NADA

Song 1

2011-06-07T06:54:00.001-07:00

Harker's Run, April 2009

2011-05-15T19:53:00.000-07:00

Cicadas failing, green hills unfurled
scroll-long into a mute map.

First night in dark trees, thunderheads,
wafts of red clay, cigarettes.
On the floor of those woods: an empty eastern box turtle shell,
withered condoms, horn coral fossils and morels past consumption.
The detritus of a green and buzzing creation.
Such abundance made meal,
rast-ways of urge rendered hollow.

The bilge water down there, 4 Mile Creek,
slank past slugged and rainbow-sheened with oil film.
Giant carp in their chain mail, approaching heaven,
sucking horseflies from the surface.

And not far off, garden rows of Civil War dead and
city fathers--then the unmarked stones far from view--
simple women, drunks, blacks. Caskets borne up
by locust roots and time.

The trail to the pond winding
through sacred groves of snakegrass and damselflies,
sun luxuriating, green breathing in time
and the sound waiting for me.

I wish I didn't know you. I can't keep caring for you
and I can't pretend not to--such a place as this:
Your undiscovered common places,
your overturned perfection.

Delightful Stuff

2011-04-26T08:28:00.000-07:00

Looavull, in the Great State of Kentuckee

2010-09-03T08:50:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, I had the chance to grade AP English Language examinations in Louisville, KY. The process and experience (and the fantastic Louisville itself) are worthy of separate posts, but I wanted to post some of the interesting writing constructs I encountered while grading. Before I do this, I want to make it clear that this is again not an attempt to poke fun. I find most of these as casual mistakes/omissions/oversights that aren’t out of my range currently, and definitely were things I might have produced as a high school writer. If anything, these stand as artifacts of the playfulness of language, and to take it even further, none of these errors alone warranted a reduction in grade or anything of the sort.

The prompt that students were responding to was the following: “In his 2004 book, Status Anxiety, Alain de Botton argues that the chief aim of humorists is not merely to entertain but ‘to convey with impunity messages that might be dangerous or impossible to state directly.’ Because society allows humorists to say things that other people cannot or will not say, de Botton sees humorists as serving a vital function in society. Think about the implications of de Botton’s view of the role of humorists (cartoonists, stand-up comics, satirical writers, hosts of television programs, etc.). Then write an essay that defends, challenges, or qualifies de Botton’s claim about the vital role of humorists. Use specific, appropriate evidence to develop your position.”

In response to this prompt, some actual exam excerpts [with my comments in brackets, and italics on some for emphasis]:

*Jeff Dunham uses a tranquilistist puppet. [With one of those, I could throw my voice…calmly]

*Kings and Queens of Mid-Evil times acquired gestures to enlighten them. [Is this sort of like a Jester skilled in the Mime arts?]

*A famous comedian that EVERYONE knows is Charlie Chapman. [And his musician sister Tracy]

*An example of humorist is William Forstchen’s “As I Lay Dying”. [If it is anything like Faulkner’s, it is hilarious]

*Jeff Dunham has a gang of puppets very different from your traditional antoinettes. [Puppetry really seemed to trip students up]

*Since the WTC Attack on Sep. 9^th, 2001…[A date that will live in mediocrity]

*I don’t want to feed around the bush…[I’d like to see this, though]

*Pardon my french, but R U SERIOUS, Alain? [No comment. This one made me so happy, not sure why]

* It is completely unacceptable to reference fat people in non-humorous terms in our society. [“What I just wrote there? Acceptable, because it’s funny”]

*President Reagan resigned because of the Watergate scandal. [The repercussions are STILL being felt]

*A Modest Proposal was able to convey to the public in a consumable way [Swift’s] idea of solving the food crisis. [I hope this was a deliberate attempt at a quality pun. Either way, it works for me]

*Larry King’s image skyrocketed downward. [Reminded me of dialog from Rize “There IS no limit! The SKY is the limit!”]

*Sometimes, humorists get the icy cold stare of a person because they have touched upon a subject that was voodoo. [Perhaps voodoo is also a taboo subject to some]

*During the 2008 election, SNL poked fun at Sarah Palin, often highlighting the human qualities she possessed. [She sometimes does seem like a human]

*Bugs Bunny and other characters took on the fascade of Hitler and Mouseolini to inform the public. [I know what they were referencing, but what they meant???]

*Humorists may be entertaining in many different ways, but behind clothes doors, they are polluting the world. [They are befouling the earth from dressing rooms?]

*How many damn times are we going to watch a man getting nailed in the crotch on America’s Funniest Home Videos before it gets old? Maybe if the writers had at least one unique bone in their body, the slop they produce could be entertaining. [I just included this one because it was written by the most bitter high school student on earth. He (unwittingly) had me crying, struggling not to burst out in raucous laughter, disrupting the busy grading going on about me. Just so snarky, upset, and fresh out of excuses]

*The declaration of independence is a humoris document that was translated from original english to english that is spoken in today’s society (informal english). [I again hope that this student is a radical and that this is some sly attempt to decry what they see as the false equality stated in the Declaration, but the rest of the essay gave me doubts]

*From Brian Regan to Brad Stine, and Jeff Foxworthy to Larry the Cable Guy, these are our soldiers for truth. [And we know how the original crusades ended…]

*Yes, it is funny to see overweight people slip and fall on YouTube, but the overall moral behind the story is that he or she was hurt. [Yeah everyone. Come on.]

*Humor is a lubricant. It makes things easier to take. [ahem]

*Robert Colbert of the Colbert Report…[a classic humorist]

*It is a proven fact that laughter causes a release of stress in one’s mind. [I love this one because it either indicates that the mind will feel added effects of stress as a result of laughter, AND/OR that this release of stress is illusory or “all in the mind.” Beautiful ?Unintended? consequence]

*Now it is extremely sad what happened to the millions of Jews, but Hitler criticizing them was vital. [What would be the proper emoticon for an aghast/confused face?]

*The Ellen Degenerate show is a popular humorist program. [Again, I hope satire…but…doubtful]

*When Obama went to Birmingham palace in London…[…was about the time that Reverend King wrote a letter from Buckingham Jail…]

*Some humorists just promote idioticness

*One of the most famous attempts at shock laughter was the time Kramer from Seinfeld used the “N” word during his act—he neglected to use it correctly. [He failed to consult his ‘Use of the N Word Protocol’ in the Chicago Manual of Style]

skech, tk. 1

2010-03-21T16:57:00.001-07:00

øøøøøøøøøøøøøøøøøøøøøø

2010-01-19T19:42:00.000-08:00

"Where's Kendra? Is she coming in today?"
"No no. She's home. Not feeling too well. Bun in the oven and all."
"Ah. I see. Constipation is the worst."

Things. 2 of Them.

2009-04-05T18:10:00.001-07:00

Thing 1--There are a host of possible ways to don a balaclava, as illustrated by the included photo:

Thing 2--I posted a free mix for download on the Plunder Guild website. Free songs for the coming spring and such. If you're so inclined, it's HERE

Saturday the 14th Eve

2009-03-13T17:20:00.000-07:00

Ash and I normally take the time to celebrate Friday the 13th with a 'scary' movie and a night at home, and for this occasion we are throwing in a new element----unnerving shadow puppetry.

Last night we discovered that my Princeton Tech headlamp, when aimed just so at the ceiling, helps create the effect of stunningly realistic eyeball to accompany puppetry.

Some of our creepy favorites:

Fig 1: Three-eyed Jake

Fig 2: Jake (regular eyed)

Fig 3: Dr. Needlefish

Fig 4: The Grumpy Bunny

Fig 5: Clean Teeth McGee

Fig 6: Colonel Alonzo Pembrose

Two Double-Ought Ocho

2009-01-22T16:15:00.001-08:00

What last year done brung...some things I found that had "nift."

Musically:

Santogold--This album got whored out majorly in 2008 to everyone making a commercial, it seems. But it stands to reason--it is that good, that catchy, that flat-out great. I appreciate this album because I can't pigeonhole it. I don't know what kind of music this is other than music I enjoy to hear playing loudly.
Santogold--Lights Out

Bon Iver "For Emma, Forever Ago." Yeah...I probably listened to this album more than any other. And if you haven't yet snagged a copy of this, you needs to. 2008 really wasn't all roses and ponies, and I think the mood of this album was just tailor made for the happenings of the year, at least for me. Instant gold.
Bon Iver--Flume

Bottomless Pit "Congress." Again, the remaining members of Silkworm combined with drummer Chris Manfrin to make an unrivaled 4 track EP that, I think, is still wrestling with the death of Mike Dalhquist (drummer of Silkworm), whose life was taken by a despondent driver bent on self-destruction. "People are frightening...when they don't got a reason to live"
Bottomless Pit-Fish Eyes

Cat Power "Jukebox." I openly crush on Chan Marshall--even Ash knows this. Chan can do no wrong, and this album is so much fun to listen to. It is really a cover album, but it is telling of Marshall's ability as a musician that my favorite track on here is her own (linked below).
Cat Power--Song to Bobby

Mogwai "The Hawk is Howling." Can't ever get away from my post-rock leanings, especially if Mogwai keeps putting out good albums. They seem to be deepening their bag-o-tricks...it isn't just 'crescendo into face melting rock' or 'play sad sad sad sad quiet'.
Mogwai--Thank You Space Expert

Sholi. Serious talent from the Bay Area--their short demo was, well, too short because it is incredible (includes an interesting remake of Joanna Newsome's "The Sprout and the Bean.") Some serious chops in this group, especially the drummer, who my cousin Wyatt reports is a joy to watch live.
Sholi--All That We Can See

Other winners from 2008 (also, if you haven't already, go to Bottomless Lakes or Frozen Banana or Tenbu for more free mp3 links--blogs on the side there)
Fleet Foxes--Blue Ridge Mountains --this song is glorious...euphoric...one of my favorites from 2008
Crystal Castles--Magic Spells
Sun Kil Moon--Heroin Blue (really wanted to link in "Lucky Man"..couldn't find it).
That is plenty on music...the blogs mentioned above have some grand link work that introduced me to some sounds I had missed...I suggest getting on it.
The Gaslight Anthem--Great Expectations --sometimes I appreciate a good hook. This group has hook...listen to this track once and lines will lodge in your skull. Sure, there is a little frat rock feel to some of it, but i like the broody angst and the bass line of this song particularly.

A few films from 2008 that i thought should have gotten far more play are these three here.

Son of Rambow. I was shocked with how much I dug this film--made me laugh hysterically in spots, hit me in the chest in others, a movie that I forgot I was watching...does that make sense? If anyone has seen this, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Man on Wire. I was sweating, trembling, ill just watching this. I don't think it is perfect, and I think the protagonist has some interesting hangups (Eiryn and I had uncannily similar grievances about this), but on the whole this is a top-drawer documentary.

The Visitor. I tend to enjoy movies that feature music as a transformative force, and this movie does that (and much more) but not in the mawkish August Rush vein. It has some serious depth and sadness, and it tends to interrogate some of the priveliges we take for granted.

This 2008-ish list is really lacking...but others have already highlighted the major players elsewhere. I am just getting tired of due diligence on the hyperlinks.

Bon Iver--Blood Bank

2009-01-14T12:07:00.000-08:00

Anyone who is a fan probably already knows that Bon Iver's upcoming EP "Blood Bank" leaked a few weeks ago (official release is Jan 20th). I plan to actually buy the album when it comes out, but I have to confess that I followed the leak and yoinked the 4 tracks. I am interested in what people think about these songs, especially "Woods."

I am linking the mp3 posted by Bon Iver's label for others to snag, in case they haven't yet.

Song: Bon Iver--Blood Bank

Movie Quiz Answer Key

2008-12-24T20:40:00.000-08:00

Long overdue...here they are. Instead of blogging about Christmas cheer here on the eve of the day that Christ wasn't born, I'll just watch my wife wrapping gifts and supply these. Enjoin.

1. Deliverance
2. Dr. Strangelove
3. Lock, Stock, Two Smoking Barrels
4. No Country for Old Men
5. The Wind that Shakes the Barley
6. Swingers
7. Thin Red Line
8. The Station Agent
9. Road to Perdition
10. The Elephant Man
11. Return to Oz
12. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
13. The Pianist
14. American History X
15. Sleepers
16. In the Name of the Father
17. Badlands
18. Eraserhead
19. The Graduate
20. Children of Men
21. Raging Bull
22. Vanilla Sky
23. On the Waterfront

Darren and Beezer pretty much cleaned this one up...Zack provided a few also...I thought Gillz would make a forceful showing here, but no effort, Emily, really. We've drifted apart. You didn't even TRY.

