APOKALIPSIS

This is Apokalipsis

2007-09-04T22:29:00.000-07:00

I will henceforth be blogging at:
www.ThisIsApokalipsis.com

Please update your links and whatnot. The new site isn't fully functional yet, but it is more functional than this page ever was, and has all of my blarchives (that is, blog archives) going back to the day I started my first web log in 2001, so there's a lot to read if you have time to kill and feel like being totally bored and annoyed.

This site served me well, but I've been trying to start a new one for like a year and a half now, so I am glad to be moving on. Please join me!

In progress...

2007-09-03T23:27:00.000-07:00

I've spent some of my labor day weekend working on a new website, which should hopefully be ready to unveil tomorrow night. Regular posting will continue once that's all squared away and everything is shipshape. I hope you will like the new design!

Misc. and Match

2007-08-31T19:41:00.000-07:00

A couple of things related to the last few posts:

1. While looking through my bags (which are still only halfway unpacked) for a computer cable so that I could scan the Bhagavad-Gita the other night I found, wonders of wonders, an old, beat-up POG! A zombie POG even! I really wanted to scan it in so y'all could see it, but I still can't find that doggone computer cable. Then I thought that maybe I could just describe the POG and tell you that I held it up to the computer screen hoping that would be enough. Then I thought that I would have to actually DO that if I was going to write about it, which would look pretty silly. and THEN I realized that yes it would look silly, but I could at least take a picture of it with my webcam!

AMAZING, right? Hardcore!

It says "HORRORS CAPS 2001" on the back, which means it's the best kind of POG: a generic one!

2. Speaking of horror-related things and cap-related things, all the episodes of Monster Bash are now apparently freeware! This is great, because it means I no longer have to ask myself the awkward question of whether or not I would pay $30 dollars for a game that is nearly 15 years old. I hope this means that the original Jazz Jackrabbit is freeware now as well. For whatever reason, I simply have no desire to play video games that were released after I got a driver's license.

3. I was pleased to learn that Yahoo Buzz does not actually have a Wikipedia page yet. This means that no one who knows how to use the Internet actually cares about Yahoo Buzz. Which is good to know, because Yahoo Buzz actually sounds like it should be the name of a caffeinated chocolate drink. Wait, I guess that would actually be YooHoo Buzz. Is that a real thing? I would bet money that it is.

Yahoo Buzz also sounds like what Archie Comics would name a stereotypical punk character who would only appear in one story:
"Hey Archie, who's the new kid on the SKATEBOARD? He NEARLY ran Betty OVER!"
"I heard his name is YAHOO BUZZ! I guess he's from OUT OF TOWN."
"Yeah, and Mr. Weatherby is STEAMED at him already!"

Oh man, the hijinx that would ensue...

(as a side note, I REALLY want to try writing Archie comics now. I wonder if they take unsolicited submissions...

Faeries, Gitas and Bashin'

2007-08-30T22:43:00.000-07:00

If my first creative writing class of the semester left me feeling inspired, my first lit class left me feeling quite numb. It is on epic and romantic literature, which I
guess sounds good on paper, but in practice, it means we will be reading this book:

It is gigantic. It is bigger than the copy of the Bhagavad Gita that I bought for a quarter from a Hare Krishna at the Los Angeles Airport, which itself is a brick of a book. In fact, it looks less like a book and more like big, pulped chunk of TREE. Fortunately no one made me read the Bhagavad Gita, because a lot of it is Hindi. It also includes some illustrated pages, which are pretty scary -- although not quite as scary as that the picture of Queen Elizabeth I on the cover of The Faerie Queen. Sadly, my scanner isn't working right now, and the online gallery I found has slightly different, less glossy and less creepy versions of the pictures. One of my favorite pictures in the book features a chariot driven by horses who are each wearing a symbol of a body part around their neck: an eye, an ear, a nose, etc. There are a couple of dudes in the chariot and they are really freaking out.

The caption reads: "The chariot of the body. The five horses represent the five senses (tongue, eyes, ears, nose and skin). The reins, the driving instrument, symbolize the mind, the driver is the intelligence, and the passenger is the spirit soul."

Neat! It's so much less disturbing when you just put it in words!

Allegories and metaphors are usually easier to depict in writing than they are in art -- which I think is why a lot of religious art is so horrifyingly bad. The Faerie Queene is supposed to be an extended allegory about how great Queen Elizabeth was, and also there's supposedly some metaphorical jazz about how to live a virtuous life. But even if it's a really brilliant metaphor, I feel like I'd rather look at some silly pictures of doves and shining souls than read The Faerie Queene, because not only is The Faerie Queen about a gazillion pages long, it's also a dang poem! And it was written before anyone thought about standardizing the way you spell things, which means it took me a couple of tries to even find the darn thing on Amazon.com, since Edmund Spenser apparently liked his vowels too much to just call it The Fairy Queen. You couldn't get away with that kind of stunt today, no sir!

So by next week I'm supposed to have read hundreds of pages of misspelled poetry that was written 400 years ago, but made to sound like it was written 500 years ago. I would have started this evening, but I still haven't bought the book, and since I've had a couple of late nights in a row (and not by virtue of doing anything exciting), I was probably too tired to read archaic verse tonight. I had a hard enough time staying awake in class. In fact, I may have dozed off to the extent that while my head was leaning on my hand and my eyes were focused somewhere on the air floating over the page we were reading, my mouth may have lolled open and I may have actually drooled on the table. Maybe. I don't think anyone saw if I did or not.

Fortunately, while reading The Faerie Queene may be hard, other things are easy! Like downloading old DOS shareware games and playing them on my Mac! Who knew? I didn't even think this was possible, but within minutes of googling Monster Bash, I had downloaded it, found an emulator and was reliving my childhood.

For a game staring an eight-year-old boy in blue-spotted pajamas, this game was really gory -- everything exploded into bits of flesh when you hit it with your slingshot (even skeletons!). But the best part was that after you killed a zombie, his head would fly off of his body and roll around on the ground trying to attack you until you shot that, also. The plot of the game was that you had to rescue a ton of dogs and cats which had been kidnapped by monsters and scattered around graveyards and haunted houses. It was actually a lot of work and didn't really make a lot of sense, but on the other hand your character could jump 20 feet in the air, never had to sleep or go to the bathroom, and could get sewered five or six times without dying, so it was a pretty decent trade off. I spent hours and hours playing the game as a kid, bashin' monsters and freein' the pets.

It would be very easy to spend hours and hours playing it again, and not reading a single misspelled word of The Faerie Queene. Should we take a vote? How do YOU think I should spend my time, dear readers??

Writers Workshop

2007-08-29T22:14:00.000-07:00

Just got back from my first writing class of the semester. I think it's going to be really good. I don't usually take a lot of notes in class, but tonight I ended up filling up three pages.
I'm excited to start on a new story, which I'm planning to write about the Days of Rage, which was a youth riot in Chicago in the winter of 1969. Check it out:

This picture came from the Days of Rage wikipedia article. It blew my mind. That football helmet! Those sun glasses! College kids riding Greyhound buses cross-country to march in the freezing December winds and fill the Chicago streets with burning trash cans and smashed glass from shop windows ...
If that's not a story, brother, I don't know what is.

...
Also on the creative writing front, there was a question here a while back about whether I'd ever post more of the the pinball stories I was working on. I guess the answer is that you'll see them when I can bear to look at them again without burying my face in my hands. At this point, it isn't looking very likely, but you never know.

xxoo

It is a continent.

2007-08-28T20:15:00.000-07:00

Apparently Miss Teen South Carolina is the new biggest thing on The Internet. I know this thanks to Yahoo Buzz (which ... it sounds like a news from a late '70s sci-fi novel: "Melvin took a sip from his UltraNutri, then turned on the Holo-vision and took in the latest beat from Yahoo Buzz." Pleasingly quaint and kooky, but not exactly cool). I guess she flubbed a question about geography pretty badly, and Yahoo Buzz is reporting the fall out:

"Searches on 'miss teen south carolina' jumped 831%." Goodness! That is a LOT of percent! I thought people were ALREADY searching for "miss teen south carolia" a ton before this, but that is like, so much percent that it would get you kicked out of most math classes! 831%. Wow. I hope Miss Teen North Carolina can keep up.

But that's not all! According to Yahoo Buzz "Her convoluted response also spurred queries on 'miss teen south carolina video,' 'miss teen,' and 'miss teen usa south carolina.'"
This is the kind of hard-hitting news you can report when you are a search engine. I hope Google issues a special report soon about whether "USA" or "Iraq" gets more searches, because I bet that it would be really revealing!

Anyway, in case you happen to not be among the 831% who have seen this video, here it is:

I'm almost afraid to comment on it because I know thousands of bloggers have already beaten me to it, so the chances of me saying anything new are one in roughly 831%, but I will say two things:
First of all, as much as I really enjoy phrases like "the Iraq," and "Everywhere, like such as." (yes, with a period), not to mention "Aimee Teegarden," the poor girl really just looks less like she knows nothing about geography and world issues (I mean, she has at least one basically good idea: MAPS! People need 'em!), and more like she is completely nervous and scared out of her mind.
And I would be, too! After all, as this movie:

(which I saw in the theater) reminds us, behind the scenes of most beauty pageants is someone trying to take of the world or kill a prime minister or ... ok, I don't really remember. But I am sure it is nefarious.

Secondly, and the real reason I wanted to bring up Miss Teen South Carolina 2007, is that I have a story that can one-up her.

THIS IS THAT STORY:

We have student assistants at my office who help us with work that is easy and also boring. Sometimes they are reasonably professional and sometimes they are jaw-droppingly NUTS. One of them is a girl who often visits my desk to use my fax machine (which is the only one in the office). She struck me as a polite, basically competent kid, until one day we were discussing a staff member who started a charity to help kids in Ethiopia (which you really should read about), and she said to me, "It's really great that he's doing this, but do you know where Ethiopia is? Because I don't."
"Well, it's in Africa ..." I said.
"OK, but ... where's Africa?" she asked, completely earnest.

OH NO! This was not the response I was expecting. For a brief moment I thought, "Oh dang, that is a good question. "Africa" is the name we've given to a huge region of land, but is anything separate from anything else? Where does Africa stop and the ocean shelf begin? Is "Africa" truly a place, or only a concept? Does it only truly exist in the minds of those who live there?!" Then I realized this was not what she was talking about.

"Um," I said, "It is a continent. It's below Europe and Asia."
She looked at me and there was no flicker of recognition on her face. I was very afraid that she was going to ask me where Europe and Asia were.
"I'll draw you a map," I said.
As I proceeded to draw a not very to-scale map of the world, she said apologetically "I'm just really not very good at history."
I gritted my teeth and told myself, "She just used the wrong word, you don't have to say anything. She's IS a college student."
"Out of all the people who go to this school, I probably know the least about history," she said. "The least."
"The thing is," I told her as I sketched out a lumpy Cape of Good Hope, "This is geography."
"Well yeah, same thing," she said.
"Yes, they are related," I admitted. "Because when things happen, they have to happen SOMEWHERE."

This is the sort of thing that makes me fear for our country and our future. Maybe 20 years from now, instead of history and geography, college students will internet study search results and website hits. Who needs a map when you have Yahoo Buzz?

See, Miss Teen South Carolina will tell you that you do in fact need maps. Otherwise, HOW WILL YOU KNOW WHERE YOU ARE?

My weapon of choice is MS_PAINT

2007-08-27T17:09:00.000-07:00

A lot of my job involves the same thing every office job involves: the paper trails, the endless e-mails, the unfathomable memos, the crashing waves of existential angst, the giddy excitement of ordering boxes and boxes of pens, the acting need to act aloof when using the copier so that it doesn't smell your fear and start jamming again and again, the carpal tunnel, the interoffice small talk (everyone is "doing ok!" or "hanging in there!"), the desire to hang up after an annoying call so hard that the phone explodes, and so on, etc.
But every once in a while I get to do something that uses my own unique talents and abilities! For example, I received this photo that had to go in the employee newsletter:

Ignore that it is a boring picture, ok? It was important to include the three people in the front row, but the picture was way too wide to fit comfortably on the page I was laying out. I had to get rid of all that empty space between them in order to make it fit. So, I bust out my mad photo-manip skills, and BEHOLD:

Now, this sort of thing is very common thanks to Photoshop. Normal-looking women are made to look like terrifying beauty queens in order to sell magazines EVERY DAY! But I do not have Photoshop at my office. Nor do I have any other comparable photo-editing program. But I do have .... MS_PAINT! Which is to say, for those of you old enough to understand, that I have a stripped down version of Kid-Pix. But I am undaunted! I was able to take my old school skills to the mat here and convincingly COMPRESS TIME AND SPACE (ok, so probably just space) in such a way that I bet when the people in that photo see it in the newsletter, they won't even think, "Wow, did I really sit that close to that dude?" They will just assume that, yes indeed they did. They might wonder why they don't remember that dude smelling as badly as usual, but they will not doubt that they were mere inches from his (or her) armpit.

That's right, my skills are esoteric, BUT THEY GET THE JOB DONE!!
Wait, let me say that in MS_PAINT ....

(hang on a second here)...

BAM!

YES! Ok, that took a really long time, but wouldn't it make a great tee-shirt? Of course it would! If for no other reason, than because MS_PAINT has such terrible compression that it makes every image look like it was printed on cheap cotton and sent through the wash about three dozen times.
See, that would be cool if grunge were still in. But soon grunge will be coming back again! Just when you think worthless skills are worthless, they become popular again.

And here is proof.

That's right: POGS ARE BACK!
and: THEY ARE ONLINE!
... AND: THEY ARE NOT PAYING ME TO LINK TO THEM :(

xo, aro

My room is a lot bigger and my rent is a little less

2007-08-18T22:42:00.000-07:00

I just moved into a new house. I'm kind of exhausted from packing and unpacking, so I'm not going to write much tonight, but I want to brag that I now live in a place that has:
A washer and dryer!
A dishwasher!
Friendly roommates!
A garage that isn't crammed full of old junk!

I will really miss my beautiful backyard and BBQ at the old place, but I'm really happy to be here as well. My housing search was looking really dire, and then this came along at the last minute and so far seems like a perfect fit, which is a huge blessing. I'm also really greatful to all my friends who helped me move in one way or another. Thanks, everyone!

Goodness Gracious

2007-08-08T22:56:00.000-07:00

Smiley Smile by the Beach Boys is a really strange album.
It's like they wrote it after doing a lot of drugs that made them really boring.

OC Vagabond

2007-08-02T22:10:00.000-07:00

I'm looking for a new place to stay. I've been in this little room in this little house for just over a year now. Never signed a lease because I wasn't sure how long I was going to stick around. At the time I was considering leaving for Turkey to teach English for a year, but I decided to spent my time sticking around here and learning to be somewhat respectable.
After about a year of leaselessness, my landlord finally asked me to sign a six month lease or vacate in 30 days. Six months is not that long, really. But I took the 30 days instead, refusing once again to make any long-term plans in Orange County again. This time it's because I may or may not take a volunteer position in Nicaragua which may or may not be offered to me.
So once again I'm looking for a room in someone else's house that I can move into for an undetermined amount of time. It's almost enough to make me just pack up and leave for good. Honestly the only thing keeping me at my job is free graduate tuition, but I can't imagine sticking around long enough to finish the entire program and actually get my degree. So I don't know exactly why I'm here. And I have even less of an idea of where I'm going.
It's just getting a little bit old. For some reason I seem determined to be a vagabond.
Although I should mention that I got a sappy inspirational card from my mom in the mail today, which actually managed to give me some hope.
... which means you know it's bad, because, well ... it's a sappy inspirational card!
Oh well. I'll do my best to take it to heart.

xxoo

Schoolin'

2007-07-25T22:09:00.000-07:00

Before I was in summer school I had time to write stuff and cook stuff. Now Post Colonial Literature takes up good chunks of that time, and instead of cooking up delicious meals for myself, I am constantly finding myself foraging through my cupboards and fridge and hodgepodging things together. Halfway through the hodgepoding I invariably realize that I should have just made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but at that point it's always too late to turn back. Also, instead of writing things that are actually interesting all I have time to write about is how I managed to not eat a PB&J sandwich. Hmm.
On the plus side, I am learning a lot about Africa!

PDXtreme!!

