continuity. Also, please excuse the misspelled words.

The Eagle Swoop

2008-02-20T07:47:00.000-08:00

How many times have I started a post by pondering how long it’s been since the last post? At least a dozen or more times. I am so tempted to do it right now, but then I would have to launch into a list of manufactured excuses and I’m just not up to that. Just know that I’ve been really busy, really, I have.

Hark, was that was the sound of the lie-detector going off?

Several years ago, when my sister moved within short driving distance of a ski-resort, I decided to return to my childhood dalliance with downhill skiing. I learned the skill during annual trips with a church youth group. It was a youth group from a church my friend attended. My family’s church, to my knowledge, didn’t have a youth group unless you count teen-al anon (we were Episcopalians), so any combination of hormones and worship had to be found elsewhere. My friend was a Lutheran, so the trips were always very well organized, physically challenging and a bit daunting. Plus, they were to ski-resorts (hard to think of these places as resorts really) in the North Carolina mountains. Fellow skiers with chewing-tobacco-juice frozen to their chins might yell “yee-haw” as they tried to create a ten-skier-pile-up worthy of the Daytona 500. As I limped down the hall at school the following Monday, I always felt lucky to have survived one of those weekends

I also skied in Scotland when I was 19. By then I had learned enough to keep an upright if not somewhat floundering sort of form. I remember that there were less trees, which is always good when it comes to skiing as far as I’m concerned. I managed to end up with limited bruising—to my body, that is. My ego was another story altogether due to the little Frisbee attached to a bent pole that yanks you up the mountain. The Scots call this a ski-lift. You place your butt under this little disk, which is about the size of a bread plate, and wait as the pole, which seems to be controlled by some angry invisible troll, jerks the plate under your backside. When this happens, and there’s no telling when it will, you had better hold on because woe to the unlucky soul who falls down. You might get run over by a large man from Aberdeen shouting incoherent brogue at you. Well, that’s what happened to me anyway.

Since then I had skied only twice. This was when my sister—who seemed to be actively seeking out ski-areas to tempt, or possibly taunt, her brother—lived in a state that could be considered one big ski-resort, Colorado. We wanted to try the sport of cross-country skiing which seemed so genteel, so refined. We imagined skiing over pristine and unspoiled country-side, marveling at vistas and peaks. When our day-excursions were over we would traverse a virgin slope to the lodge where alcohol laced hot-chocolate drinks awaited. You know, like in the flashback scene in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.”

Unfortunately for that to happen you have to be a native of Norway or at least be familiar with a few techniques involved in cross-country skiing. We were neither. We were smart enough however to start with lessons. The lessons were helpful but woefully lacking in vistas, peaks, traverses or alcohol laced hot-chocolate drinks. We took our lesson in a little clearing, tucked safely away from any “real” skiers. I remember one point when the instructor was introducing techniques on how-not-to-fall-down my sister, as if on cue, promptly fell down. She was at a complete standstill. Our family, I’m happy to say, has never been one to stand on pride, or on solid ground for that matter.

The area where I would return to all this winter joy was in the northwest portion of Virginia. The resort has the innocuous name of Wintergreen. We bucked family consensus by even going up there, as the resort brings unwanted development to a rural part of the state. But judging from the experience we had, the family should have very little worry that we will ever return.

After several years away from the slopes I was uneasy about the fact that there was no beginner’s run. They used to call these 5 degree hills the Bunny Hop or something. Not that I needed it you understand, but sometimes one needs a little time to warm up. Plus I’ve always liked helping novices as they start out; it’s the teacher in me.

It appeared that a long steep dog-leg was the beginner’s run. I steeled myself for what was to come, threw caution to the wind, tried to think of another cliché in the interest of stalling, and started down. To my utter amazement I made it to the bottom without falling, and buoyed by a completely false sense of security I started eyeing the signs with the blue diamonds on them.

The ski-lift was virtually an elevated leather upholstered couch. It gently scooped up four skiers like a benign Ferris-wheel. As we dangled our skis and took in an actual vista or two, I realized that I had finally reached a point of appreciation for this winter sport. I was considering making this my new pastime, jetting off to Tahoe or Aspen to try my luck on a couple of black diamonds with, of course, the alcohol laced hot-chocolate drink waiting for me at every lodge. Experiences from childhood of being ten feet off (and parallel to) the ground after inadvertently skiing up a hidden mogul had mysteriously left my mind. The little Scottish Frisbee on the bent pole seemed to have never existed. I was, at last, a skier.

For about hour. After practicing all the techniques I could remember from the youth group trips and cross-country skiing, I began to get bored. For those of you who have never skied and are planning to try it, let me give you one piece of advice—never, ever, get bored. This one phenomenon has probably caused more broken bones, more widowed wives, and more orphaned children than any other element of skiing. If you do get bored find something to divert your attention that is not ski-related. Whatever you do don’t decide, like I did, to “take it to the next level.”

Before starting out I decided to consult with my sister.

“I think I’m going to try that slope there.”
“Which one?”
“That one, the Eagle Swoop.”
“Oh, but isn’t that a blue diamond?”
“Yea, but I think I can handle it.”
“Are you sure?”

Just at that moment a ten-year-old girl came skiing down the Eagle Swoop.

“Yes, I think I can handle it, unless you don’t think I can handle it.”
“I think it’s up to you to know if you can handle it.”
“Yea, but I want to know what you think.”
“I don’t know.”
“Well I think I’m going to try it.”
“Okay.”
“Really, you think so.”
“Only if you’re sure.”
“I’m sure…I think.”

Anyway, this went on for several moments until finally I had said so much that there was no going back, I had to do it. I went in search of the ski-lift.

There was definitely a steep learning curve between the beginner ski-lift and this one. Green wooden single-seaters with peeling paint swung-around like those rubber ducks at a shooting gallery, and as I stood in line wondering if the sweat on my palms was going to freeze, experience skiers timed their butt placement and were shot up the hill in a series of whip-like jerks. I took mental notes. I managed to get scooped up without incident although I had to adjust quickly as I was lifted off the ground. The lift creaked and groaned me all the way up the slope, and as I neared the top I realized that this was a much more exclusive club than at the bottom of the hill. Before reaching the top I had already identified pedigree skiers with designer gear and attitude. When I skied off the lift I immediately fell-down for the first time that day. A group of skiers regarded me with wrinkled noses. This is how I made my entrance to the top of the hill.

After getting my bearings and deciding to "just go for it" I inched forward. I was the only skier in the immediate radius doing the “snow-plow.” The steepness of the slope voided this common technique that beginners use to slow down, and as I picked up speed, going faster than I ever had without the help of a internal combustion engine, I lifted my right leg off the slope in an effort to turn, and, using language common to my neck-of-the-woods, busted my fucking ass.

I got up, like they always tell you to do, and tried again. Thirty yards later I had done the exact same thing, landing on the exact same spot on my body, my left hip. The third time, same thing. The fourth time was slightly different because I found myself sliding down the mountain, head-first on my back. The fifth time was like the first, second and third times. The sixth time was like the others except when I fell the ten-year-old-girl swooped by me, kicking up snow on my battered body. I was beginning to see why they called it the Eagle Swoop. By the time I made it the bottom I felt as if an eagle had swooped down, picked me up and dropped me onto the pavement from a great height.

My sister met me at the top of the beginner’s hill.
“How did it go?” she asked.
“Pretty well.” I said.

I was not deterred in the least by my first run down the Eagle Swoop. But I rationalized that to have a successful run the next time I had better hone my skills on the beginner's run for a couple of hours or until the slopes closed, whichever came first. That wide dog-leg was looking much less boring to me for some reason. After a couple of runs which found me favoring my right side and wincing with every left turn I became separated from my sister. I thought she must have met up with my girlfriend who had sensibly declined to strap on skis and spent the afternoon shopping, taking photos and drinking hot-chocolate.

As I took the elongated Ferris wheel up the hill once again I noticed an emergency sled stopped half-way down the slope but I couldn’t make out what was going on. When I skied down to the scene I saw my sister sitting on the slope with an emergency team hovered around her. She had fallen on her face somehow. I tried to ski toward her in a professional manner in order to assist, but I had to fall down to stop, thus inspiring no confidence in the emergency crew who hovered closer to my sister as if to protect her from me. Darn, it looked like I wouldn’t have a chance to try the Eagle Swoop again, seeing as my sister was in distress and all.

It turned out that she was alright, but both of us retuned from the resort with numerous bruises and a healthy respect for the combination of mountains, snow and fiberglass. The bruise on my left hip was ten shades of purple. I had a photo made of it but no one should be subjected to a view of my posterior in the full light of day so I will refrain from posting it.

It has been at least five years since that last ski trip. Sometimes the subject comes up when my sister and I get together.
“We should really go back up to Wintergreen sometime.”
“Yea, we really should.”
“Let’s do that.”
“Yep, let’s do that.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
Then the subject changes quickly.

The Darling

2008-02-10T15:08:00.000-08:00

I’m not going to attempt a long critical analysis of the novel I recently finished, but I want to try to express some prominent "turns-of-emotion" I experienced while reading Russell Banks’ The Darling. I chose this novel after reading a short review of Banks’ latest book The Reserve. The review referenced 2004’s The Darling as a novel set against the atrocities of the Liberian civil war, and because I based my capstone research paper on colonists in Liberia I was drawn to this work of fiction. I wasn’t disappointed, although the events of this novel take place around 140 years after the period I researched. Still, the recent past, as portrayed by Banks, proves more horrific and inexplicable than anything I uncovered about nineteenth-century pedagogy and separatism.

Founded as a quasi-American colony through the patronage of an organization known as the American Colonization Society, Liberia gained independence in 1847. The independence was tenuous and heavily reliant on American aid, with descendants of relocated American slaves being the prominent members of a class-system based along ethnic and genealogical lines. By the mid-twentieth-century Liberia was experiencing a relative period of stability under the leadership of William Tolbert, underwritten by a cash flow from American corporations such as Firestone. (One of Liberia’s key exports is rubber.) From 1980, after the overthrow and murder of Tolbert, until the end of the century Liberia experienced almost two decades of bloody civil war. The country only just gained a marked amount of security with the election of American backed Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Charles Taylor, whom Sirleaf succeeded and whose life-story could be made into an outlaw western if he wasn’t guilty of so many atrocities, is currently standing trial on hundreds of counts of war crimes in the Hague.

The Liberian portion of Banks’ work spans from 1976 until the late-1990 by which time Taylor is leading the country. The narrator is Hannah Musgrave, an ex-1960’s radical who, to escape her stifling upbringing and the FBI’s most wanted list, flees to West Africa with a fellow militant idealist and ends up in Liberia, the wife of the Minister of Health in William Tolbert’s cabinet. Musgrave must endure every indignity in this highly patriarchal culture to remain with her husband and three sons, and as the situation deteriorates Hannah endures far worse. Her only true peace comes when she opens a refuge for abused chimpanzees. She finds solace in the unambiguous nature of these apes, who demand only food, water and company from her. They seem to live at the whim of some inexplicable natural force that dictates they live in the present at all times. This detachment from Hannah’s world compels her to name them her “dreamers.”

This is the first work I’ve read by Banks and I found it an absolutely unique, although not always pleasant, experience. I was halfway through the novel before I came to the conclusion that I was engrossed. I tried not to like it for about 200 pages, but found that I couldn’t put it down. It’s been a long time since I’ve read a novel this length (392 pages) in such a short time. (I won’t tell how long it took to save me some embarrassment from the speed-readers out there). My initial problem was that the narrative builds around meandering reminiscences and explorations-of- feeling by Hannah as she tries to explain her story to the reader and herself. I don’t have much patience for extended self-exploration, unless I’m the one doing it, and the first half of this work has this in spades. There is a great deal of second-guessing, expressions of resentment, regrets and ambiguity that had me zoning out a time or two. But somehow it all seems convincing, as if this is how someone’s brain must work if they have experienced—witnessed—great tragedy.

So when the atrocities take place in the book they come with a force that could only be rivaled by actual events. It has also been a long time since I’ve felt such a physical jolt while reading. Banks’ succeeds in getting the tone and suddenness of brutality, so when the acts of violence come it is as shocking to the reader as to the characters portrayed on the page. I will say here that if these types of descriptions bother you, it's probably best if you avoid this novel. But to me this is the novel’s greatest achievement. The Darling unmasks how the brutality-of-war and the reality-of-death shakes us from our own dreams, dreams built on self-delusion, faulty ideology and filtered news segments, so that the real story of Liberia is contained only in the abrupt downward stroke of a machete.

After I’d finished the novel I went out and rented Hotel Rwanda. I avoided this film when it first came out, I’m not sure why, maybe I just wasn’t ready for this story yet. The movie is good, and I found myself moved, but I also felt that as hard as it tries it just isn’t as good as it needs to be. There is hope, and a hero, and a happy ending and nothing can get the attention of the West like that combination, but something about this movie and the 1,000,000 lives lost during Rwanda’s crises didn’t seem to connect. Still, there is a point that the filmmakers were brave to make. Western society continues to revere Africa as a “less-than” in the world equation. While many of these Westerners also complain of corruption in African countries, I can only guess that corruption is the inevitable step-child of exploitation. We would do better to view Africa for its most valuable commodity, its people.

Thin Man

2008-02-01T10:25:00.000-08:00

Can anyone guess that I’m a Bob Dylan fan? I’ve kept the Dylan Watch feature on the left side of my blog for the past three months, and the allure of this artist just keeps getting stronger as I age. If you’re one who can’t stomach someone blathering on about an artist or public figure like they have sole ownership of that figure don’t worry, I’ll spare everybody that. It’s just that I wanted to introduce this next post by drawing attention to the influence of abstract personalities on everyday people, and show, in one detailed example, how this has happened to me.

Sometimes an event can take a person swirling around their very existence and reinforce the theory that linear time is only a man-made invention. The other night I succumbed to yet another new vice called Itunes. This music download website offers thousands of music selections from Bach to The Bonzo Dog Band, which is a good example of how far my musical tastes go in each direction. The biggest problem for me now is not maxing-out my credit card (it’s a scary thing admitting to using your credit card over the internet) downloading obscure concerts by NRBQ and Tom Waits. But the selection beats anything that Borders could even hope to attempt, and to see all that music, at $.99 a song, in one place is just too hard to resist. Yes folks, I’m a consumer sheep.

So I had to download the March 27th 1988 Grateful Dead concert in Hampton Virginia that Itunes sneakily offered. They must have known I’d attended this show and the other two in the three-night-run. The set list for that night was brilliant, but I won’t go into the details because eventually I plan to get to the point of this post, and if I get off on a tangent about the Dead we may never get there.