This first attempt was a little too grandiose. I will do another installment with more variety...not so many dark and tragic films.

Movie Quiz--Film Stills

2008-12-16T16:39:00.000-08:00

This idea is taken from Darren's blog ( http://frozenbanana57.blogspot.com/ ) because Darren is a trendsetter and fad-forger.

The concept is simple: look at the vidcaps below and tell me in the comments section what movie the picture comes from. To make this genuine, don't use Google or other such sites to search contextual clues, don't look at my Facebook profile (where most of these films are listed), don't read other comments before commenting yourself. I realize that these kinds of tests aren't simply about film savvy, but sometimes an understanding of the person posting--if we have ever talked about movies, you'll probably be able to figure all these out, even if you haven't seen a few of them.

None of these movies are overly obscure; most are popular and critically acclaimed.
Some of these are real softballs, some are intentionally difficult, there are a few that will surprise me if they are identified (I couldn't have done it). These stills represent some, but of course not all, of my favorite films. Let's see what you got...

Olfactory and the Moustache

2008-12-12T06:21:00.001-08:00

as i regrow the obligatory winter stache, i am reminded that moustaches are like snowflakes--no two are exactly alike. the other glorious fact about the uniqueness of a moustache is that no two moustaches have the same smell.

"smell?" you might say.

"smell," i respond.

of the 5 moustaches i have grown in my life, each has had its own distinct scent, its subtle waft, a threshold essence, if you must. like the discernment of hops or grapes or fermentation by libations experts, detecting the smell stamp of your moustache is a high art.

some of my moustache smell detections:

-The softly musty Houndstooth jacket (with leather professor elbow patches) that somehow wandered into your hall closet--and will remain there forever.

-The frayed strands of an aged jute rope, most likely used to tow something that smelled slightly of freshly cut wood.

-A brown paper lunch bag factory (i'd imagine)

-A bark plant on fire

And the smell of this winter's moustache (so far my least favorite of all, and a scent that has me "perfuming" my moustache daily):

-Goretex gloves, put away wet in the spring, pulled back out for a snowball fight (very earthy with a hint of wool)

Random Mental Backwash

2008-11-25T19:42:00.000-08:00

Bits and odds, for the few who still dip into these blog waters.

Section First: Overheard Partial Conversations From Small-Town Middle America
NOTE: I include these not to moralize or poke fun, but mainly because I was amused for some reason--either some unexpected regionalism, sentiment, quaintness...I really don't do this to say: come look at the freakshow of the Eastern midwest--although I don't agree in full with the subject, the style was compelling and each eavesdropped passage did invoke an audience that wasn't there (which I supplied in imagination as I am sure you will).

Overheard in the Depot Restaurant and Dairy Bar in Camden, OH--speaker was a grizzled man probably in his mid 40's, wearing a Carhart jacket and a red mesh trucker hat, and the solemnity of attitude is what I wish I could capture for you here: "Well Todd, it's just like it sez in the Bible. If there are gonna be people there speakin' in tongues and floppin' aroun', you gotta have an IN-TER-PRE-TER. I mean, for shit's sake..."

Same man, shortly after, upon arrival of his order of fried mushrooms: "Aww...hell yes. Shrooms. I could eat a dump truck full of these lil' bastards and I am crapping you negative."

Overheard in random antique store, Eaton, OH, spoken by a woman of probably 60 years in between drags on her Salem light: "...but he don't speak like a black boy. He just don't...(drag, methodical exhale)...Aw sure, he'll wear all the dangly stuff and crooked hats and he likes that thumpy music, but he'll still hold the door open and say 'please' and whatnot...(drag)...and I dunno Loretta, his voice just sounds, white..."

Overheard at a gas station in McGonigle, OH, spoken into a cell phone by a college-aged girl, most likely a student of Miami University: "And my GOD, now all of Amber's roommates have the same STD and their like--wha?"

Overheard in random guitar/antique store, West College Corner, OH, spoken by the store owner (around 50, long pony tail, stubble, deep gruff smoke voice) to a customer who had been silently strumming a Gretsch Electromatic: "We have a jam session ever' weekend. You otta come out 'n play. It'd be good fer you. A few weeks ago we were jammin an Edgar Winter tune fer 'bout an hour. I swore I was seein ghosts, it got so good. Who'd thought an albino could rock like that?" (if this one is lost on you, google Edgar Winter)

Section Second: Random Names Generated by Mark Clements and I via Cell Texts That Would Be Fitting Names for a Salvage Yard (I can't remember how it came up)

J.D. Salvanger's
the Salvage Detectives
Salvage Garden
The Plunder Years, starring Fred Salvage
"Hey, that's my bike"
Sal V. Ager's Craptorium
Junk and the Trunk
Rusty's
The Salvagtion Army

Part Third: The Reality of the Final Mix CD

Often, as a whimsical thought experiment, people may ask you what your favorite songs are (normally, as a way to transition into allowing them to tell you what their favorite songs are--probably what will be the upshot of this post, too), or perhaps they may ask you to POX (pick only ten [X]) songs. The classic desert island dilemma comes to mind--if you were to be banished to a desert island and could take one mix cd, what songs would go on it? Until now, this has been mere parlor talk--a fanciful and amusing mind exercise that has no bearing on the human situation (other than for those who will be relegated to a desert island but are still given ample time to prepare). But for me and my car, this situation has become reality. It is dire. Let me explain.

For the past year, I have watched the CD player in my car slowly lose its powers of ejection. It is covetous of all discs in its laser belly. It won't give them back. Eventually, the player will muster the stamina to eject the disc, but I have noticed that the interval between reception/rejection has grown exponentially. I have been charting it, really, and if my calculations are correct, the player won't give up the next disc I put in it for some 4 years. I do not kid. And I do not think that this car will still be running by then. Now, I have to add that the discs play just fine once they're in, but the bottom line is: whatever disc goes in there this time, play as it might, is NOT coming back out. So I have to make it good. Now, naysayers and smatterers might chime up and say "Well, Joe--just run your iPod through the radio. You can have an entire jukebox in your car." I know this, fools. I do. And I have all the necessary equipment. But the thing is: I love and adore the mixtape (cd). I love the concept, the artifact, the melange. I like to put a disc in there and have it come out with full fidelity without any FM static nonsense. I like to turn the volume beyond itself and let my marrow really jive with the sonic blasts. I like the cd.

So, it comes to this. The final cd, the swan song mix. As a mixtape veteran, I realize that most of my mixes push the 80 minute envelope and normally total about 17 songs. I am setting about to craft a mix that attempts to encapsulate not only my autobiographical musical history in large, but also tackles the various emotive responses that might be fitting/complementary to be heard while driving--experiencing the open wonder of the American road system. I challenge any reader here to put this thought experiment to use, with the realization that for me it has crossed over from the theoretical into the practical. What would you do? What would you put on the mix? As a text itself that can be read rhetorically, what do the selections on the cd say/reveal about you? I am not about to attempt to post my final mix just yet, but my next post will contain it, and maybe we can get some dialog boiling on this concept of casting yourself through a definitive mix cd. Get your thinkin' caps on.

Cross-eyed and Painless

2008-10-29T18:37:00.000-07:00

Last December, Rob Wood, Sam Hawkins and I got together in the basement of an empty house to record some songs. These were songs that we regularly performed together (with Matt Zollinger and Andy Jacobsen) some ten years ago under the name Cross-eyed and Painless. Silly name maybe, since we were not at all a Talking Heads cover band.

I don't even know what kind of band we were, to be honest. It was eclectic, sure, and in hindsight, probably benignly pretentious--we made some lofty forays at multi-genre music. There was a real complication of sound from the band: Rob brought a definite folksy, CSNY/Pentatonic blues background to complement Sam's heavy Dub, Ska, and Punk influence. Zollinger was at the time awash in sort of drug-rock poetics of Morrison Hotel psych, the Cult, Pink Floyd, and lord knows what else (what everything else...Jacobsen too). I came to the band around the time that my prog nerdery was at full mast: I still thought E.L.P. were a wildly unappreciated band and I would be ready to go to the ropes in defense of Yes for even the slightest dig. Salad days, indeed. Mixed greens.

Anyhow, despite years of playing numerous shows between the Burg, I.F., Salt Lake City, etc., we never really had an artifact of our music to keep as indication of our time playing together. So, as mentioned, three of us got together and cut some songs. These songs were recorded in essentially two sessions, hastily, with Sam and Rob working on immediate post-production and then Rob painstakingly doing the mixdown in between work and law school. I did very little, save record some horribly shoddy drum tracks.

Rob sent me some copies of the final CD, all 13 songs, and I have to say it sounds great. I am very pleased. It is a polished sound that of course loses some of the rawness of live performance, but as a sort of C.A.P. period piece, it does well. It is always interesting to see what your modern sensibility imposes on the past, because I listen to some of these songs, and lyrically speaking, I blush. In context of who we were and what we deemed important, though, the songs are true. There are some peace-nick sentiments and mawkish adolescent wanderings, but there are contrastingly dark themes in there too--and in context of where we were at the time (ages 16, 17, 18), they are representative. To try to rewrite these songs with newer lyrics would be like reading pages of a journal from awkward years and rewriting the content based on what you now experience. They need to stand as they were.

So...two songs from our recording, posted mainly for some visitors of this blog who were with us during the C.A.P. days, and for those who are interested in a first listen.

This first song is a Sam song for the most part, one of our later additions. It is really just an upbeat Funk track with some abrupt time changes...becoming a sort of speed-waltz at times. I always liked to play this one live, because people would dance: C.A.P. "Uncontrolled"

This last song was always our favorite to play live, because it usually incited chaos. It is definitely multi-genre: a sort of jumpy blue-grass, hoe-down rawk tune with some psychobilly shades, and we would usually use it to close a show. One show, played on a flat bed trailer at the High School in St. Anthony, included a version of this song that went on for about 20 minutes while the crowd destroyed itself. My snare drum was soaked in blood. This song always "felt" punk when played live, and it really charged the air:
C.A.P. "Event Horizon"

I don't want to ask forgiveness for such a long-winded and self-indulgent blog entry. I shouldn't have to. I miss playing music live, and in the way I remember and revere those days, I might never again come closer to it than to type about it here.

The Wal-Mart Bags of East Jersey: An Ode

2008-10-10T09:04:00.000-07:00

I am currently writing papers on Universal Design Theory, Quintillian, Rhodian rhetoric, and comparative philosophy. I am straining to further develop 3 separate scripts (film scripts), one of which I have had in the hopper for years. I am trying to think up a worthy proposal for a scholarship (some rhetorical aspect of the Brazilian MST movement), I am working two separate conference proposals, and desperately trying to blog and keep a personal journal. Imagine my surprise when I got bored writing, and especially writing about comparative rhetoric. Ironically, to alleviate the boredom (and as a result of not wanting to stand up and find something else to do), I did something I haven't done for years--forced myself to write a poem. It is below...its title is above.

“New Jersey is where all Wal-Mart bags on earth go to die.” Ben Barker

Why do you come here, en masse, flocking in countless
droves like dry jellyfish
to gather as one at the base of buildings bridges barricades,
to breathe as a unified plastic cloud?

Is it the urge to mate?
To glom on to a partner at the bottom
of a chain link fence
and shudder in ecstasy?

You are defying American expansion
creeping back across the fortune trail of the Midwest
stopping only to dip your flimsy handles in pools of water
traveling on, dreaming of the Garden State and the
gathering of friends that awaits you there.

Are you are drawn here to die
To this mysterious place, like an elephant boneyard?
Something innate, an unyielding magnetism, instinctual to plastics.
You, devoid of the contents you once carried,
your life sapped, your will flagging and sagging.

This place is your Mecca,
these fences your stone
you kiss and circle these back alleys and
are absolved of your failures, oh bags.

I like to think that this is how
our end will be:
all one roving mass of trash
socked in together
unable to tell one from the other
boasting of the good we once knew
and the purpose we once had.

This wind will fix our wandering.

Dear Joseph: I've been following you for years...see you Wednesday, perhaps?