2007-07-11T14:45:00.000-07:00

I usually like flying into Oregon because there are lots of clouds and everything looks wet and green. This time there were no clouds, no rain and the horizon looked like a blurry line of orange. It was hot and dry when I stepped off the plane. Even at 9 p.m. it was bright as midday and roughly 95 degrees. Strange.
My buddies Andy and Peter were there to pick me up at the airport. I'd left straight from work so I still was dressed up for the office, prompting them to ask "yo, what's with the tie?" or something to that effect. We got Frosties from Wendy's, went back to their apartment and played Streets of Rage and Guitar Hero, so nothing had really changed. I slept on the couch.
The next day I went to Powell's Books with my mom because I needed to buy a couple of novels for my summer class. Powell's is probably the best gigantic bookstore in the world, and I picked up a couple of zines as well as the required reading, because they have a great selection of them. Is there anywhere that even sells zines in Orange County?
So anyway, I was happy to be in Portland, at Powell's, buying great reading material. After paying, I turned around and who is in line behind me but CORIN TUCKER FROM SLEATER-KINNEY. I do not care much about celebrities -- since I've lived in Southern California, I've brushed shoulders with a number of famous people, and for a while I tried to keep a tally of who I'd met just in case anyone from Oregon asked me if I knew any movie stars, but I can't even remember who was on the list anymore. Except Coolio.
But Sleater-Kinney is basically my favorite band ever. I like a lot of bands, but their's is probably the only one that I would say changed my life, and I never got to see them live before they went on "indefinite hiatus."
So there's Corin Tucker right there paying for books and I would really like to ask her ten million questions, but she is just a normal person, really, and she's only trying to buy books, but thank goodness someone invented the concept of autographs, so that I'll at least have an excuse to say "hi" and then get out of her way, so I say to my mom "Do you have a pen I need a pen!" and she's digging through her purse and she can't find one and I am keeping my cool, because after all, an autograph isn't that big of a deal, but she can't find a pen and Corin's right there and Mom is saying "are you sure it's her how do you know it's her" and I feel a surge of adrenaline in my chest, which is just a little embarrassing (although I don't think anyone else can tell), and I say "Yes it's her, I can tell."
After she paid for her books, but before she was totally out of the purchasing area, I stepped up and asked if she was who she was (which, of course she was), and asked her to sign (in pencil) the course syllabus for my Experimental Course in Post-Colonial Literature, which was the most appropriate thing I had on hand. "I really like your band," I told her. And that was it. Whew!

(Note that she signed "s-k" along with her name, which gave me a tiny bit of hope that the band might eventually reunite.)

Mom and I went next door to Whole Foods after that to get lunch. The delicious pastries and fresh fruit alone would have been enough to put me in a blissful daze, but they were also playing the Beach Boys on the radio and I was carrying a bag full of wonderful books and I had just gotten one of the few autographs in the world that would mean anything to me, and there were interesting people with tattoos and green hair and strange suits all around me, and I felt that there could be no more perfect city than Portland.

Action-Time Movie Reviews!

2007-07-06T23:12:00.000-07:00

On the morning of the 4th of July, Ed and I celebrated our freedom by going to see Transformers and The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. There were a surprising number of people at the theater considering we got there around 9 a.m. I thought I would review these movies for you, but I really don't have much to say about them.
The Fantastic Four movie was fine. There were enough neat effects and strange action scenes to make up for the fact that Dr. Doom is boring and the Invisible Woman is kind of annoying. I imagine that like the first Fantastic Four movie I'll have forgotten what happened by the time the next movie rolls around, but it was entertaining while it was happening.
Transformers was better than I expected. I have no real knowledge about the franchise, so it was weird to watch from the outside as other geeks freaked out. Usually I am the one freaking out! I liked that the robots basically all sounded and acted like cartoon characters because it made them seem like they really were from another planet -- a planet where everyone only has one character trait! Despite being a Michael Bay film, it actually managed to have more depth than a Mountain Dew commercial, which was surprising. I still can't believe that this film is supposedly a big deal, though, and the thought of it spinning off inevitable sequels makes me a little nauseous. Surely it is time for Hollywood to invest in some new intellectual property? Please? I feel like it took a lot of people a lot of time, creative energy and focus groups to craft an suitable family film based around on a premise that came about because someone realized that, amazingly, boys like playing with cars AND playing with robots! I think they had to throw everything they had at this one to make it work, and I don't think a second film will fare nearly as well.
But then, who am I to talk? I have been convinced for years that robots and cars will eventually kill us all.

On Suits

2007-07-02T23:52:00.000-07:00

I've never been much of a clothes person. I have historically based my fashion choices first on not wanting to look like someone else and secondly not wanting to spend more than 15 seconds thinking about it. So when I lived in Oregon I wore basically nothing but Hawaiian shirts, and then when I moved to California I started wearing sweaters and my dad's old wool jacket.
Now that I work in an office with a dress code, I have to keep up appearances. I keep my hair short, wear a tie and even bought a belt, after not owning one for years. Looking like everyone else is a different sort of thing. It feels very culturaly specific -- the nuances and rituals associated with dressing nice are fascinating, and comforting in a way. Knowing exactly where the end of my tie should fall (the middle of the belt buckle) gives me confidence that even though I tied it while skateboard down the middle of the street on my way to work, I'll look like a respectable part of the office. It's the same thing with changing out of my skate shoes into the work shoes I keep under my desk. In a very small way, looking professional makes me feel more serious about my job, and more ready to be taken seriously.
The fascinating thing is that looking professional varies from place to place and culture to culture. That's probably a little less true now that suits are standard business attire in most of the world, but what was regarded as professional, serious attire in other times and places would be totally unacceptable in my office today. If I came dressed as a samurai or wearing a fez, I would probably not get away with it.
That bit of historical perspective lets me see wearing a suit and tie as a way of respecting and blending into the culture that surrounds me. It feels a little bit like wearing a costume, but for some reason I like knowing that if I were suddenly transplanted in another time or place, I would not look like part of the establishment as I do now -- perhaps in the distant future in a tie-dyed police state run by facsit hippies I would be arrested for having short hair, being clean shaven and wearing a collar. (I would like someone to make that into a movie!)
For those of us who have always resisted looking or acting just like everyone else, it's useful to realize that clothes are just a tool, and you can use them to your advantage just like anything else. After all, even the best-dressed of us all is still naked at the end of the day!

Six- or eight-thousand years ago THEY LAID DOWN THE LAW

2007-07-01T23:38:00.000-07:00

This is just a post to publicly declare that I am a fan of the B-52s.
I know this will come as a disappointment to some members of my family, but please understand that it is just very hard for me to not like a band that yells out strings things that don't make sense in strange voices in complete (if synthetic) sincerity, and furthermore, this does not mean that I like Neil Young any less. He is awesome, too. Just look at him!

ROCK OUT, NEIL YOUNG!

I wonder who would win a fight.

On Running

2007-07-01T01:25:00.000-07:00

They say that distance running is all mental. It's not true of course. Chess, perhaps, is all mental. Running is physical. It takes takes bone, muscle, joints, lungs ... and when you run you feel them all.
I ran my third 5k of the summer this morning, adding Villa Park alongside Saddleback and Anaheim. It seems that there's something of a 5k circuit out here and you could run a race every weekend if you wanted to. When I first started running someone told me that you get hooked, and I can now verify that it's true. I like getting up early in the morning and doing stretches. I like hearing hundreds of feet thumping the pavement all around me, and I like passing people. I like finishing and getting a medal.
That's not the race, though.
The race is you and your body. The race is that point where your body doesn't want to go further, but you push on; the race is the point where you are on the verge of giving up, but your body keeps going. The mental and the physical merge. There is a point where it hurts. You are lungs, you are legs, you are running. Your brain -- it's a physical thing, too -- pushes past feedback of pain and impulses to quit. But it's not your brain that's running. Something else drives you further along.
You don't have to be running. You could be still in bed, or surfing the Internet. You could be anywhere.
But you're here, you're running. At some point you will stop, but you haven't stopped yet. You're stretching, you're pushing. And if it's true that we each have a soul, then it must be the part that says "YES" when both mind and body shout "no no no." If it's true, then at the toughest parts of the race, when you walk the line between surrender and victory, when you must embody your intention moment to moment, then if it's true that we each have a soul, at that point, you become soul incarnate. You are gasps, you are strides, you are synapses. You are running.
Running, of course, is not the only time this sort of thing happens, but it has a way of abstracting it and making it easier to understand. The exhaustion I feel when I'm running is similar to how I sometimes feel when I'm writing, but it's easier to push onward when it's my whole body in motion rather than a pencil in a notebook. Running helps me to remember to embody my intentions and live them out. The race is seeing how far you can get, in spite of obstacles and your own resistance.
I met my goal of hitting around 21 minutes today. At the first race of the summer I came it at about 25 minutes, so it's a pretty big improvement. I knew I could get there, I just had to remember to push myself further.

Work is (sort of like) Hell

2007-06-15T11:25:00.001-07:00

They were supposed to fix the air conditioning in my office yesterday. People had started talking about needing to incorporate naptime into the work day if it didn't get fixed soon, because by mid-afternoon the whole office would be groggy and humid. We kept the window open and sometimes you could feel the breeze if you stood by the printer long enough. Some facilities guys in tan polo shirts finally showed up yesterday to install all the proper parts, and promised that everything would be in working order in the morning.
The morning was beautiful and cool, although you could tell it would be heat up another 20 degrees or so before lunch. I was freshly showered, awake and quite pleased with the world, until I stepped from the hallway into the office.
"They didn't fix it!" I moaned, loudly, without a thought of office etiquette. It was hotter than it had ever been, at least twice as hot as yesterday. It was surreal, like a practical joke. My chair and my desk both radiated heat.
Of course, instead of activating the air conditioner, they had left the heater on all night. Terrific! Fortunately, within an hour the error had been reversed, and our working conditions are now more pleasant. It was a strange way to start the day, though.

Satuday!

2007-06-09T22:22:00.000-07:00

-AC and I illegally ran in the 8th Annual Downtown Anaheim 5k Run, which we arrived too late to actually register for. It was a flat, easy course, and I shaved about two minutes off of my time in the Saddleback 5k! Hooray! Because I didn't have an official bib, they didn't let me actually cross the finish line, though. Instead, some old guy waved me to the side and yelled "If you didn't register, you can't finish!" I was maybe 2.5% sad. I was more much more upset that there was a big construction project going on right next to the course and the air quality was pretty sad. The best part about running a 5k race is that when you tell people about it, they almost always go "Oh wow! That's amazing!" because no one knows how long a 5k really is. It is 3.1 miles. That is not *that* far. It feels good though. Goodness, I can hardly believe that I've become the sort of person who talks about these sorts of things.

-We went to the Irvine Spectrum later that morning after AC bought hisself a bike from a garage sale. He had to talk to the cell phone people and I had to talk to the Apple people. Apple is supposed to make everything, but that has not been my experience. My laptop has not worked 100% correctly since I purchased it a year ago, and I'm going to have to go into one of their little mall stores at least two more times before I can get it in working order. argh. The Irvine Spectrum was not as terrible as I thought it would be, though. I mean, it was terrible, but the architecture was clearly inspired by the Alhambra, and there weren't a ton of people, and I didn't want to smash anything. Which is rare for me in a mall. I AM A MALL SMASHER!

-For lunch we hit up Tandoori, an Indian restaurant close to the sushi bar where I used to work that I had never visited. They had a cheap lunch buffet, clean table cloths and a crazy Bollywood movie on their flat-screen TVs. Also, our server was latina. It was great! I ate so much that I couldn't do much but lay around for a few hours afterward.

-Back at home, I read some comics and watched an episode from the first season of Northern Exposure, which I borrowed from the Chapman library. My parents often talked fondly about that show, but I had never seen it. It's a really good show, but beyond that, it's interesting to me because it's about a doctor who is only a few years younger than my dad would have been when the show was on the air. I wonder how much of himself he saw in the character. At any rate, it is much more interesting than procedural doctor soap operas like ER and even (gasp!) Grey's Anatomy, AND it has 100% more moose.

-Went to The Abbey in the evening to see The Cobalt Season play, which was really enjoyable. The band appears to have started as a husband/wife thing, and now they have something of a band, and also a baby! The baby was asleep during the show, strapped across the mom's front, which looked like it made maneuvering around the small stage a big difficult. I had a beer and a bunch of cookies, which was my dinner. Basically, that is the best dinner ever!

All in all, a pretty great day.

one man operation

2007-06-07T21:17:00.000-07:00

Almost everyone I know has someone to go home to.
A lot of my friends still live with their families, even though they're (mostly) grown up.
Others have roommates or housemates, usually about the same age, to hang out with.
A growing numbers have spouses and families of their own.

I've lived basically on my own for about a year now. In some ways I don't mind -- it has taught me a lot, and I'm perfectly able to function on my own. Being alone seems like a great environment to work and write and get things done. But when I leave work in the evening and don't have a real conversation with anyone until I get back to work in the morning, it does tend to get me down. It's too bad it's hard to be productive for very long when you're lonely.

grrrr.

Weekend Update

2007-06-03T22:37:00.000-07:00

The first Saturday of each month there is an open house at the Artists District in downtown Santa Ana, and I've made it a point to go as often as possible over the last year and a half or so. There are galleries filling nearly every space -- galleries that open up to the fountain in the central plaza, galleries underground hidden around corners, galleries in apartments and up firescapes. Not all the art is good, but that hardly matters when there's so much of it to see. There are always plenty of people, mostly yuppies in blazers and art kids trying to look bohemian, and generally it's not hard to find plenty of free snacks and wine, too. I have a lot of great memories of ripping the night open with all sorts of old friends, many who either don't live here any more or don't plan to live here much longer.
But last night I didn't feel much like running around and soaking up as many galleries as possible. The galleries all change, but I already know which ones hip, which are banal, which are provocative, so some of the mystery is gone. I decided to scope out the outlying area instead. Santa Ana is something of a cultural war zone as the only urban center in Orange County -- there are Mexican street vendors, dozens of quincenera shops, and lots of rundown low-income housing, plus big glass government buildings, plus "cultural centers," plus new trendy artist-friendly apartments, ultra-modern, high-concept architecture firms, and all sorts of people trying to claim a piece of downtown real estate. Half the storefronts seem to be in transition -- just as many are closed down as are opening up.
After wandering a bit and ponderin' stuff, I bought a burrito and returned to the Village. Then these things happened:
-Hung out at The Abbey with people from Canvas, scoped the new show by Jay Summers which focuses mostly on found art with some ceramics and silkscreens of blues musicians thrown in for good measure. There was live blues music, too, which was raaaad.
-Went with Amy to see a free jazz concert down at the The Episcopal Church of the Messiah on Bush St, where we'd gone for Ash Wednesday. It's a cool old church, and I dig it a lot. Got there in time to see the final song and grab some of the last remaining refreshments. Amy said none of the musicians looked very happy to be there, but I imagine that this is because playing free jazz can be difficult. (Or something?) I asked them to play one more song, which they did, even though there were only about half a dozen people in the audience left at that point. I felt important!
-There was a big party going down at the Amoreviejo Art Gallery, which is in the old deco-gothic courthouse building, so we scoped that out. It was hip chaos. I wasn't sure what was going on, which obviously made it that much hipper. Lots of crowded hallways, and a good deejay. Left pretty quickly, but also grabbed a flyer for an upcoming exhibition that will feature signs made by beggars. Sounds cool. Too bad there's not really any examples of the signs themselves on the website.
-Went to Bill & Kathy's new apartment for cake + hangouts. They just moved into a complex across the street from the main plaza which seems to be partially under renovations and is laid out kind of unusually. Bill & Kathy are an older couple who moved to California about a year ago and have been trying to find a permanent place to stay for just as long. It was good to see them getting happily settled, and Kathy makes a good cake.

Because I am an old man, we went home around 10:30 p.m.