Well let’s just keep moving forward then and see if we can’t get on the right path. The Dead, during this period, were having a close relationship with Bob Dylan. They had toured with him the year before and had learned many of his songs. The Dylan song they played on March 23rd was the famously bombastic put down of an out-of-place square-peg called “Ballad of a Thin Man,” where the narrator sarcastically sneers these lines at the lost intellectual: “something is happening, but you don’t know what it is, do you Mr. Jones?” Bob Weir took the vocals and snidely recited this character assassination with contemptuous brutality that surpasses Dylan’s original. It is a pop-culture monument to “othering.”

When I heard this version the other night so much about my twenties came back to me. Not only was I a “thin man,” back then (oh, for those days), I also felt remarkably clueless and out-of-place in the presence of my peers. I remember listening to this song in a friends dorm-room and not only did I feel as if Dylan were singing about me, I also felt that the other people present were reinforcing his words, showing me up as a phony and a poser. Here is one of Dylan’s more cutting verses:

You've been with the professors
And they've all liked your looks
With great lawyers you have
Discussed lepers and crooks
You've been through all of
F. Scott Fitzgerald's books
You're very well read
It's well known

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Many may know now that the subject of this song was Jeffery Owen Jones, a film professor. Jones was an intern at Time when he interviewed Dylan in 1965. Presumably Dylan was not impressed. If anyone has seen the interview segment of the film “Don’t Look Back” they know what could happen if Dylan was not impressed. The moral might be never piss off a songwriter, just ask that guy in Alanis Morrisette's song "You Oughta Know."

As for me, the sentiment in “Thin Man,” continued to affect my self-image. I took this insecurity to the Dead show that spring and never felt it so strongly than in the presence of these neo-hipsters. A Dead show could be a great experience, but there were many times when deadheads could be just as elitist and exclusive as the owner of Hollywood hot-spot or a member of an old-money country-club. This was certainly not the rule, but at times I wondered how different this alternative community was to the one they were escaping. They were still hierarchical, judgmental, and a disconcerting amount of them drove late model BMWs. The music always seemed to make up for this though.

The trip to Hampton that year was not an enjoyable one. The general mood, to me, was one of uptight restraint, as frat-boys picked fights with cops who seemed to be at their Southern-redneck worst. The group I was with seemed indifferent to my presence (creating more thin man paranoia) and the first and third night’s concerts plainly sucked. What was worse I was bored, and worried about the classes I was missing in order to be prodded around eastern Virginia to the sound of Jerry Garcia’s rapidly deteriorating voice.

And then, the second night, they played “Ballad of a Thin Man.” I vaguely remember feeling as if insult was being heeped upon injury, and I half expected to have a single spotlight illuminate my skinny frame for the entire song. I don’t know when I’ve ever felt so disillusioned. It was if I was desperately compelled to be there, but at the same time I would have rather been anywhere else. I breathed a sigh of relief when we headed back down to North Carolina.

I can listen to this song now and still feel like an outcast. I suppose I will never lose that insecurity, although I’ve gotten pretty good at telling myself that the outcast stance is a noble and healthy position. But back then I so wanted to belong, even to a group of rich white kids with their parent’s credit cards pretending to be experiencing something “real.” I also know that something is happening and I do know what it is, it just takes some courage and self-respect to understand that.

Okay, I'll Bite: A Meme

2008-01-29T12:47:00.001-08:00

I haven't done a meme in a while so here it goes. This is a reading meme from Emily and Eva.

Which book do you irrationally cringe away from reading, despite seeing only positive reviews? This is kind of cheating, and definitely not answering the question, but I cringe away from Tolkien. Why? It’s simple—no humor. Or none that I can identify. If something is void of humor there is no way I can imagine it. Oh, and I’m suspicious of The Historian—but kind of curious too.
If you could bring three characters to life for a social event (afternoon tea, a night of clubbing, perhaps a world cruise), who would they be and what would the event be? Jack Aubrey: for the world cruise, but I would have to be in Maturin’s position so I wouldn’t end up with a giant splinter from the mainmast through my torso. William of Baskerville: I’d hang out with him until I realized that I would never be that smart. Maria from “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” Forgive me, I’m a guy, and it’s a long cruise.
(Borrowing shamelessly from the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde): you are told you can’t die until you read the most boring novel on the planet. While this immortality is great for awhile, eventually you realise it’s past time to die. Which book would you expect to get you a nice grave? Atlas Shrugged. Might cause me to end it all before I’m finished.
Come on, we’ve all been there. Which book have you pretended, or at least hinted, that you’ve read, when in fact you’ve been nowhere near it? I read half of Zorba the Greek and told people I’d read all of it. I got caught out on this (I was unaware of the gruesome scene at the end and talked it up as a “happy” novel). Later I read the whole thing.
As an addition to the last question, has there been a book that you really thought you had read, only to realize when you read a review about it/go to ‘reread’ it that you haven’t? Which book? I’m pretty sure this is the case with On the Road. I thought I’d read it in high school, but when I read it a few months ago I realized I started about 1,000 books in high school, this being one of them, and only finished about three—all of them by a guy named S. King.
You’re interviewing for the post of Official Book Advisor to some VIP (who’s not a big reader). What’s the first book you’d recommend and why? (If you feel like you’d have to know the person, go ahead and personalise the VIP) I’ve been the unofficial spokesman for Tobias Wolff (although I still have trouble spelling his name) for the past 18 months. “Hey VIP! Ya gotta read Old School!” If you want to know what it’s like to be a boarding-school trapped adolescent with aspirations toward Literature you really should read it.
A good fairy comes and grants you one wish: you will have perfect reading comprehension in the foreign language of your choice. Which language do you go with? No doubt and not a moment’s hesitation, Russian.
A mischievious fairy comes and says that you must choose one book that you will reread once a year for the rest of your life (you can read other books as well). Which book would you pick? That’s a very hard one…The Great Shark Hunt maybe?
I know that the book blogging community, and its various challenges, have pushed my reading borders. What’s one bookish thing you ‘discovered’ from book blogging (maybe a new genre, or author, or new appreciation for cover art-anything)? I’ve discovered that I have a lot of catching up to do. There are so many great blogs about great books written by great people that the list of things that have changed about my approach to reading is very long. I should be reading non-fiction history, but this blogging culture has me reading fiction almost exclusively. But it’s a good thing; literature, as someone once said, is the soul of history. Someone please help me identify that quote.
That good fairy is back for one final visit. Now, she’s granting you your dream library! Describe it. Is everything leatherbound? Is it full of first edition hardcovers? Pristine trade paperbacks? Perhaps a few favourite authors have inscribed their works? Go ahead-let your imagination run free.
An automatic machine like they have on the Jetsons or Star-Trek where you just type in the name of the book and it appears in first edition perfection down a little tube or shoot. I’m not talking about ebooks or anything on-line, a little tube (a-la-the-drive-through-at the-bank) that delivers new volumes in pristine condition from the exact year when they were originally published—and in translation if required. (Could you imagine the Odyssey?) Behind this shoot would be limitless book-shelves, you know the kind where you have a rolling ladder that goes up about three stories. I would have people help me shelve, but sometimes I would give them the day off so I could just loll around and wander the stacks. Oh, and I would get paid a dollar for every word I read, or make it two. I know, sacrilege to get paid for so much enjoyment, but I have to think of upkeep for the library now don’t I? :)

Whoops

2008-01-25T08:47:00.000-08:00

In the following post I stated that Art Garfunkel had read over 4000 books since the late 1960s. I was way off. This would mean he read an average of 100 books a year, not impossible, but still, that's a lot of books! The website claims he has read over 1000 which is still pretty impressive. Sorry for the misquote.
The Management

The Garfunkel Library

2008-01-24T06:32:00.000-08:00

There's a column in The New Yorker's "Talk of the Town" this week about Art Garfunkel's reading list. He's been keeping this list since the 1960's. I believe the total of books he's read is now over 4,000 strong. That's a huge number, but I'll bet some of the lit bloggers I frequent can top it. The list is interesting--it isn't all Tolstoy and Plato, Bob Woodward's Wired is snuck in somewhere around 1984 (the year, not the novel). As the New Yorker wryly states, a steady flow of royalty checks creates enough down-time to fulfil anyone's reading wish list. I wonder what Paul Simon's list would look like, he wrote Simon and Garfunkel's songs and presumably takes a higher cut in the sharing of those royalties.

Here is the link: http://www.artgarfunkel.com/library.html

Food Glorious Food

2008-01-17T15:06:00.000-08:00

Is it possible that something has changed in me? All last week, in an effort to refrain from the fast-food that has defined my diet during the time I was a student, I cooked a meal for myself every night. Part of the reason was for health's sake, but I soon found that when you cook for one you can't help but cooking enough food for two, that's just the way food is sold. So I ate the lions share of each meal, not exactly a strict diet. But a satisfying one. I was really surprised at how much fun I had with this, and a small portion of each day was spent trying to figure out what to prepare for that night. I suppose this is also a cheaper way to eat, although when I got to the grocery-store the more pricier items always beckoned. I ended up making some damn good grub. Despite some minor missteps, I've proven to myself that I've still got it.

Cooking in a home kitchen is far more difficult for me than cooking in a professional one. Everything is smaller, and those little boxes of plastic wrap fall all over the place and stick to your wrist as you try to wrap a piece of chicken with a piece that is way to small. Temperatures are different as well because most professional kitchens have convection ovens which employ a fan to circulate hot air for more even and slightly faster roasting and baking. But this is no excuse, it is just something I have to remind myself of when I start a meal. One thing I like about cooking at home, I can watch the evening news while I'm waiting for water to boil or my timer to go off.

I've continued my home cooking routine into this week. On Monday I roasted a chicken. One of the bidders for the college's food service contract sent a large bottle of excellent extra-virgin olive oil with their proposal, and I took this, some fresh garlic, lemon, sage, onion and swathed the whole thing down like an Asian masseuse. Then I stuffed the inside with the onion, lemon and garlic and roasted it. I kick myself now or not taking a picture--it was a sight to behold when it came out of the oven. The next day I stopped by the store and bought some crimini mushrooms. I took all the leftovers from the roast chicken and rice and made chicken-fried-rice with szechwan sauce. Mmmmm Mmmmm tasty!

Here are some of the things I made last week.

I started the week with a stir-fry of broccoli, chicken and peanut sauce over rice. The first photo is the chicken cooking, the second is the dish simmering in the sauce, and the third is the finished product. I wolfed this down pretty fast.

This is terriaki pork loin with yellow squash and roasted new potatoes. I didn't fan out the pork like that to be pretentious. So many years of doing this I just did it unconsciously and ended up plating it like we would have for a banquet. Of course we wouldn't have used crappy pink plates and there would have been a lot more garnish.

I wanted something vegetarian so I made a marinara boboli pizza with caramelized red onion and portabello mushrooms. I like banana peppers, so they had to go on top. And of course, lots of mozzarella. Diet my ass--literally.

The next night I ate leftover pork loin and pizza, but the next night, which was a cold wintry one, I made meatloaf with brazed cabbage and new potato mash. This was comfort food in the extreme. The best part? The meatloaf sandwich the next day.

I'm going to make vegetarian quesadillas tonight. It should be good, if not just as fattening as Taco Bell. But so much more satisfying.

Yar Rule!

2008-01-13T09:01:00.000-08:00

Wow, it has been a really long time since I posted. Those Christmas photos are looking dated already. There is no real excuse for this, but I will say that last week I was adapting to a new regimen (that I hope to stick to) and I’m having a good time not plucking away on a computer for hours like I’ve been doing for the last four years.

My laptop has been acting up and this has taken a great deal of patience from my end. Cross my fingers, I hope I have solved the problem, but the thing developed a mind of its own for a while there. I accidentally downloaded an anti-spyware program, you know one of those pop-ups where you try to close the box and it ends up downloading more crap onto your hard-drive. Sleazy bastards. When I tried to remove the program it wouldn’t let me uninstall, it said I had to close the program first—but the program wasn’t open. Yow! So this morning, after deleting everything in the file I could, I was finally able to get rid of it. Spy-Shredder is the name of the company, so beware.

I almost, almost, took it to Best Buy to have them look at it, but reason got the better of me and I stopped short of taking this drastic measure. For one, I would be without my laptop for ten days (this is an estimate, but a learned one). Then they would charge me as much as the computer is worth to fix a hypothetical problem that probably doesn’t exist. A condescending tech-geek would spread icing on the cake. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

So I spent the week deleting cookies and temporary files, defragging, rebooting, swearing a little, swearing a lot, praying and rolling cyber-dice. The problems have abated, but I still get pop-ups, one especially annoying one which promises to find the perfect partner for me. Right now the perfect partner for me would be someone who is good at preventing a computer induced melt-down.

But on a happier note, I bought a new car. A Toyota Yaris. It is about three feet long and gets 720 miles to the gallon. No, not really, but it feels like it. One tank of gas will allow me about 400 miles of highway driving. With current gas prices it takes about 30 bucks to fill up. For its size it is very roomy inside, and Booker has much space in the back when I fold down the seat. And it is amazingly fun to drive. I can whip around clueless motorists with far more flexibility than the truck, and I actually look forward to the commute. It is remarkably small, and wise-cracks about clown-cars from the motor-heads might ensue, but while they are parked on the shoulder thumbing a ride with a gas-tank in their hand, I’ll be zipping by singing Allman Brothers at the top of my lungs.

Oh, and—it finally happened. The day, as a commuter, I’ve been waiting for. I was on my way to work one morning last week and was passing a van in the left lane. I looked in my rear-view mirror and coming up behind me at an enormous rate of speed was a brand-spankin’-new Cadillac. He was coming on so fast that for a moment I thought he was going hit me. I still had about half-a-van to pass and I refused to change my rate of speed, so I had this guy attached to my bumper for about 30 seconds. Really obnoxious. I finally merged over and the guy shot past me doing about 100mph. One of the most brazen tailgating experiences I can remember.

Right where the highway opens up to five lanes is where the cop nailed him. I was praying for this, as I often do in similar situations, because the police patrol around this area in unmarked cars all the time. I have no doubt that everyone who this guy bullied off the road cheered when they saw him issued a speeding ticket. He was way over the speed limit which could result in a revoked license, and if he has any other infractions it is sure thing. I’ve been waiting on this to happen probably for as long as I’ve been driving, but for it to happen to this particular one, who was so obnoxious, made my day.