2008-09-08T08:38:00.001-07:00

I am a nerd. The major foundations of my nerdery are the Science Fiction pieces I encountered--in print and otherwise-- as an impressionable youth. Some of the broad genre standards are there: E.T., Star Wars, Close Encounters, Bradbury/Asimov, Sagan, and Dune featured most largely, among others. Today I thought of one of these "others," namely Disney's the Black Hole. The above picture is a shot of Maximillian--an entirely distressing, mute robot whose mechanistic indifference to human concerns scared the shit out of me as a kid. Sorry--no other way to put this sentiment more effectively. Terror. Deep, unnerving terror. Combine the silent, mime-like technistic finality of a hulking robot with saw-hands and a blinking sensor eye and you have fear. Simple math.

Why, why do you need to know this? Because on Wednesday, we may all have the chance to meet Maximillian face-to-face. On Wednesday CERN will fire up their new 17-mile Hadron Collider: the world's largest, longest, most powerful atom smasher (insert Michael Scott joke here). The collider itself is a magnificent feat of human engineering--a 17 mile tunnel set some 500 feet under the surface of the Alps, whose purpose is to investigate the atomic happenings that contributed to the formation of our planet. Now, the great part: critics of the tunnel have been working on legislation to stop the use of this machine, operating under the idea that its operation could create micro black holes that will begin to suck our planet in on itself. Yep. There are many people, some even within the scientific community, who believe that the operation of this collider could result in a anthropogenic black hole. Al Gore will have to eat his penny loafers to top that. Read more for yerself here, if ye dare...

I just wanted to post this entry as an informative piece, in the event that you wake up Wednesday and some of those for-granted things like time and gravity aren't working too well.

Don't Call it a Comeback

2008-08-29T06:31:00.000-07:00

i been here fer years....

so i took a break from the blog, but now i'm back with a new set of teeth and i'm fresh out of excuses. except for the following excuses-

*busy-ness. no time for computing. i spent my last little while in Idaho painting a clapboard house in the full sun...i was drained. all other aspects of my life suffered, except for the all crucial farmer tan.

*need for blogger space--push the blog away. i was getting into writing routines that weren't exciting. it was becoming rote. if the blog feels like an additional job, i'm obviously not going to be writing much.

*the move. we did just move about 1800 miles from what we would both deem "home." we are in Oxford, Ohio now, living the high life. things are coming together. more details on our environs soon.

the trip out was wild. we listened to bill bryson and dune. we sampled various jerkys from strange and exotic vendors. we saw the giant Abe Lincoln head in the highlands straddling the Wyoming-Nebraska border. we gave Milo a sedative that inflated his eyelids and had him flopping around in the uhaul cab like he had be swapping his Iams for Jaggermeister. We crossed the Missouri, and then the Mississippi, and then the Ohio. Ash saw her first fireflies illuminating the highway side in rural Iowa. we went through John Wayne's hometown. we rocked every inch of that highway between the Snake River Valley and Northern Blugrass Country, and here we are.

more on the way.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Too Much

2008-05-27T09:06:00.001-07:00

Possible Spoilers Ahead--If you have not seen the latest Indiana Jones film, and are planning on doing this, don't read on unless you like a sullied theater experience.

We were thrilled for this film. We went to the late late film to avoid the crowds. We bought all of the customary tokens of a positive movie-going experience. I had a strange twinge of nostalgia as the house lights came down and the crowd, for the most part, quit texting on their phones. Wide-eyed and eager, I watched the screen, willing at that point to eat out of Spielberg and Lucas's hands.

When the house lights came back up, I wanted to beat the pair with a pillowcase full of doorknobs and rifle through their pockets for a refund. In a phrase, the latest installment alloyed and adulterated one of my favorite long-held adventure icons.

Let's take my disgust in doses. Before the opening shot came up, I was silently praying that Lucas didn't get his buttery mitts on this one. I was praying that the CGI would be used sparingly--like a trick shot in a game of 8-ball, amusing as an occasional novelty, but stale upon repetition. After my supplication, the very next thing I saw on the screen was a cute CGI-ed varmint looking around quizzically. I thought, "this must be the trailer for another Dreamworks vehicle about a personified animal community, many of whom are jive-talking, that goes on some raucous adventure." It was the opening for Indiana Jones. I pressed on, undeterred, hoping to enjoy the rest of the film. The opening wasn't bad. I remember thinking that it had a distinct film-noir feel to it. And there were Russians. The first glimpse at Indiana is always good...and of course, the first shot is always the fedora, the sema of ruggedness and wild risk in the name of cultural preservation. Then you see Indiana. And then you see him move. And he's old. Now, no one can be blamed for this, and I'm not trying to do that. But it was a reminder of passing time. Where there used to be a fluidity and ease of motion, there is now a slight, almost imperceptible hitch. It is really in the back and shoulders, but it is there if you look hard.

Still excited, I watched on, suspending my disbelief a dab for the whole "floating gun powder" sequence. I gave them that--perhaps this was magnetism that I cannot understand. By the time Dokta Jones is trying to escape the commie clutches, I was fully re-immersed in the film experience. A lot of the old signifiers are there: the punches still sound like slabs of dolomite landing on sheets of iron after falling from, I don't know, the moon. There is the classic Indy vs. the Evil Henchman trope, the Russians are even worse shots than the Nazis were, and the whip the whip the whip. Indy is still fallible. Still angry. I am in. Then enters the mantra coined once by my friend Matty Z: "Give me toooooo much!" Lucas and Spielberg then begin to slather on the "too much" in abundance after Indy survives the 6000 degree C blast radius of a nuclear warhead by riding the concussion in a refrigerator that is "lead lined." Then he exits the fridge and leisurely watches the mushroom cloud on a nearby ridge, thereby ensuring later thyroid cancer. At that point I was starting to dial out. And I swear that after the blast scene, when Indiana is being grilled by the janitor from "Scrubs," that Indiana himself, noted archaeologist and peerless academic, says "nucular." Can I get a witness? I couldn't exactly rewind the movie theater, but I thought I heard "nucular." My assessment of things up to this point was that the producer/director had used a formula that I think is helpful in writing and film: get Alice down the rabbit hole on the first page. But the duo made this proverbial rabbit hole a KGB and alien casket-lined thermonuclear disaster that they must believe is necessary for Rockstar swilling Americans who love their 'too much.'

The rest of the film was a wild blur of awkward dialogue and twisty twists and CGI poo. There were subthemes galore, intrigues upon intrigues, and a consistent dosage of excess. One thing that bothered me was that in the previous films, the logic informing what Indy had to do seemed understandable and based on informed research. In this film, Indy and his sidekick Mutt (a poor-man's Brando a la The Wild One who turns out to be...and I wish I were kidding here...his son) see a picture on a wall (for example) and make some amazing non-sequitur extrapolations and suddenly understand that they have to go to a certain place and do a certain thing. It just felt jumbled. It is also a possibility that I have become more stupid with the passing of time.

Some of the more heinous crimes include a scene where Indy and Marion (from the first installment-who at some point between then and now was zapped by a ray that drains acting ability) are trapped in quicksand during a ham-handed escape attempt. Their son, in an effort to find a simple stick or somesuch solid device to help extract them, comes up with the brilliant idea of using a live snake to pull them from their deaths. A snake. I kid you not. I hung my head. Soon thereafter ensues a wholly unbelievable, CGI doctored chase scene that culminates in Mutt swinging from vines with a host of monkeys, successfully catching up to jeeps that are speeding away from them at 50 mph. I almost walked out of the theater. The team soon finds their way to an ancient temple behind the Foz da Iguacu (which they float over with little problem), where they discover a sort of wunderkammer of human artifacts. It looked more like a dusty Pier 1 Imports in the heart of a Mayan temple. Some bad things happen, some bad things happen, some really bad things happen, and then good things happen. And then Indy marries Marion, mother of Mutt, and the show ends and I can get out of there. I almost hung around to make sure that the credits said "Spielberg" as director, and not "Bruckheimer."

I realize that my interest in writing this critique began to flag soon after I began..it just saddened me. A few final grievances, in list form:

1. I don't mind Shia LaBeouf, but in this film, I minded Shia LaBeouf.
2. Aren't blow darts poisoned and pointed on only one end?
3. Scorpions don't "bite," Indiana.
4. There are no Siafu (the rabid and flesh-hungry type of Army ant featured in the film) in South America, and even if there were, they couldn't drag grown men underground, kicking and screaming. The Ark of the Covenant will melt your face off with white hot holy electricity. This is fact. But driver ants can't do what they did in the film.
5. CGI monkeys. So bad I wanted to fling my own poo at the screen.
6. Cate Blanchett's face didn't melt.
7. No Short Round cameo (John Ke Quan).
8. No John Rhys-Davies.
9. The use of the theme song was too liberal. Lucas: "Okay, they are walking down this passage, and nothing is really happening. Should we play the theme song again here to fill this negative space?" Spielberg "Perrrfect."
10. No one was caught in an airplane propeller.

I guess that my critique of this film is another testament to my age, and also to my tendency to idealize the past. It is the same impulse that makes the elderly talk about the better days. I think that the bottom line is that the use of obvious CGI destroys the experience for me. And for that, I point the finger at Lucas. If you want further proof, just look at the recent Star Wars episodes. And look at the re-doctored originals. I defy any of you to watch the CGI performances in Jabba's Palace and not cringe. This Indiana film oozed and reeked George Lucas. In my opinion, he befouled a legacy with technology that can be impressive in the right venue, but in this context, it caused me to suspend my disbelief until my disbelief snapped. At that instance, I sit in the theater as a fault-finder. I don't like it, but it happens.

I used to think that Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was the worst of the films in the thoroughly entertaining Indiana Jones series. After seeing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Elongated Crystal Skulls that Appear to be Filled with Balled-up Aluminum Foil, I would sup from the teat of the Palace of Doom like the greediest of swine.

I read somewhere that Lucas told the press at Cannes that he could make yet even more Indiana Jones films "as long as [they] wanted more." I hope they want no more.

This one does not belong in a museum. Send it to the Marx Brothers.

Let's Start the Fire

2008-05-05T09:30:00.000-07:00

Of the myriad contributions Billy Joel has made to society, most bow before the the potent rhythm and rhyme scheme of "We Didn't Start the Fire." You remember the song: the bastard child of Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World as We Know It," sort of a paean to entropy and the inevitability of human misery. I always felt somewhat guilty listening to the song. It brought to my young mind icons of horror, pain, and disenfranchisement (at least the few references that I understood at the time, e.g. Vietnam, suicide, AIDS), and contrasted them with the trivial joys of suburbanites (Hula hoops, Disneyland, Peter Pan). I probably first saw this song on MTV while waiting for "Dr. Feelgood" to be shown again. It was probably on a Saturday. I was probably slurping down a Capri Sun, avoiding mowing the lawn. Billy Joel sure knew how to make me feel like a louse. He seemed to say "Here you are, eating sugary snacks on the couch, while other people are starving. Here, look at this picture of street execution. Here's another picture of a torture victim. Let's talk about thalidomide children. Now, enjoy your fruit-by-the-foot. By the way, the tranquility of your home life will be trampled with time...just you wait. You're going to grow up, wear tie-dye, smoke, and hate your parents someday."

Thanks, Billy.

Back to the subject at hand: I have found that an excellent way to divert your attention from the horror is to write your own verse or two of this late 80's gem. Billy has given us the blue-print, just plug your words in and run with it. Example (note--this is not in chronological order like Billy's. Extra props to him for that verbal wizardry. You might have to read the lines a few times to get the cadence down):

Verse 1:

Q-Bert, Dune, Osama Bin—
HIV, Phnom Penh
Oreos, Speedos,
So-da Pop...

Hen Fap, Johnny Reb,
Short Circuit, Little Deb,
Martin Sheen, Steve McQueen,
Lin-dy Hop…

(assorted instrument interlude…lots of Talking Heads-style world beat stuff)

Verse 2:

Kodos/Krang, Orangutan
Elian, Lois Lane,
BetaMax, Income Tax,
Inconvenient Truth…

Serpico, Jacques Cousteau,
Leavenworth, Guantanamo,
Kim Jong-il, Chlorophyl
Ba-by Ruth…

John Belushi, Kanye West,
NASCAR, Homelessness
Forced Eviction, Contradiction, R2D2, Prohibition
Scooter Libby testifies, Come and fly the friendly skies,
Calvin pissing on a Ford, I CAN”T TAKE IT ANYMORE!

WE DIDN’T START THE FIRE!