Wednesday nite

2007-05-30T22:47:00.001-07:00

I went with AC tonight to see Glen David Gold read at Casa Romantica Cultural Center and Gardens in San Clemente today. Gold wrote a big, bestselling book called Carter Beats the Devil, which is a pretty good name for a book, and is finishing up a new novel called Sunnyside, which he read from tonight. I think he said it was his first reading from the book, so we got a glimpse of something most people have not yet seen. Awesome. The book appears to be about Charlie Chaplain among many other things, and the opening chapters he read were funny and well-crafted. At one point he was describing a train and all of a sudden we could hear an actual train in the distance. He stopped and said "I bet you're glad I'm not reading the passage about Howitzers." Also of interest: he has written a few short stories for comic anthologies.
The Casa Romantica was nice, and struck me as a quintessential Orange County non-profit deal -- very clean, great view of the coast, with some interesting exhibits about Mexicans and Native Americans and hardly a person in sight who wasn't as white as the mission-style walls. It was, shockingly, more ethnically singular than Chapman. I almost felt like I was back in Oregon.

ahem

2007-05-24T23:04:00.000-07:00

I should have done some serious writing tonight, but I decided to watch some of Once Upon a Time in the West while I ate my pre-dinner burrito and ended up watching the entire film, which was very good. And also three hours long.

Run, Spider-Man, run

2007-05-21T23:18:00.000-07:00

One of the things I don't like about watching a movie is that I often feel like it's a waste of two hours -- you just sit there and don't get anything done.
In kind of a similar way, I'm sometimes not motivated to run or exercise unless I feel like there's some kind of goal or purpose besides the activity itself (I think this is why sports were invented).
Tonight I was able to reach a happy compromise, however. I ran a couple of miles to the local cinema, watched Spider-Man 3, which most of my friends have already seen or are not interested in seeing, then ran back home. It was a very pleasant way to spend an evening.
These things were discovered:
-Spider-Man 3 is not as good as Spider-Man 2, but it is not as bad as everyone says, if you are willing to be forgiving (I was!)
-My body likes to run! (I already knew this, but it is easy to forget)
-It is OK to go to the movies alone.

On The Road, part 1

2007-05-15T13:42:00.000-07:00

This is another part of my suite of pinball stories, tentatively called Multiball Blues. As of right now, it is the only piece that will work as a serial -- there are three parts of "On The Road" that tell Alison's story, which will be interspersed with the other self-contained pieces. As always, I'm interested to know what you think, especially since this is a work-in-progress. I just read through this, and realized that most of it is terrible. I almost took the post down, but in the interest of humility I'll leave it up for now. eek. Work. In. Progress.

"Jack Kerouac bounced around America for a while, then rolled straight down the continent to a gutter in Mexico, and very nearly never got a chance to try the whole thing again," thought Alison, who had just finished reading On The Road a few weeks ago, and now found herself couched inside a deserted box car which rattled with anticipation as she watched the desert roll by, whipping her blond hair into a tangled frenzy. "If that's his game, then let it be mine, too. I've had enough with responsibilities, with parents and college applications."
Alison was prepared, or so she thought, to tackle America head-on. After eighteen years of seeing the world through the eyes of older people, she was terrified of spending the rest of her life that way. She'd left in the middle of the night after a panic attack and hopped the train, hardly knowing where it would take her. It surprised her how easy it had been to slip through the cracks and break the rules. The wind rushing blowing through the empty box car felt like freedom, and wide-eyed Alison was electrified by it.
Of course by now she had a few destinations in mind. She checked her backpack one final time, making sure her cell phone and camera were tightly bundled in amongst her clothes, then crawled carefully to the door of the box car. Gripping the sides of the door frame, she pulled herself to standing, feeling the worn steel of the outside and peeling paint under her fingers. They were nearing another station.
She waited until the train was slowing just enough. She pulled back, then suddenly tensed and let go, propelling herself forward out of the train and into a vast, tilting sky, tumbling, stumbling on the cracked, brown earth.
She tripped over herself and lay there flat on the ground for a long while, feeling the warm desert until it stopped spinning. Then she shouldered her backpack, checked the map on her cell phone, and headed out toward the horizon.

Graceland

2007-05-12T18:39:00.000-07:00

It's been a kind of crazy couple of weeks, and I realized while standing in the lobby of Salem Hospital, surrounded by my relatives who had come to see my great-great-aunt before she died, that I had not gotten a really good night's sleep since sometime before May began. This has generally been for the best possible reasons, but I'm holding off a cold, and the body does have physical needs.
So now I've got an evening to myself and I really think I needed it. I've got a cold glass of Oregon water and Paul Simon's Graceland for the moment, and things will be crazy and busy again soon, and that is OK, that is great even, but for now this feels really good.

xxoo

Multi-Ball Blues, part 2

2007-05-01T21:30:00.000-07:00

This is a much shorter section from my suite of pinball stories. It's pretty dark compared to what I usually write, but I also think it's really funny for some reason.

Vicious Cycle
When Eugene Brismark was seventeen years old he wanted nothing more than to own his very own Bally "Space Creatures Return!" pinball machine. In order to save up money for it, he stopped playing pinball in the arcade and he put in extra hours in the Circuit City stock room. A year later, two months after graduation, he finally bought one, which he refurbished himself.
It never occurred to him that if he had instead spent some of that hard-earned cash taking Jennifer Culpepper out on a few nice dates, she would have ended up marrying him and happily bearing his children. Instead he just drove her out behind the golf course after a few high school dances and tried to work up the nerve to touch her breasts, which she finally got sick of. Eugene ended up twice married, twice divorced and in possession of a vintage pinball cabinet that he could play for free whenever he wanted.
In his later years, the machine grew dusty and unloved for long stretches of time, but he always fancied it as a prized possession, never suspecting that it was the reason he would eventually die alone with no children or heirs. The pinball table was sold in an estate sale.

What is going on??

2007-05-01T00:44:00.000-07:00

Things that do not happen to me have started to happen.
It's funny how they once seemed so impossible and have become so simple.

Multiball Blues, part 1

2007-04-30T00:52:00.000-07:00

This is the first part in a series of interconnected pinball stories I am writing for my Techniques of Fiction class. The ending turned out a little different than I planned, but that basically what always happened. Anyway, I tried some new things in this piece, and any and all comments are welcome, especially since this project is still in progress.

Heartbreak at the Arcade Garage

Twelve vintage Gottlieb pinball machines had been arranged neatly inside of Gary Mackenzie's oil-stained, two-car garage since the summer before seventh grade. They mostly hailed from the '50s and early '60s, all mechanical bumpers and buzzers and big flashing lights, with a score boards made of panels that flipped or spun as you racked up points, no microprocessors, no LCD screens, and plenty of busty women painted in bright colors on the back glass. The long-awaited twelfth table, Atlantis, was unloaded from the back of a battered orange van shortly after Maggie and her parents moved to the neighborhood. With no friends and nothing to do until school started, Maggie had sipped a can of lemonade in the front lawn as her uncle had helped the movers slide the machine into the last empty spot along the back wall. When it was done, he dusted off the playfield glass, opened a beer, and stood beside her, examining the makeshift arcade.
He ruffled her brown hair, a tangled mess in the dry California heat. "It's taken eight years, but I've finally ran out of room," he said. "What do you think, Maggie, should I get another hobby?"
"Aren't you going to play it?"
"Nah. But why don't you give it a shot?"
Though she could barely keep the ball in play her first few games, to hear her tell it, that afternoon was the first time she felt happy since she'd seen her apartment in Chicago all boxed up and empty. The bright lights and constant clatter reminded her of home, and the flat comicbook colors of the playfield made everything seem simple in the lost, underwater kingdom. When she signed her three-letter initials, MAG, to high-score chart Uncle Gary had made and tacked up next to the table (most of the old pinball games didn't keep track of top scores themselves), she felt the thrill of belonging.
Eric had seen the garage arcade for the first time while going door-to-door collecting bottles and cans for Boy Scouts a few years before Maggie moved to Upland, and he avoided it. Mr. Mackenzie, a barrel-chested man who insisted on wearing shorts and tanktops even in winter, let the neighborhood kids play the tables for free as long as they didn't cause any trouble, and the garage was always buzzing with loud chatter and the clanking, whirring sounds of pinball. The electric bill must have been extraordinary, even before the twelfth machine completed his collection, but if Mr. Mackenzie had lived alone for as long as anyone could remember and if he had a job, no one knew what it was.
He'd never set foot inside the place until Maggie brought him there in the spring of their junior year, on what they would later agree had been their second date. They'd each man one side of the table, standing side by side, their bare arms rubbing against each other as she showed him how to trap the pinball and then pass it between the two flippers. It was details like this, her quiet intensity as she hunched over the table, constantly blowing her hair out of her face with the side of her mouth; her barely contained enthusiasm when she would hit a difficult target or light up the scoreboard; how she'd throw her hands in the air and pout at him when she lost, before breaking into a coy smile; the way her mouth tasted like licorice and New Coke on their first kiss, these were the things that kept her real when she went away for the summer.
He loved getting letters back from her, usually written on the back of graph paper or periodic table handouts, but they could never come often enough, and sometimes when he was cashing out the register at the gas station, or sitting on Ernie's couch watching some boring cable movie all his buddies were laughing at, he found that he missed her terribly but could not remember what it was like to be next to her. But if he could grab onto one thing, say, her pristine white tennis shoes, and how she never wore socks, then he could trace that back to the way her ankles strained when she leaved over a pinball table, how she would kick her shoes off haphazardly in the grass, the time she'd accidentally kicked him in the face in the back of her mom's station wagon and been so shocked and apologetic ... and then he could reconstruct her in his mind and know that even though she wasn't there, at least she was real.

###

It wasn't until Maggie went off to Colombia to study biology that Eric found himself drifting to the garage late at night to play pinball by himself. College seemed interminably long compared to six-week science camps, and without money for school, or any idea what he'd even like to study, Eric wasn't sure what he was going to do in the meantime. He was saving up money to buy them a house when she finished school, but he could only work so many hours at the gas station.
And so he found himself pulling up next to the curb of the arcade garage one night after he got off of work. Mr. Mackenzie (who by that point had given up insisting that Eric call him "Uncle Gary") knew a thing or two about heart-sickness and he left Eric in without any hassle, even though the neighborhood kids had gone home hours earlier, and the went back to bed. All the machines in the garage were dark and silent. The only sound was a buzzing hum radiating from the murky fluorescent light on the ceiling. Eric plugged in Atlantis and the machine came clanking and crashing to life, frighteningly loud at this hour of night.
It felt strange to not have Maggie next to him at the table; she often played by alone, but he rarely did. He pulled the plunger and sent the ball spinning up the ramp, catching a glimpse of the high-scores sheet tacked up to the wall -- MAG held five of the top seven scores. This was her favorite table. He jammed at the flippers, lashing out at the ball indiscriminatingly. He half-wondered why he was suddenly so angry, and why lighting up those bumpers felt so good. He threw all is weight into the game, and in an instant, everything locked up and the ball rolled straight down the table. Without realizing, he'd tilted the machine. It took him a moment to figure out what had happened. Maggie hardly ever tilted a table, and she never looked enraged while playing one, not how he had just felt.
He sent the next ball into play, trapping it with the left flipper, and taking a moment to focus. Maggie said that every table has a goal, a story that you play through, and that was the best part. This table had a series of targets to hit on the left side first, which he knew from watching her. Now he would play it her way. In order to reach the left bank of targets, he passed the ball over to the right flipper, then realized he'd only played one half of a pass before, and flubbed it.
He was down to his last play in the game and felt very much alone. But Maggie had learned this table by herself and she'd learned it when she'd been lonely. Eric stood up straight at the table and resolved to do the same thing. He didn't leave until many games later, his eyes blurry from pinball lights. He imagined them to look like the lights of Manhattan, which he told Maggie in his next letter.
What he wanted to tell her was that he'd made it into the top-ten scores on one of the tables, even though he knew that, as hand-written by players using the honor system, they were hardly a definitive record of the all-time top scores at the garage arcade, but they were the only record that existed, and she was in the top ten on every table. So Eric made it a point to visit the garage on a regular basis. The most convenient time to go was late at night, and he would leave the garage light off, so that the room was lit only by pinball, colors splashing his face as he hit bumpers and racked up points. After Eric had waken him up twice in one week to open the garage door, Mr. Mackenzie simply gave him his own key, and then Eric started coming every night to stand alone in the garage, hunched over a table, trying to feel how Maggie felt when she played. While at work, he could see afterimages of the tables behind his eyes, and he began to think of everyday tasks in terms of ramps and ricochets and multiplier targets.
He beat Maggie's scores -- all of them. That was his surprise for her when she came home for Christmas. He bought her diamond earrings and held the top score on all twelve tables.
"Well now I don't even have a reason to play," she laughed, "You've learned them better than I ever will!"
They played a few games together, side-by-side like they used to, but Eric felt frustrated, crippled with only one flipper.
"Is that how you felt?" he asked her, "Did you feel closed-off when we would play together? Like there was only half of you?"
Maggie thought for a long time, then said, "Back then, when we moved here, and until I met you, I always felt like there had only been half of me. So I didn't care that I wasn't as good at pinball when you were playing. It didn't matter." She paused. "I felt whole."
"But you left for New York." Eric spat out the words, though he didn't intend for them to come out like that at all.
"And you stayed here!" He was surprised that the hurt in her voice matched his. "Doing what? Playing pinball? When I was 17 nothing would have made me happier than competing with you for the top score, OK? But I stopped dragging you down here so much because I could tell you weren't that interested. And NOW you love pinball so much?" She was crying.
"I don't --" he stopped; maybe he did love pinball now. "This was for you! I wanted to feel closer to you!"
"I'm not HERE!" she said throwing her arms up and spinning around the garage, indicating Atlantis, Kings and Queens, Space Warriors Return, Buck Wild and all the others.
Then she looked at him, arms at her side, her cheeks pink and wet, and she seemed suddenly very small. "I'm here."

###

The high score sheets with Eric's initials at the top came to Maggie in the mail at the beginning of February. Uncle Gary included a note: "No point in keeping these up in the neighborhood -- these scores would intimidate even the hypothetical pro pinball players your aunt always talked about. She would have been proud of both of you. I am, too."
Maggie gave the score sheets to Eric as part of his present for Valentine's Day; there was little room for clutter in their tiny apartment, so he kept them tucked away under their mattress for when their next to visit California. He wanted to see if he could still beat the top score.

spring!

2007-04-29T14:10:00.000-07:00

It is a beautiful day, and I am sitting outside in my backyard eating a ham, cheese and tomato sandwich, enjoying the sunshine and watching the birds, bees and butterflies that flit and buzz around the yard in spite of my lumbering, inelegant presence. I've brought a book to read, but there's no point right now. It is enough to be still and testify to the life all around me.

2007-04-26T02:59:00.000-07:00

It is 3 a.m. and I cannot sleep. This is strange because I can ALWAYS sleep. Always always always. I actually hate it, because I will fall asleep reading or watching a movie or trying to write. It's massively inconvenient.
Now, however, I am tired, and it is late, and I cannot keep my eyes closed. I guess this is called insomnia?

raaaaa.

Obligatory Disneyland post!!