One of the things I like about the Yaris is that it has a little auxiliary jack. Now, I’m still living a little in 1995, so I don’t have an Mp3 player which is what this feature is for primarily. What I do have is an old fashioned walkman. Remember those things? You put these weird little plastic things called cassettes in them. They would play one side and then you would have to open the walkman and physically take the cassette out and flip it to hear the other side. Music storing devices, for many years kids, had two sides. Don’t even ask about LPs, we don’t want to go there.

This is advantageous because during the actual 1990s I did my best to actively collect as many tapes of hippy concerts (I kind of fancied myself as a retro-hippy, albeit a geeky one) as I could lay my hands on. I even went nation-wide, placing an ad in Relix magazine—the NYT of jam-band related stuff—and would receive packages filled with concerts in Belgium by Fishbone or somebody. This collection grew to around 500 tapes that all sit, gathering dust, in my new-millennium-digital media-center. Okay, it’s the extra guest room, but new-millennium-digital media-center sounds better.

What this means is when I put the archaic two together and plug it into the auxiliary jack of my new car many elements of time and space are joined. First you have the concert. Let’s take the Grateful Dead at the Springfield Creamery Benefit in 1972. You know, the one where it was 103 degrees and the guitar strings started melting, literally, not just through the aid of hallucinogens like they normally would. This tape was recorded by some stoned engineer on that day and then distributed through tape trading of many generations before reaching my greedy hands sometime around 1994. I listened it into the ground, and then placed it on my shelf in 2003 when archives.org allowed the show to be streamed in digital format. Now, with the marriage of old and new, I can rediscover the joys of a “crispy” tape. (I always hated that term crispy, it usually meant too much treble and hiss, plus it just sounds weird) And that is another positive element, I had forgotten how warm a well recorded tape with noisy background ambience can sound to a trained—or cheap, whichever way you lean—ear. So what if the Allman Brothers in Raleigh in 1990 makes my right eardrum itch uncontrollably when I turn the volume up past six. It is history man! Warren Haynes man! Don’t you get it? Uh oh, the 1995 me is coming back a little.

So I’m loving the car, and I’m hoping the computer will settle-down. We are at the mercy of machines aren’t we? But I’m not quite ready to except Laurence Fishburn into my life quite yet. That conversion is a long way off.

Post-Script: I like the name Yaris. I have no idea what a Yaris is and if anyone has a notion let me know. Or better yet, just guess. I like it because it sounds pirate-like. "Yarrrrrr, is that your new Yarrrrr...is?" "Yarrrrrr, it is." "Yarrrrrr."

Holiday Photos

2008-01-05T13:38:00.000-08:00

My last post stated that I was very busy, too busy to do a proper post in fact. But this was more or less an outright lie. I've just been slack, watching reality restaurant shows and plucking around on the guitar. I did take Booker for a walk two days in a row, and I built some bookcases at work, but a true evaluation of my activity would reveal an orgy of procrastination.

I hope to give details of my holiday soon, or maybe some other muse will divert my attention and I'll write about something completely different. In the meantime here are some photos from Christmas.

The folks on Christmas Eve

Mom continues to decorate up to the last minute

Lounging around on Christmas day

Daddy recites from War and Peace.

There's always a dog lying around.

Booker's hoping someone will drop some roast beef.

Time to walk off the chocolate truffles.

Aunt Boo with a painting of her house by Lindsay.

Lindsay and brother-in-law Dan.

Lindsay in her studio.

My parents' dog Sally.

The Virginian in his natural habitat.

At the top of the hill.

Happy New Year (good thing we can't smell that breath.)

Bonus: Here is my reading of Don Quixote

Stay Tuned

2008-01-02T09:29:00.001-08:00

I've been pretty busy with travels and so forth, so I haven't had time to post. I still don't have time really--but I will very soon. Here are some things I've been doing.

Celebrating Christmas with my family in Charlottesville. One of the best Christmases ever!

I bought a new car! Whoooohoo!

Went to Atlanta to see Widepread Panic on New Years Eve. Lots of drunk fratboys, but my God what a show!

I'm reading Don Quixote!

Getting psyched for a new round of grad-school applications!

More details, plus photos, in the next day or so.

Cheers and HAPPY NEW YEARS!

Spice Quiz Results

2007-12-17T15:17:00.000-08:00

My score on The Which Spice Are You Test:

Fennel

(You scored 50% intoxication, 50% hotness, 100% complexity, and 25% craziness!)

http://panther.is0.okcimg.com/users/434/744/4357457111978303249/mt845783353.jpg

You are Fennel!

You're a cool cat. Crisp, clean, fresh, and extremely complicated. You're like quantum physics or modern jazz. Think Niels Bohr meets Ornette Coleman. You may look normal now, but once you sprout, you look kind of, uh, funny.

Link: The Which Spice Are You Test
(OkCupid Free Online Dating)

1000 Years

2007-12-14T09:35:00.001-08:00

I’m going to veer wildly from my usual subject matter—me—and write about musician Richard Thompson.

Born in West London, the son of a Scotland Yard detective, Richard Thompson started his recording career as a member of the British folk-rock band Fairport Convention in 1967. The band’s take on Celtic music provided a graceful accompaniment to the burgeoning psychedelic scene, using traditional acoustic instruments and vocal harmonies to balance out heavier American counterparts like Jefferson Airplane and The Byrds. Thompson played guitar in a style influenced by Django Reinhardt, Les Paul and Buddy Holly as well as older forms of English folk music. He is mainly noted for his guitar playing virtuosity, but his rich voice, which one critic claims just gets better with age, is also a strong feature of this subtle musical craftsman.

Thompson left Fairport in 1971, partly due to the band’s slow progression toward original material. His solo career showed uneven success, but he remained critically acclaimed for much of this 35 year span. The early and mid-seventies saw Thompson recording with his wife, singer Linda Peters (later to be Linda Thompson) with whom he converted to Islam in 1974. He still remains a committed Muslim. The Thompson’s marriage lasted until 1980 when, at the height of their first measurable critical success for their release Shoot out the Lights, they went their separate ways under less than amicable circumstances. At one point during this period Linda reportedly kicked Richard in the shin during a guitar solo.

After the couple split, Thompson continued a journeyman career in and around the recording industry. He managed to negotiate a deal with Capitol Records which allowed him to release a consistent flow of material into the early ‘90s. In 1991 he received a Grammy nomination for Rumor and Sigh, which included the masterpiece modern-folk single "1952 Vincent Black Lightning." Thompson left Capitol in 2001 and has since been exploring different venues of style with independent labels.

I just acquired Thompson’s 2006 DVD release 1000 Years of Popular Music. Thompson has recently been touring this DVD/CD and is stopping by my stomping ground on Jan. 18th. The concept of the show came from a Playboy interview which asked artists to name the ten most important songs of the last millennium. Thompson, a student of musical origins and genre took this to heart and formed a collection of songs beginning in the 13th century and ending, well, relatively speaking, right now.

The breadth of the song list is remarkable. There are traditional songs from the Elizabethan era, an Italian madrigal, a piece from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, a Smokey Joe’s reminiscent "Java Jive", Cole Porter’s "Night and Day", and a soul-melting version of one of my favorites, "Shenandoah."

The range of these selections is ambitious, but viewing the DVD from start to finish in one session is—and it is hard not have this sound trite—like making a musical journey through time. To conceive that you have just watched the same performer play Vecchi’s "So Ben Mi Ca Bon Tempo" an hour before playing Bowling for Soup’s “1985” is to take part in more than just a great live performance. There is some instruction going on here as well.

Thompson demonstrates the occasional universal thread that connects the music of the past to today. As he introduces a modern pop-song he identifies the chord-structure as one that resembles those of the distant past. During the song he skillfully places a waltzing, finger-picked classical form of the chord-sequence in the middle of a typically “whatever” attitudinal assertion of adolescence. The song is Brittany Spear’s “Oops I did it Again.”

Thompson’s version of “Oops I did it Again” shows what a song (any song) can be in the hands of a talented musician. I’ve had it my head for about three days now, but not in an annoying way—or at least not yet. To hear this pop-confection performed with a voice that could come straight out of the Scottish peat-bogs transforms its meaning, even though it is a song about a teasing teenager suffering a brief moment of guilt for toying around with someone’s heart. There is beauty in the notion that an aging male folk singer is conveying this pre-adult sentiment.

I’ve watched this DVD about three times since purchasing it on Saturday, and I know I’ll be watching it tonight. I can hook my stereo up to my TV, and the music is so good that household chores seem to take care of themselves as I leave the DVD running and get on with the endless War of the Dog Hairs. The video is that much more pleasing because of the presence of Judith Owen who is a singer of seemingly limitless range and very easy on the eyes. The overall impression that Thompson and his three piece band are having a ball with this material sets the overall tone of a modern bacchanalian romp.

So I’m looking forward to the concert in January (I better start looking for tickets). My mind has been distracted of late, but some of the life-long joys are coming back at a time when I have more time to focus on them. These distractions are welcome, and I hope more are forthcoming as I depressurize and start, temporarily, resting on a laurel or two. See, I knew I couldn’t go a whole post without writing about myself.

Here is Thompson doing 1952 Vincent Black Lightening

Stick a Fork in Me

2007-12-12T09:05:00.000-08:00

“Stick a fork in me Jerry, I’m done.” I’m quoting Kramer from Seinfeld here, but unlike him I haven’t basted myself in butter and sat out in the sun all day. I’ve just finished undergraduate.

Last night they had a reception for all of us who are graduating this semester. It was in a barn-like auditorium they use for student dances. It has a cement floor and cinder-block walls, and I’ve never felt like chattel so much in my life. It was sweltering. The air parked itself motionless above the screaming babies and sweating students and I have to say, I became cynical.

Most of the graduates are adults: single moms, adults going back for a second degree, and people who weren’t ready for college the first-go-round. I fall into the last category. As I stood there listening to the generic “now-all-the-doors-are-opened” speech, smelling stale bodies thinly masked by cheap deodorant, I tried to make this momentous occasion mean something. Still, I couldn’t help feeling like a number—a boost to enrollment, a warm body. If you are going to recruit adults to your institution and then give them four years of liberal-arts ideology you have to expect a few to see it for what it truly is.

Okay it is time for me to boast uncharacteristically. Why? Because after last night I need to remind myself of what I’ve done here and not feel like a statistic who’s just received a distracted and patronizing send-off in a building with the warmth of an abandoned train-station. Here are some things I’ve done at college.

The Thomas Thompson Award for History
The Eugene Hire Award
The Dorothy Gilbert Award
The CCE History Award
Who’s Who’s on American Campuses 2006 and 2007
Dean’s List 9 semesters
Phi Alpha Theta Historical Society
GPA 3.8, GPA for History 3.9
Was a TA
Wrote a very well received food review column
Landed three campus jobs
Helped numerous students with projects, papers and other life-issues
Double majored—with English being my second major
For most of this time I worked full time while attending school full time
Organized two benefit dinners for The African Medical Mission raising $15,000
Taught my dog to play Frisbee

It’s hard for me to brag. I don’t like doing it and I don’t like people who do. But I feel I needed to do this in order to individualize this experience. Still, I’ve been around long enough to know that how ever well you’ve done, there is someone who will do better, unless you are Michael Jordon.

After the ceremony wrapped up I ran into Vivian, a woman who was with me in my very first class. She graduated last spring. She gave me a huge hug and we talked for a while. She said that for a month after she graduated she would keep writing in the margins of every book she read—she just couldn’t help it. I believe her. It’s hard to give up these habits of thinking, reading and writing.

It was great seeing Vivian, and she lifted my spirits to no-end. Life throws some strange coincidences at you and I feel that this chapter has been book-ended in some way by the presence of Vivian. She was there virtually on my first day and my last, although I rarely saw her after that first semester. She was so gracious and encouraging and funny. I realized that this whole thing has been more than just a treadmill for me and a payday for admissions. As I pull away and try to put things in perspective (the curse of a student of history) I know that through time I will see this for what it is, truly. And then I’ll be ready to start giving back.

My Friend, My Brother, My Shirt

2007-12-09T12:14:00.001-08:00

I can tell the pressure is residing. Today I actually folded clothes. This is a change from my pattern of the last three or four weeks, which saw me grabbing something from the wrinkly pile I had hastily washed the night before and putting it in the dryer for five minutes as I frantically shoved things into my book bag before rushing out the door, hopefully with the article of clothing on my back. The wrinkly, but clean, pile was acceptable, but on certain days when no laundry was available I resorted to the dirty wrinkly pile—not something I’m proud to admit. My only consolation is that during this period in the semester many resort to the same style. I’ve even heard professors admit it.

So as I was folding my first round today (a wrinkly pile that had been sitting on the back porch for about four days) I ran into a dire moral dilemma, one that made me reevaluate the notion that I might be obsessive. I realized that some of the clothes had almost deteriorated into rag-status. As I examined a frayed and grease-stained golf-shirt I thought “why am I wasting energy and water on washing these things, I can’t wear them in public and I rarely want to wear them around the house?”

I gathered them up and put them right in the garbage. Done, problem solved. But when I started folding again I realized I had missed one. It was the green polo-style shirt. I wore it into the ground, retiring it when an un-removable stain appeared and it was good only for yard-work-days and lounging. This I grabbed up too and unceremoniously tossed it into the trash.

I moment later I had pulled out ole’ Greeny and the rest and put them on the ottoman. I just couldn’t throw them out. I was humanizing the damn things.

I suppose there’s something about pack-rats and people who can’t throw out anything from bottle caps to broken refrigerators. I can tell you why I do it. The clothes represent a time I believe I will have to let go of if I throw away any physical representation of it.

Ole’ Greeny and the rest are probably ten or more years old. What was I doing ten years ago? I was a chef at a country club, Margaret and I had just taken our first trip to Scotland—an amazing trip—and I was in the first or second year of my mortgage, a proud homeowner who did yard work regularly and played in a band with two old friends from high school. I was actually making a little money as well.

Some of those things are still with me, some aren’t. But the clothes are. Even in their rag-tag incarnation they provide sentimental recall for me. Ole’ Greeny (I know, that name is getting old) used to be my favorite shirt! How can I throw it out? Do I have to move on? I can’t seem to picture the shirt in a landfill somewhere surrounded by plastic grocery-bags and empty soda cans. First of all, it's 100% cotton. You just don’t do that to 100% cotton.

I have no idea what to do with these clothes, and if anyone has any suggestions I’d love to hear them. They are definitely not material for Goodwill—they are way past that point. My mom used to turn old clothes into house-hold rags, but to me that seems like a demotion, like sending a guy with a .322 lifetime-batting-average to go run the concession stand.