I want to see your version in the comments section. Let's play this game. C'mon now. It is worth the mental energy. I swear. Let's see those verses.

PS-as a humorous aside, I always thought that in the original version, the words "trouble in the Suez" were "troubles in the sewers." I thought that Billy Joel was refering to one of two things (both of which I would later learn were urban legends), 1) aligators thriving in storm drains -OR- 2) overzealous Dungeons and Dragons players conjuring daemons below the city (and subsequently killing each other / smoking each other's bones).

Mixed...

2008-04-15T08:37:00.000-07:00

An excerpt from one of the most difficult things I have ever written. The second I hit "send" I felt like I was making a huge mistake, but it is the right choice for now. I need to believe that.

"After a very arduous and wrenching decision-making process, my wife and I have decided that it would be most prudent for us to accept an offer elsewhere. This is a very difficult thing for me to do, because I think that my academic interests aligned most closely with the faculty interests at Carnegie Mellon University, and the program was the top program I was considering. Sadly, the decision was mercenary, and even despite the full-tuition remission offer, we would have had to incur some degree of student loan debt to attend. This past year has been fraught with some financial twists for us, and we are currently very risk-averse, financially speaking."

If someone reads this within the next few minutes, and they have at least $10K they want to give us, then maybe I can turn this around. No expectations, really.

On the bright side, it looks like we're moving to Ohio, to a place that Robert Frost called "the most beautiful college there is." The offer was just too good, and the program (composition/rhetoric) is well regarded. It has, quite possibly, the seemingly most anatopistic name possible: Miami University (located in Oxford, OH). But I think we'll enjoy our time there, and the program should be a good step toward a solid PhD program in a few years.

It is good to have some closure on this. This is also a formal invitation for my ulcers to heal now, if they'd like.

I Keel You...

2008-04-03T14:01:00.000-07:00

I was on the last stretch of a thickly wooded, downhill slope, racing through the trees in my 2004 Enzo. This was 24 Hours of Le Mans, and I knew the score. I rounded a sharp downhill curve and punched through second gear out of the turn. Instantly I heard the noise. “BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP.” “BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP.” My first thought was my Ferrari’s temperature gauge. Surely it was overheated. Or maybe it was my tire pressure. Concern hit me like a red wave. Something was wrong.

My next memory was my wife shaking my shoulder in bed, asking “Joe—what’s that sound?”

I muttered something about my engine temperature, only to realize by the tail end of my slogged announcement that I had been dreaming. And I never knew if I ended up taking a champagne bath at the end of the race or if that honor went to my French nemesis. It was a good dream, and I was sad to see it fly, but something of it persisted. The beeping. There is was, screaming darkly from some corner of our apartment. Milo was beside himself, arched back, claws dug into the carpet, ready to raise hell. I stumbled out of bed—abnormally groggy and with a wild headache—and followed the sound as it led me to the furnace room. There I found our Carbon Monoxide detector ringing the news. Evidently, it had discovered some uncertain amount of covalently-bonded carbon and oxygen atoms seeping from the furnace (technology is astounding, if you think about it). Or had it malfunctioned? Was this the result of some flagging battery or steam release from the water heater? I stood there, perplexed, unable to collect my thoughts.

I was faced there with a dilemma: risk death and get more sleep or assume that the detector had done its job and take some action. I defy any of you, when faced with this choice at 2:30 AM, to not seriously consider both options. I looked again at Milo. Aren't animals normally gifted with preternatural abilities of detection? Could my house cat warn me somehow of imminent danger? Would he serve as the proverbial canary in this basement apartment coalmine? Here I was, at 2:30 AM, looking for wisdom from someone who made hobbies of eating bugs and humping cashmere sweaters.

I knew the batteries were good. I had put them in not 3 months ago. I pulled them out to reset the detector and stumbled back to the bedroom, detector in hand. I opened all the windows to get some ventilation, and I placed the detector directly in the path of the heater vent. I reasoned that if it went off again, I would then take more serious action to get my babe and my buddy out of there. The detector never went off again, and sadly, neither did I. I just sat in bed, anticipating the shrill bark at any second. I didn’t sleep again until around 5:00. My alarm for work went off at 5:40. I crawled from bed with a numb face, nausea, and a “pain in me Gulliva.” I went to work feeling like I was strapped to the deck of Styrofoam ship in the North Atlantic. I was ready for the big hurl, the chunk blow, the cookie toss, the soul cough, the Technicolor yawn. Ash texted me telling me to tell me that she felt the same.

Long story short: we called the gas provider and got someone over there to check the CO levels. The verdict was that the furnace (which is only about 6 months old) had indeed been leaking, and offering more than merely trace amounts of CO into our breathing air. The furnace is disconnected until approved repairs are performed, after which the air will be tested anew before green-light operation is given. So, for what it's worth, this post is again a cautionary tale—after a mild carbon monoxide poisoning, I can vouch that it is nasty stuff, capable of making life Hobbesian rather quickly. Check your checkers, por favor. And don’t use crap Rayovac Batteries, even if Michael Jordan endorses them.

Side note: last night after trying to get back to sleep, the term “Carbon Monocle-oxide” popped into my head, and was hilarious. Another of those late-night thoughts that isn’t so funny by dawn.

Grifter and the Body Politik

2008-03-25T13:35:00.000-07:00

I spent this past weekend in Western Oregon where I did a number of things. I ate a bowl of slumgullion. I spoke with a bearded lady, who I want to call an unintentionally bearded lady, because I am sure that she was oblivious to her hirsute upper lip. I sped down the pacific coast highway in a '39 DeSoto. I was told by a man that though Ken Kesey is dead, the bus and the merry pranksters live on. I touched a severed, dessicated, and 20 year-old walrus penis. I touched a human skull. I wrestled a viszla named Donovan. I lost a contrived, homemade highway alphabet game to my wife and her savant-like memory. And I engaged, to a higher degree, in the political process by attending a town hall meeting in Salem where I listened to Barack Obama regale an interesting mix of lawyers, students, law students, business folks, and local nut jobs about the future of the United States.

It was worth attending. I went with one of my favorite people on this earth, my cousin Wyatt Baum, and we both agreed that it was time well spent. It was worth standing in line for an hour while being politely harassed by the militant right, then sitting patiently in an armory for another hour and a half, until finally Obama spoke. One thing that has always bothered me about the participation in political rallies and stump speeches is the false sense of society created by a congregation of too many like-minded people in the same place. Such a venue doesn't allow for candid dialog, and those who may be moderately interested, curious, or on the fringe of alliance aren't likely to find anything substantive. Wyatt and I sat, listening intently, withholding our applause, trying to examine in depth what exactly Obama was saying. Of course, his remarks were punctuated every few minutes by climactic applause by a vast majority of the the boisterous audience, which I thought a touch ridiculous. Don't get me wrong; I have been leaning toward Barrack since the campaigning process began last year. But I am not about to applaud a platitude. All we get from any candidate at this point is theoretical, and hopefully later in practice, the proof. Having said that, during the rally, I kept getting the feeling that Barrack was almost impatient with the crowd for not pushing the hard issues or asking tougher questions. He commented that some of the questions posed were "softballs." I kept raising my hand to ask a question that I thought was pertinent, but alas, he never saw me. I am somewhat hard to miss. I am not sure what the result of Obama in office would be, but he is very convincingly behind the idea of bottom-up reform, and the ideas of a quasi-grassroots reinvestment in America. Any political figure could be interpreted as being disingenuous, and again, proof of intention is demonstrated in practice, but I conclude that Obama is sincere in his proposed method of approach, and that he says the things that he does from firm conviction in their certainty. I don't think this is the unanimous case with all politicians.

I am still weighing issues internally, trying to understand exactly how the candidates will respond to the issues that weigh heavy in my mind, namely: Iraq, education, and energy (all three of which have direct impact on the hot-button economic issues currently aflame in the media). I do not yet know how I will vote. I avoid wearing my political leanings on my sleeve. I don't coerce or even try to mildly persuade anyone to see my view of politics and I begrudge no one their political view (ok...sometimes jokingly, but never with serious intent). I recognize that there is pragmatism in various solutions, and that the lines are rarely black and white. But I have to say that it is refreshing to do something more during this process than merely read and analyze internally. My opportunity to go to this rally was largely a product of time and good fortune, but I hope than anyone reading this, if presented with an opportunity to engage, will do so. I write this not so much as an exhortation to participate, but as something of a cautionary tale. I haven't done enough--done my part-- to ensure the vitality of my country, and I hope I can seek opportunities to compensate for this.

Some Musics

2008-02-22T07:27:00.000-08:00

I'm behind on this, but in keeping with tradition I am posting some great music from 2007.

Hands down, my favorite album of 2007 was Mice Parade by Mice Parade. I really don't know why this band isn't the biggest thing out there. Is it that people don't like exceptionally amazing things? Judge for yourself, but every time I hear that Adam Pierce (band founder and source of the anagram 'Mice Parade') is contemplating making a sound from some instrument, I get in line. This guy is a musician in the truest sense of the word. In my opinion, Mice Parade is a band that you can appreciate more fully if you play the drums. The beats aren't overly technical, but they are played with fluidity and purpose. They are a central piece of the music, not simply part of a rhythm section. I believe I also enjoy Mice Parade because of my time in South America--the music is reflective of many of the styles you could hear on a street corner in Sao Paulo. I am always thrilled by this band.

Samples (both excellent, especially the end of "Las Negras"):
Sneaky Red--Mice Parade
Tales of Las Negras--Mice Parade (this link takes you to another page)

After the death of Michael Dahlquist (R.I.P.) and the breakup of Silkworm, the remnants of that essential band formed Bottomless Pit. Their debut album Hammer of the Gods was another album that I wore thin last year. It is very spartan, straight-forward music that occasionally brushes against the sublime, lyrically speaking. Note to Plunder Guild members: next week you should have a Bottomless Pit track in your mailbox. Look to the east. Or to wherever your mailperson normally approaches. I would include a free mp3 download, but the album is somewhat of a rarity and a limited release. If you click on the name link above, you can preview their tracks (and if you are clever enough, you can pick the songs out of your browser cache and save them as mp3s). I recommend "The Cardinal Movements" and "Human out of Me," the latter featuring the excellent vocal delivery of "In your terrible clothes with your hound-dog nose, glory wrapped in trouble it seemed. I felt it back then, I still fell it, now I can't believe...my heart," lyrics that I like to believe describe the very singular Mike Dahlquist.

Smog started using his real name, Bill Callahan, and he put out an album last year called Woke on a Whale Heart. I haven't enjoyed this as much as I have enjoyed Smog, but I will take whatever I can get from Billy C. Not much can really touch Smog's 2005 release A River Ain't Too Much to Love, but a few tracks on this release approximate former greatness, such as "Diamond Dancer" and "Sycamore." It should be noted that Bill's girlfriend (assuming that is still the case) put out a good EP last year as Joanna Newsome and the Ys Street Band.

Some other favorites of last year were:

Mirrored by Battles. These guys took forever to release this album, after releasing 2 EP's in 2004, both of which were full-on amazing. Hard to expect less from a band featuring Helmet's drummer and a former guitarist from Don Caballero.

Sample (not full track...sadly):

Battles--Race:In

!!! came out with Myth Takes. This album signaled a departure from what I expected from this group. Their first release was an acid, disco-laden thing that was uncannily refreshing. this album seemed a lot more introspective, and very worthy of a listen.

I get so tired of any post with a high volume of links. There are many albums that I dug last year...a lot of them have been covered so extensively and repeatedly (by real music critics and journalists) that you'd have to live in a cave or in Rigby, ID not to have heard about them. You know...your Radioheads and Andrew Birds etc.

I discovered some old bands last year that I particularly enjoy. these are names you can search out yourself, assuming that you have read this far into this post, care this much, and have time to kill.

Aphrodite's Child -- a band I had never listened to, but whose merch I did notice 3 years ago in Crete. Amazing Greek prog featuring the keyboards of Vangelis! (yes...Chariots o' fire Vangelis!) They sound like Procul Harem and ELP in a knife fight. Check this saweet track and video HERE (warning...very thick beards ahoy) How bouts them vocals? The boy can sing.