2007-04-03T22:44:00.000-07:00

My mom and sis came to visit this past weekend from Oregon and I tried to show them a good time. It ended up being pretty easy to do, since mostly they just wanted to go to Disneyland. Living down here means Disney theme parks aren't quite as exotic for me as they used to be -- I'm ashamed to admit my first piece of travel writing was a breathless blow-for-blow account of my family's trip to Disney World that was spread across two full pages of the middle school newspaper in seventh grade (to my credit, it was a homework assignment and I wrote most of it on the plane ride home) -- but they are still pretty fascinating, and I always end up doing a lot of pondering while there. I've written before about Disneyland's manufactured nostalgia for turn-of-the-century colonialism, as well as the strange way many of the rides are backed by a self-referential warning against greed, indulgence and thrill-seeking, but this time my post-Disneyland polemic is nothing so collegiate .
Perhaps this is because I am going soft. Or perhaps I needed to be in a less critical frame of mind in order to convince my kin that, despite my previous ranting, I really do ENJOY Disneyland.
Anyway.
I don't appreciate roller coasters for the sake of being spun around and flung against the forces of gravity and inertia. I can understand the appeal of that sort of thing, but the fact is, it's not for me. I do like Disney rides, though, because most of them have some sort of theme or story to them. If I had to give that sort of experience a name, I'd call it "immersive fiction," because the goal of many of the rides is to immerse you in fantasy, to literally transport you through another world. It's not quite interactive -- you are on a fixed track, afterall, but like any fiction, how much you get out of the whole experience depends on how much you are willing to be immersed and suspend your disbelief -- especially if you're a repeat rider. I tend to talk out loud when I'm on a ride (I tend to do this during movies as well, but that's another blog), commenting on the action as if it were actually happening. I suspect this is relatively common. When you know that the rabbits and princesses and yetis are really just robots going through the motions, you've got to do something to validate them and support the illusion.
It's kind of like kids playing pretend, like saying "this See & Say is a time machine!" or "this is a boat, not a bunkbed!" but hyper-realized, dressed up, set to music, put on wheels and contained in 1500 feet and 2/12 minutes. As such, it doesn't required much imagination to see what this world looks like or who its characters are. It does, however, required quite a few narrative leaps to piece together a story from many of the rides. If you've seen the movies, it's not that hard to do, but I'd like to know what it's like to ride many of those rides with no prior knowledge of the story they are supposed to tell.
Some of them, like Snow White's Scary Adventure (which scared the crap out of me as a child) move with a breakneck pace, equivalent to "ok, and then this happened and then this and WHOA! then this happened and YOW! and then this and this and WHAM! and then this and ok it's over now" -- a bunch of story fragments crammed into a run-on sentence, some of them, like "The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" have a strange dream-like logic where one minute it's a blustery day, then all of a sudden the room is flooded with honey, and then you wake up because guess what, it's your birthday!, and some, like "Pirates of the Caribbean" are organized more like an immersive essay than an actual story (ok, perhaps "Pirates" is the only one that works like this, even and it's been more of a narrative thrust now that elements from the movie have been worked in).
With their emphasis more on evoking a mood rather than telling a true story, their frequent use of recurring motifs, and way you are brought through the piece at its pace rather than your own, and even their average length, it strikes me that the art form Disney rides most resemble is that of a pop song. A pop song with robots that look like animals, jerky half-turns and safety bars that you have to wait half an hour in line to experience, but a pop song none the less. Instead of singing along, you just talk back to the ride.

(for the record, if I had to classify the rides mentioned here into pop genres:
Snow White = garage punk. perhaps The White Stripes
Winnie the Pooh = upbeat, dreamy psychedelia/shoegazer.
Pirates = Rhapsody in Blue
anyone else care to make comparisons?)

Holy Smoke!

2007-03-21T17:21:00.000-07:00

While continuing my exploration of religion and rock/blues music, I found this:

The musician is Son House, who began his career as a preacher at age 15 but could not resist the pull of blues music. Later he would popularize the story that blues legend Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil...

A Distorted Reality is a Necessity to be Free

2007-03-17T16:14:00.000-07:00

(Note: This was done for my creative writing class and I have NO IDEA if it's any good or not, and it certainly is not finished, but this is the version I'm turning in for class and I'd love any feedback you can spare.)

Alden can't stand being here, but he can't just leave either. The service was already in progress when they arrived and they had to pick their way over people to find places to sit among the dozens of rows of wooden folding chairs. Leaving now might be disruptive, plus disrespectful to Patrick who had invited him once he found out that Alden wasn't going to a church of his own any more. The reason that he can't stand being here right now it isn't that he dislikes the church or is bored or angry with it, which sometimes happens, but because for no reason at all he feels like he could fall asleep at any moment and that's making it very hard to concentrate.
The pastor is a middle-aged man with a shaved head and a neatly-trimmed goatee. Patrick had said the pastor's name was Johan. "I've been thinking about healing," Jonah says.
It's evening, and the room-less room is dimly lit. There are candles on the stage around the musicians, as well as rose-colored can lights on the floor by the side walls, giving the faintest neon-pink outline to the silhouettes sitting across the room.
No one is wearing their "Sunday best," although Alden isn't sure if that's even something people do anymore, and anyway, it isn't a Sunday.
"I've never been one to go around laying hands on people, even though I know that God can empower us through his Holy Spirit to do just that, because it's just never been my thing," Jonah is saying. "I know a lot of you in this room are like that. It's something you're scared of or shy away from or just aren't interested in. And there are a lot of you who are all about that kind of ministry. And that's all cool. But tonight I want to try something different."
Alden is vaguely interested. Even though he doesn't hardly believe in miraculous healing, he's curious to see how this Jonah guy will defend it and how he'll explain it works and why it doesn't happen more often. But Alden misses whatever it is that Jonah is explaining.
His mind is drifting, detaching itself, without his consent, leaving the real world, putting nonsense in the mouth of the speaker, inventing abstract movements for the silent band members, leaving this room entirely, cobbling together mental skits from bits of television ads, car trips and half-remembered dreams.
Alden catches himself, but it's too late. The sermon is over, and whatever bits of it he may have caught are indistinguishable now from the bits he knows he involuntarily made up.
"Now I'm going to lead us in a time of prayer," Jonah says. Everyone adjusts themselves slightly, folding hands, bowing heads, leaning forward expectantly. Alden sits up straight and keeps his eyes open.
"Lord, we come before you tonight with broken hearts, broken bodies, broken spirits," Jonah begins.
When Alden was a kid, he'd solemnly close his eyes and see every prayer vividly in his mind as it floated up to the clouds where God loomed huge and attentive. Things that seemed confusing in real life somehow seemed clearer while praying.
Now for some reason he feels that if he closes his eyes, if he relaxes, he'll fall through the looking glass and see everything through a gauze of fantasy. So he hangs all his energy on each of the minister's tender, measured words, trying to stay present for a whole sentence, to keep pace, to just understand this prayer if nothing else. He opens his eyes wide, he leans forward, but his consciousness slips between the cracks, and Alden is suddenly floating beside the prayer, hearing the words but unable to grasp them.
As soon as he realizes this, he pulls himself back up to the surface again. He looks over at Patrick, who rests his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. "Where is he?" Alden wonders.
On the stage, the guitar player has started playing slow dreamy notes. It isn't helping.
Alden gets up from his seat and squeezes his way past silent, bowed heads -- perhaps this is disruptive, but it only takes a moment -- then walks to the back of the sanctuary, pulls up the hood of his sweatshirt, folds his arms and stands against the wall. Occasionally people come quietly in and out and brush silently past him, but no one makes eye contact and no one questions him, even though he is the only one standing. Patrick might not even notice that he has moved, and if he does, he'll probably just figure he had to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water.
Jonah has stopped praying and he looks up at the congregation.
"Jimmy and the music ministry are going to lead us in a time of worship and preparation for healing," he says. The band begins to play and the congregation adjusts, leans back in their wooden chairs, gets comfortable.
Alden wonders if Jonah can see him, standing there in the back. Probably it is too dark to see anyone very clearly. But Alden's sweatshirt is white, and he imagines that the pastor can see it dimly, hood pulled around an invisible face, hands hidden, shoved deep in the center pocket, looking like a specter floating ominously behind all those solemn, blurry heads.
Jimmy and the music ministry have begun to play a slow, modern hymn, but there are no words to sing along to yet, so all those heads are quiet. How many were dozing, and how many dreaming?, Alden wonders. How many can't wait to sing and how many will refuse to join in? Who is thinking about dying relatives and who is thinking about car payments, and is the spirit of God really at work in any of them?
Alden never gave up on church because he believed in how he felt when he was younger, when God seemed present to him there. Now, as he watches hundreds of heads sing the words to songs projected on 10-foot screens, he feels very far from all of that.
A few people in the audience are standing now, some holding their hands and arms in the air as they sing as if calling attention to themselves. Alden has never understood that sort of spiritual exuberance, but never before tonight has he suspected that it might simply be a result of people trying not to fall asleep.
"Now we're going to ask those of you who need healing to come forward to the front," Jonah says quietly. "First, those who need God to mend your heart. Maybe your heart is broken from broken relationships, broke homes, broken dreams. Whoever you are, if you need healing in this area, I want to ask you to come to the front, so that we may pray over you."
Slowly people begin to stand up and, one by one, dozens of them make their way to the front of the stage and kneel. A liturgy flashes onto the screen and Jonah leads the congregation as they begin to read aloud:
"Oh Lord, God of grace and peace,
Have mercy on us, on our brothers and sisters.
We need you to heal our lives, our hearts, our spirits.
We need your touch, oh mighty God."
As Alden watches all this he feels detached, like a ghost. If hearts and minds are being healed and lives are being changed, it's like it's happening on a plane of reality where he doesn't exist. He just sees bodies sitting, kneeling, standing, brushing past him on their way to the front of the sanctuary. He doesn't feel anything except relieved to be awake.
Up in the front of the sanctuary a few dozen people with hurting hearts kneel before the alter in various positions of surrender, and Alden would like very much to be able to pray for them.
But when Alden closes his eyes to pray two things happen:
He feels nothing. And his mind is quickly bathed in nonsense.
Alden's eyes snap open then, and he thinks:
"What if I am full of chaos? What if the God who is incarnate in me is not a god who heals, but one who disconnects, One Who Rips Apart?"
Thoughts of demonic forces terrified him when he was little, sometimes kept him wide-eyed awake at night until his mama would sit beside him and rock him to sleep with her prayers. But now he feels unmoved, knees locked and hands deep in his pockets. What if he is no good here? What if he is no good at all? Well, if it was true, it was true.
Jonah says a blessing over those who are kneeling and sends them back to their seats. "Now, those of you who are suffering a sickness of the mind, come forward so that we may pray for you that you may be healed by the Holy Spirit," he says.
Alden has never believed in alter calls. He wonders what he might do if he did. Deep inside him a tiny voice, a single synapse, is screaming "just go just go just go!" Alden shifts his weight and does not move -- the voice doesn't sound that different from the one that will sometimes scream at him to step off of a ledge or drive into oncoming traffic. He ignores it and after a moment it is gone.
Before long the space in front of the alter has filled up again and Alden is left standing in the back. How many of those going up to seek healing of their heads would have moved from their seats if there hadn't been others getting up, too, he wonders, and how much of church is not about God but about maintaining order?
Jimmy leads the congregation in reciting another liturgy projected on the screen.
"Renew our minds, all-knowing God," everyone says, "And bring us in line with Your will"
Alden is mouthing the words, still trying to participate, to feel anything, but he doesn't. The lead pastor takes the pulpit again and calls forward everyone who needs physical healing. There's a large exodus toward the front of the stage. Apparently more people need physical healing than mental or spiritual healing. Alden smirks, thinks of taking a poll: "Where do you need God to intervene in your life?" and mentally checks the last box, box D, all of the above.
"I'd like to ask those of you who are in our prayer ministry team to come up front now as we sing the next song," Jonah says, "They're going to come around and lay hands on you as we pray."
About half a dozen people scattered throughout the congregation stand up and slowly make their way to the front. This is apparently the prayer ministry team. They were dressed in jeans and sweatshirts just like everyone else.
Alden finds himself compelled to follow them, and before he knows it he has taken two steps forward, and once he's started moving he's committed to the follow through.
It's just like sneaking backstage at a concert, he thinks as he walks past the last row of chairs and turns toward the front of the room. His heart is beating fast, the pulse of an accuser.
If they let him, the one who stood in the back, the one who felt nothing, if they let him pray over these people, wouldn't that prove that this is all a hoax? It terrifies Alden, but he has to know. Can someone filled with the spirit of a void be allowed to pray over penitent believers? If it was true, then it would prove there was no spirit here at all. No spirit of God, no true spirit of void, just variations in brain chemicals making him sleepy, making them reverent, just misplaced faith building this willful deception.
As he approaches the front of the room, his vision is flooded by white-pink light from one of the can lights on the floor. He squints, imagines his accusing shadow cast across the room of hundreds of bowed heads. "One way or another, you'll all see now," he thinks.
He turns away from the light and toward the alter, where bodies are kneeling. They come in all shapes -- young girls with long hair falling over their faces, guys his age with foreheads on the ground, palms face up, a man his father's age openly weeping. From where Alden stands it's hard to tell what is wrong with any of them, except for a few people who sit in wheelchairs.
The prayer team is moving carefully between them, crouching down next to some, laying their hands on the backs, shoulders, heads of the afflicted.
And Alden decides he does not need to do this, not really. If he leaves now no one will no or care; he's been invisible up to this point. But a drum, an accusation, is pounding hard in his head and suddenly he can feel the blood coursing through every vein in his body with a frightening immediacy. He wants very much for someone, the pastor, Patrick, God himself -- anyone -- to stop him from taking one, two, three steps forward toward the mess of people he won't be able to help, people he can hardly reach.
But no one does anything, and he marches among them, moving on instinct alone now.
And he finds himself crouching down on his haunches next to a 21-year old boy whose breathing is loud and raspy, and reaching out to place a quivering hand on his back. He leaves it there for a moment, feels the slight movement of the boy's spine beneath his tee-shirt. Alden looks around the room nervously, unable to focus on anything.
"I shouldn't be here," he thinks. "This is no place for me to be."
There are sounds all around him, he realizes. Coughs, breaths, and tiny voices, swirling, swooping, mumbling nonsense, whispering prayers, crying "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus." Alden's breath quickens.
Then the boy coughs violently, and Alden quickly presses both his hands to his back, as if to stifle the cough. The boy coughs harder, each one shaking him like a ragdoll. Alden desperately imagines that his fingertips can spread roots of healing through this boy's body. And he cannot stand to stay here, cannot bear to leave.

2007-03-16T19:05:00.000-07:00

It's 7 p.m. on a Friday night! Do you know where Aaron is?
Still at work!

I did get a free rootbeer float today though.

Dear everyone in Orange County,

2007-03-15T21:50:00.000-07:00

You do not get to pass judgment on our public transportation until you have ridden it. Google transit makes this much easier to do. You also might learn a thing or two about racial segregation, patience and having exact change.

Pastures of plenty

2007-03-13T00:00:00.000-07:00

-I finally have a sufficient amount of music on my computer that when itunes plays on shuffle mode I hear more than just a mix of sea shanties and live sleater-kinney tracks.
-Now that I've rearranged my room there is more space to leave things on the floor.
-I went grocery shopping a few days ago and have bee able to eat whatever I want since then. Unfortunately, what I want usually is: cookies, chips and cheez-its. I only eat healthy when I run out of junk food.
-I recently also bought tea for the express reason of being able to ask a girl over for a cup of tea. The chances of such an event ever coming to pass are slim, but at least I am prepared.
-Daylight savings time is weird. Tonight I took a nap at 6 p.m. and cooked dinner at 10:30 p.m. This is not helping things.

blog to brag

2007-02-27T13:54:00.000-08:00

I just recieved my first "magazine editor" credit today! Wahoo!

Bubble in a Sound Wave

2007-02-27T00:06:00.000-08:00

Los Angeles hums with feedback.It reverberates off of fluorescent-lit billboards for movies and tv shows which echo last year's movies and tv shows. The skywide ads have been designed by ad agencies based on what a demographic wants, and the demographic knows what it wants based on what the ad agencies sell it.Below the billboards, stores that cannot afford ad agencies simply state their purpose in red block letters, fluorescent or neon: CHINESE FOOD, DISCOUNT SHOES, ADULT VIDEO, WATER, DONUTS, repeat. A back-beat.And on the streets and the freeways, arcing across overpasses, winding down boulevards, a constant stream of blurring headlights and tapping break lights, everyone in line, waiting. The pitch oscillates as night falls, gets higher, tenser, electric. Daytime is a holding pattern of long lunches, development meetings and traffic, but night is when things happen. Or could happen.The line of cars drones on, pulses steady, even as one pulls away, turns down a corner. There are always more to pick up the pace.The car, no more alone than before, surrounded by dozens of others, buzzes past its destination, a nightclub. It will have to circle the block half a dozen times before finding a place to park. The club is in an old theater, its name spelled out vertically above the old box office, which is now painted black and covered in peeling rock and roll posters. There is a line of people outside that stretches around the corner of the sidewalk which is stained with gum and smells of beer. Those in line are mostly kids, either in age or in outlook. They wear sports coats and hooded sweatshirts, skirts over jeans, clothes designed to look like they were bought in a thrift store, patches with the names of bands that were dead before they were born, reverb. They are all waiting for a disruption, a system shock, a rolling drum beat, a boiling over, a bubble in a sound wave. It is after 9 p.m now. The band was scheduled to start at 7:30. Finally, the doors open.The club fills quickly, the crowd rowdy from waiting, on-edge from the constant drone of the feedback. They crowd up to the front of the stage, they buy drinks, they check their cell phones, then check them again. Some people start chanting the name of the band incessantly, but the chant dies out after a few minutes.Then the lights go down.As the audience becomes a solid wall of screams and cheers, three unremarkable women take their positions on stage in the darkness, sliding past amps and stepping over mic cables. There is a drum beat, there is a crunching guitar riff, then the singer, who is small and has more hips than she would like, steps up to the microphone just as the lights sweep over the stage and she closes her eyes. She sings with a voice that comes from so deep inside her that it feels like it the core of the earth.