So, I think I’ll post pictures—a Hall of Fame for knits. A strange thing I know, but for me, appropriate.

Old Greeny

These shirts alway get holes around the collar.

These have seen better days.

From the Vault

2007-12-07T07:11:00.000-08:00

This is a draft of a post I wrote in October. I don't know why I didn't post it then, maybe I thought it was too ranty. But I just re-read it and I think it needs to go up.

Right, I'm pissed off. My favorite time of the year, Autumn, has been ruined by the greedy fossil fuel industry and our do-nothing government not to mention bipsy-bopsy in her gargantuan SUV which she bought because she is such a coward that she wants to make sure that if she gets in an accident everyone else will be killed by her civilian tank and not the other way around. It's October 19th and it feels like August 1st. Where is the crispness? The cool clean air? The beautiful leaves? The hint of frost? The promise of snow? Maybe in Nova Scotia, but not here.

I missed the environment blogging day, but better late than never right? My area of the country is experiencing severe drought. Water restrictions with diligently enforced fines are being issued in all of the surrounding counties. I've talked to people who know more about this stuff than I do, and they believe that this drought is not a fluke (in fact it can't be, it is actually an ongoing event that has been plaguing our area for a number of years). This is what global-warming is folks.

Today it rained, but not nearly enough. It is overcast and muggy, and while getting ready for work today I began to sweat profusely just minutes after my shower. I had to move into the living room because my office is too stuffy and I refuse to turn on the air-conditioner. This is okay in July, but the summer is only bearable in this part of the world because of the "fact" that there are determinable seasons here and that cool weather is always just around the corner. Well I believe that corner has been blocked off by greed, good-ole boys, and selfish Americans.

The Weather Channel reported yesterday that rain clouds are evaporating at an increasing speed which makes it difficult for any appreciable amount of rain to fall. Why? Well if you stare at the sun without protecting your eyes your eyeballs would burn off. If we expose storm-systems to increased exposure to the sun's heat, caused by depleted ozone, the systems will evaporate and my little part of the world will become Mojave Desert East.

Dammit let's do something. Conserve, recycle, carpool, plan for making less trips, and for God's sake let these bozos who are running for elected office know that if the environment is not a major plank in their platform then screw 'em. Let the people decide how our country should be run, not big business!

Now that they've ruined "my time of year" it has become personal.

What I lerned in colage

2007-12-05T09:31:00.000-08:00

Today I attended my very last class of undergraduate school (unless some unforeseeable circumstance arises and I’m forced to take botany over again). Here is a list of things I learned in college.

1) Turning on the passive voice setting on the grammar options for Word is the most annoying thing I’ve ever done. That green squiggly line under every “did go”, “is maintained”, and “was forwarded” almost caused me to throw my laptop though the window this morning.
2) When I’m trying to look casual, I usually look awkward.
3) When I speak in class, I don’t throw up on my feet like I always think I’m going to do.
4) However smart I feel at home is directly proportionate to how stupid I feel in class.
5) Getting through with classes has not eased my anxiety, now I’m a basket case over grad-school.
6) I’m old.
7) How to actually believe the B.S. I write in a paper. I can convince myself of anything now.
8) My hand starts to shake when I hold it in the air too long.
9) Witty banter is not my forte.
10) That the piece of plastic that clips a Bic mechanical pencil to your shirt pocket breaks very easily.
11) That when people bring food to class I’m usually too worried that food will dribble out of my mouth to actually eat any.
12) That when you try to say something funny and people just look at you with a confused look on their face, what you said wasn’t funny.
13) A lot of adult students complain.
14) A lot of traditional students skip class
15) Occasionally a student will show up drunk to class, no matter if he is a traditional or an adult student.
16) That when I have a day where class makes me feel smaller than a bug, writing a post usually helps.
17) That if I can’t be a creative genius all the time, then life ain’t worth a damn.
18) That I don’t know how to spell genius (but spell-check does). Officially, you can’t be a genius unless you know how to spell genius—so scratch #17.
19) I lack confidence.
20) Singing the confidence song from “The Sound of Music” doesn’t help, it just makes me feel creepy.
21) Without spell-check and my dog, I would have flunked out.
22) Never look at your transcripts from when you were an eighteen-year-old punk.
23) Applying to grad-school is like trying to work your way out of burlap sack in order to play a sonata on a piano in another state.
24) Every professor I had here was awesome in one way or another, even the one who gave us a study guide for an exam and put none of the questions on the actual exam.
25) That I would rather write history than lit. theory.
26) To love postmodernism (sigh).
27) That at this school, for the first time in my life, I might be considered a conservative—but I’m not dammit!
28) That film classes are not an easy way to pass the time and earn some credits. They can be tortuously dull.
29) That any school where you spend a week discussing “The Big Lebowski” is a school I’d be proud to graduate from.
30) That sometimes it’s alright to end a sentence with a preposition.
31) That the sun just came out and I feel better!

Sunny Side

2007-11-30T18:01:00.000-08:00

I believe some have seen this already, and for that I apologize. Too busy to write right now, but not too busy to dance around the kitchen. (This was shot last week.)

Birthday Present from Lindsay and Dan

2007-11-26T14:05:00.000-08:00

I now know what I'll be replacing all those fascinating scholarly articles with after graduation. My "books read this year" list will be pretty small in 2008. This will take at least four months. But what a great four months. Thanks Dan and Lindsay!

...and the Sky is Gray

2007-11-26T13:26:00.000-08:00

It is a gray drizzly day in my neck of the woods. On top of that it is Monday, and now that Thanksgiving is over the weeks until Christmas offer a no-man’s-land of dark afternoons, bad traffic, empty trees and a restless dog.

I absolutely felt a dark mood coming on after work today and, thankfully, was able to spur myself on a fast-paced 3 ½ mile walk with Booker. He had gone without a walk for three days, and I had no choice on the pace of the walk, we were going fast regardless if I wanted to or not.

That was alright with me. By the time we got to the top of the Moravian graveyard I was panting hard. I was trying to get rid of a prevailing train-of-thought and get a little peace of mind today. I can’t say if it worked entirely, but by the time I got home I was determined to make my house warm and inviting instead of dark, dingy and depressing.

I put on Son Volt’s The Search, and while the first track always drives me to despair (probably because it reminds me of my current situation), the rest of the album is incredibly upbeat, especially for this band. So I started cleaning.

I straightened the living room, but the kitchen isn’t in that bad shape, I just need to toss the remaining Thanksgiving leftovers and clean the pans. I have to admit, I’m procrastinating on that one.

Here’s a funny one about the leftovers. On Friday I was getting prepared to make a meal of the leftover turkey. I pulled the pecan pie out and made a turkey sandwich. Then, after I was finished, I went to the store down the street to get some batteries. I was gone for five minutes. When I got back there was an empty pie-pan and a very satisfied looking Booker sitting on the living room carpet. He had eaten an entire pecan pie in five minutes! I suppose he deserved it though, he had to spend all of Thanksgiving cooped up in the house. But still, I really wanted that pecan pie.

Back to this afternoon. As I was cleaning up the living room, I started opening mail. I picked up a letter from my insurance company. Since the premium isn’t due until next month I thought that this must be a promotion of some sort and I almost put it in the junk mail pile. But I opened it for some reason.

It said that I had won $125! And it is legitimate too. They do a grand drawing every month of those who pay their premiums on time. This is one bill I’ve managed to do that with. So I was the grand prize winner this month. Man, am I glad I decided to clean up the living room and not throw away that letter.

Jefferson said something about luck didn’t he? The harder you work the more luck you have. I’m starting to believe that this is true.

I guess I’m superficial but nothing can turn a potentially dark day into something grand like a little windfall like this. I started whooping and Booker did his I’m happy but I have no idea why dance--complete with super-sonic wag-tail and everything. It’s only $125, and it is probably already spent, but it just made my day.

Link to Me

2007-11-21T16:19:00.001-08:00

Okay, I tried but I was unable to embed this video this go round. I'm going to keep trying, but until then, here is a link to a youtube video of me rambling somewhat incoherently.

A Quick One

2007-11-20T13:19:00.000-08:00

Okay, this is going to have to be very fast. I'm busy, busy, busy. Sorry the posts haven't been very frequent and I haven't been commenting on anyone's blog. I'm not going to worry about typos either today, so blah.

I went to see Beowulf in 3D. Fifteen minutes of pretty cool 3D stuff (nothing really made me jump out of my seat though) for every hour of crappy dialogue. $8.50 for this. But what the hell, at least I could relax for a minute, and even doze a little between epic fight scenes. Angelina Jolie has stiletto feat which killed any 13 year-old adolescent urges I was experiencing during her famous virtual nudity. Man, but what lips!

I realize that my mind drifts even more during action sequences than boring declarations of love and fealty. While the dragon was dragging Beowulf around the mores I kept wondering if I'd turned the coffee pot off. I also kept wondering if the dragon would ever hurry up and die, along with Beowulf, so I could get on with my plans for Saturday. The sequence where Beowulf rips out the dragon's heart with his bare hands took forever. Haven't these people seen Enter the Dragon? Bruce Lee did it in a split-second.

The 3D glasses were cool though. Cheap as hell, but better than those white cardboard ones with one blue eye and one red eye. These look like Elvis Costello shades. Kitsch my ass. Whoops.

U2 is coming out with an Imax concert in 3D, they showed the preview. It was cool for a moment but I don't know if I want Bono stomping all over my lap for two hours. Although I though this Beowulf was going to be good (Ebert liked it for chistsake!) and I was wrong about that so maybe the U2 will be good, who knows. I'd rather see them in concert, anyone have tickets?

This is good, a couple more sentences. I've been working on a long wordy contract type thing since yesterday and this feels like riding down a steep hill on bicycle with your hands off the handlebars. You don't know how freeing stream-of-consciousness writing can be after coming up with hackneyed neophyte legalese for 24 hours.

So I will sign off. American folks, have a good Thanksgiving. All others, have some Turkey, or some pie, just for the hell of it. We Yanks can be pretty cool on this holiday.

69/72 by way of the Beatles

2007-11-14T09:00:00.000-08:00

The other night I watched the new DVD release of Help! (how do you punctuate this without making it sound like you are shouting the whole sentence--editor types, please advise). The movie has its ups and downs. I loved watching the Beatles run around England to the sound of their own music, but it was hard to take the rest of the soundtrack. Still, it's really magical how the Beatles (this version) can still inspire a feeling of childlike innocence in me, and one element in Help! that is not in their first feature length film, A Hard Days Night, is color. The vibrancy of the English streets added to a feeling of deep familiarity that I couldn't put my finger on. Then I thought about it, this was the England I knew as a kid.

Well not quite. The film first played in theaters in 1965. (I think, but please go easy on me if I'm off by a year, I've been doing research for the better part of a week and I really don't want to verify one more fact right now.) My parents first hauled their newly completed crew to England--all four children--five years later, in the summer of 1969. I was 2.

When do we start remembering things? Well, I suppose I will never know for sure when my brain filed its first memory, but I believe at least one of them was on this trip in 1969. We were in London, and I was either with my cousins or my sisters. My father held me on his shoulders while I stared at the largest, most elaborate lego display I could have imagined--it may have been my first introduction to them. (later, legos would take over my room, and you would have to be careful not step on them during a late-night trip to the bathroom). And I also imagine a grey blur of streets and taxis, with a bright candy-apple colored double-decker bus grinding by from time-to-time spewing diesel fumes.

I vaguely remember a chocolate mousse in the shape of a rabbit that my aunt's cook, companion, and all-time-champion spoiler of children made. I have conflicting feelings on whether I actually remember this, or if it was mythologized by my sisters between this trip and the trip we took in 1972. I might just imagine that I remember it. I do know that by the time I got back in '72 I was very interested in experiencing the chocolate mousse rabbit again. This is when the chocolate addiction was born.

Those are the two memories that I may or may not have of England in 1969. If I had been aware what was going on with the Beatles and the rest of the world at that time I might not have been so ready to grow up.

I can even relate the trip in '72 to the imagery of Help! Seven years after the film's release, the child-appeal of this country, which seemed like one big toy to me, was still everywhere. There were still double-decker buses and Union Jacks far and wide, life-sized on the street and tiny versions in sweet-shops. The Americans have never really figured out how to mix milk and chocolate, but the British have this technique down to a science, and I'm sure, although I can't really remember, that much of the trip was spent pleading with our parents for sweets. What made it worse was that my cousin supplied vending-machines to all the local pubs and had a garage filled with Cadbury products that we couldn't touch.

I definitely remember smashing my finger in the garden gate that summer. I want to say I shrieked, but I don't recall, I just remember the children around me looking very distraught, like they might run away and abandon me. My finger turned dark red with little black spots on it. One thing I do know, moments earlier an adult had said "mind you don't smash your finger in the garden gate."

There was also a rumor, embellished fully by my sisters, that one of the hotels we stayed in was haunted. We knew this to be true because my oldest sister said she had seen the end of the toilet paper roll swishing back and forth in a ghostly manner. We were appropriately terrified for the rest of the night.

Castles, knights, tanks, toy-soldiers, the changing of the guard, lukewarm tea which was mostly milk and sugar, bangers and mash and BOAC, they all fortified my one-fourth English blood. But the orange juice was horrible.

I’m very glad that Help! made me remember this version of England. The Beatles, right after Beatlemania and right before the summer-of-love, projected a childlike enthusiasm which allowed us then, as it does now, to laugh and discover.

Just don’t smash your finger in the garden gate.

A Ramblin' Man

2007-11-06T14:15:00.000-08:00

I am way way way way way over due to post. No excuses, and I really shouldn't be posting right now as the things I need to to do are steadily overtaking the things I've managed to get done. If that last sentence is convoluted and confusing, just use it as an example of my life right now.

I took the damn GRE finally. I might get into Bill's graduate school and taco-stand with the scores I made. As predicted, my math score was a negative number (first time in the history of the test) and my verbal score indicates that I am a Bulgarian third-grader (no offense to Bulgaria or third-graders). Actually it is really hard to tell how I did because when I go on-line I find chat threads where people are crying that they got a 1500 and can never get into Princeton in a million years. Wah wah wah. Showoffs!

But I'm glad it's over. I was really quite calm during the test, and afterwards I did the unthinkable and stopped at McDonald's for a quarter-pounder and some "chicken" Mcnuggets. Yea, I know, this food would kill Superman--in fact I think they put small doses of kryptonite (sp?) in it--but it was Friday, I had just spent four hours trying to remember the meaning of words like obfuscate, and I wanted to feel like I was sitting in a room where everyone wasn't way smarter than me. The Kernersville Micky D's did the trick perfectly.