Downtown '81 -- not really a band, but a compilation and soundtrack to a film shot between 1980-1981, dubbed "a rare, real-life snapshot of ultra hip subculture of post-punk era Manhattan." I scored this album from a guy from NY who cold-contacted me, wanting to trade something for a copy of my Heaven on a Popscicle Stick album by the band Smoke. This compilation is phenomenal, and includes songs from DNA, Tuxedomoon, Kid Creole and the Coconuts, Suicide, and James White and the Blacks. If anyone is interested, I will see what I can do about posting the .zip for download.

Roy Harper -- I have known his name via Led Zeppelin, but never looked into his songs until last year, and was pleasantly surprised. No wonder Jimmy Page is doffing his hat to Roy. I suggest listening to "Another Day"--sure, it is one of his far more approachable pieces, and perhaps not indicative of his oeuvre, but it is an incredible song. I think you can hear it Here.

I also spent the last year reconnecting with 3 old favorites, notably, Zeppelin and Bowie (as evidenced in prior blog ramblings), and the unrivaled genius of the Talking Heads. Over the years this band has simply been a self-renewing revelation to me. I find them impossibly good--lyrically and musically. My obsession has been watching YouTube videos of the Heads performing live, and in this process I have unearthed some footage that lights me on fire every time I watch, namely, Talking Heads performing Crosseyed and Painless, live in Rome, 1980 Please follow that link and watch that performance--I would embed it here, but it isn't allowed. If you enjoy live music, I would wager that you won't regret watching that. It starts with a heavy funk beat and some Jerry Harrison keys, and then just explodes at around 1:30. Also, this performance features the untouchable Adrian Belew on guitar (of King Crimson fame). He's a wizard. An axe-wizard. If you don't watch the whole video, at least forward to 3:24 seconds, where Chris Franz and percussionist Steve Scales start a breakdown that moves into David Byrne's elusive injured-waterfowl dance and ends with Adrian Belew playing some insane runs on his Strat. This video is the greatest. I mean, everyone on that stage is playing with so much fever. I get sustained goosebumps every time I watch this.

That is all. For now. Please disregard any improper usage, misspelled words, misc nonsense in this post.

Those Sepia-Drenched Days of 2004

2008-01-25T07:18:00.000-08:00

I was cleaning out one of my dozen or so email accounts when I found the sent message below. I had to laugh. It was in response to a letter to the editor in the Scroll magazine at BYU-Idaho. The author of the original letter was basically calling the Warhol Marilyn Monroe lithos in the Spori Building pornography.

March 5, 2004

To the editor, in response to last week’s letter “Spori Art Distasteful”:

We appreciate BYU-Idaho’s acquisition of artwork by significant artists such as Warhol, Lichtenstein, Haring, et al. To support our appreciation with reason would require pages of explanation, most if it probably falling on deaf ears (or aesthetically blind eyes?). In fine, we find the pieces enlightening, culturally significant, and aesthetically pleasing. For those who persist in staging an aesthetic witch-hunt, we know where you can find some torches and pitchforks. There are plenty of artists on this very campus that you can “run up” the nearest clock tower. (insert “Dueling Banjos” HERE).

Sincerely,

Joseph Griffin, a senior from Rexburg, Idaho
Jessica Hall, a sophomore from Newport, Oregon
Phil Hanamaikai, a senior from Clovis, California
Matthew Zollinger, a junior from Rexburg, Idaho
Darren Zufelt, a senior from Littleton, Colorado

I laugh for three reasons. 1) The incredibly summary and stilted nature of our response, 2) remembering thinking how clever we were with dueling banjos line. 3) I think that were we to respond to such a critique currently, we would probably do so with much more tact and respect and far less sarcasm. What jerks.

Miscellania

2008-01-16T08:57:00.000-08:00

I have recently wanted to write about a number of topics, but haven’t had the mental stamina to pull it off. Graduate School applications can be blamed for a bulk of that. My job can take the remainder of blame. Instead of addressing any specific topic, I am typing an annotated list of what has been in my head recently. This is therapeutic for me, more than anything, and I don’t expect anyone to take particular interest with what is found below.

1) Ashley. My wife is the best, and she makes life so incredibly enjoyable. I love having someone with whom absolute transparency is possible. It has altered my life fundamentally.

Colobus-style Beard Groomin'

2) Daniel Griffin. Loving Ghana, contracting malaria, catching spiders, being attacked by “crows on steroids.” I am jealous of my brother, and I miss having him around. Anyone who knows Dan would agree that he is unique.

3) Filling out Graduate School Applications. I would rather snort lye. Or glass particulate. The further I go, the more ridiculous so much of this looks. Reading over faculty interests and research topics just astounds me sometimes: how incredibly trivial some of the specializations seem, and to what end other than to possibly inform another effete and privileged member of academia? I am sure that the practitioners could offer valid defense of their interests, but my pragmatic tendencies shy from the whole thing. I just hope I am accepted into a composition and rhetoric program, which I feel is one of the few English emphases with practical application.

4) Cross-eyed and Painless. Sam and Rob and I recorded about 13 songs over the Christmas holiday. It was a glorious time to reconnect with two very old friends, and it has been a long time since I have laughed so recklessly. We should be finalizing mixdown in a few months, with CDs to follow. I must say that I don’t endorse the drumming, whatsoever. I think it was the curse of Frida’s unibrow that kept me down (see below), not to mention the fact that the house we were recording in was about 20 degrees (we were recording in the furnace room and had to turn said furnace off).

5) KFLO. Last night I uncovered old data discs that comprised most all of my editions to KFLO’s rotation. These are gold. With the high volume of music we were dealing with (purchasing hundreds of songs a week) I had forgotten about a lot of these. It has been like opening a time capsule from only 5 years ago, although it feels like much further back. Very poignant. I also saw Blake Shirley walking around, still sporting the KFLO muscle car promotional T. It has inspired me to make some more, and I owe a few of you (I remember, Gillz).

6) Nostalgia. Because of the discovered musiks mentioned above, an explosion of imagery assailed me. Lots of Tom Waits songs that I hadn’t heard in years. Lots of memories of hanging out with Price in San Francisco, hating my daily life, but eager for the weekend and thrilled to just drive the hills at night listening to Echo and The Bunnymen and Sigur Ros, talking to Price, driving to SanfeWayn for a Bang of Chinps. During the one Clark Feast where we actually didn’t go to the Fish Market, I found an enormous live earwig writhing in my Denver Omelet at IHOP. True story.
7) Ebay. Probably the greatest internet site ever invented. I have been collecting David Lance Goines lithographs for the past year and a half, and I recently hit pay dirt on Ebay. Where else can you score a hand-signed 1975 Goines poster worth over $1,600.00 for a mere 90 bucks? Do tell. Check this beauty…all mine:

8) Daniel Day-Lewis. Can’t wait to see “There Will Be Blood.” Just can’t. I find that his moustached roles are particularly keen.

9) My faith. I feel like I have been in what James Fowler described as Stage 4 for years. Where and how is this resolved? If any of you know what I am talking about, maybe we can discuss elsewhere. I am having some very pointed difficulties.

Lifetime piling up. James Best and Darren: if you read this, aren’t we obligated to have our ‘Best of 2007’ list war? Last year we built it up as the event of the season, and this year nothing. Guide me.

The Rice Gauntlet

2007-12-18T09:58:00.000-08:00

I' m throwing it down. If you didn't hear about FreeRice.com on NPR, then you'll hear about it from me. It is a free, on-line vocab test that donates 20 grains of rice for every word you guess correctly. It is addictive, and beneficial to someone somewhere in the world. A great idea. I am throwing down my rice gauntlet and posting my high level as food-generating challenge. I got a 48, but am unable to climb any higher.

Try it.

Hey, Bill Watterson Fans...

2007-12-04T08:48:00.000-08:00

Please tell me which of these two horrible things is worse:

THIS

or THIS

I wish I were elusive enough to track down the originator of the "Let's-use-Calvin" idea. I would strangle them. Slowly. And then make a decal about the ordeal. Aside from the copyright infringement, inane public declaration, and the ridiculous practice of bedizening an auto with stickers, people are adulterating the legacy of what I consider to be an ingenious piece of writing and artistic achievement. I know that my argument is as inane as hating Chevy or Ford via Calvin's urine stream, but it just...gets me going.

Spagett!

2007-11-29T21:40:00.000-08:00

On Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job, the laughs are sometimes cheap, and sometimes surreal. This skit is oddball, but nails my funnybone like a Liston right hook.

Damn

2007-11-27T14:40:00.000-08:00

Birds of prey and a fresh ride. I had to post something that makes me smile, because inside I am low. Ash and I resolved that we have to abandon our Peace Corps plans, for now. Our reasons can be summarized as:

1) The entire process, from application to returning home, would have take 3 1/2 years. We applied well over a year ago, were accepted and assigned, and are still waiting to go. The bureaucracy of a government office has put a bug in my academic ear, and we see the time passing without getting on to our major goal of graduate education. It is time for more schoolin'. I ain't skeered.

2) The more pressing reason, although listed second, is Ashley's mother, who is terminally ill and likely won't last much longer. It has been sad for everyone, and Ash is incredibly stoic, but I know it weighs heavily on her, and she feels the need to be close, at least within a state or two, which I agree with. We are both incredibly sad about have lost this opportunity. We still lament the fact and we are both finding it hard to give up the images we had built around the experience we were sure we would have. I feel like I have lost something.

A good friend, Scott Samuelson, said something that I appreciated. Scott always seems to say the right thing, and he told me that there was something gained in simply the process of applying and then having to withdraw. This served a purpose and taught us something, whatever it may be. That is a simple idea, and not novel, but it is something I need to remember. Ash and I will find valid service opportunities in the future. It has also shown us that our focus need not be so international: our community is in need, and currently our immediate family may need our help. Things are fine. It does feel good to have some definition on the horizon.

Grad school it is.

I guess this warrants a blog entry...

2007-11-20T06:48:00.000-08:00

but probably not. I had a dream the other night that a group of people, under the leadership of one Darren Zufelt, cruised the town of Idaho Falls on a machine dubbed "The Swigmeister." Now, the Swigmeister was a firetruck retrofitted with an enormous tank full of root beer, and a high-powered root beer cannon atop. The goal of this vehicle and its cadre of skilled operators was to spread mirth and refreshment throughout the town. At some point in this dream, my car broke down on the side of the road, and although I was depressed and frustrated in the roadside gloom, I knew that I was due for a visit from the Swigmeister. Sure enough, up they came. I pretended not to see them, even though their enormous vehicle was parked not two feet in front of me. I opted to crack the old "What I need right now is an enormous firetruck full of root beer" joke, looking in all directions except for right at the Swigmeister. This got a good laugh out of the Swig's crew, and once the laughter stopped, the root beer flowed. First, my Mercury was doused in the sweet ambrosia, magicaly restoring it to full operating condition. Next, I was blasted with a cold and sugary concoction of home-made root beer, sopped and soggy with the stuff. Then root beer was launched to the roadside, to the trees, the sky, everything. If any of you have ever seen 'Puff, The Magic Dragon,' and remember the chicken soup scene, you can relate with the transformation that took place in my dream. I think my mind must have borrowed from the iconography of Puff, although I haven't seen that show for decades. Everything was grey prior to the root beer, and soon, the sun was shining, trees (who all had pre-root beer frowning faces), were enlivened and happy from the saccharine blast, the skies returned to being bird-filled and blue. Having done their work, the noble crew of the Swigmeister awarded me two gifts to brighten my day, gifts presented to me by an old friend named Wendy Olsen, someone whom I haven't seen for over 10 years or dreamt of, well, ever. For taking my root beer flogging with such aplomb, I was awarded an oversized digital clock. In my dream, I remembered the opening lines of a Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and almost laughed at the digital clock, but thought it would be rude, especially after so much free root beer. The second gift received from the Swigmeister crew was a frosty mug with my name embroidered (yes, embroidered...I don't know how they were able to sew thread to glass) across the front, full to the top with bubbling beer. I got into my car (whose seats were sopping wet), fired it up with no problems, and rocketed off on my way.

So, I ask you all again: awkward?

You Know, My Wandering Days Are Over

2007-11-08T06:24:00.000-08:00

Does that mean that I'm getting boring? You tell me. But if I were still able to randomly pick up and drive to somewhere in California or ride my thumb north to Montana, Couchsurfing.com would be my grail.