Ash Wednesday

2007-02-21T21:41:00.000-08:00

Took the bus down to Santa Ana today for an interview to be a mentor for some students in the Kidworks program. The trip was made easier thanks to Google Transit, which was recommended actually by the Orange County Transit Authority website and is much better than their own search feature.
The trip only took a little over half an hour, plus some walking. I stopped at a run-down taqueria and got a couple of really delicious street tacos al pastor. I'll have to remember that place.
The interview went well, I think -- I never know how to answer questions like "what are your strengths?" or "what do you think is the biggest problem facing the youth of today?" though. They seem to require research, a long bibliography and extensive synthesis. Maybe some day I will have pat answers to give out to questions like that -- but I doubt it!
After the interview, Amy picked me up for an Ash Wednesday service at the Episcopalian Church down the street, where I had never been before. We were joined by a bunch of people from Canvas, which was nice. The church is brick on the outside and wooden on the inside, about 100 years old I think. Very lovely, though a bit empty during the service -- the Spanish service that got out as we were getting there was much more well attended.
I love being reminded of all the ways that people "do church," and found this service refreshing -- no music, no video screens, just scripture readings, a short sermon, the ashes bit, followed by hugging, then some liturgy, and finally the Eucharist.
That's such a superficial way to break a church service down, and I feel bad about it, but I need to do some serious reading before bed if I am ever going to get caught up for my Fowles Lecture Series class. ugh!
xxoo

The Greatest View

2007-02-19T00:17:00.000-08:00

What a great weekend!
Played Frisbee saturday morning on Chapman's fancy new field, then watched a tiny bit of Shakespeare at a theatre competition on campus. After that I met Keika and we drove out to Corona to see a metal band. We got there before the venue opened, so we hung out in Corona for a while, admiring the hills and eating at "Honey's Diner" where Keika got pasta and I got strawberry ice cream. By the time we made it back to the theater, it was packed with kids and there wasn't really any way we could get in. Which was sad. But we went to see Megan in Redlands instead, which was a lot of fun. We had pizza and beer with her and her parents and bro, then met her puppy and played Guitar Hero II until we were too tired to be coherent.
The next morning was church, where we had a good discussion about what salvation means and how different groups of Christians consider themselves "saved." Amy was driving me home after church when we had a spur of the moment plan to get Indian food for lunch, which her parents joined us for. We drove out to Huntington Beach where we ate at a sweet Indian place that had a Sunday buffet, then walked around the pier -- although it had been a beautiful day further inland, it was cold and windy on the beach! I had a lot of fun just talking with Amy and her folks.
Afterwards I came home and took a nap for about an hour (which was much-needed at that point), until Shawn B. came to pick me up for the Silverchair concert in Hollywood. Met Sean G. and Brian B. up there and I mostly hung out with them, since Shawn B. wanted to sick closer to the stage and potential mosh pits than I really cared to. The three of us hung out by the side of the stage and chatted with a security guard, joking that she should let us backstage.
Then, after the opening band ... she actually LET us back stage!
We walked back there and stayed kind of huddled together in a tiny space where we were out of the way of the roadies and stagehands. I think it was pretty obvious that we had no business being back there, but everyone was cool and mostly ignored us.
It was kind of amazing. The show was sold out and it was really exciting watching all the kids pressed up against the stage cheering and singing along to all the songs. And Silverchair was great, of course. I will probably write more about the whole thing later since I need to go to bed now, but wow, what a fantastic weekend!
... I didn't even really get any homework done!

Half Marathon

2007-02-05T22:30:00.000-08:00

I ran a half marathon yesterday!
It seems like decades ago already.
Afterwards I hobbled around like an old man with stiff joints,
And I'm still sore today.
But I did something I'd never done before
And it was something I never thought that I COULD do before.
The first two miles and the last two miles
Were the hardest,
But the rest was simply a case of going going going
And not giving up.
So how do I feel?
I feel sore,
But I feel great.

This Weekend I ...

2007-01-21T21:46:00.000-08:00

-Went grocery shopping
-Unclogged the shower drain
-Cleaned the bathroom
-vacuumed
-Cooked an actual meal (without microwaving anything!)
-Played ultimate frisbee for three solid hours
-Found a new sandwich shoppe
-Bought tickets to see Silverchair at the El Rey next month
-Napped
-Got in an argument with housemate over a milk cap left on the counter
-Reconciled with said housemate
-Read The Time Traveler's Wife and Little Nemo
-Got my hair cut
-Went to church
-Felt like Aro 2.0
-Felt awful
-Felt OK again.

The Soft Bulletin

2007-01-10T23:20:00.000-08:00

I spent the evening eatting bratwursts with some good friends and an awesome old German man, and then losing badly at billiards to the old German man ("GerMAN MAN" appears reduntant, but it is not! ... MerMAN MAN would be, however) who had never onced played the game in his life. What a wonderful world we live in!
I am too sleepy to write up a real post today, so I will leave you with this picture that I saved for some reason I can no longer remember.

BEHOLD:

The best part is that their last names are all "Superman." The other best part is that one of them is a Mermaid.

Aught-Six to Aught-Seven, part 2

2007-01-09T00:25:00.000-08:00

So far, I have been sick for all of 2007. It's only been a week, so there is plenty of time for wellness to descend upon me, but it is getting a little annoying at this point. My dad is a doctor and my mom is a medical technologist and either of them could probably tell you what is going on inside my body in clear and accurate scientific terms. As an errant son who refused to take up the mantle of the stethoscope, I can only make wild guesses.

Inside by body, valves and joints and canals buzz and churn and pump in a continual harmony that I contain but cannot feel. When I try to picture my own interior, it is like looking into a night sky and trying to understand the light-years between stars. It seems unfathomable. And yet, somehow I am sustained by tiny electrical sparks, by unseen chemical reactions, by red and white cells in my blood stream, and by trillions of microorganisms living inside of me.
No wonder they made that movie about sending a spaceship inside the body -- there is practically a whole universe spinning and pulsing within each of us. And on days when I am being particularly lazy and uninspired, the only thing I really work toward is making sure the Aaronvese is maintaining a decent amount of fluids.
It's not a great feeling to realize how much time I spend doing nothing but making sure the right things come into and go out of my body, but I do marvel at the mysterious mechanics inside me. All I really have to do is make sure I get enough water, eat occasionally and stretch once in a while. And somehow, that is enough. It seems indeed to be a miracle.
But now something foreign, some strange strain of invisible microbe has begun reproducing itself deep in the interior of my body. This cannot be allowed. My body, quite without any conscious command on my part, is fighting back. Perhaps it is encasing the intruders in mucus, which is being forced out of me through my ears, my throat, my mouth. During the worst of it I wake up in the morning and spend a full half-hour clearing all the mucus from the hollow places in my head, blowing, coughing, sneezing it out, like a vacuum cleaner in reverse, shoving out instead of pulling in. It will continue all day long, at work, during meals, on the phone, in the shower. It does not look, sound or feel pleasant in anyway.
But this is not a very bad illness. The worst it does is make me annoyed and tired and always grabbing for tissues. The human body can endure far worse.
It is fascinating -- my body is healing itself, cleaning out this disease, although I never even asked it to. It is as if my body made a New Year's Resolution, the same one it makes every moment: to survive a little longer. All these things inside of myself have a powerful will to keep going, to clean up the trash in me. It's not really fun, or always pleasant. Sometimes it makes my nose bleed.
But I find it incredible how hard my body will work to keep going. It's almost enough to inspire me to clean up my bedroom.

...

Wow, inspirational sickness. Now I know I'm off my rocker.

Aught-Six to Aught-Seven, part 1

2007-01-07T23:27:00.000-08:00

It's the last day of 2006 and I'm asleep in the passenger seat of my mom's battered mini-van. We are driving through Northwest Oregon, on the way home after our annual year-end weekend family reunion. I'm starting to get a cold.
The roads and the scenery are familiar -- single lane highways that dip, curve and climb through grass seed farms, Douglas Fir forests and two-diner towns. In the distance, green, rolling hills fade farther than you can see and look patchworked by clearcutting.
I blink my eyes open occasionally, catch lazy half-glimpses of the world through the windshield. Everything is grey, desaturated. We are driving beneath a cloudy, colorless sky that seems to be holding back all of the rainbow frequencies of midafternoon sunlight.
The past year drains away, fading to whispers of grey. Maybe it's just the comforting rhythm of quiet cartrips, but I feel world slowly and surely shifting. 2007 is not yet here, but it is coming. Across the world, it's already begun.
Our New Year's Eve is surely irrelevant and arbitrary on a cosmic scale -- it's simply the day we chose to end our calendar -- but as our wheels turn atop the shifting planet and I watch the grey and white landscape, eyes half shut, it feels like a true new year is surely on its way.

Epiphany

2007-01-06T00:31:00.000-08:00

Today is my birthday. I'm 24. Everyone says "oh, 24 is no big deal," like now that I've over 21 I don't really have anything to look forward to, but I don't buy any of that. It's not like the purpose of my life is to purchase or drink alcohol or pass any sort of legal benchmarks set by the state. This is another year to be alive and quite frankly I think I am more excited to be 24 than I was to be 21. 24 is a good, solid number. It's divisible by 2,3,4,6,8 and 12. It is the number of hours in a day. It's the number of years I have been on this planet. Thank goodness for 24!
(also, it is apparently an action-packed TV show, although I haven't watched it)
...
Tonight I got food and frozen yogurt with friends, then we went to see Children of Men, which is a breathtaking movie, unspeakably bleak while bound to hope. I think it should have been released as a Christmas movie, as it is the closest thing you will ever see to a science fiction nativity story, albiet through a firmly agnostic lens.

Oregonian Dispatch UPDATED!

2006-12-29T11:12:00.000-08:00

Apparently "Oregonian" is a funny word. All of my friends in California seem to giggle every time I say it, even though it's basically conjugated the same was that "Californian" is. Oh well, comedy does indeed lurk where you least expect it!

Take this thrilling misadventure, for example:

*Last night my sister and I decided to go see some old high school friends who were supposedly gathering at a local pizza place, Abby's Legendary Pizza. Note that they do not call their pizza tasty, delicious or tolerable. Only legendary. My father claims that it is THE worst pizza he has ever endured, and adds, "and I've had a lot of bad pizza," so perhaps this is what Abby's pizza is legendary for. I never found out, because the event was hastily planned almost entirely via the facebook, and when we arrived no one was there -- not even the host of the party -- except my sister's friend Brian, who looked very relieved when we arrived.
We stood around by the gumball sticker machines for a while trying to decide what to do, before I made the joking suggestion that we should check out a Dallas bar, since none of us had ever done that before. The more we talked about this idea, the better it became, until we were nearly bursting with excitement to head on down to a good ol' paragon of redneck culture and kick back a few brewskis!
The little girl getting a sparkly horse sticker from the machine looked at us in a way that told us that she knew we were going to Hell.
But for tonight at least we would not be going to Hell -- we were going to a long-standing pub in Dallas' run-down downtown that had changed names and proprietors more times than we could remember. It was not Heaven by any stretch of imagination, but it was cleaner and more welcoming than we might have suspected. We sat at a table and were served by a former classmate of Elizabeth's. Each of us ordered a beer and Brian got a hamburger. There were about four old guys hanging out at the bar, and one of them chocked on something and almost died, but didn't. There was a rerun of The Office playing on the television. It was not exactly eventful.
Our beers only cost $2.50, however. Elizabeth was nonplussed by this, but Brian and I come from more urban and costly areas and were shocked. Dallas beer is cheap beer!
We paid the paltry tab and headed out into the cold night.
We were about halfway home, which is to say I had driven my Mom's Prius about two blocks, when I noticed a cop car following me in the rear view mirror. Just when I thought the cop wouldn't turn on his lights and pull me over, well ... he turned on his lights and pulled me over. Awesome!
It turns out I had forgotten to turn on the headlights. Uh oh!
"Where are you folks headed?" the young agent of the law asked me after I finally figured out how to roll down the windows in mom's car.
"Well officer," I said, "We're actually just heading home after having a drink at the bar."
"Oh really."
"Yeah, but I only had one drink and that was probably an hour ago."
"..."
"Well, OK, it was probably more like I had one drink over the course of an hour, really."
"Ok, you can go on home then," the cop told me after he ran my license and registration, "but I really don't recommend drinking and driving."
"You got it, officer!" I said, as I rolled away.
...
So there you have it. My first trip to a bar in my hometown ended with me being pulled over ALMOST IMMEDIATELY and also being let go without penalty or sobriety test after instantly fessing up to having been drinking mere moments earlier!
Small towns are amazing!

Half-marathon training update

2006-12-04T22:21:00.000-08:00

oh man, I just ran four miles!
and it wasn't even hard!

now I just have to be able to run three times that ...

also, my knees feel funny. I think it is ligament laxity kickin' in. mmmmm. laxity.

Two videos:

2006-11-19T17:57:00.000-08:00

These are the first real "films" I have made in a long time. I put them together for today's service at Canvas Church. Please check them out and let me know what you think:

A). Fast

B). Slow

I'm starting to feel compelled to do this ...

2006-11-18T00:50:00.000-08:00

-Last day at the sushi bar was today. A bunch of my friends came in to eat lunch and wish me well, which was very nice of them. I was even able to sit down for a couple of minutes and hang out in their booth because my replacement, who I have been training this week, was covering me at the time. Some of our regular customers made a point to wish me well before they left, and my buddy Bang nearly refused to say goodbye. Leaving places is strange. I still have to go pick up my next paycheck.

-The bad news is that almost everyone in my office at Chapman is sick. The good news is that I feel fine!

-Went to see Casino Royale tonight with Ed, Kyle and Nicole. It passes muster.

-Afterwards, Kyle made us all listen to Damien Rice, who totally makes me fall asleep no matter what. There is ONE song on his new album that is not a sleepytime song, however, and it is currently stuck in my head. la la la.

-Tomorrow is Saturday, but I have SO MUCH TO DO!!

More of the haps

2006-11-16T23:13:00.000-08:00

-Today was my last day tutoring at the high school. The first couple of weeks there I felt sure that I was an awful tutor and no good at teaching anyone anything, but now I have realized that teaching is something I really love, and that kids are amazing. That doesn't mean that it still wasn't my last day.
-I am working on an article about the film school for the next issue of Chapman Magazine that I have gotten to interview a lot of film professors for. It's actually really amazing because I get to sit down with some of the best teachers there (The designer of Blade Runner! The writer of The Sting!) and just talk to them about filmmaking and storytelling, one-on-one! I kind of feel like it's cheating, because I'm learning way more from these people than I'll ever be able to convey in my article, and I'm personally getting a lot out of it. It's almost like being back in school again, except without having to do assignments! Well, except for finish the article, I suppose.
-Saw a trio of one-act plays tonight. A one-act is a great format to experiment in, because you can go out on a bit of a limb and even if it's a bit akward, the audience isn't going to be thinking "oh lord, not another two hours of this!" All of the plays did some interesting things stylistically and were interesting, though some bits were more successful than others. This isn't really a review.
-I signed up to run a half-marathon in February one week ago. Guess I need to start running!