I really don't know how my scores will affect my overall chances at grad school. The programs I am interested in are in a broad range of tiers and when I sit back and really look at the big picture, I'm very happy that I even have a chance. Five years ago, when I was a shlepping chef who didn't have to take out a loan to buy a CD, I would have never pictured myself poised to enter graduate school. If I had known how much dept this project would accrue I might have patted myself on the back for sticking around with the sadists and the snobs who worked at the club. But I sometimes told my friends during late night beer drinking contests that I had always regretted not getting a bachelors degree. Then we would pour beer over ourselves and sing Margaritaville at the top of our lungs. Not really, but close.

So I keep trying to remind myself of why I am doing this. You've heard of those families where junior was the first one ever to graduate from college? Well, if I make it another six weeks, I'll never have to worry about people saying junior was the first one in his family not to graduate from college.

I've made excellent grades here. It has been lonely at times, working in a corner of the library watching the college socialites laugh and go off to their dorms together. They say a person has an average of eight good friends, and if that is true I can say that while I've been here I've added at least two to that average, so I think that is a very good thing. Plus, my typing is starting to reach mind numbing speeds. But nothing compared to the guy typing next to me right now--he's incredible.

This has been a rambler of a post but I have to go now, I'm being kicked out of the computer lab because a class is about to start.

Bill Buford’s Search for Chocolate

2007-10-26T09:34:00.000-07:00

This is a somewhat formal thing I wrote for the Guilfordian Practicum.

Bill Bruford, in this week’s New Yorker, continues his association with obsessive foodies with an article that follows the exploits of chocolate-entrepreneur Fredrick Shilling into the Brazilian rainforest in search of the perfect bean. Bruford, who wrote last year’s best selling book (Heat) about party-animal celebrity chef Mario Malto, approaches his subjects as a novice, taught by the people on the cutting-edge about the changing nature of their obsessions, which is usually food. He often seems to play Sal Paradise to the larger than life personalities he writes about, but his style is deceptive in that it offers subtle insight into the quirks of these Dean Moriarty-like figures. In this article, Buford exposes the contradictions of Shilling’s vision for a purely organic chocolate revolution and leaves the entrepreneur’s decision to sell his company, Dagoba, to Hershey for $17 million up to the reader’s interpretation.

The story of Dagoba goes roughly like this. In 2005 Shilling and his girlfriend Tracy Holderman debuted their products in New York to rave reviews. They started a company, smoked a lot of pot, but didn’t know business so they brought in Shilling’s father to help, and soon business was booming. A few years later Shilling allegedly had an epiphany in the form of a dream that involved a Mayan goddess and a whirlwind tour of the cocoa growing-areas of the world. Soon after, Shilling sold his company to Hershey and now acts as a consultant.

Although chocolatiers may consider Shilling a sell-out, Bruford depicts Shilling as a relentless, although sometimes misguided, visionary. The reader might find Shilling’s personality, like much of his products, somewhat hard to digest. Bruford does a masterful job of amalgamating the personality and the product, combining Shilling’s over-the-top enthusiasm with an honest critique of some of his wares, many of which seem inedible. Shilling is looking for organic serotonin substitutes and antioxidants much of the time, and the results can be brutal on the palate. At one point, after tasting a drinking chocolate, Bruford asks, “Why make a drink that tastes disgusting?”

Bruford’s article is also a rich resource for a 101 guide to the role of chocolate in world history. The research is meticulous but not pedantic. Descriptions of the mystical qualities of chocolate from Montezuma to Pepys provide the reader with a good understanding of why Shilling is so obsessed. The bulk of the article relates a trip Bruford took to the Brazilian rainforest with Shilling, one that saw the men sampling cocoa pulp and spitting out the bitter seeds, the part used to make chocolate. Bruford explains how the plant relies on the bitterness of the seeds to regenerate more plants. Animals and people eat the sweet citrusy pulp but eject the seeds, assuring continues growth. Details like these, interspersed with the personal history of their guide, Badaro, bring Bruford’s journalistic experience into full focus. The trip culminates in the three men immersing themselves in fermenting cacao pulp, sloshing around like pigs in a trough, a bacchanalian if not exactly appetizing image.

Bruford’s subjects may represent the cutting-edge of culinary quests, but in a sense there is a cutting-edge quality to Bruford as well. Rejecting the idea of writing as a seasoned insider, Bruford instead immerses himself from a point of little reference and then gathers as much information from actual experience necessary to write a thorough expose. As Shilling searches for the perfect cacao bean, Bruford also seems to be searching obsessively for something—the nature of the compulsion that drives people to dedicate their existence to a single vision. The reader can be glad for Bruford’s attempts to locate the origin and destination of these visions.

Ian's Index

2007-10-21T12:09:00.000-07:00

Beginning a post with a description of how badly I’ve been procrastinating is getting redundant so I’ll just give you a statistical update:

Statistics for October 21, 2007:

Minutes studying for GRE: 0
Minutes watching Redskins game: 72
Minutes reading Huckleberry Finn when you told yourself you would only read a couple of chapters and then study for the GRE: 125
Minutes trying to start a new satirical blog about litblogs: 49
Minutes spent believing that Wordpress is run by Nazis: 9
Minutes deciding that you would try the new blog with Blogspot and not Wordpress: .3
Minutes spent trying to post a picture in the header of the new blog and not have it be frighteningly gigantic: 18
Minutes spent trying to spell frighteningly: .9
Minutes spent believing Blogspot is run by Nazis: 9
Minutes spent deciding that you don’t really have the time to keep up with a new blog: 2
Minutes spent noodling on the guitar: 17
Minutes wandering around looking out the window: 8
Minutes spent noodling on the guitar s’more: 14
Minutes spent giving self pep-talk to gear up for a five-mile walk with dog:
11
Minutes spent going on five-mile walk with dog: 0
Minutes spent looking for syllabus to see what to read for tomorrow: 6
Minutes spent doing assigned reading for tomorrow: 0
Minutes spent trying to come up with the next statistic: .8
Minutes spent checking comments and reading blogs: 70
Minutes wondering if my comments are arcane and awkward: 13
Minutes checking email: 2
Minutes responding to emails: 0
Minutes it takes dog to convince me to let him get on the couch: 1.8
Minutes it takes dog to take over couch and push me into a corner: 15
Minutes it takes to get every dog-hair out of house: 1,235,689,675, 869,638
Minutes being annoyed because there is something in my eye: 5
Minutes being amazed that the Redskins are winning: 32
Minutes feeling guilty that my team has such a politically incorrect name: 6
Minutes feeling guilty that my other team, the Braves, have such a politically incorrect name: 6
Minutes rationalizing that judging things as politically-incorrect is just another form of suppression: 9
Minutes spent wondering if that thing is truly out of my eye, it feels like it, but not quite: 2
Minutes spent looking around my office and realizing what a mess it is: .5
Minutes wondering how I’m going to find the time to clean it: 1
Minutes spent trying to figure out how I’m going to wrap this post up: 4
Minutes spent grasping for a pithy end statistic: 7
Estimated minutes I will spend correcting typos in this post: 27
Estimated time I will spend doing the things I told myself I would do today: 67
Estimated times I will tell myself that this is the last day of fall break and I deserve a rest before the final push: 89

Historians Circling Overhead

2007-10-18T14:14:00.001-07:00

Several months ago I was walking across campus with one of my professors and two other students, and the professor started describing some strange birds she had seen on the way to work that morning. She claimed they were enormous, and were spreading their wings and doing a kind of dance. I think she said that it looked like they were about to mate. She believed they were eagles, and one of the students confirmed that eagles were indeed making a comeback in our part of the state. I was skeptical, although I didn't express it at the time. All I could offer was to describe them to my dad, a dedicated birdwatcher, and see what he thought they might be. One of the reasons for my scepticism was the many times I myself made broad claims about spotting raptors and the like, only to have my dad reveal them as crows or pidgeons.

If I had been on my toes I would have easily realized that they were more than likely turkey buzzards. She had described them as being on the ground, and earlier she had talked about how the road had recently been full of deer so that you had to be careful driving. My theory, one that I arrived at a couple of days later, was that a deer had been hit by a car and the birds she saw were buzzards, very common in our area, fighting over the carcass.

I emailed her (sometimes I just think I have too much time on my hands) with my theory and she concured, relating that the following day as she drove by there were more of them.After all this I began to think about the relationship of vultures to historians.

The class that this particular professor taught had to do, roughly, with the interpretation of the past by fiction authors. I was kind of a willing foil in her class, and I took the stance of the stuffy literalist history major who believes in absolute truths blah blah blah. We read a number of books that distorted history for literature's sake, awesome books like Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf, and in thinking of the vultures I began to see myself as one of them, picking over old primary sources in an archive somewhere and digesting what I needed and regurgitating the rest up for succeeding generations all covered in stomach acids and mucous. I'm kind of gangly too, although gangly is quickly turning into paunchy, and I hunch over a lot and my face can get very red--just like the turkey buzzard.

I've been churning this in my mind for these past months--this class made such an impression on me--but I didn't know what to do with it. I didn't particularly think that the vulture/historian concept was such a bad thing, but I couldn't quite figure out how it could be good. Then I was visiting the always wise and witty (and probably the most shameless punster I know of) Archie and discovered this.

If the vulture keeps the environment free from carcass odor then, if I stretch, I can tie together my analogy. Historians treat history to a thorough deodorizing if they are good. I don’t mean that the historian cleanses the historical event from any of its terribleness (if it actually was terrible), only that they keep the event from just sitting there, corroding and offering up unpleasant myths and misunderstanding for concurrent and future generations. They do digest it, and produce concise packages of molecularly-changed regurgitated information—sometimes in the form of excruciatingly boring thirty-page papers for journals like The Journal of Historical Methodology and Anthropological Survey Statistics.

As I sit on my porch being eaten by little black mosquitoes, I wonder if the historian/vulture, like the mosquito, is nothing more than a parasite. Absolutely not! Whether he, or she, be a garbage collector, an interpreter, a propagandist or a poet, the historian's relationship to his source should always be reciprocal—so that the historian gives back, at least in some form, what he has taken. Let’s see a mosquito do that. Thwack!

Rock-on Footballers

2007-10-16T13:32:00.000-07:00

There is a band that lives down the street from me called Auto Passion. I used to think it was Audio Passion and I would walk by and shout “how is Audio Passion doing?” They never corrected me.

They are great musicians. The reason I know this is because they play a type of music that I don’t like (probably because I’m too old) and I still think they rock. They have the look too, they are perilously skinny and look like they never shave, although their beards never get to the Chris Robinson during the Kate Hudson days stage. (Robinson is proof that if you rock your ass off you’ll get the hotties no matter how much you look like Tom Hanks in the second half of Castaway).

These guys have the rock band thing down to a tee, but not in any kind of contrived way. They just seem to have been born to it, like I’m born to knocking my elbows on kitchen counters and swearing out loud. They lurch around the yard and smoke a lot. Their recycling bin (yep, I look) has empty 40oz PBR cans and burgundy bottles in it every Tuesday morning. They own an old Econoline, and when they drive by they hunch forward and glare down my street. If they ever see me they wave, but in a glowering, moody kind of way.

Every so often, when the weather is fair, Auto Passion comes out to play football in the street. They don’t really organize a game or anything; they just toss the football around and smoke. Sometimes one of them will have a beer loosely held in his hand while he tries a one hand catch.

I love it when they come out because they suck so badly. Not one of them can throw or catch. They run like they are from The Ministry of Silly Runs, really low to the ground, as if they stretched out any longer their back leg might break off. I sit on my porch and watch this and laugh. Sometimes they see me and they laugh as well; they know they suck as well as I do.

It seems to be a rite for them. I imagine their dark cave-like practice-room all filled with Pall Mall smoke and rank with stale beer. This may not be the case at all, but this is what I imagine. I feel like this football ritual is a way for them to air out a little, not just the football but themselves. As they slink around and hoot when someone hits a parked car, they change into kids screwing around, their talent for music uniquely balanced by their ineptitude for organized sports.

They are part of my neighborhood, and if they move I’ll kind of be disappointed. They have been around for about two years and they add a grimy neo-southern gothic element to my working-class neighborhood, which is in transition but thankfully (at least I hope) not leaning towards gentrification. I wonder if they ever hear me play drums—their drummer is awesome—and they may laugh as I laugh at them and their football shenanigans. I kind of hope they do.

2007-10-11T11:49:00.001-07:00

I know its been a while since I've posted, and this one is going to be brief. I'm managing to beat back the huns of midterm (no offense to the huns, they did give us Bach and Beethoven), and in two days it will be fall break--YES! I've had some very welcome good news lately, my guitar playing compatriot Pete is going to be in town in a week or so, and I've been chosen by the college to help with the process of finding a new food service provider. I think its the weekly column in the paper's what's did it.

I am storing up energy for an outburst of posts by eating huevos rancheros late at night, reading, and waiting around for South Park to come on. Booker is getting more and more obsessed with his red frisbee and he carries the muddy chawed up thing around the house like Linus' blanket. Of course his goal is to have me throw it for eternity, and the neighbors might be getting ticked to hear the frisbee hitting the empty house across the street at 10pm. Then there's the drums.

I can do an extended solo for about 6 minutes now, and yesterday, as I was wrapping up, I heard something that sounded like something hitting the side of the house hard. I didn't dare go investigate. I always imagine my neighbors thinking "wow, listen to that fine young man get down on those skins--he sure is improving." But then I think about it. If I've come home from a long day at work would I want unmeasured jungle-rhythms pounding out from the neighbors upstairs window greeting me? Hmmmm, knowing my history for annoyance, I really doubt it.

I once lived in a duplex. The guy who lived next to us was pretty cool, but he would come home from work and crank REO Speedwagon from his stereo for two to three hours. Banging on the walls was futile. We even had a chat with him. It all went congenially, but to no avail, the next day 70s shlock rock was making the plaster chip again.

The only access to the basement was through our side of the house, and we realized at some point that we had the advantage--the fuse box was in the basement.

One day, when we just couldn't take it anymore, I went down to the basement and pulled the main to his apartment. All we could hear after that was the guy stomping around. I let it go for about a minute, expecting a loud knock at the door. Nothing came. After a while I tripped the breaker and we heard that noise (this was in the eighties) of a turntable starting back up, and Speedwagon churning its way from 0 rpms to 33 1/2. They weren't so speedy then. The volume came down and stayed down.