How Many More Times

2007-11-06T08:21:00.000-08:00

I’ve mentioned it before, but my musical tastes run in cycles. I’ve just come out of my delta blues/Americana/roots country phase and now come crashing headlong back into the Led Zeppelin phase. This is an inevitable move every 3 or 4 years: total Zeppelin immersion. The fascination began in 1992 when I lay bedridden after my first knee surgery. My dad, being the rocker that he is, went and bought me two cassette tapes for my Sony Walkman: The Beatles Sgt Peppers.. and Led Zeppelin II. I turned off the Alice in Chains and turned on Zeppelin, and that was it. I was sold. Spirited away. Sentenced to a side life of head-banging, intense air guitar, and wild Bonzo imitations. Zeppelin presented an amalgamation of things interesting to young pre-teen boys: aggression, a highly occult and lurid sheen that bespoke battleaxes and graveyards, sexual innuendo (see “The Lemon Song”), Vikings, warfare, defiance of authority, wanderlust, etc. But they are so much more of course: a musical hybrid involving creativity and innovation that I couldn’t fully appreciate at the time. Zeppelin has owned me since I popped that tape in, lying in a dark room fifteen years ago. As a result of that single gift, I endeavored to purchase every piece of Zeppelin music that I could. Within a few months, my paper route monies had provided me with all of their albums, including the elusive (at least in SE Idaho) album Presence. Tied with the Beach Boys, Zeppelin is one of the monolithic musical influences in my life. This fact can be proven by the historical volumes of graffito-tagging done by yours truly in the service of Zeppelin. I believe if you go above the Madison High School auditorium, there is still to this day a wall bearing a handsome mural in honor of Zeppelin, sprayed while I dangled precipitously from a catwalk. There were, at times, alleyways in the Burg that bore their logos. Car windows and hoods have been branded. Furniture in my house. The downstairs wall. The inside of my old closet. I had a major Zeppelin addiction, fueled by my band friends Matt, Rob, and Sam--all huge Zeppelin heads.

I have recently been watching my Zeppelin DVD with footage of their final concert at Knebworth in 1979, in front of a crowd of about 200,000 people. The gem of the show is the powerful, wrenching performance of “Achilles Last Stand.” Jimmy Page outdoes himself constantly through the song. The footage is remarkable: a sweat soaked and lithe Page taxing his Les Paul like he caught it breaking into his house (see photo below), Robert Plant leading the charge with flawless vocals, and the moving force of Zeppelin, the rhythm section of genius John Paul Jones and the unrivaled John Bonham holding down a galloping groove that is just staggering. For NINE minutes. Youtube, being cool as well, had the footage from this very song at this concert. I don’t expect everyone to watch it all, no wait, I do, for it is incredible.

As a request from a good friend, I am going to post some Zeppelin lists here. Some of my personal Zeppelin favorites and what not. Because they are such a dynamic group, I figure I had better break my favorite tracks into 3 categories. “Light Eaters” are generally shifted toward the acoustic end of the spectrum. “Moderate Growlers” are good, bluesy rockers, and “Punch a Hole in Something-ers” are raucous, epic Zeppelin slammers—the big, heavy hitters. As a side—I understand that a lot of these are blues of folk classics, redressed with Zeppelin style. Zeppelin still made them theirs.

Light Eaters
Going to California
That’s the Way
Ramble On
Thank You
Tangerine
Gallows Pole
Bron-Yr-Aur
Battle of Evermore
Black Mountain Slide
Friends

Moderate Growlers
The Rover
The Rain Song
the Song Remains the Same
Over the Hills and Far Away
Fool in the Rain (go Bonzo)
Houses of the Holy
Celebration Day
What is and What Should Never Be
Bring it on Home
I Can’t Quit You Babe

Punch a Hole in Something-ers
Achilles Last Stand
Communication Breakdown
Kashmir
Stairway to Heaven (don’t argue this...it is a classic, no matter how many times you’ve heard some fledgling kid in girl pants tripping over the intro on an Ibanez in Guitar Center)
Whole Lotta Love
Out On the Tiles
Immigrant Song
When the Levee Breaks
In My Time of Dying
Since I’ve Been Loving You

Making these lists has shown me the difficulty of selecting favorite tracks. It is hard, if not impossible. They are one of the few groups who don’t have a song I don’t like. I mean that. So, once again, an homage to the greats. Let’s all praise Led Zeppelin.

The Vice Chancellor

2007-10-18T11:38:00.001-07:00

Ash and I don't yet have a human child, but a terror-inducing and uncompromising cat? Why yes indeed. Milo. The cat, also known as Vice Chancellor Milosovic, Don Miiiiilo, Milosh the Hungarian, the Chiseler, Rippy-Tearry, The Scalpulator, the Droog, and (for some reason) Patrick, is growing.

The boy he was...

and the 'man' he is becoming...

The older Milo gets, the more he impresses me with his ability to quickly tear my flesh. I provoke him, and he loves it. He waits on the armchair by the window in the afternoon (see picture below) for my arrival home. He usually lets me in the house with a greeting at the door, but not long thereafter, he starts to arch his back and hop around sideways like some insane matador, just trying to get a rise out of me. Then the games begin. I growl and look at him. He tears off somewhere into the house, and customarily, I follow. He hides, waiting for me to round a corner or similar obstacle, and then leaps, probably 3 or 4 feet into the air, and attaches himself to my leg all while performing these insane looking head gyrations. It is the highlight of my day. We battle, he usually draws blood, and then he relaxes, purrs, and goes back to sleep. At night, he is prone to trying to sleep on Ash's face, lulling her to sleep with his purring, only to accost her head (for her hair) late in the night. We were curious about his largely demonic nature, until we realized that his dad was completely feral. I am dealing with 1/2 wildcat in the home (Milo), and 15/16 wildcat as well (Ash).

Anyway. He's a good bud. Since we live in the city, I can't yet get a Vizsla or Deerhound or Setter or other large dog. Although I can't take Milo into the hills or to the river, he has been a great amigo on the homefront. He deserves a public shout out. Here's to you little homie.

Catharsis and the Thin White Duke

2007-10-11T10:41:00.000-07:00

I know I have used this jpg on this blog before, long long ago. But i still enjoy it, and somewhere, someone still
has a T-shirt with this very same image on it.

Trouble…no trouble. Travails and turmoil have been getting to me. Being concerned for myself and my Asher has gotten me thinking about our options in the future--where we should go. Marriage is a big commitment, for this reason. It creates duplicity of person (in the double sense, not the deceptive sense). I am two people. Ash is two people. These concerns will grow exponentially with kids. I know this.

The issue is: we don’t know where we are going. Peace Corps or Grad School. Throw a dart. We are dangling on the blade, wobbling to and fro. Absolutely 50/50. The Peace Corps route would have been finalized had they sent us a year ago (when we applied). Making us wait has driven the nail of haste deep: the closer our appointment gets, the more heightened our desire to get on with school, get moving in the direction we will ultimately head. These thoughts have been with me.

For years, I have found music to be a great way to purge the frustration. A long drive, a fist pounding the dashboard. A solid beat. Smart lyrics. Good delivery. this brings me to my point: one of my favorite providers of this release has always been Bowie. I have always known that he is a genius (although having Mick Ronson on your side doesn't hurt either). It grows clearer daily. As an adjunct prof in Rexburg, I have a 30 minute commute twice on the days I teach. Coming home, it is all Bowie. If you want the greatest album ever recorded, go pick up a copy of Aladdin Sane. It will rock your face off. The title track is undoubtedly the gem of the album. The hectic piano work is transcendent—the spooky groove is intoxicating. Strangely, what made me fully realize the potency of this song was a documentary entitled “Asylum”, which examines some of the incarcerated in California’s Patton State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. I remember watching the film years ago, and seeing a burly inmate named Michael Padilla randomly recite the lyrics to “Aladdin Sane,” which eerily mimicked the not-so-subtle play on words in the song’s title, i.e. “who will love a lad insane?” I don’t tire of blasting it. Frantically. Maniacally. It is perfect.

“Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide” is another well-known favorite. The sheer energy of Bowie’s vocals in this track has always stirred my blood. Recently though, the impact has been taken to new and airy heights. Beginning with the lyrics “Don’t let the sun blast your shadow, don’t let the milk float ride your mind, you’re so natural, religiously unkind” and culminating in the lines “All the knives that lacerate your brain, I’ve had my share I’ll help you with the pain…..you’re NOT ALONE”—well, I defy anyone to not be rocked by the fury and sincerity of those vocals. And I have never identified with that song as being pitiful or pandering. I listen to it in times of turmoil, and it makes me sneer long at my troubles, thumb my nose to them, swagger with defiance and violence at my problems. This song, especially the section I just mentioned, light me on fire with something electric. My cells come alive and my hairs are all abuzz with gigawatts. Go try it. Get confused or troubled by something. Find a dark road for driving. Turn “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide” up as loud as it will go on your stereo. Get into the feel. Get lit on fire.

Other formidable Bowie tunes of old and recent spinnage: Bewlay Brothers (Oh that I could write like that), Oh! You Pretty Things, Watch That Man, Sound and Vision, Absolute Beginners, Look Back in Anger…too many.

I just needed to once again publicly declare that I think Bowie is a musical genius. Done.

Here they come...

2007-10-02T12:16:00.000-07:00

There they are: the high and nickle-plated nimbostratus that presage the cold. There are the aspens on fire with their own death. Black geese are approaching heaven. Fields fallowing after the gold rush and plunder. In the morning we burn the trees inside our homes to keep the teeth outside--keep the dark at arms length. The ham fat and fish grease sheen is on the cast iron. There are stacked sacks of kabuki white flour and salt for the cold granite mornings ahead. The veins of our old house have been purged for the cracking death from within. When I speak aloud, the wind fills my mouth with a fist. We pile death in a million forms to support our lives through the days ahead. We wake in the dark and lay down in the dark.

Extra! Extra! Guile in Salmonid Taxonomy!

2007-09-04T11:29:00.000-07:00

**caveat lector: another fish-related posting below with poor, camera-phone quality photos, but the best I can do without carting around more gear (click to enlarge)**

Fig 1: Birch Creek area, near Lone Pine. Birch Creek is a tiny fishery on the high-desert road to Salmon, Idaho.

Fig 2: Defunct auto, creekside.

Fig 3: Birch Creek. Tiny width-wise, but contains holes some 8 feet deep.

Most school children have heard of the legend (however unfounded) of the naming of Greenland and Iceland and the lexical switcheroo of years hence--the diversion by language. Could it be that the same sneaky Scandi pulled the proverbial wool over so many proverbial eyes when it came time to name fish, in particular the beguiling doling-out of the names "Brook Trout" and "Rainbow Trout"? Of course not, but the ironies remain. Explanation...

Rainbow trout are beautiful fish, but they are more silvery-green than anything resembling a "rainbow"...an overall silvery fish (the bigger they get). Very W.B. Yeats. Silver. Argentine. You'll see them on stream beds, like slivers of dark mercury over smooth stone. As river knives, they cut the water hard and fast, and are beautiful in the hand: rose colored gill plates, a red banner across the flank, a pattern of constellations and sidereal speckling over the entirety of the body. Gorgeous creatures, and prolific in their journeys and longevity.

Fig 4: Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss). They stay quite small on Birch Creek. I started fishing around 6:00 AM and by 10:00 I had caught a few dozen of these pan-sized trout (all of which I released unharmed).

Then there are Brook Trout. These should have been called rainbow trout. To catch them, for me, is the acme of the fly fishing experience for although they are small by nature, their fight is fable. They resist dry land with an electric fervor, and a one or two pound brookie can feel like you are tugging Beelzebub from the water. To hold one in hand is wonder. Last week, alone on the gaunt stretches of the high chaparral near Birch Creek, Idaho, I had the supreme fortune to catch brookies all day long. I defy anyone to tire of staring at these creatures. What evolutionary advantage is there in yellow-green worm-forge vermiculations across your back? And blood-red fins bordered by ivory? Why all the blue set against a body running from magma orange to sulphuric yellow to emerald? The antique eyes, the yellow splattering, the primordial attitude. They are jewels: tropical fish in a land of grey and brown. The fish pictured in the photo was so incredibly soft that it may as well have been full of goose down. The suppleness of its body was beyond the finest Italian leather. They are exquisitely beautiful.

Fig 5: Brook Trout (Salvelinus fontinalis). Notice the spawning colors on the belly. I returned this fish to the water.