The Haps

2006-11-16T00:07:00.001-08:00

briefly:
-I have been hired full time at Chapman University as their Public Relations Coordinator, which will be my first 40hr/week gig since working concessions at Mount Rushmore in the summer of 2003. It also effectively ends an eighteen-month period of job-vagabonding, which has included stints of various lengths as a pipe de-denter, bad freelance writer, Christmas light hanger, sushi bar host, high school tutor and public relations writer, and also rather palpitable plans to move to both Alaska and Istanbul, which were eventually discarded.
-I've been listening to a lot of Bob Dylan circa '64-'65 this week.
-I have been rather deathly afraid or writing, and have willfully avoided it pretty constantly. I think we can all agree that this is pretty stupid.
-I have been free of romantic entanglements for over a good year now. This is certinally a personal record, and I speculate that it might also place me atop a list of my friends and close aquintances. I also wonder if I even remember how to "date." The very act of kissing seems even more incomprehensible than it did when I was 15, and I am sure that if I ever again find myself in a place where !!kissing a girl on the lips!! is a possibility, I will botch it quite miserably. Perhaps I should just take a vow of, what do they call it? celebacy?
Except that it is not that I would not like to be involved with a girl, it is just that I don't want to waste my time and energy only to have something fail. Again.
-Actually, I feel about the same way about girls as I do about writing. I think. Goodness, what does THAT mean? I'll leave it for you, dear blog readers, to psychoanalyze. I need to go to sleep.
-I start working full-time on Monday.

2006-11-08T22:56:00.000-08:00

This story is a) about me, and b) quite funny! It is written by my friend Jennie from Koisan.
I am quitting Koisan, the sushi bar where I work, in just over a week. It's kind of strange because this is the first time that I have quit a job for any reason besides "I am moving away and it will be geographical impossible for me to continue my duties here."
I will miss it, because it's an easy job that I know how to do well. I will also miss the people I work with there, mostly Jennie, who stopped working lunch shifts with me a few months ago, and Bang, who has been my Koisan cohort longer than anyone else. I will also miss making jokes in Spanish with the cooks in the back, folding ten thousand red napkins into roses at the beginning of each shift, greeting regular customers by name, and sometimes getting curry for lunch.
I'm really comfortable at Koisan, probably more so than I have been at any other job I've had. Which I think is one of the reasons that I need to move on.

xxoo

politics, briefly

2006-11-07T22:24:00.000-08:00

So the Democrats have won both houses of Congress and a lot of governor races, too!

Why this is good: it proves the power of democracy -- people were unhappy with what was going on, so they voted to change it.

Why this is not great: there's kind of a sense that this was a vote AGAINST Republicans rather than a vote for the Democrats. Voters are saying, "we're sick of scandals, corruption and war!" but it remains to be seen whether the new regime will rid us of any of those things.

I would like to see things change not because those in power have proved themselves incompetent, but because those who could be in power have proved themselves to be truly visionary! I would like to see things truly change for the better instead of just away from the worse.

I want people to stop asking the easy questions ... of course people who have become corrupted should not remain in power! That is an easy question. I want to hear people asking questions like:
-how can we prevent the corruption of those in power in the first place?
-when are we going to stop relying on cars and oil?
-what can we do to seriously fight global hunger?
-how can we rehabilitate our criminals rather than marginalizing them?
-why has it become so hard to intelligently debate politics in America?
-what can we do to better educate and empower our young people?

oh, don't you know? talking about a revolution sounds like a whisper.

Doppleganger watch

2006-10-31T08:05:00.000-08:00

Christina showed me this video of some kids covering a Dave Matthews Band song... which features me on saxaphone. Check it out:

Obviously, that is not the real me, but he even has red shoes like I used to wear! Side-burns are a *little* long, but whoever he is, this kids is doing a pretty good job of replicating me. And I am freaked out!
Not that there's a clone of me. I can handle that. I am freaked out that there is a clone of me who probably sits around grooving to Dave Matthews all day long, and that, my friends, is truly frightening!

Disc Jockey

2006-10-29T23:36:00.000-08:00

So on Saturday I ...
-wore a Lacrosse t-shirt
-got up early to run a 5k race
-ate two hearty breakfasts
-played ultimate Frisbee for about an hour
-set my line-up for Sunday's fantasy football game
-watched the riveting second half of a college football game on TV. It was USC vs. OSU ... and the Beavers won!

Then I realized, with a shock, that this is all evidence that I could be becoming a *gasp!* jock. aaaaahhh!!!! that would be like the worst thing ever. if I were a jock I would have to beat my geeky self up. Which would be unpleasant, I think. I like my geeky self!

Everyone I talk to seems to be surprised that I ran a 5k race, and then almost unbelieving when I tell them my time -- 21:08, just about 7 minutes per mile. Do I really seem to be THAT unathletic?? I am in pretty good shape, honestly! I haven't got big muscles, but I can run OK.
At the Chapman 5k this weekend I out-ran not only President Jim Doti, but also Orange Mayor Mike Murphy and Congresswomen Loretta Sanchez! Ha! I even got a medal! And a tee-shirt!

Jocks rule?????

Considered blogging. Finally blogged. Everyone yawned.

2006-10-25T21:11:00.000-07:00

Here's a list of six-word stories stories from various sci-fi and fantasy writers. It's worth mentioning for two reasons:
1. Even though more respected authors contributed, Stan Lee actually turned in the best engry.
2. An old college prof of mine, James P. Blaylock, offers up a story there as well! Blaylock was a great teacher and an excellent writer, though none of his students really seemed to recognize it. He knew both Phillip K. Dick and William Gibson personally, although you had to kind of pry him for details. He never threw that kind of thing around to impress people. When I mentioned in class that I had read one of his stories (which was online), he raised his eyebrows high and said, "really?" I wonder how much fanmail and stuff he gets. I wonder how many deeply respected artists walk in our midsts without us ever knowing it.
...
The thing about six-word stories is that, like haiku or limericks, they're kind of addicting. A few of the authors in that list contributed many times over, which I think sort of dulls the point.
But, oh well. Here are two more from me:
-Played PONG until dawn. Kept losing.
-Wrong step equals fire. Bring it!
That last one will only make sense if you read the story at the link.

xxoo

One good deed, one bad deed

2006-10-24T19:48:00.000-07:00

Good: I donated blood today at Chapman, which I was excited about because the last few times I have tried to donate here I've ended up getting sick the day before the blood drive. It pretty much went without a hitch, except aftewards I felt a bit loopy and now I am just about ready to go to bed, even though it's not yet eight. I'm just tired, ok?!

Bad: As I was brushing my teeth, a spider jumped onto the wall behind me. I saw it in the mirror, kind of like in a horror movie or something. It was kind of neat looking spider, with long spindly legs and big ol' hairy pincher/mouth(mandible?) things, but I grabbed uit with piece of tissue and squished it with my fingers. It made a popping sound. I'm sorry. I should have just put it outside. :(

Moving-hopping

2006-10-21T23:28:00.000-07:00

Went movie hopping today. I truly love movie-hopping, even if it is slightly illegal (maybe). For me, it turns the movie-going experience into more of an active way to spend the day. Rather than just going to the theatre, sitting back, watching a movie, then going home, you have to plan out your route, pack a bag with vital supplies, sneak past guards to make it safely to your destination, etc, etc!
It makes going to the movies an adventure in and of itself!

Anyway, I am tired, so this will be short, but this is what we saw:

-The Departed: A cops vs. mob movie by Martin Scorsese based on a Hong Kong thriller that was huge hit over there a few years ago (who knew?). The film is basically about Matt Damon and Leonardo DeCaprio who are both undercover agents working for the opposing teams, and who sometimes look basically like the same person, though not on purpose. It's meaty film -- there is a lot going on all the time, and when it was finally over, I truly felt like I got my money's worth. Which is worth noting, since theatre hopping is all about trying to get MORE than your money's worth, but I would have walked out of the mutliplex quite satisfied with having just seen that one movie.
I also liked these things about it:
-They use cell phones like ALL the time, but in interesting and believable ways. Talking face-to-face is shown to be more secure than using technology.
-It's set very distinctly in Boston and is about Irish Catholics there. It a lot of ways this movie, especially at the beginning, just DRIPS with that sort of ethnic flavor. It made it feel like it was about a specific people in a particular place, which is kind of rare for a Hollywood movie.
-The acting is good all around, except that Jack Nicholson mostly plays his character EXACTLY how you would expect him to. Which isn't bad, it just felt like I had heard him say every line at least once before in another film.
-Inter-cutting was used quite splendidly. I will make no more film-geek statements like that.

After that we saw...

-Man of the Year: in which Robin Williams plays a comedian who is elected president! There is a good picture in that premise, but as soon as the credits revealed the director to be Barry Levinson, I kind of grimaced. This was actually because I had gotten him confused with Barry Sonnenfeld who had previously directed the rather awful Men in Black II and Big Trouble, and coincidentally, RV, this season's other Robin Williams vehicle (which I have not seen).
So, whatever.
The film was still not great, and not nearly as good as it could have been. There's not really much to recommend about it besides Williams' sporadic "stand-up" bits, which are thrown in just often enough to keep the film floating. On the flipside is a sub-plot which involves Laura Linney, an evil corporation, voter fraud, conspiracy theories and serious drug abuse, which is played almost entirely straight despite being grossly implausible and nearly sinks the movie. Linney is a great actor in my book, but she's given a thankless role of running around raving about corporate cover-ups and men trying to kill her in a movie in which neither of those things should be happening.
On top of that, there are ten zillion plot holes, which I'm willing to overlook in a comedy, but they make the film rather unbelievable and prevent it from ever addressing its main premise: what would happen if a comedian became president? We never really know, because the filmmakers seem like they'd rather be making three other movies.

We were going to see a third film after THAT, but we actually were all too tired to press on. Another day, my friends, another day.

American Catastrophe

2006-10-12T23:33:00.000-07:00

So my landlord has started bringing her two cats to stay at my house while there is construction going on at her house. The cats' names are Freedom and Liberty.
They are not ever, EVER allowed to go outside.

I could make a crack about her being a Republican, but I will restrain. All I will say is: that, my friends, is what you call irony.

If love were a pastry...

2006-10-09T21:31:00.000-07:00

When I am feeling down and depressed for largely ungraspable reasons, I find that pie is one of the surest way to cheer myself up for a few moments. I think this is because it tastes somewhat how love would taste if love were a pastry.
Of course I glad that love is not a pastry, because with pastries it is only a few bites before you're left feeling fuller than ever and as empty as before, but when I am feeling down or depressed for largely ungraspable reasons, I wish that finding true love was as easy as pie, and I could buy some from the grocer for 6.99 (plus tax), freshly baked just for me, in a aluminum tin I would save forever as a symbol of love's everlasting presense at my side.
But if that is too much to ask, could I just save leftover love in the fridge for something a little less fleeting to heat up on lonely nights?
...
xxoo

Department of Obsure (But Amazing!) Music Videos

2006-09-29T22:39:00.000-07:00

What's that? You to hear a song that name-checks biblical heroes, J.D. Salinger and Mad Magazine? But it has to be hip-hop and sung by three Jewish boys?
Ok, ok, anything else?
The music video must feature a fight between a bull and a grizzly bear? Alright, check.
It's got to be rotoscoped in proto-Waking Life style? Well, that narrows it down a bit.

Oh, and you want it when? Circa 1989?
Then I think I've got just what you're looking for...

The Beastie Boys, Shadrach

The Revolutions of America!

2006-09-27T00:01:00.000-07:00

Now that Peter's settled into his new apartment and has the Inter-Net once again, True Tales of Bravery and Honor is back in action! Check out today's new strip!

Then come back here and tell me what you thought!

Introspectionville, Bloghio County

2006-09-25T01:35:00.000-07:00

I have stayed up all night reading my past posts on this blog. I kind of figure that before I finally move on to a new blog (which has been a transition I've been making ever since coming back from the Comic-Con it seems, actually) I should come to terms with what this particular journey has been. It's like some old warrior's adage about looking your opponent in the eyes so that you may know his soul before you slay him with a mace and a broadsword. RAR!
I've learned a lot, actually.
Probably the most important thing is that I have a ton of great friends who have given me invaluable support, encouragement and notification of typos. Truly, I am blessed to have such great friends and family. Thank you for reading and for commenting. Thanks for talking to me in real life and for hugs and for car-rides and home-cooked meals and everything else. I love you all tremendously.
Secondly, this past year has been one of incredible growth for me, and even though sometimes it has seemed impossibly hard, I am amazed when I look back and see how I have changed. When I started out this blog I had almost everything I thought I wanted. Less than a year later everything had gone to pieces -- no job, no money, no girlfriend, no church, no plans, no clue. Now, almost a year after that, I'm still standing. I've not changed as fast or as radically as I would like, and sometimes it infuriates me, but I am growing up. Sometimes I feel that being out of school has made me unproductive, but on the contrary, it has forced me to look at myself and learn who I am and where I fit in the world.
Obviously, I'm still learning. And I think I'll always be able to say that.
Here are more things I have learned from re-reading my blog:
-Some of my typos are truly atrocious.
-My emo posts have usually not been as emo as I thought they were when I was writing them.
-I will ALWAYS think I used to be funnier, wittier and more eloquent. It is most likely not actually true. Therefore, I need to accept it, suck it up, and move on.
-Sometimes, what I thought was my best writing ended up being my worst.
-Sometimes, what I thought was my worst writing ended up being the best.
-Whatever my deepest despairs and darkest worries are, someone shares them. I never knew it before, but that is one of the reasons I write.
-Continuing themes have included: pies, hats, and The Bible. Also: food, laundry and bedtimes.
-I did not talk at all about my last trip to Oregon, which is a shame, because it was great.
-It is OK to be you.
...
-I was going to write something lofty about The Muse, but frankly, that does not seem to be something she is inspiring me to write about at this time. Oh, The Muse! What a cruel mistress thou art!

And now, long after my bedtime, I will wrap this up.

Date-Watch 2006

2006-09-19T17:10:00.000-07:00

The young woman who I asked out to dinner has begun postponing for ambiguous reasons, leading me to believe that, rather than the stated delay of one week, our date is on hold indefinetely. This is pretty much ok with me, for reasons I won't elaborate on right now because I am about to go to a baseball game. I will just say that I think she is the kind of girl that I've tended to go after in the past, which means she is probably not the kind of girl I should be looking for.
I'm still glad I took the step to ask her out, as it's been a learning experience.
My only regret is making such a big deal out of my personal life. Now people are asking me all the time "so, when's the big date," etc, etc, when the date was not even that big of a deal to begin with.
Well, maybe it was to begin with. But only to me. And it quickly became something that felt more like an obligation than something that fun.
So, yes. Or no. Or whatever!
Now I'm off to see the Dodgers! Go Dodgers!!!

Romanticizzzzed

2006-09-13T08:11:00.000-07:00

Moments ago, for what I have figured is something like only the second time in my life, I asked an actual girl on an actual date. It was not even that hard, apart from trying to not spontaneously combust before I actually asked her.

It is scheduled for "sometime next week." If she flees the country between now and then, I guess that will mean she was only being nice.

Details...

2006-09-12T22:14:00.000-07:00

will be forthcoming. I've got to go to bed now. Also, I've started reading Moby Dick. So far, it is whaletastic!

Weblog Vagabond

2006-09-12T00:54:00.000-07:00

Once again I'm transitioning to a new weblog as I begin to transition to a new phase in my life. For whatever reason, WHERE I write things is important to me, and even when I kept a journal in spiral-bound notebooks I would think of each one as a different volume of my life.
So the Slow Season is ending. And ugh, thank goodness. I'll have more details here tomorrow, but mostly I'll be posting at Orange County Vagabond, which is currently very much under development.

I think I am turning into a girl...

2006-09-10T01:15:00.000-07:00

... because I have felt bummed out for whatever reason tonight, and the only thing that seemed to make me feel better was eatting some pie. Now that I have finished the pie, I am all sad again for no reason.
Crap. I guess now it's time to break out the pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream, lame romance movie and floral-printed box of extra-soft tissues.
I will curl up on the couch in a bathrobe and curlers in my hair and proclaim, "EVERYONE LEAVE ME ALONE, I JUST 'NEED SOME TIME!' *SNIFF*"
(but not really)
(I have never known a girl to actually do something like that, so where did I get that idea from? Does it actually happen?)

Anyway, GRR. Everything is stupid. Or maybe, it's only me. rrrrrrrrrrrrr

Real America Labor is the Labor of Gettin' Down!