I don't know why I wrote that, I just wanted to post something today I guess, plus I like the story.

Here is a new review for the college paper.

Booker Catches a Frisbee

2007-09-30T07:16:00.001-07:00

Get Thee Behind Me, GRE

2007-09-20T11:02:00.000-07:00

I think this cartoon gets to the the spirit of the GRE really well.

I know, shut up and keep studying.

Random Randomness

2007-09-18T13:54:00.000-07:00

I think I've realized that when I am under a certain amount of stress I tend to revert to my childhood. I just noticed that the caption for the photos for the last post were written in sort of a show-and-tell way, and then, at some point, I put up Youtube videos of Bugs Bunny. I'm not sitting here eating a bowl of Sugar Smacks, but I feel like that might complete the package. Bugs Bunny was a large part of my childhood and I suppose one of my early heroes. He's really a wiseguy of the thirties mob mentality, and he actually takes on the mob in one episode. I can't remember what the name of the episode is, but it has the famous line from the mob boss who Bugs is tormenting, "shut up, shuttin' up." So maybe I turn to bugs for guidance, although I'm not ready to dress in drag to fool any crazed rabbit hunter just yet.

Do people do shout-outs anymore? I wonder if the term has been retired, like "Def," or "not." Well, if it hasn't, I would like to do a shout-out to Froshty, who helped me through my half-imagined editorial crises the other day. I have to remember that I'm not exactly in this alone, and that most of the people I know these days are published in some form or another. Froshty's help, and other war-stories from great people out there, have helped me get over my molehill/mountain syndrome and put me on course for the next crises in confidence.

By the way, read Froshty's blog. This is the person who taught us that the infuriating things in life are there to be laughed at and reviled (well, she and our father). No one does a better job at critiquing what technology has done to the English language, and this is coming from someone who uses this tech-language for her bread and butter. She can also tell a damn funny story.

So that's all I have for now, a brief post today. The week has gotten off to a decent start, and my next review should be out on Friday, hopefully gross-error free. I should be studying for the GRE between now and six o'clock class, but what the hell, I've got plenty of time--right? I will say this, I'm taking less credits this term than any other, but for some reason my book bag is always heavier than a bag of rocks you see on those documentaries about the gulags. I'm seriously afraid that I'm going to take somebody out one day by mistake. I was in a narrow corridor today with someone coming toward me and I had to lift the bag up over a rail which took an amazing amount of effort and threw me off balance. I caught myself just as I was about to knock someone behind me over. My right arm is starting to look like Popeye's on spinach while my left still looks like Little Orphan Annie's. End, semester, end.

And speaking of reverting to childhood, this weekend the whole family is getting together for my brother-in-law's ordination. Wish us luck.

Here is the new review with the correct name of the restaurant.

Brothers

2007-09-10T09:40:00.000-07:00

I don't know how I was led back to The Brothers Karamazov but I have found myself once again absorbed in Dostoevsky's last novel. I am reading Richard Pevear and Larrissa Volokhonski's translation whose first printing was in 1990. Pevear and Volokhonski are coming out with a new translation of War and Peace on October 16th, and if their translation brings Tolstoy alive like the Dostoevsky, I might have to reserve three months so I can devote all of my time to it. I suffer from ESRS (extremely slow reader syndrome).

I read The Brothers Karamazov many years ago from the translation by Constance Garnett, who was, until recently, arguably the gold standard in translation of both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. How I wish I could read them in the original Russian, but possibly in another lifetime. I remember very little of the novel, vaguely recalling that there was a murder in a family of three sons. One part I remember, and this was why I was apprehensive about a re-read, was the long theological debates that take place in the monastery at the beginning of the novel. Reading this reminded me of wading through thick mud, but, at the time, I was patient enough to anticipate eventual plot development--possibly on page 456 or somewhere. Now that I'm a hundred pages into the re-read, the discussions don't seem that painful, possibly because I participate in/endure such discussions at the LLAC (little liberal arts college).

Mainly the argument is about the relationship between church and state. I won't go into the main theses surrounding the discussion, but there is a definite undertone of prevailing socialism being tauted by certain members in the debate. Now I see now how important this is to the introduction of the main characters in the novel, and, although it is still tough going at times, the discourse doesn't seem as long as I remember. I actually understand a great deal of it.

I'm also enjoying the development of the rogue father Fyodor Pavlovich, who is cringe-provokingly socially inept. Like an episode of Murder She Wrote, you get the idea that this guy is just begging for it. Also at stake are women and money, so there just has to be a grisly resolution at some point, and the tension is building toward a frantic, emotional, Russian climax.

Could it be the translation that makes this reading more compelling? I've got a copy of the Garnett translation here as well (sometimes I love working in a library) and I want to do a quick comparison to see how the language differs. At times the wording is identical, with the word "countenance" being replaced by "looks", but it seems that Pevear and Volokhonsky add depth to Dostoevsky's expressions. Here is a brief comparison of the same two sentences.
Garnett:

Even when he was excited and talking
irritably, his eyes did not follow
his mood, but betrayed something else,
sometimes quite incongruous with
what was passing.

Pevear and Volokhonsky:

Even when he was excited and talking irritably, his look, as it were, did
not obey his inner mood but expressed something else, sometimes not at all
corresponding to the present moment.
(sorry I can't go back from block quote mode, but F****** blogspot is being stubbornly inept today)
I love the use of commas in Dostoevsky. The placement of the words and the details contained in the clauses feed a rich image to me as a reader. The commas also do something for the pacing, which forces me to slow down, and take in the words individually, something I rarely do when reading any work. At this rate, how will I ever finish the book? It doesn't matter, this work has allowed me to find my groove in the right lane going five miles under the speed-limit and enjoying every bush and vista along the way.

I believe The Brothers Karmazov has a reputation as a difficult read. It may be so, but you've got to love a novel whose chapter titles bear declarations like this: "Why Is Such A Man Alive!", "One More Ruined Reputation," "Strain in the Drawing Room," "Strain in the Cottage," and "The Old Buffoon." All of the language in this novel is provocative and active, and if fiction is meant to be transformative, Dostoevsky is a master at taking this reader out of this world and into his.
Last night, at around 2am Booker woke me wanting to go out. I laid back down but I couldn't sleep. I had gone to bed early and now, in the middle of the night, I was wide awake. I puttered around the house a bit, checking to see if anyone from Indonesia was viewing my blog (they weren't) but finally I picked up The Brothers Karamazov and started reading. The inability to sleep is usually defined by too many things swirling around in my brain. Reading in this state rarely changes anything, except that I have a book in my hand that I can't concentrate on because of the Rolodex of anxieties flipping through my conscious. Last night reading worked, and Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, for all his faults, can be solely responsible for getting me out of myself and into his buffoonery, allowing the Rolodex to stop and sleep to overcome me. I woke up thanking Dostoevsky.
Extra: Here is a link to the article I wrote for the school paper. I'm doing restaurant reviews.

For Your Next Dinner Party...

2007-09-05T09:28:00.000-07:00

Warning: This post is about really gross food, so if you don't have a strong stomach, you may want to skip it.

Casu Marzu (a.k.a. maggot cheese), Sardinia, Italy

I’ve heard about this cheese twice in the past couple of weeks, once on NPR when they were interviewing a scientist in search of the world’s weirdest food, and again on a “disgusting things that people eat” TV show. Seeing the cheese in its maggot popping glory turned my stomach but strangely led me to the internet to gather more information.

Instead of regular cheese, which goes through a fermentation process for flavor, Casu Marzu is more a product of decomposition. The cheese goes through this process by the use of cheese fly larvae that eat the cheese and then secret the waste, making the cheese “softer and more flavorful.”

One of the hazards of eating Casu Marzu is the larvae, which can jump up to 15cm when disturbed. Consumers may be disturbed by the fact that their cheese is jumping and making a crackling sound. Often, connoisseurs refrigerate the cheese for hours before consumption so the larvae can become placid and less, well, jumpy.

There is another danger with eating the cheese. Human stomach acids cannot kill the larvae, so often the larvae remain in the digestive-tract, boring into the walls and causing intestinal lesions. It is no wonder that its home region of Sardinia banned it. Still the allure and rarity of the cheese has food-adventurers searching for black market varieties.

Kopi Luwak: The most expensive coffee in the world. Indonesia

Kopi means coffee in Indonesian. Luwak means civet, which is a small weasel-like creature. The reason this coffee bears the name of an Asian ferret is that the mammal is an important part of the manufacturing process. The animal eats the raw coffee beans, but only the soft outer part. According to one source, the digestive “juices” of the civet provide the coffee with a “unique” flavor. The process removes bitterness.

Kopi Luwak is rare, costing up to $600 a pound and $50 a cup. The quantities are much smaller than a regular cup of coffee and are served more like espresso. Looking to buy some of this? Talk to the Japanese, apparently they have cornered the market.

Taste testing conducted at Bramah Museum of Tea and Coffee in London elicited smiles and compliments from one taster, until she found out how the coffee was made. She reportedly made a hurried exit. Others called the flavor “chocolaty with undertones of molasses and tobacco.”

Postscript: I found a photo of Kopi Luwak in its raw form, but it looked so disgusting that I spared any unfortunate web-surfers from it.

Addendum: I've got to hand it to the civet and the cheese-fly larvae, they really have us humans eating shit.

Patio Update

2007-09-03T16:16:00.000-07:00

Okay, so here's what's going on with the patio. I'm still not sure of that word--patio. I'll just start calling it the backyard project.

This is the excavation-site as it stands today. Dug-out, and stones in production. It is taking a long time. Mixing 80lb bags of concrete by hand is a workout. But this is the way I want it done so it'll just have to be that way--apologies for all the contractions.

Now this is the tree in question. It is a maple that dominates this expanse of turf and it's a mean-spirited bastard. But we have maintained a truce for a spell, and the worst part is over, the war of the roots. To me, after all the root-canal work I did on it, it looks like it stands up a little straighter.

These are the slate slabs that were down before the project started. I washed some off to see if I could use them as part of the scheme but they looked butt-ugly down in the dirt. I want to use them because they are awesome, and I'm thinking of a walkway around the right side of my house.

This is the last root I dug out. I was expecting to work on leveling that day, but I discovered this instead. It took me half-an-hour to extract it, and when I was working my neighbor came by and wondered what I was doing. I must have looked like a Scottish blackguard in the indigenous rain forest as I explained the project. She asks about it now, which is good, the more people who ask, the more I'll keep going, because of my fear of public shame. So, keep asking about the multi-month backyard project.

Oh, and speaking of roots, here is the extent of them.

This is what one of the paving stones look like.

This wheel-barrow is pissed at me. I mix the concrete in here and it's about to fall over. I need to tighten its bolts and get it fit again. It works well.

And of course, what would a piece about outdoor activity be without this guy. He is wondering what is happening to his puppyhood.

Flight Night

2007-09-02T06:42:00.000-07:00

I try not to repeat on my Youtube sidebar feature, but tonight is the finale of the HBO series Flight of the Conchords so I'm going to feature them again for a few days. I love the band and the videos, but the show also does a great job with supporting characters such as Mel, Murry and Dave. I also hope that the semi-professional actor, Ben, shows up again next season. I'm assuming there will be a next season.

Sidenote:
I'm obsessed with this song by The New Pornographers
All the Old Showstoppers

Pete and Ian--New Uploads

2007-09-01T16:51:00.000-07:00

Pete, my guitar playing compatriot, has moved to New Zealand. Here are two tracks we recorded last spring.

I Shall be Released

Big River

These are both cover-songs, so i hope BMI doesn't freeze my assets.

Great Rooms, Dogs and Books

2007-09-01T10:40:00.000-07:00

There is a term that gets used more and more, and it is starting to grate on my nerves a little. People, in these strange days of modern housing, love to refer to their "great rooms." For some reason this term seems unbelievably pretentious to me. What used to be called a living room or a den is now called something that hearkens back to the middle-ages. To me this adds to the general feeling that Americans want to view themselves as modern day nobility. A great room?C'mon. Why don't you just call it a big space where the contractor could save money by not having to build any expensive extra walls. I often hear things like this, "yes, we just had to buy the house because of the 450 square foot great room." What are you planning to do, host a renaissance fair? Fly radio controlled airplanes in it? Set up a beach volleyball court? It always amazes me when I enter someones great room and find it sparsely furnished and soulless. I had a friend, a really good friend by the way but one who believed in the power of material worth. His great room contained three items besides the built-in fireplace, or should I say hearth. One was a practice putting green, another a sofa, and the center-piece was a life-sized cut-out of Michael Jordon. The room had no depth at all even though it was very big. In contrast, the bedrooms of this house were tiny, smaller than my smallest guest room.

This came about I believe with the emergence of subdivision housing and later with the McMansion industry. When I was a kid, if we didn't have a number of rooms to escape to when annoying siblings or mothers with a to-do list were threatening our piece of mind, we would have killed each other. Don't get me wrong, clutter and darkness makes me uncomfortable as well, and one things these rooms usually have going for them is abundance of light. It's just the use of the term great room that causes me the most problems. If you tell me you have a great room, when I visit, you better greet me sitting on a throne with court jesters and damsels strewn about. If not, I'll just go back to my house with its damaged porch, its half-finished patio, and its very serviceable mead-hall.

By the way, here is a shot of my "pretty-good room."

I also want to add this. Four years ago I had just left my job of eleven years and was seriously floundering, wondering what I was going to do next. Two great things happened during this time. I was given my dog Booker as a present from my parents, and I read one of my favorite books of all time Life of Pi. These two events would have significance for a number of reasons, and funnily enough both the book and the dog are located in reaching distance as I write this. For those of you who have had puppys you know what the first year can be like with chewing and other fun side-effects of unmitigated cuteness. Well, when Booker was small, nothing was off limits for chewing, and things with my smell on it were particularly popular targets. Shoes, telephones, remote controls, couches, chairs, and practically anything else I had touched were usually found mauled on the back-porch.

So I came home one day during the time when I was reading Life of Pi and found this:

I've kept this copy and view it fondly now, but at the time I was pretty pissed. Now I see it as a souvenir of a different time in my life, one that I've worked hard to steer away from. Both Booker and the book are representative of a time when I caught my breath, gained a loyal companion, and rediscovered the power of good fiction.

The Conference

2007-08-29T16:22:00.000-07:00

I don’t know why, I just have to post this.

I was twenty when this happened.