Summit

2007-08-30T08:21:00.000-07:00

Following last years failed attempt at the summit of the Grand Teton (called on account of a snowstorm), my old buddies Jason Price and Jason Summers and I recently made our annual ascent via a route none of us had ever tried: The Upper Exum Ridge. The photos below detail the happenings. These photos are a mixture of shots taken by either myself or Jason Price, who also documented the climb on his excellent blog.

We started early. Around 3 Am. This photo was taken at sunrise near the upper Morain in Garnet Canyon, or as the fading Forest Service signs might indicate, the "Morainal Camp Area."

Jason Price will stare down the sun. He ain't skeered o' nuthin.

I don't know why, but I really like this picture of Jason and Jason. The diagonal line slightly above halfway on the right hand side is the beginning of the Upper Exum Ridge, traditionally called "Wall Street." It is a granite ledge that tapers down to a mere stub of rock.

This is Summers climbing up Wall Street. It just keeps getting more and more narrow until you come to this...

A 600+ ft granite express train, straight down. This photo was taken after I made the step accross the void. The next picture shows Summers making the crossing, and it gives a better perspective.

Don't mind my shadow there. This was the first real exposure of the entire climb. It was a thrill.

A shot of Price doing what he does best: climbing straight slabs of rock with minimal difficulty.

By now we were around 12,500 ft, where the air gets slippery for an endomorph like me. I could never survive a trip higher than 15,000--my lungs just can't do it.

In this picture, Price very kindly interpreted my gaze as one demonstrating strength of will. In reality, this is me battling the impulse to hurl myself down the nearest coulier on account of being spent beyond spending. Luckily, I had enough energy to attempt the following:

The recovery traverse. By now, it was clear that we were blazing our own route up the mountain: a challenging hybrid of the Upper Exum route. To get back on what seemed to be the proper course, we made this traverse across a granite slip and slide. This was probably the chilling highlight of the climb, for me. The adrenaline surge was wild here. A few more photos of the traverese (we ended up dubbing it the "Tyrolean Traverse," although not at all truly Tyrolean. The mere speaking of the word "Tyrolean" became a rallying call for the rest of the day.)

Price navigates the steeps while Summers--strong as an ox--holds the reigns.

Just to explain: off the end of this sloping ledge is over 1000ft of alpine air leading down to a jagged rhyolite ocean below. After this traverse, we nailed a few more pitches and dig a lot of freehand climbing. I was far too gassed to even take any more pictures until arriving at 13,770ft--the summit.

There is sweet air up there. And usually Australians.

The route down was easier, but long. It included a stellar 120ft rappel into the thin alpine air (stellar for me--Jason and Jason laugh such trivial heights) . I had to take it slow--as usual, my feet begain to throb, my toes began to bleed, and every step down from the upper saddle was like a fingernail file being jabbed under my toenails. We arrived back at the car rather late in the evening, slightly buzzing from the all the caffeine products we had been gorging ourselves on throughout the day. Price and I rode up front while Summers konked out in a drunken stupor behind us. We had a good time talking on the way home, as I drifted in and out of fatigue-induced delirium. All told, it was an extraordinary day, and I look forward to when I can feel those high winds again.

I wish I had a river so long

2007-08-22T09:13:00.000-07:00

All I want out of life is a few acres near a river with trout. I want a comfortable, small, craftsman-style bungalow on those acres. I want a porch for late night guitar and banjo. I want quaking aspens. I want a garden to grow squash, carrots and red potatoes. I want a hammock big enough for Ashley and I. I want a greyhound, a chocolate lab, and a scottish deerhound. I want a cadre of razor-clawed cats prowling my acres. I want all four seasons in their severity. I want a horseshoe pit. I want a fire pit. I want a wood shop where I can refinish Stickley rockers and a garage where I can restore Norton motorbikes and Karmann Ghias. And I want a raspberry patch that stretches the confines of the imagination--endless garden rows of thorny, fruit yielding bushes to border the perimeter of my property. And I want these things soon. This is not too much to ask: a small home, away from people, near a river with trout.

Drinking At The Dam

2007-08-07T08:52:00.000-07:00

Lately I have been spending long hours on the Teton River near the broken dam, catching Cutthroat. I have been reconnecting, in a way, with a place that has a valid identity and personality. The Spillway and old Dam site are places where I wasted my youth with good friends. When I remember to bring my camera, I take photos. I share with you some of the photos, and also an invitation to explore.

View from the top.

On the river. This hole on the right always produces. Notice the thunderclouds? First rain in months, and it falls on the day I fish. It is a good thing though, for sure. The fish like it.

Young gopher snake. Blow snake. Bull snake. Whatever name you choose to call it. Far more even-headed than the tempermental garter snake.

Part of the old dam works. There is a shaft that extends a few hundred feet upward inside the hill, and the lower entrance to it is here, inside this cage. The upper entrance is on top of the spillway, with cast iron sheets welded over the hole. Long ago, it was simply a metal grating. We would drop things down the shaft and they would fall for a long time without a sound. I was thinking of simply ignoring the cage at this point, knowing that the entrance was covered in concrete, until I looked close and coud see that someone had torched a few of the bars away. I went in.

Inside view. Apparently, Dustin Snell kix ass. He is also mean n' nasty. Many other fun and useful tidbits of information can be gleaned from this place. It's like the spraypaint Oracle at Delphi.

There was a piece of plywood covering the lower entrance, and upon moving it, I saw this. Someone had chipped a hole in the concrete. Possibly some pechoulie-reeking peacenick. Some peacenick named Dave, perhaps.

All day, it had been above 90 degrees, and uncommonly humid. The air coming from the hole was ice-cold and ferocious. Like me. I think I may have been able to fit, but I didn't quite feel like taking all my fishing gear off or tearing my waders, so I stuck my camera in (instantly losing my battery from the cold) and took a photo...

...and this is what I got. The shaft goes far back, bending in the distance. I have never been in there. I propose an expedition (Price...I am looking in your direction). Some headlamps, some ropes, some spray paint of our own. Any takers?

At the top of the dam site, on the southern ridge, there is another small overflow building, and an old culvert. My favorite part of this place is some graffitti that has been there for 10+ years. I took some pics:

If any Rexburgers from my era read this, you will instantly know which Greg/Brent duo would crudely tag a slab of concrete with their names and AFI, NOFX. The X Bent King Brent Heiner, and Gregory "H." West, two of my favorite people on earth who at 16 or 17 used to head to the dam for cigarettes without reprisal. The spillway itself, across the valley from this lonely culvert, is laden with the scrawlings of my cohorts and I. The psuedo-urban graffito-speak of a bunch of rural boys and girls. These days I mainly concern myself with the cutthroat, spray painted on the underside, twice, by God himself. I once worked with a good guy from Ashton who has a hard time going near the Teton dam site. He was one of two fisherman about 2 miles below the dam on the day it broke. He tells it himself in this .pdf. Terrifying. The dam site today still has a haunting quality about it. It feels like a guilty place. Whenever I am in the canyon alone, I feel like I am being watched. It does seem like a perfect place to get jumped by a group of Jawas, but in all seriousness, there is an eerie quality to it in dusk's half-light. The reasons for its allure are endless, and I go there as often as possible.

I Was Saying "Boooo-urns"

2007-08-02T08:24:00.000-07:00

Snark ahoy. Gird up your snide loins, because I am coming in with my thoughts on “The Simpsons Movie."

A preface: I have been devoted to the Simpsons since Season 1. Yes, Season 1, way back when, those sepia rich days of the waning 80's/nascent 90's. My grandparents had satellite television, and aside from my cousin and I trying to stay up late enough to watch USA “Up All Night”, we also watched Fox for Homey the Clown accosting people with his rock-filled sock. One night we stumbled upon the Groening gold, and the proverbial hook was set, and set deep. Over the years, I have given my mind, heart, and hard-earned spending monies to the Simpsons name. I believe that 21% of my brain matter is devoted entirely to Simpsons quotes--these gems that become esoteric speak, shibboleths between the enlightened. They are secret handshakes of appreciability. I know I can trust someone who understands when I say "...there's a little Uder in all of us". I have immersed myself so fully in the sea of swag that I sometimes feel like the satirized situation of Bart surrounded by his cheap Krusty Krap gear. VHS cassettes, video games, board games, comic books, DVDs, figurines, I even bought copies of “Songs in the Key of Springfield” and “Simpsons Sing the Blues” *shudder*. Like a tussock moth to a Bunsen burner, I got snuffed in the flame of merch.

Ashley and I decided to go see the new film, although we had our reservations. The recent episodes (oh, since Season 12) have been light on the wit and social satire end and heavy on the “make Homer overly crass, overly slapstick, let’s go crazy on the cultural reference” end. The show has become a slimy caricature of itself. The movie, which is absolutely steamrolling the box office, incorporates the oft-seen sly jabs at Fox Network’s shameless self-promotion and effrontery, yet it wholly embraces the humorous flavors of Fox, and dare I say, that is why it is doing so well in theaters? It saddens me, deeply, to see a thing that I love, like a close friend, an educator (if you don’t think the Simpsons is educational, lets have it out in the comments section *thumbs nose, Dempsey stance*) fall so far from grace. I don’t know if the writers conscientiously wrote the film to appeal to the least common denominator, or if the evolution of the show has led them here unavoidably. Well, instead of ranting on and on, I think I will just say that I laughed, genuinely, about 5 times in the film, laughing hardest at the introduction—seeing Ralph Wiggum standing on the 20th Century Fox logo, finger in nose, singing along with the theme. I take consolation that I will always, always, have my favorite seasons (2-11) on DVD, complete with director/producer/writer/character commentary. Ash and I can always kick back after a long day of work and watch “The Lemon of Troy,” “Marge vs. the Monorail,” or “Bart of Darkness”—classic episodes of unlimited wit and trenchant observation. I know that this is not a case of idealizing the past. The show has taken a stylistic nosedive, and “The Simpsons Movie” seals the coffin on my hopes for some latter Simpsons genius. Put it in the ground before it starts to reek. The epitaph will read “HA-ha!”

Clean Up: All Aisles

2007-07-26T22:06:00.000-07:00

Let me say this first: this post is not necessarily a shameless self-promotion. It is an invitation for you, the reader, to join me in appreciation of oddity. The posted YouTube video is a commercial that Oliver Russell and Associates made for Albertsons Grocery and their Essensia line of “artisan breads and natural juice pies.” The guit-fiddle being clumsily plucked in the background showcases the musical stylings of one Joseph Griffin. I wrote this song on my porch, with no ambitions other than to play it on my lonesome, and soon thereafter, my friend Shawna Webber (girlfriend of Steve “Sleeve” Samuelson) calls me with an offer to purchase the rights for an in-store bread commercial. Long story short, we make the deal, they pay for a professional recording, I go about my life, I get a sweet royalty check, Asher and I live it up by going to one of them fancy “sit-down” places for dinner. TWICE.

Flash forward 6 months. I find myself in Centerville, Utah, around Thanksgiving time, running to Albertsons for some San Pellegrino at my Auntie’s request. There I am, meandering, when I hear the familiar strains of my guitar cutting through the Phil Collins “Su-Su-ssudio!!” And there it is. And I get this awkward, shameful feeling, like I should tell someone. “Hey, complete stranger, hear that? That’s me. I wrote that. I hope my handiwork influences you to purchase some Essensia Artisan Bread, the potato rosemary, perhaps.” After my shining 25 seconds, the Phil Collins overwhelms all other sounds…or maybe it is Air Supply by now…immaterial. The commercial is very well done, and I am sure Albertsons is happy with it, but there is an unshakable feeling, a wavy amalgam of both utter pride and a need to scratch the back of my head from being involved with something so potentially mawkish. All told, a unique opportunity that I welcomed. It also shows that I am no class warrior or sell-out resistant elitist: for the right amount you could get me to dance the Charleston in a real-fur wookie costume at a PETA convention.

Pinkture

2007-07-13T14:11:00.000-07:00

It seems that the blog trend for young married couples is to dual-post photos of their kids. Obsessively. I have no kids, and Ashley doesn't care much for computers, so I guess I am left alone here on my blog to opine about meaningless garbage at will. However, in an effort to "responsibilize" this here blog of 3 or 4 years, I will try to include more family-oriented material and less descriptive rants about my public indecency, my general distemper, invasive medical practices, and the like.

I begin with a gem of a picture. This photo chronicles a favorite pastime of Smasher and I. Perhaps it also testifies of our cruelty. The ritual washing of the Milo (in a non-ecclesiastical sense) never fails to illicit smiles from us and anguished squeaks from the kitten. There is necessity to wash him often: I actually spent NINE DOLLARS on "organic cat shampoo" called Mango Tango. I plan to use every drop.