2006-09-05T23:48:00.000-07:00

Labor Day!
'Tis a day when all laboring must come to a rest, as if America itself decided that God had not put enough Sundays in the year! Now one day of rest in a week is fine, and usually necessary, but two days of rest is excessive. Americans can simply stand to rest for that long! Locked into a routine of working hard five days a week, we are compelled to toil on the extra day of rest at PARTYING HARD! Preferably with a Barbecue! And pie! And air-guitaring!
And so it was much to my surprise to find that no one I knew was planning any sort of party or general carousing whatsoever this past Labor Day Wizeekend!* None! I was shocked, but not deterred. For what is America but the land of opportunity?! I elected (in true patriot form) to hold a party on my own!
To say that I hosted the party myself is a bit of a misnomer, however. All I really did was provide a time and a place. My friends were the ones who came together and made the party. Together we shared food, drinks, stories, music, etc, etc, mush, mush, friendship, mush, mush. It was truly a grand time, and I am thankful for wonderful friends. When we work together, the labor of partying is that much easier and the partying is that much hardier! Hoorah for teamwork! Hoorah for friendship! Hoorah for DEMOCRACY!
At one point we used my computer to play modified karaoke with Garage Band, recording our vocals over some of our favorite songs.
Probably the best of the bunch was this version of "Lean On Me" which features a rotating choir of whoever happened to be walking by at the time, as well as a stunning section where we are singing like two measures ahead of the actual song. Brilliant!
Also, here is Kirsten adding harmonies to Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Simple Man," which sound pretty good until I join her for a verse and mess things up.
We also did a version of "Straight Up Now Tell Me" by Paula Abdul, but the girls stood too far from the computer and all you can hear is me, and it's really embarrassing. Sorry, but you don't get to hear it. There are two reasons for this:
1). Trust me, you don't want to, and 2). I am the boss here!
Anyway, it was a wonderful time. Please enjoy the following footnote, related to the above statement that there were no parties in my neighborhood over the weekend:

*This is not entirely true, for the Orange International Street Fair was being held only a few blocks away in The Circle. I have a love-hate relationship with the street fair. On one hand, it is always uncomfortably crowded and the only cultural lesson it has to impart is that, along with beer, the universal five-dollar beverage, almost every country proudly features sausage as their national food item of choice, proving that it is indeed a small world after all. On the other hand, a gathering that size only happens in Orange once a year, and it is full of tiny children, biker grandpas, underage college skanks, burned out rockers and their tattoo'd girlfriends. It's the best place to go to be reminded of Orange County's underground, flourishing, time-tested white American red-neck culture!

All alone love-struck for a dizzy moment (Emo Week Continues!!)

2006-08-31T23:06:00.001-07:00

It has been a very long time since I've been moved by a girl in any inexplicable way. For the greater part of this past year romance has felt like a very dead, far away thing to me, to the point that listening to swaggering love songs has reminded me of nothing more than sitting curious and bewildered in pew at an elaborate religious service conducted in a foreign another language.
Of course every now and then I've thought about what it might be like to date someone, but it's always been a very calculated business involving mostly trivial matters such as: would she tolerate my taste for punk music, would I tolerate her taste for ridiculous clothing; would she spend 70-80% of the time being cold and condescending, would she eventually go psycho, would I regret the whole business within a week, etc.
It has been a very very long time since just a conversation with a woman left me feeling so soft, airy and unable to concentrate.
And I should say that when it suddenly happened it rather caught me off guard.
I can't say that I am happy about this.
Not because of the girl -- at the moment I happen to think that she's the sweetest thing ever, which only happens when you know someone inside and out or, as is the case here, hardly at all -- but because of (well, I suppose part of it is that the girl could be [and probably is] very different from how I imagine her, but that's a digression), because of me. Because I feel rather incapable at the moment of giving my whole heart to anything, let alone another person. I'm not sure that I even have a whole heart to give, quite frankly. And I'm terrified of gathering all the pieces and trying to put it back together. Why in the world would I be terrified of that? Why would I be afraid of pulling myself together? What am I scared of?
I've always said to myself that I can't have an extraordinary woman until I have become an extraordinary man.
Hopefully, some day, that will happen.

< / emo >
The skin on the bottoms of my feet is peeling. I don't know why!

Samurai movies and leftover burritos: my life as a bachelor!

2006-08-30T23:22:00.000-07:00

Goodness, I am tired! But I promised myself that I would write something tonight. Hang on, it's too hot to write with pants on...
Ah, thats better.
It's also too hot to write with socks on. One of the best things about clothing is that it can both go ON and come OFF! Hoorah!
Anyway, let me tell you of my evening.

There was no employee lunch served at the sushi bar today, so I had to feed myself once I got home. This could have been a problem, because contents of my food stores was such:

-One piece of bread
-Three unhealthy, very hydrogenated cookies
-One peach
-Three nearly-empty bags of potato chips
-Half a box of 99% fat free popsicles d
-Some cold cuts and pre-sliced cheese
-random, un-useful canned food.

However! The previous day, when confronted with this same dilemma I ventured down to the seedy corner strip mall that included:
-a chinese restaurant where I had colon-destroying "orange chicken"
-a Mexican market where I bought peaches for 50 cents each earlier in the week
-a laundromat
-Tacos Pepe, which I decided to get dinner that night.

I was the only person there and ordered a carnitas burrito, which was four dollars, including tax! It was a big burrito; so big that I had to return the plate that I got out to eat on that night and get a bigger one. It was so big that after eating just half of it I was too full to continue.
So I got to eat the other half for lunch today! And it was good. Too good to enjoy in solitude, actually. I had checked out the movie Yojimbo from the library, so I watched that while eating my burrito. Even though it was due today, I almost didn't watch it until I started in on the burrito and realized that burritos are enhanced greatly by early-1960s samurai movies.
Yojimbo apparently inspired A Fist Full of Dollars, one of the classic Spaghetti Westerns which are enthralling by always make me fall asleep. I've never made it all the way through one before. But Yojimbo was way better. At least, the first half-hour was. I didn't get to finish it because I had to leave to go to West Hollywood, but I was able to renew the movie online before I left, so I'll get to watch it more! hooray!

ok, this is totally boring. I'm sorry.
These other things happened:
-Drove 40 miles to West Hollywood in two hours. At one point we sat stalled at an intersection and waited through three green lights before we were able to progress. Grrr!
-Saw Ed's band (with a guest appearance by Grant) play at The Roxie for a Battle of the Bands. I yelled "Battle!!" but no one fought. Sad.
-Walked a few blocks to a pizza place that served two amazing things:
1). Gigantic 36-inch pizzas
2). A special "Aro" pizza, which I seriously had to order. I only ate half, so now I know what's for lunch tomorrow!
-Tried very hard to remember the formula for calculating the area of a circle so that I could determine how many square inches of pizza are in a gigantic 36-inch pizza. I came up with something like 1200 square inches, which seemed excessive. There were equations scrawled all over my menu before I finally gave up.
-Struck up a conversation with the couple at the table next to us about my calculations, which they were impressed by. It turns out that she was from South Africa, he from America and they had met in the Philadelphia airport, then ended up getting married! I'm not a sap, but my inner-vagabond thought that was very romantic.
-Talked to my sister via cellular phone on the way home and debated song lyrics. She was right. It turns out that there IS is a first time for everything.
-Came home, wrote very boring blog entry while listening to sea shanties.
-Slept, I guess. (This one is a prediction).

Once Again, 1/4 Life Crisis

2006-08-29T22:06:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking of moving.
It seems that everyone I've seen lately keeps asking me when I'm going to move. Or if I'm still at my same job, if I'm still in my same place, or what is new.
I suppose these are all normal small-talk questions that people ask all the time, but I take each one as a direct accusation about the direction of my life:
Why aren't you moving? Haven't you moved yet?
I've lived in this house for almost two months now. I got back from Oregon less than a month ago. I've only been working my office job since January, and my restaurant job since sometime in October. I freaked out a bit when I realized that in less than two months it will be my one-year anniversary as a sushi bar host, but that's not an inexcusable amount of time to have a part-time job to pay the bills.
But people like to ask, "So, how's the job going?"
And so I have to answer: "The job is fine! It's normal! It's the same as always!" And perhaps I should add that I am getting better and better at doing menial labor that means nothing to me! I am learning nothing except for new ways to not care about nothing! The highlight of my day is folding napkins so that they vaguely resemble roses for place settings at the restaurant! I kid not; it's true! I have discovered that anything I attempt at my office will be eventually rendered insignificant, but that shocks and depresses me less than the continual discovery that a day can become so very, very small.
The only thing that gets me out of bed most mornings are the dreams and plans that bubble constantly from either my soul or my imagination. Are they the path to my future, or just fantasies to distract me from this stagnation?
Either way, can I stay here much longer before dreams start to feel like false hope? And how much longer after that before it becomes resignation?
I'm not sure that I want to know, but I think the transformation is starting.
And the only thing I'm more scared of than that is following my dreams and seeing them fail. No one really tells you how hard it actually is to follow your dreams. It's hard! But you've got to make a move.
And I'm thinking about moving.

Ganges, contemplative fiction and books from the future

2006-08-19T20:44:00.000-07:00

I just re-read my copy of Ganges #1, a large format comic by Kevin Huizenga, who does seriously great work. The unlike most comics which focus on what a character does, whether it's a date or a treasure hut, this whole issue is all about the internal action. Our Hero, Glenn Ganges, walks to the library, sees a litterer on the way home, then spends an evening at home reading and drinking coffee while his wife Wendy does work on the computer. The climax of the book is Glenn lying awake in bed, watching Wendy sleep. That's it! Glenn doesn't make any big, life-changing decisions -- he hardly makes any decisions at all besides getting up to get more coffee, etc. -- but he certainly ponders about a lot. Spiritual, the scientific and speculative discourses are explored in depth, and in a way that makes these three forms of thinking seem like nearly the same thing.
The comic works because Huizenga's diagram-clear style allows him to present all sorts of metaphysical musings and formal experimentation with a cheeky, steady confidence. Also, it's funny and heartfelt.
As a person with an active life that seems to speed further, farther and deeper than "real life" can possibly express or accommodate, I found a lot of comfort in Huizenga's "contemplative fiction," which recognizes how much of life is made up of thinking about time, eternity, song lyrics, library books and imagined futures.
I met Huizenga at Comic Con and got to tell him how much I appreciated that the comic was about normal life and things that happen to people all the time. He said he wasn't sure if many people ever have a day like the one in the comic. He was very nice, and soft-spoken like his characters seem to be, but I keep wondering what he meant by that.
Anyway, here's another mystery. I've had this comic since May I guess, but look at the publication date:

It came from the future!! That's probably a common publishing thing. News-stand comics usually have a cover date for the month after they are published, for example. But still, I always thought the publication date would be the actual month the book was published. Can anyone clear this up?

resu me

2006-08-14T23:53:00.000-07:00

Today I finally did my laundry, updated my resume and applied for a job (as a skateboarding blogger!).
Putting together a resume is a bit of a harrowing experience because you kind of have to examine yourself under glass and ask, "Have I actually done ANYTHING worthwhile?" It's can be a scary, lonely question.
I have more ideas about what I could do and who I could be than I have actual accomplishments to list. But it's always slightly reassuring that if I think long enough I find that there is actually more to my list than I first thought (I just now realized that I forgot to mention that I studied at the University of Granada, for example).
But I still can't escape the feeling that I'm going to bed not having done enough today. Goodnight.

Shake your tail!

2006-08-04T08:30:00.000-07:00

Sleater-Kinney wrapped up their final east coast tour last night with a show in Washington D.C., leaving just today's performance at Lollapalooza in Chicago, and two farewell concerts in Portland before the band enters the netherword of "indefenite hiatus."
The D.C. show initially had to be rescheduled because the venue almost burned down, but National Public Radio was there to broadcast and preserve the eventual show, which is awesome. You can listen to it here. Turn your headphones up, though -- in true NPR fashion, the mix is a little low.

???

2006-08-03T09:48:00.000-07:00

A good half of the Internet seems to be down for no particular reason. Trying to go to any web site is basically a crap-shoot right now, because the odds seem equal that it may or may not exist. Did some very large servers go down somewhere? Was there a natural, Inter-net-destroying-disaster that I am yet unaware of? IS THE INTERNET BEING EATTEN?!!?

These are the mysteries of our age.

2006-07-27T08:53:00.000-07:00

I am so sick of a lot of things, and one of them is feeling like I have to update my weblog. I'm tired of learning about my people only second-hand through the Internet and I hate that we follow our friends lives the same way we follow the news: by checking for updates. As if it wasn't enough that we're radically disconnected from world events, now we're also drastically disconnected from those we love. Or "love."
I'm trying to remember how many meaningful conversations I have had in the past month, and it can't be more than a handful. And one of them was probably via the Internet.
Now I normally would complain about how society is fragmenting, people are being isolated, real human contact is diminishing, etc, etc.
And without a doubt it IS an awful way to live.
But I think that part of this is my fault.
Weblogging, in its many forms, is really a performance. Your audience may be quite small, but it still exists. Whether you are being witty and clever or somber and self-pitying, you are still being watched.
It's easy for some people to forget that, and their journals become a long, rambling, self-indulgent form of catharsis. There's something kind of pure (although usually very annoying) about that. But I rarely, rarely write what is really deep inside of me. I am very aware of the performance.
I am very aware of these three things:

-I cannot afford to be seen as weak.
-The truth is almost always ignored.
-No one wants to hear about my problems.

I have seen too many dreams fail, too many confessions met with silence and too much anguish run unchecked. I am losing hope that whatever lies deep inside of me will ever see the light of day. Instead, my life will be a series of performances, and whatever makes me ME will be compressed tighter and tighter inside my chest until even I no longer know what it was supposed to be.

Comic Con Journal Day 2

2006-07-21T08:27:00.000-07:00

Wifi is working at the hostel this morning! (I know you all are deeply concerned about this) At a certain point while traveling, it starts to be difficult to remember what time it is or even what day it is. Without a regular schedule, and with concerns like, "what bus do I need to catch to get to where I am sleeping?" "where is there good food?" "how much longer do I have to carry this?" and "where does one go if one is possibly interested in talking to some nice girls?" it is pretty easy to lose track of time.
So even though my body doesn't FEEL like it's 8:30 in the morning, I am very glad that it is -- because the hostel has a free pancake breakfast every morning! FREE! PANCAKES!! You have to cook them yourself, but it is still awesome. If I'd only known yesterday! yum.
The word from the publisher yesterday was that he'd be interested in seeing one of our projects when it is finished, but really we could publish ourselves just as easily as he could. Which sort of make sense, except that the only publishing experience I have is from doing Gabbo, which isn't quite the same level. Still, it would be something new to learn!
I've got to pick up some photocopies of our proposal from Kinkos this morning and pass them out to other publishers. I'm not expecting to get much of a response from that, but it would be a shame to come all this way and not at least try.
Even after one day of the convention I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. The main convention floor is huge, and so so full of people, booths and every sort of assorted pop culture miscellany you could ever not possibly need. But there are some extremely talented people swirling around in that mini-universe, and it's been a pleasure to talk to a few of them.
I'll write up more thoughts later. But for now I am finished with my pancakes, and should be on my way. I do, however, dread carrying my backpack around for another whole day. My shoulders are seriously being worn down like rocks on the seashore.

Comic Con Journal Day 1

2006-07-20T09:12:00.000-07:00

I'm at a nice little coffee shop with tasty smoothies and free wi-fi at the moment. My hostel is sweet -- I'm sharing a room with seven other guys, but the facilities are pretty big and have almost everything you could ask for (excpet their wi-fi, which I guess is broken).
Traveling on my own so far has been really nice. First of all, the train ride down here was amazing, worth taking just for its own sake. I've also met a lot of people and enjoyed being able to set my own pace. In a few hours I'm my scheduled pitch meeting with ait/planetlar and I have no idea how it will go. I'm hoping that I will learn a lot at least!
Last night I had a dream that I met a witty and sarcastic red-head who fell in love with me almost instantly. When I woke up, it was hard to concentrate on wanting to get a publishing deal. I want to go out and find that girl instead.
I guess Bravery and Honor is lucky that I haven't met her in real life.

On my way...

2006-07-19T14:48:00.000-07:00

to San Diego!
I hope I didn't forget anything . . .

turn of phrase

2006-07-18T14:59:00.000-07:00

Because I think that "furthest corners of the globe" is a rather delightful non-sequitur, I really want to use it in an article that I'm writing at work.
Unfortunately it's hard to wink while writing straight-ahead copy, which means that if I were to indulge in this particular flight of whimsy, it would just look like bad writing.
Can't people take for granted the fact that I know what I'm doing?
oh, what? I have to prove it first.
oh.

well, I still like "furthest corners of the globe!"