Way back in the distant eighties I was in Africa. I was living in a place called Umtata, an outpost capital of a South African homeland known as Transkei. Transkei is where the Apartheid system of the National Party sequestered the members of the Xhosa people in a semi-arid overly-farmed corner of southern Africa. People were poor. I was a volunteer at a school run by the South African Catholic Archdiocese that gave poor disabled children an opportunity for an education. I taught English, music, and art, but more importantly, I drove the van.

The regular school driver was unreliable. No stones shall be cast in this glass house, but let us just say that at eight in the morning he wasn’t at the top of his form, more like he was at the bottom of a bottle. I was awakened more than once to find someone knocking at my door before daybreak claiming that I needed to get my things right away because I would be driving to East London that day. Driver was drunk again. He had a name, but we all knew him as Driver.

I took many trips south to East London where a relatively modern prosthetic clinic was located. Many times I was fortunate to go north, to Durban, but this was usually for more administrative purposes. Often I would be carrying an assortment of passengers: students, nuns, adults with disabilities, and occasionally a low-ranking government official. It was on just such a journey to Durban where this story takes place.

The school charged me with taking two of their most prominent nuns to an ecclesiastical conference of Christian religions from all over South Africa. I want to speculate that this was an ecumenical meeting, but I doubt it is that easily defined. The conference was three days, and at the reception I witnessed a different, more multi-cultural Africa, but one with more trappings than I felt comfortable experiencing. I remember spending hours in the guest room of the conference-center reading Donald Morris’ The Washing of the Spears.

On the first night was a reception, followed by a dinner at the host minister’s house. It seems that only a few of us were invited to the dinner, because the number of participants declined noticeably by the time we entered the man’s main parlor. An African served some sort of preliminary drinks and hors d’oeuvres, and I began talking to the minister’s wife. I’m not sure of the denomination of this particular man-of-the-cloth, but I will just claim him as Anglican which is broad enough for me not to feel as if I’m offending anyone.

The wife succeeded in making me feel quite comfortable in this unfamiliar environment. She did what always eases my apprehension, she asked me about myself. Her questions were polite and she listened with an attentive ear. As the minister invited us over to the dining-room table, we continued our conversation.

The minister’s wife sat opposite me. The preliminaries of the meal required a few prayers from each representative of faith, and as the final prayer was being amen-ed, I felt a prodding on my lower leg. It was a gentle brush at first, and I ignored it as something unexplainable but insignificant. I followed the polite conversation and spoke when spoken to, but, in a moment, I found that the prodding had come back. I couldn’t quite verify it, but there was a general feeling that someone was rubbing my leg with their foot.

I looked to my left and realized that the gigantic and forbidding nun who I had driven to the conference was the least likely candidate to be rubbing my leg with her foot. On my right was a man, and though it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, I scratched him off the list. Only one person was left—the minister's wife.

I took a quick glance at her. She was listening attentively to the conversation, but there was no mistaking it, she contained a coy twinkle in her eye. I could tell that she wasn’t listening fully, that it was just a ruse and that her attention was on my ankle and my ankle only. A crises of faith swept over me. A married woman? And a ministers wife at that? No way was I going to take that double lightening bolt. But then again, I was twenty-years-old.

The dinner continued and the rubbing of my leg persisted. At one point, when I was required to give my much practiced speech about my plans for the future, the rubbing got more intense and I could barely concentrate on the part about how I planned to become a journalist and everything. I wondered what would happen now. How was I to handle this? This was way beyond my area of expertise, hell, at that age, everything was way beyond my area of expertise.

When the meal ended and we stood up I was in severe crises. I did not know how to comprehend the situation, much less react to it. I did what I always seem to do given mental stress, I waited.

As we bowed our heads for the final prayer—there was so much praying going on at this conference—I quickly looked up at the minister’s wife and she made brief, reassuring eye-contact. I must have shown my confusion, but at the same time I may have decided just to follow her lead. As the minister launched into a lengthy prayer thanking the host for the divine gift of fellowship and nourishment, I happened to open my eyes and look at the place where the table cloth met the floor. From beneath the table appeared a cat. It started rubbing up against my leg.

Fun with Cut and Paste

2007-08-27T16:50:00.000-07:00

It seems that books are a recurring theme on the blogs I visit, so in the spirit of recent postings of personal bookcases and favorite bookstores, here is my office bookcase in all its chaotic glory.

Now that I have the capability to post photos, this blog is going to be overloaded with arbitrary stuff that is my material fish tank. Check out this picture of my dog, Booker.

Okay, this is too fun, what else can we post? Hmmm, I know.

Okay, I didn't take this picture,and I've used it before, but I think the maxim "a picture speaks a thousand words" is very relevant in this case.

I call this one" "GRE Hell."

Stay tuned for more engrossing photos.

Note: Tried to get a movie of Booker catching a Frisbee to upload but it took almost two hours for a ten second spot. Seems my laptop and blogspot were having some issues. I'm going to keep working on it though.

Taking a Break

2007-08-22T15:29:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a break from blogging for several days because this week has shown me how busy the semester is going to be. I have taken on a lot, and I need some time to get things in place before I can commit to a good post. I hope to be back early next week when the dust settles.

Patio update: Hand made paving stones have gone into production. Hard work, but they look fantastic.

Booker update: Booker got two new frisbies on Sunday, and he has been walking on a cloud ever since. I'm teaching him to play goalie.

School? One regular tough class, one two credit I.S. that will require a great deal of self-starting, and the math--which the jury is still out on.

Work: New position in the library in the special collections.

Personal: Don't ask, not too bad, but don't ask.

GW Bush? @#$!@#%$# ^%$#@ %$!@#$ %^$##@

Back Soon.

Okay, I'm Going to Stop Doing These Quizes Now

2007-08-20T14:10:00.000-07:00

I got this from Archie.

You're The Grapes of Wrath!

by John Steinbeck

You're mired in a deep depression that encompasses you and everyone you know. You're trying to get out of the depression, but your idea of help is, in itself, pretty sad. While some are convinced that this all has a deeper meaning, you're really just dull and tedious. And utterly obsessed with dust. You really need to focus on something other than dust. Your best moments center around turtles.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Reading Meme

2007-08-20T11:54:00.000-07:00

School has started once again, and I'm all set for my last semester. Wish me luck. It took me twenty years but I'm on the back stretch now. {Please don't let this come back to haunt me later as one of those things I did to tempt fate, and actually I find out that I'll never be able to graduate because I didn't learn how to add fractions in third grade}.

I got this meme from the indefatigable Emily. It was welcome because I was having trouble coming up with a topic, as nothing really embarrassing has happened to me in the past week. (More tempting fate).

What are you reading right now?
Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy: Dmitri Volkoganov
Being There: Jerzy Kozinski
The Fortune of War: Patrick O’Brian
In the Garden of the North American Martyrs: Tobias Wolff
The Master and Margarita: Mikhail Bulgakov

Do you have any idea what you’ll read when you’re done with that?
Hmmm, that list might be too long to name. I have a big stack of European history books that my dad gave me sitting between the dining room and the living room. They all look tempting. I also have the seventh in the Aubrey/Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian which is a probability. I want to check out the new translation of War and Peace when it comes out in October. Steinbeck always beckons as well. Knowing me, it will be totally random. I started reading Being There because I was practicing drums (a friend left a drum set in my house) and I saw the book sticking out of the bookcase. I’m glad I did. I love it!

What magazines do you have in your bathroom right now?
People and The New Yorker

What’s the worst thing you were ever forced to read?
Sons and Lovers in high school senior English class. I found this to be incredibly depressing and I barely even read enough to take the exam. I want to give it another try, but maybe I should trust my seventeen-year-old-self and leave it alone. Tess of the D’Urbervilles comes in a close second.

What’s the one book you always recommend to just about everyone?
Surprise, surprise Old School by Tobias Wolff. I could go into why I like this book so much, but the main reason is because I identified with the main character so much. Read it everyone.

Admit it, the librarians at your library know you on a first name basis, don’t they?
Yep, and what’s worse, I’m one of them. I work part time in the library and people ‘round here know me. But…..librarians are shedding their conservative persona. Your modern librarian is no longer the horned-rimmed, hair-in-a-bun type who says “shhhhhh” all the time. We are making reading sexy again. The hormones in this place are practically palpable and you should check out miss ------- in circulation. I told a young woman the other day that I was a librarian and she practically ripped my clothes off, it’s true! Actually, she did say, “that’s kinda hot.” So get ready for the 21st century library geek, the new pop star of the future.

Is there a book you absolutely love, but for some reason, people never think it sounds interesting, or maybe they read it and don’t like it at all?
I reluctantly recommended I am Charlotte Simmons to a couple of people, suspecting that this book would upset, disgust, or just plain bore them. I was right in most cases. I’ve never decided if I liked the book even, but I know it is on my “books that made an impact” list.

Do you read books while you eat? While you bathe? While you watch movies or TV? While you listen to music? While you’re on the computer? While you’re having sex? While you’re driving?
While I bathe: I have, but its awkward to keep your hands dry while you’re in the shower. While I watch movies or TV: Not with movies, but I read during the commercials on TV by muting the sound. Listening to music: I can do it with classical, but if there are any vocals I can’t do it. I even find it hard with Jazz instrumentals. On the computer: only when I’m writing a paper and I haven’t read the text, in other words, when I’m behind. While I’m having sex: No, but I can tell you, reading The Brothers Karamazov one time right after sex caused one of the first pouty arguments I’d ever had with a girlfriend. Imagine, someone being jealous of Dostoevsky. Now, watching TV and sex, that’s another subject, especially during playoffs. While I’m driving: only directions, maps, syllabi's, assignment sheets, schedules, rough drafts, CD cases, the back of video game boxes, but never, never fiction. What is more dangerous than me reading a draft on the way to class is shuffling around to find the draft on the floor of my truck while doing 70!

When you were little, did other children tease you about your reading habits?
Yea, probably. I would always bring really morbid books to school that would show soldiers with their arms shot off, or novels about cows that have gone berserk and have started to eat people. This would get me off the hook somewhat because the kids liked that stuff--well most of them. Also, when I was playing with neighborhood kids, I would excuse myself early to partake in my favorite pastime, eating Marathon bars and reading comic books.

What’s the last thing you stayed up half the night reading because it was so good you couldn’t put it down?
Patrick O’Brian. This isn’t necessarily true, because I fell asleep way before half the night came along, but I would have finished the book if I could have stayed awake. He just leads you from one fascinating situation to the next, and, for me, totally captures every piece of my imagination. I would have read Being There in one sitting last night, but (knock on wood) insomnia is not one of my troubles right now.

I'm Demotic

2007-08-15T06:14:00.000-07:00

Apparently I'm some sort of crazy offshoot of hieroglyphics--and one letter away from being demonic! Yow.

Your Score: Demotic

You scored

You are Demotic, the degenerate wild child of Hieroglyphics. At least, that's what Hieroglyphics used to say. Quicker, nimbler but a definite trouble-maker in the family.

Link: The Which Ancient Language Are You Test written by on OkCupid, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Portrait of an Artist as a Seven-Year-Old

2007-08-14T07:38:00.001-07:00

Lindsay gave me permission ( I think she did..didn't you Lindsay? oh well, I'm going to anyway) to post some of her earliest artwork. I think she was around seven when she wrote this book of poems for my grandmother. It shows how already she had a way with imagery and poetics. Especially the one about the squirrel. ;)

The Jam that Went
Once ‘twas a girl named Ann
Who loved to fry chicken in a pan
She was tempted to get in the jam
While frying a leg of lamb
Ann was naughty and ate
All the jam that was on the plate
Ann’s mother came home and found
Where all the jam was bound
Ann got quite a spank
And lost all the money in her bank
For paying for all that jam
And the very, very burnt lamb
Ann got very sick
For all the jam she did lick
And now she’s got a pain
Of never eating jam again

Look at the size of that jam jar! I happen to think that this is autobiographical.

Feet
Feet,
Walking stalking, running
Tired, energetic
feet

People
People
Tall, small
Talking, sleeping, eating
Unhappy, glad
People

Early attempts at anatomy and portraiture. Love the guy in the bottom left corner.

Good or Bad?
Am I good?
Or am I bad?
I’ll have to stop and think
I’m sometimes good, I’m sometimes bad
Oh bother! Let’s have a drink

Upside Down
I’m standing upside down
It’s fun, fun, fun!
I’m acting like a clown
It’s fun, fun, fun!

"Good or Bad?" was my grandmother's favorite. I think it was the part about having a drink that she liked.

Squirrel
Squirrel, Squirrel, squirrel
Why do you twirl and twirl?
You twirl all day
And never play
Oh why do you twirl and twirl?

Knocking
Knock, knock, knock,knock
Who is knocking at my door?
Pitter patter, pitter patter
I walk across the floor
Creak, creak, creak, creak
I slowly open my door
Who’s there? Who’s there?
Only my uncle Ned
Pitter patter, pitter patter
Slowly back to bed

Uncle Ned sounds kind of creepy to me.

The Fight
A fight
I think it was last night
One boy hit the other
The other insulted his brother
Finally they were pulled apart very scratched and mad at heart
But soon they made friends again
And they forgot about all their pain

I'm glad this one has a happy ending. They look a little like they're dancing, not fighting.

Good-by
So long! Farewell! Good-by!
Ireally must be going!
Oh really time does fly
But our friendship is still glowing!
Good-by!

Sorry if this is embarrassing Lindsay, but you know its a younger brother's job to embarrass his sisters.

Premature

2007-08-10T07:37:00.000-07:00

A bit more self-degradation before I turn to humor again. Because the world of blogging is so compelling and thought-provoking, I have found myself hastily typing comments on blogs ranging from accordion aficionados to learned dons. I have one fault which is about to drive me to distraction unless I am able to fix it. I am premature (not in that way, well…that’s a subject for another post) but I mean I jump-the-gun-half-cocked to mix metaphors and euphemisms simultaneously. Today I posted a comment on the always insightful loosebaggymonster thanking her for recommending Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. Only I didn’t write The Master and Margarita, I wrote The Master and the Margarita. Small mistake maybe, but to me it seems that a simple three letter word changes the meaning from a central character in the novel, to a refreshing umbrella-drink containing tequila and salt. Did I expect the novel to be about how the oppressed Russians were saved by a pitcher of Margaritas? Maybe that’s what I was hoping, deep down. Hey, it’s helped me before.

I’m starting to remind myself of the character Horshack from the 70’s sitcom Welcome Back Kotter. The clueless inner-city high school student would raise his hand at the most inappropriate moment and gesture frantically while making a sound akin to a gorilla luring a mate—“ooh, ooh, ohh”—or something like that. The ever patient Mister Kotter (the teacher) would call on Horshack eventually and Horshack would blurt out some inanity. Mister Kotter was usually able to turn it into a gentle joke or use it to strengthen the point he was making. This would satiate Horshack and class would resume.

When I read a post I often start formulating my comment while only halfway through. The problem is that many post give me so much to think about, and so much to relate to, that I don’t stick around for the main point of the post. This is something I’ve learned to check myself on when I’m doing something for school, but when I’m rushing to read blogs before having to get started on daily tasks sometimes I become careless. If I could only take a moment and consider the whole post, I might not have to spend half-an-hour writing long disclaimers such as this.

Last night the Democratic candidates held the first televised debate regarding gay rights in American history. The debate was held on the Logo channel, a gay and lesbian cable network. Most of the candidates bonded well with the two-hundred plus audience members. The only gaff came from Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who didn’t seem to grasp the offensiveness of the idea of homosexuality being a “choice” for gay and lesbians and therefore one that can be “corrected.” He wore his confusion markedly on his sleeve, and today his campaign headquarters issued a statement explaining his position more clearly.

I identify with Richardson, not for his views on gays and lesbians—whatever they might be—but for not being informed enough to make a stand one way or the other. This lack of preparedness is what I intend to work on, to correct, as well as general carelessness that has plagued me since kindergarten.

I had every intention of finding out a bit more about Bulgakov this morning, but instead I went to loosebaggymonster to tell her the news that I had started her recommendation. My haste led me to make Bulgakov’s book about a cocktail instead of a woman. It was only afterwards, when wikipedia of all things set me straight, that I realized that the novel was not about a frosty tequila, triple sec, and lime drink. Oh well, it's still a very good book.

Catchup

2007-08-07T17:08:00.000-07:00

So I'm going to take a few moments to look at the laundry list I made at the beginning of the summer and see if I got anything accomplished. We still have another month-and-a-half of summer (a fact made very apparent by the sweltering heat-wave the south is experiencing) so there is still time, but a couple of things just have to be put on the back-burner, as I didn't know how involved this studying for the GRE business would be. I can live with the fact that some things don't always come to fruition, and these are things that I may have time to do later in life.

The Shakespeare Challenge: Just can't get it off the ground. I gave myself a break and decided, because someone suggested that Shakespeare is best experienced by watching a good production, that I could watch film versions of his plays. I got halfway through The Royal Shakespeare Company's 70's version of Macbeth for the BBC, but I haven't come back to it--which is too telling. I didn't like it as much as I tried to tell myself I did. Shakespeare will ( hark,is that a pun, me thinks 'tis) have to wait.

The Patio: I haven't stopped this project, I've just put it on hold. The area is dug out and ready to be leveled and paved, I even have the method of paving picked out. But lately I have been experiencing lower-back pain which is either a result of, or aggravated by, the war of the roots. I desperately want to return to this project for many reasons. One is that Booker is transferring much of the dug-up dirt onto the living room carpet. Another is that my across-the-street neighbors just moved out, and as a parting gift they left a gigantic pile of accumulated junk in their yard to view when I sit on my front-porch. Having a secluded space to enjoy the outdoors in the back-yard is what I'm dreaming of. This one is still simmering on the back corner of the stove.

Reading something by Jane Austen. I'm going to paraphrase a rejection notice I got from The New Yorker once: "despite its evident merit, this just isn't for us." I found the prose of North Anger Abbey compelling, sophisticated, and transcendent, too bad there wasn't anything in it to which I could relate. Hard to admit about my mother's favorite author.

The woman writer's challenge. Another one that is on hold, but this is a little distressing because I have only one more book to go before completing it. For some reason, for the last three years, I have picked up a great big involved history related tome when the dog-days of summer hit. Because this year I have allowed myself to follow any reading whim that came around, I was led to Dmitri Volkogorov's biography of Stalin. It is dominating my realm in such a dictatorial way that reading another book at the same time doesn't seem possible. But if I stay on the history kick I might return to the old stand-by, Barbara Tuchman, and re-read The Proud Tower to complete the challenge.

Writing decent songs. Summer just isn't a good time to write songs. Neither is winter. Muses arrive on a crisp fall day or a sparkling day in spring. I'm going through a break-up right now, and I was presumptuous enough one Sunday morning to think I could write a song about it. I couldn't, but I went through with it anyway. The song is the worst song I've ever written. This is not self-flagellation folks, it is really bad (think emo meets Styx, but not even that good). I've done some lousy stuff before, but this is the pinnacle. Although it might just be something I had to go through.

So, whew, I needed to give myself those passes on a couple of things. I've made obligations to certain people recently that won't be so easy to go back on, but I'm okay with breaking some promises to myself, as long as the major goals, or the goal making, is still around. Still, that Shakespeare thing is needling me...never read Hamlet....never read Hamlet.

A Funny Post From Forsyth

2007-08-05T15:30:00.000-07:00

Ever wonder where Emily (my sister) and I got our sense of humor? It may have started here, with our oldest sister Forsyth.Check out this post that will make you double over.

Vive la Ratatouille (did I mangle that?)

2007-08-02T08:57:00.000-07:00

Ratatouille
Director: Brad Bird
Patton Oswald as the voice of Remy
Peter O'Toole as the voice of Anton Ego
Disney/Pixar 2007

I went to see Ratatouille yesterday. I was putting off this post because I knew it would be hard for me to spell Ratatouille correctly for an entire post. But here we go (it’s r a t a t o u i, double l, e.)

Anthony Bourdain claims that this is the best movie about food ever made. I don’t agree, (that honor goes to Tampopo, Babette’s Feast finishing a close second, oh, and then there’s Big Night) but it is still very, very good. I suspect that Bourdain’s claim stems from the fact that he consulted on the film in its development stage. Boudain is a master of self-promotion and anything with his name on it has to be the best, that’s why the Travel Channel sends him all over the world to partake in the local moonshine and calf-testicles of places like Hinjut and Sjorndaggherland.

Ratatouille is a triumph on many levels. To bring the world of a restaurant kitchen to life with computer animation in a way that impresses real chefs (a persistently critical and easily distracted bunch) is equal to creating a menu that Gordon Ramsay would fawn over. The Pixar animators construct a kitchen atmosphere with scarily accurate details. The light and space of the often confining and crowded environment is oddly believable given the medium, and anyone who is curious about the workings of a classical French kitchen could do worse than going to see this film. We have to remember that it is a cartoon, a cartoon where a rat controls the motions a hapless chef by pulling on his hair as if he is controlling a marionette, but beyond the fantasy, and exaggerations, this film gets so much about a working kitchen right.

Actually, the fairy tale aspect also works remarkably well. This is Disney’s primary domain, and they fashion a story that distils the most basic Cinderella concepts into an intricate and convincing plot line. Rats, the absolute pariah of the restaurant business (forget about cockroaches, they don’t even come close) are the heroes of the film, and a scene where hundreds of rats are working a busy dinner service is perversely fascinating. The idea that Disney and Pixar can make a hero out of the antithesis of kitchen sanitation proves that the modern fairy tale has either been fully resuscitated or was never very far from our rushing, literal world.

Pixar doesn’t just score points for the kitchen scenes; the filmmakers produce an environment that is an apparent tribute to France and the French. Some Francophiles may locate stereotypes in Disney’s portrayal of Parisians, but it has been a while since I’ve seen a film about another country that made me want sell my house and move there immediately. The animators show a sparkling, beautiful Moulin Rouge inspired Paris; the coloring is transcendent, and lush atmospheres, such as a country house or the underground lairs of the rats, confirm that computer animation has come a long way since the days of Pong and Space-Invaders.

The plot, unfortunately, bogs down as the screenwriters try to tie up all of the misunderstandings and falling-outs experienced by the variety of characters. More than a simple boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl story, Ratatouille is more rat-meets-boy, boy-meets- hot chef de commis, rat-meets-imaginary-diceased-chef, rat-loses-boy, or is it boy-loses-rat…well, you see what I mean. Disney, it seems, never waivers in their instruction as to how we should conduct our relationships, but the frenetic make-up speeches at least drive the film and prevent any long periods of stagnation.

There is one point of accuracy that Anthony Bourdain must have missed. Linguini, the talent-less young chef, claims that sweetbreads are veal stomach when in fact they are either the thymus gland or pancreas of any less-than-one-year-old lamb or calf. Never-the-less, Remi, the rat hero, creates an amazing special order using the product, one that looks as if it involves a small poached egg, (possibly a partridge egg?) and a carmelized orange sauce. The people at Pixar had me salivating over a computer produced image of food. They are very good.

There are many reasons to see this film, but the main one is that it is fun. It is ride through a fantasy Paris, and a humorous send-up of chefs and their culture. It is also an example of how the animated feature film, a genre that constantly wants to stay fresh but often falls short, has a shelf-life that, with new treatment (dare I say additives? I dare not.), is far from turning stale.

Thanks to Archie

2007-08-01T08:51:00.000-07:00

I'm stealing shamelessly from Archie again. This was too funny to pass up.

Third Grade

2007-07-31T09:26:00.000-07:00

I’m taking a break today from studying for the GRE for the sole reason that my brain still hurts from yesterday’s attempt to relearn third-grade arithmetic. The GRE prep book stupidly assumes that math-a-phobes like me readily remember how to do simple problems involving long division. I had to go online to an elementary math website to do a refresher that practically involved “how many baby ducks do you get when you take away five baby ducks from ten baby ducks.” My first answer was four baby ducks.

I was literally tearing my hair out (I could tell because when I looked in the mirror my hair was standing straight up) over simple percentages, when in walked T, who calmly looked at the practice drill and said “is this all they want you to know for the GRE? I could do this.” This was not very encouraging. I showed her what I was having trouble with; she took my pencil, and without any hesitation solved four problems in as many seconds. My jaw locked into the gape position. “You did that without even writing anything down,” I said. “Oh, yes, but I am quite good at math, I got a 790 out of 800 on the SAT,” she replied. She doesn’t know this yet, but she is going to be my tutor for the next three months.

I don’t know what turned me off on math. It is probably because I am left-brained, or right-brained, or lame-brained or whatever, but I suspect that it has something to do with my third grade teacher Mrs. Morrison. Every subject I ever had trouble with in school stems from Mrs. Morrison. Mrs. Morrison ruined my life, and if it wasn’t for her I would surely be fixing the terrible mess in our country, sending Alberto Gonzales to Gauntanimo Bay, finishing up impeachment procedures against George W. Bush, inventing an environmentally friendly sustainable source of energy, successfully convincing extremist Muslims that a couch-potato Midwestern bubba is not the Great Satan, and otherwise having an academically secure outlook on life. But, Mrs. Morrison made sure I become a bowl of half-congealed Jell-O every time I try to balance my checkbook or name the capital of Bulgaria.

You see, she was intimidating. When you brought your work up for her to check, she would look at you like Levrenty Beria, cold and unflinching, completely unmoved by the fact that you had done exactly what they told you to do in second-grade, you had “tried your best.” She deemed a large masterpiece I completed depicting an admiral on a very realistic sailboat insufficient because I hadn’t colored in a patch of sky with my blue crayon. It was too daunting an undertaking to tell her that the blank space was a cloud, and that Tommy Donatello had taken the blue crayon and thrown it across the room at Angie Bowman. I felt that Mrs. Morrison had it in for me. This may be where I picked up my persecution complex as well.

Part of the problem was Mrs. Haith. Mrs. Haith was my second-grade teacher and she was everything Mrs. Morrison was not. Fortunately she had met my parents and held my father in high esteem because of his history professor status. Mrs. Haith loved history, she had been involved in the Civil Rights Movement which, at that time, wasn’t such a long time ago. (I believe it is still going on, especially after this Supreme Court debacle, but I am talking about the core years during the fifties and sixties). She was very proud of the fact that she had met John F. Kennedy personally, and brought it up on a regular basis, but with such warmth and affection that JFK soon took on a hero status in the classroom.

The affection Mrs. Haith had for my parents helped me in a way, but may have hurt me in the long run. I became a pet of sorts. I, along with a pigtailed girl name Elizabeth, sat in the front of the class. Mrs. Haith gave us special duties such as leading the class to the lunch room or sharpening pencils. I don’t know why the class saw manual labor as a sign of status, but when Tommy Donatello got his chance at pencil sharpening, he lorded over the task like he had been given the keys to the kingdom (all the pencils came back stubby, broken, and cracked.)

So at the end of the second-grade, Mrs. Haith recommended me for the advanced program for my third-grade year. My parents must have been proud, and my success in the second-grade quelled any misgivings about my academic future—for the time being. I was happy too, and true to a nature that persists to this day, I became cocky, bragging to my fellow second-graders, especially my best friend Barth. Barth didn’t care; he was a good natured kid, free from envy and persistently happy.

I may have had apprehensions about starting the third grade, but I can’t quite remember. All I know for sure is that I didn’t read the hand-out for supplies I needed for that first day. This was not going to be like the second-grade, where the school provided most of the material for you, and I took this all for granted.

Mrs. Morrison’s favorite classroom tool was the overhead projector, and to this day, when a professor uses one, I think of her and feel butterflies. The transparencies were whipped on and whipped off with the precision of a fascist train-station, and it was totally up to the student to copy the problems down before the next transparency came whipping onto the projector. God help you if you fell behind.

Mrs. Morrison started right in on the first day. The projector was warm and ready, and as she started shuffling transparencies I realized that all of the students were busy copying math problems in their notebooks. They had notebooks. Notebooks! I might have had a pencil but a notebook had never crossed my mind. I distinctly remember wanting to crawl back to Mrs. Haith to tell her I’m wasn’t ready for this. I sheepishly asked the kid next to me for a couple of sheets of paper and he glared at me and handed some over. I maintained pariah status from that point on.

The first day summed up the rest of the year. I struggled through, but my grades were abysmal. One day, while waiting for the bus, Barth grabbed my report card out of my hand before I could conceal it and started rolling on the ground laughing. I got him in a head-lock, but let him go because he just still kept on laughing. Luckily, my parents took my side after a time, and, after meeting Mrs. Morrison themselves, came to the conclusion that she was not a good teacher. Now I’m not so sure. I do know that her personality was about as dynamic as a pile of cinder-blocks and she had no talent for motivating her students, but part of the problem might have been me, wanting to believe that school was always going to be like Mrs. Haith’s class. No, Mrs. Morrison did not ruin my life, but she did wake me to the idea that life is tough so I had better be prepared--with a notebook at least.