Dedicated to CU . . .

2006-07-11T19:06:00.000-07:00

Intermission . . .

2006-07-09T23:56:00.001-07:00

Oh little light
That shines for me in the dark of night
Oh little sigh
Sometimes I follow you all the way home
I would almost have to ask you
I hate to be led
So give me a spark I can look for instead

How do you do it?
This bitter and bloody world
Keep it together and shine for your family

How do you do it?
With visions of worst to come
Live in the present
And spin off the rays of sun

Oh little beam
Splitting the fog and the dirt in between
Oh simplify
Like a problem you try to work out in your mind
I would almost have to ask you
It's clumsy when said
So give me a spark I can look for instead

-s-k, nightlight

.....

I've been taking a blog break for a while now. Will return.

Holy crap

2006-07-02T19:32:00.000-07:00

I am scheduled to pitch stuff to a well-known indie publisher at Comic Con!

Blessed Geography

2006-06-30T10:33:00.000-07:00

Some people plan their lives with a calendar.
I'd prefer to plan mine with a map of the world.

2006-06-11T16:01:00.000-07:00

The built in camera on my new mac is a lot of fun!

These totally aren't all of them.

lonely as a cloud in the golden state

2006-06-08T11:22:00.000-07:00

Baaaaaa

2006-06-07T18:53:00.000-07:00

I've been shorn!

compy!!

2006-06-05T16:23:00.000-07:00

Well, I am typing this from outside.
I got a new computer in the mail today. Not magically, I had to order it. But still, I've never gotten a computer in the mail before. It is a macbook pro, and since it can connect to the Internet wirelessly, so I'm sitting in the shade of a tree on the patio at Chapman and feeling very hip. It's a good thing that it can connect wirelessly because we still can't get the stupid internet to work at our house at the moment. oh well. It was a hot weekend, but it really is a nice day at the moment, and I'm glad that I can be outside. This is a nice keyboard! I need to get my nails trimmed, though. And I need to get my hair cut.
Here is a picture of my nails, my hair and the outside, via the built in webcam. technology is crazy!

Speaking of technology, the power went off at the sushi bar where I work today! Fortunatly there were only a few customers and we had some candles and flashlights, but there are no windows in the whole resturant, so it was pretty dark. The whole block lost power, including the stoplights. The power didn't come back on, so eventually we all went home. It was strange! But a good adventure I suppose.

hey, there's a butterfly!

Moving Day

2006-05-31T15:23:00.000-07:00

Our twelve month lease is up, so I am moving out of the apartment today. I have lived here longer than I have lived anywhere since I left home just under five years ago. I am glad that I do not have a lot of large things to take with me -- in half a decade on the run you learn to cut down on material posessions which cannot be easily moved from place to place -- my biggest indulgence has been filling my bookcase with books and graphic novels of all sizes and I still do not know how exactly I'm going to move it.
I'm excited to be moving and feel that change is in the air. I feel as if this is natural -- in more than just a physical sense, I am moving out of this space I have outgrown.
But while cleaning under my bed I came across a pile of broken promises -- a comic I never finished drawing from back in the fall, a calendar with missed deadlines for a screenplay I still haven't written, and notecards detailing the trip I took with Erin to take her back to Wisconsin almost exactly one year ago.
Here is the future, everblooming.
Here are the possibilities of the past, wilted and dusty.

I suppose I could say that my regret is never becoming who I once thought I could be, except that now, looking back I know that person could never be me.
Today, I am learning to grow up into me. That may sound like a message from public television, but being true to yourself can be the hardest thing. I am still learning what it means.

Some thoughts on the X-Men and the first commandment

2006-05-29T21:02:00.000-07:00

I’ve spent enough time around both Christians and comic book fans to have realized how similar they can be at times. Both discuss evangelism and reaching out to the “unsaved” (or “uninterested”), both will get into heated debates about who would win in a fight (or who gets to go to Heaven), both go weekly to their place of worship (churches on Sunday or LCS (local comic shop) on Wednesday, when new issues come in), and receive what is hopped will be a transcendent experience in exchange for what cover price (or tithe).
The parallels are not exclusive to comic books – you could just as easily compare going to church with going to the mall or to a baseball game or a rock concert, etc – society is full of religious ceremonies that masquerade as commerce, deification clothed as entertainment and spirituality that’s simply called “culture.”
I’m not calling for asceticism here, not am I proclaiming that mainstream culture as demonic. I’m just calling a spade a spade. Taken objectively secular devotion, be it to Wolverine, Hot Topic, microbiology, Dickens, Nirvana, bird-watching, apple pie, or what have you, looks remarkably like religious devotion. Religious devotion is generally more self-aware, which can lend it a slightly different flavor, but hardly makes it anything different.
This isn’t a ground-breaking theory and I’m certain that plenty of people smarter than I, religious and secular alike, have explored the theme more extensively than I ever could.
But it’s still something I’ve been thinking about; yesterday was Sunday and I did not go to church (there was no service for Memorial Day) -- instead, I hosted an X-Men 3 party.
I do not plan things very well, or very often, but I did plan this: everyone had to dress up an X-Men character, free X-Men comics would be handed out, the previous two X-Men movies would be screened and the night would culminate in a trip to the theatre to see the very reason we were gathering: the new X-Men film, X-Men: The Last Stand.
The film was billed as the last X-Men movie, but it won’t be. Even in its first weekend the film has made far too much money for the studio to let the franchise simply fade away.
Reasons I held the party:
1. X-Men 2 accomplished a few things I thought were cinematically impossible and when people ask me to list my favorite films, it is usually included.
2. A friend who is cooler than me told me about how her friends went all out dressing up as characters for X-Men 2 and how it was totally awesome, and I was a little jealous.
3. My hair sometimes looks like Wolverine’s, except curly.
4. Parties are fun!
5. If you are much older than 23, dressing up as the X-Men stops being cute and becomes creepy.
None of these things are blasphemous, as far as I can tell. But while dressing up as Wolverine and going out to buy X-Men comics to give away and trying to decide if there are any party foods that relate to the X-Men (there aren’t), I felt like if someone unfamiliar with this sort of cultish behavior would have to proclaim it, well, a bit cultish.
Forget that these are the X-Men and that fans all over America regularly dress up as their favorite characters for comic conventions and movie openings. Strip away the rather reasonable excuses that we were just having fun and hanging out with friends.
From this lens, this is what we did: we dressed up as our idols (in both senses of the word, but just consider the “teen idol” one if the other makes you uncomfortable), spending considerable time making our hair and clothing look accurate, came together to celebrate and talk about these personas we had taken on, then ventured to the city center with hundreds of others to watch our idols projected on a 30-foot screen.
From a religious perspective, it looks very much like worshiping false gods.
From an advertising perspective, for the amount of hyping I did of X-Men 3, I should have been getting paid.
And considering the actual experience, I know that none of us really cared THAT much about the X-Men, and that dressing up and playing pretend is just something fun to do. Honestly when I look at this picture of us I can’t help but smile:

Still, still, still . . . these connections keep troubling me. . .
Most of us have probably defended fictional characters or famous people (who are the same as fictional characters in our minds since we do no know them) or bands or movies more vigorously and frequently than we’ve defended our faith and beliefs about things that really matter. And dressing up, whether it be physically wearing a costume or embroidering a mental fantasy world, is a pretty wonderful way of hiding from reality and from ourselves.
There are of course plenty of people who will tell you that religion is just a self-constructed delusion, a crutch for those who can’t face the real world; at its best a comforting diversion, at its worst an oppressive, repressive way of controlling the masses.
And I would say . . . exactly.
Pretending to be comic book characters is an excellent, corporately funded way to ignore the world and problems around you. It is a harmless distraction that can give you a sense of purpose and direction as long as you don’t look too hard behind the curtain. But isn’t that what distractions are for – stopping you from looking behind that curtain? Isn’t that what makes a good religion?

But Christianity is about a torn curtain. It is about seeing the world the way it is. It is about being fully human and finally ourselves.
It is about what would happen if we were feeding the hungry and comforting those who mourn instead of going around pretending to be the x-men.

For future reference:

2006-05-25T15:34:00.001-07:00

*Listening to hard-kicking rock bands and/or reading about this century's greatest artists while you are supposed to be doing tedious work at your desk job will only increase your desire to burst free from the office fetters and fly with expanding abandon toward the limitless horizon.

*And if you do it for too long, you could end up writing junk like that.

*The Internet might possibily be the worst place for appologies, but sometimes that's all we get.

*Remember to grease skateboard bearings.

*Do not accumulate too much furniture.

*As impossible as it seems, they say that it IS possible that you could fall in love again. Until then, enjoy the solidarity, and the breeze of standing on the brink of one hundred and one possible futures.

*It could be, that when you "just don't feel like it" you aren't trying hard enough.

*There's still ice cream in the fridge if you want some when you get home.

*You are, most likely, forgetting something.

slow train coming

2006-05-24T23:53:00.000-07:00

hm. I've neglected this poor blog a bit, haven't I? I'm sorry! I'm learning a lot about The Internet by working on the braveryandhonor.com site, but it also takes time and is complicated! Kind of like a girlfriend, but not as fun. I swear I am not turning into a computer geek who can't meet or talk to girls. Really, really really.

Anyway, every so often I tear down a blog and put up a whole new one. That time may be coming soon. The slowseason isn't over, but I'm in a very different space now.

I think.

blip!

2006-05-15T22:47:00.000-07:00

Wow, it has been too long since I've written! I have a lot to write about. But I also have a lot to write before I can write more? I promise frequent updates coming soon, but in the meantime, please check out the new
TRUE TALES OF BRAVERY AND HONOR .
I think most of you know about it already, but those of you who haven't seen it need to give it a shot. There's art, comics, movies and more! Please lemme know what you think of the website AND the comicstrip!

I also will be blogging there from time to time, so watch out!

The war at home

2006-05-09T11:07:00.000-07:00

I’m sitting in the sushi bar after closing, fishing my chopsticks around in my lunch, made specially by the chef for us employees, and I’m thinking about human endurance.

I’ve been reading about David Blaine, the street magician turned endurance artist who emerged today from an acrylic aquarium where he had been living underwater for a week, suffering from liver damage, acute muscle pain and all sorts of other aliments. The man has balanced on a 22-inch platform atop a 100-foot pole for 35 hours, been buried alive in a see-through coffin for a week, survived inside a gigantic block of ice for 61 hours and fasted for 44 days inside of an acrylic box suspended over the Thames River.
Plenty of news articles list the facts of his feats, but none give me answers to the questions I have –

What does it feel like to live in a body that’s been pushed to the edge of experience?

Where does the mind drift when there is nothing to concentrate on but hanging in there for just another second . . .and another and another? Does it drift at all?

How do you stay motivated to pursue an insane, outlandish dream?

Who has done anything like this before?

Now David Blaine surely has done well for himself with this brand of professional insanity – each stunt gets him a television special, media coverage, thousands of new fans and surely more money than he needs – but I can’t help wonder if he isn’t doing it not because of those things but in spite of all that. You see, the most of us can only guess what it’s like to be the point on the parabola that brushes the x-axis, and though the entire world may watch him, but only Blaine understands how it feels.

Those who test the limits, do they experience more life, more risk, more humanity than the rest of us? Do they give more love? Do they gain more understanding? I’d like to know. I’d like to push myself as far and as hard as I can. I’d like to arc through the sky, burning like a comet, to touch snow covered peaks and heal broken souls. I want to grasp at infinity and come back a little wiser. I want to bend mightily but never, ever break. And if I do break, I want it to be with style, agonizing and transcendent, inspiring.

But right now, at this inescapable moment, it seems enough of a feat to choke down my lunch of squid and mushrooms mixed with rice.
I eat about half, and brush the rest into the trash.

Upcoming Events!

2006-05-03T00:04:00.000-07:00

May 5: Cinco de Mayo!
May 5: also Cinco de Mustache!
May 6: Free comic book day!
May 11:

(I made the flyer. I like it. But a lot of people don't like the things that I like. What do you all think? Give me your honest opinion -- is it fantastic? or DOOMtastic?)
xxxooo

An e-mail I recieved at work

2006-04-27T22:57:00.000-07:00

Subject: In honor of Administrative Professionals Day - everyone wins!

In honor of Administrative Professionals Day, denim day will be in effect for tomorrow.

Be sure to thank your fellow admin co-workers (and ____ _____, in particular) for this wonderful privilege.

My soul then folded in on itself from sheer lack of hope for the world.

Sleater-Kinney is totally the best.

2006-04-27T00:40:00.000-07:00

I have decided that Sleater-Kinney are probably my most favorite band ever. A lot of rock critics have written really interesting and wonderful things about them, but I'm just going to tell you that this is the music that I put on headphones at work when I am disillusioned with just about everything, and also the music that plays in my head when I'm skateboarding, the sidewalk gliding beneath my feet and the future rushing up joyously around me. Exuberant angst? Angsty exuberance?

I was going to share a bunch of songs and videos, but I think I'll limit it to one tonight, with more possibly to come. This one has a little bit of Patti Smith in it, a great line about tree climbing, a KILLER guitar groove and "aaaaaah GET UP!" The video has people walking through fields and a mystical purple circle. I don't really know what is supposed to be going on. But what are music videos if not obtuse? The song is from like 1999 I think, and truthfully it's a little artsy and pretentious, but there's enough good stuff in there that I don't even care!

Get Up

Oh man they are a great band.
PS -- here is a live version of the same song, which shreds nearly all the artiness and pretense and basically just rocks. Track is via rbally, a music blog from Boston that includes posts about a few of my friends right there along with the established greats.

Playing with Google maps . . .

2006-04-25T18:14:00.000-07:00

The world looks better right side up . . .

My apartment complex. Ridgewood Village. I used to think that the name was stupid because it wasn't on the ridge of anything. Then I realized that we are in fact just on the ridge of the freeway. A small concrete stream with no water runs between us and the power plant to the north.

The Black Hills, South Dakota. Mount Rushmore is less than a mile southwest of this picture, but it was cover by clouds, and the view in this direction was always my favorite anyway. I can point out secret spots in these hills that wouldn't mean much to just about anybody.

Hometown. Dallas, Oregon. Of all the pictures, this one looks the most plain to me, which I suppose is appropriate. My house is in the lefthand corner.

Fishing village on the northern Italian coast. You could see the bay from our hostel window, and google doesn't even have images of the path we hiked the next day, which was filled with more beauty than could fit into a year.

La Alhambra, since it seemed a crime to not include it. What strange geometry builds up over the centuries!

The Columbia River gorge which divides Oregon and Washington is so, so, so green. There's nothing more inviting than flying home over this landscape. I cannot wait to be in the midst of it all, but if I must wait, just watching this pass beneath me is not bad at all.

This one is zoomed out farther than the others, but I had to include it because: Venice looks like a little boot, attatched to an umbilical cord (the road to the left-hand corner) to its mommy, Italy the big boot! Who knew??

It's technically called the Orange Plaza, but come on -- it's clearly the Orange Circle, which is what everyone calls it, smack dab in the center of Orange, a central Orange County, California town. I guess the historic look and feel of the area was only preserved due to the fluke confluence of a bunch of antique stores in the same place, which somehow seems appropriate.

Minneapolis. A city built like a puzzle out of skybridges and shadows.

I never realized that Kenosha, Wisconsin was so close to the tiny ocean that is Lake Michigan. Erin told me she sometimes dreamt of flooding, and now I know why.

Granada's Parque Garcia Lorca was one of the last places I revisited before taking a bus to the airport to catch a plane to London, to Dublin, back to London again and finally to Oregon, away from Spain. My host family lived in an apartment in or close to this picture, as did many of my friends' families. I've walked those streets so many times I can see it up close if I just close my eyes.

"All the wild world is beautiful, and it matters but little where we go, to highlands or lowlands, woods or plains, on the sea or land or down among the crystals of waves or high in a balloon in the sky; through all the climates, hot or cold, storms and calms, everywhere and always we are in God's eternal beauty and love. So universally true is this, the spot where we chance to be always seems the best." ~ John Muir