Fig 1--The Atom Smasher washing the Milo

Fred Meyer limited our options for our pet grooming needs. At the cash register, my total purchase consisted of: Mango Tango Cat Shampoo, a jug of prunes (see earlier posting), cedar barbecue planks, and Flossers. The cashier looked at me strangely, while offering the obligatory "Did you find everything you needed?". I gave her a deadpan "Yep. Just stocking up on the essentials." After the purchase of NINE DOLLAR cat shampoo, I felt so much shame walking through the parking lot that I almost leapt in front of a speeding milk truck.

Fig 2: When distressed, or peckish for my ear lobe, Milo often retires to the safety of my shoulders. He usually gets there by means of clawing my bare skin.

So, again, the blog moves forward toward a new plane of propriety. As Seymour Skinner once said: "The times they are a-becoming quite different." I am sure this responsibility phase will last some 2 odd weeks.

130 bpm of Rebel Bass

2007-07-02T11:49:00.000-07:00

I revel in KFLO memories occasionally. Indulge me.

Steamboat found this relic of a flyer while digging through his moth-ridden grad school stuffs. I had given up on finding things like this, but they still linger out there in the ether. Steamboat's closing assessment on the flyer was to point out how cocky we were. I have to agree. But Steamboat himself knows of the necessity of hype, of selling things big, inflating them, give them a mythic status. Otherwise, he would not be known as both "Steamboat" and "Snakeoil". We sold quite a bit of hype on this show, and wound up with a few hundred bucks each, thanks to a generous door cut from Griffin Boice. I remember spinning my set with Matty Z. It consisted of a lot of Chemical Brothers, some DJ Q-Bert, Dilated Peoples, Outkast..etc. I then snuck outside, away from the thump-ss-thump-ss-thump and talked to Gillz on the phone, whilst freezing to death, for a long time.

My favorite aspects of this flyer are the campy play on words and subtle geek-fused references (Droids not served). It was our esoteric speak and secret handshake toward an audience that, lets face it, probably largely missed the joke.

Thanks Jeremy.

*apologies for quality..it is a converted jpg of a pdf of a scan of a copy of a copy of a copy*

The Hurly Urge

2007-06-20T08:38:00.000-07:00

Long, long have I fought the impulse to throw things, in the strictest literal sense. I am assailed at odd hours by the rampant and rabid urge to throw. There is an aesthetic element associated with propelling an object, any object, skyward or horizon-forth. I don't know what triggers this urge. I wonder if it is elemental, or influenced somehow by nature (moon cycles, pollen?). I don't know. When it comes, it comes in black waves that tuck my thoughts and reasoning under and give rise to my clenched fists. I call this the Hurly Urge.

I consistently want to throw that which I never have, nor ever possibly could: iron doors torn from hinges and hurled in shards out into the road. Oak trees uprooted as garden carrots and cast like tinder into raging rivers. Rusted Studebaker pickup trucks hurled back into the past, to a time when their chrome still winked. The passing tray of sacrament during a Sunday service—I want to shatter the holy silence and fling it, discus-like, directly at the smug sanctimony of the face of the man sitting on the bench on high. I want to hurl bowling balls at the hoods and windshields of cars with stupid-ass and demeaning stickers, and launch those who intentionally hurt children, animals, and the innocent to the icy backwash of the Van Allen belt.

The hurling challenges of work are monolithic. Carrying my daily cup of soup down the long, sub-clinical hall, I constantly want to set the brew asail, most often just imagining it, in slow-mo, crashing into the antiseptic sidewall and erupting, burping forth its steamy innards. Often in the hall while carrying my soup, I see approaching figures in the distance. I will want to hurl my stews at them. Guest lecturer from Harvard? How about some New England Clam chowder down the front of your Dockers…Visiting Japanese dignitaries? Try some of our Miso soup—all over you. Big wig nuclear industry insiders and closed-fuel cycle geniuses—I can, and perhaps someday will, raze your pretensions with a simple cup of Three Bean.

My friend Matt, in a moment of disclosure, told me outright that he fights the urge to bite random people without provocation. I nodded. I understand. And it normally doesn’t spring from malice, from contempt, from misanthropy. It may challenge some to believe that I am a caring person, but I am. I am very concerned with others. I try to champion the underdog. I despise bullies, and have never picked a fight in my life. But the urge is no respecter of persons, nor of etiquette, morality, or civil law. The urge deludes itself, trying to ignore the naysaying and stern rebuke of the laws of physics.

I once dreamt of a place of sheer horizon, like God’s driving range, like the vast plains of the Midwest, like the high desert of the Snake River Valley, where a soft blue, mana-like substance would form into whatever I hoped. Boulder sized and building-massed forms of the stuff weighed mere ounces—like small river stones or wet balsa wood. And these things, I would throw to the beyond. I would watch them spin madly toward the limits of my vision until they simply vanished. I would reform and throw again. And then again. And there was peace there, and a depth of emotion that I have only felt ever so often when dreaming.

So please understand. My discretion is strong against the hurly urge, and not one of you will ever find yourself its victim. Just understand that if we ever cross paths and, while talking, I stoop down to gather loose objects off the ground, I still care. I am still listening. I am still there.

Surreal

2007-06-13T07:51:00.000-07:00

A series of absolutely incredible events has led me to believe that the world is ending. What I know:

5:48 AM: I awoke to the sound of a yelping dog. A dog not just yelping, but screaming, with a sound that wavered between a high-pitched squeal and a deep gurgling rumble. Terrified, I looked out the window to the neighbor's yard to see their Great Pyrenees, Sasha, with a gaping neck wound gushing steaming blood. Bloody human handprints flanked the back door of the neighbor's house.

6:00 AM: Deeply unnerved, I showered, and through the frosted cube window in my shower, I saw vague traces of people, not a person, but multiple people milling about in my side yard, pressing up near the translucent cubes, scraping their teeth carelessly across the glass. They were mumbling and dragging their feet. My first thought was that hungover punks from the park had slept on my lawn, but I could clearly see a white shirt and tie on one of the figures. Sasha was just gurgling by now. At least she won't be keeping me up at night any more.

6:45 AM: Someone began pounding on the door as if it was the rapture. I sidled up to the peep hole and looked out to see a wan face, trailed with rivulets of blood, and a pair of threatening eyes. I thought that perhaps I had won the raffle held by my local Bar Rawk radio station, and that Alice Cooper himself had paid me an early morning visit. I slicked my hair, picked some nocturnally developed eye-crust out, opened the door and instantly a hand shot through the screen and fixed around my neck. Full of adrenalyne, I prized the hand loose and slammed the door shut, locked it, thought about how much I hated Alice Cooper anyway, and had a bowl of Cracklin' Oat Bran.

7:00 AM: I called in sick to work and plopped down in bed to finish watching the BBC Planet Earth series on DVD. Through the walls of my home, I could hear tank tread grinding the road into meal. I also think I heard a flamethrower, but I haven't heard one in a while, so it might have been the deflating tires of an ice cream truck. I did distinctly hear a loudspeaker/bullhorn/attention-getting device of some type, repeating the arcane phrase "He's retaining your scones. (and something about an Ombudsman or something)..*something something* Moose" actually, hell, I don't know. I was ensconced in the wonders of the deep sea as narrated by David Attenborough.

9:00 AM Ashley wasn't waking up, so I reached over and shook her shoulder and it fell off. It was as if she had been rotting for the last few weeks. She always said I didn't pay her much attention, and now I see what she meant. This whole time I had been blaming the cat for the smell, but now all is forgiven. It is a good thing I have forgiven too, because now it is just him and me. I wonder if I can teach him to do laundry.

Current: The house is burning now, and not in a metaphorical, P. Funk or Talking Heads sort of way: it is literaly aflame. No bother, seeing I am housesitting. There was nothing contractual about me having to put out flames, so I see this as the homeowner's issue. Sure, they are in Norway, but they can't just run off to Scandi and assume that life will all be a bowl of odd smelling herrings and cherries. Not entirely sure what I am going to do here. Alice Cooper just forced his way through a flaming wall. I Louisville Sluggered him in the groin. More of his disciples are pouring in through the hole...I don't know if I have enough Crystal Lite for all these people..

(okay, I am stopping. this was hastily written in honor of BLITEOTW)

Saudades Enormes

2007-06-04T07:32:00.000-07:00

Memorial Day came and went, and I thought long. I spent the day digitizing old photos, and looking at recent photos too. I am no hardcore sentimentalist and I understand the tendency to idealize the past. I know that I am as content now as I was then, if not moreso, but the thought of days gone had me, for a moment.

Specific people, places, things: proper nouns, really. Olfactory assault. June 12, 1997. Many things I miss, separated by geography, misunderstanding, death. I know I couldn't get them all here, and I know that there are some people who read this blog like traceless ghosts, always watching but never speaking. I know who you are, and I thank you all for everything. If you don't find yourself below, it isn't for anything but either lack of photographic documentation or lack of ability to locate. Some of the nouns I love:

Jeff Buckley, Ten Years Gone

2007-05-29T11:24:00.000-07:00

Today marks the 10 year anniversary of the death of Jeff Buckley. The good die, sadly, both young and old.

A BBC documentary on Jeff can be found here.

Awkwardness: Flexible Sigmoidoscopy is Thy Name!

2007-05-24T14:13:00.000-07:00

**Warning to the Overly Sensitive—Crude and Off-putting Descriptions Ahead**

My recent blog entries have been lighthearted: descriptive musings of foreign fauna and flora, contemplation about the road forward, recognition of the subtleties of the season. This entry, conversely, is about the day I got a black hose shoved up my ass.

Yeah.

During the medical screening procedure for the Peace Corps, my trusted medical practitioner, Dr. “nietzscheian eyebrows” Rencher (yes, pronounced “wrencher”) determined that a sigmoidoscopy was in order. This was because of some rather, ah, unsavory problems I have been experiencing ever since my adventures in Brazil. I cited to him a recent symptom or two from which he determined that he needed to visually spelunk the Lost Dutchman’s mine.

1 hour before the procedure, please don’t imagine the following: me, totally and completely nagoy, administering the ol’ Fleet enema on your humble narrator while Milo, our pet kitten, ruthlessly pureed my feet with his adamantium talons and needle teeth. It was an unprecedented mixture of sheer discomfort and unbridled laughter as I imagined the absurdity of it all. A picture from that moment in my life would not only guarantee that I could never hold public office, but would also warrant that future of generations of Griffins be chased up to abandoned saw mills by rubes with pitchforks and torches.

Jump ahead to procedure time, please don’t imagine the following: me, reading Sports Illustrated in a waiting room obviously decorated in the late 80’s by a Grizzly Adams acolyte. Don’t imagine me waiting an hour. Don’t imagine the images my mind was imagining—something akin to the covers of old Iron Maiden albums with a hearty mix of anomalous medical instruments to be used on your humble narrator. After an hour, I was taken to a cold room by a surly nurse, not the sultry nurse of my junior high daydreams, and told to “strip from the waist down.” She left. I dropped trou. And I stood there. There was, sadly, no gown for me, and I was assailed by an odd guilt: I didn’t want to sit down on their bench while being stripped of clothing from the waist down. I considered it rude: an affront to the sterile and antiseptic conditions of the office. So I stood, in a blue collared shirt and nothing else. I did what I normally do when I am in an awkward situation and have no other recourse: I put my hands in my pockets. It didn’t work, because my pants were looking up at me in a heap on the floor. My belt seemed to be laughing at me. My hands just made these little gestures down the sides of my thighs, seeking their dens, but they were gone. It was like a pang from a phantom limb. A reflex of comfort. I eventually arrived at the “To Hell With Standing” state of mind, and flopped (quite literally) down on the bench. And then, in they came. The next part of this narrative was mainly a Vaseline-slathered blur. There were the eyebrows, there they were telling me to assume the fetal position on my left side and “try to relax.” In a colonoscopy, there is often an opioid analgesic, a sedation, some fentanyl, some solace. The sigmoidoscopy is quite the sang-froid younger brother to the colonoscopy. There isn’t the slightest hint or pretense of comfort or normalcy. Just two people inserting a black hose some 2 feet into the lower extremity of some wide-eyed, entirely nonplussed pantless sap (me). I expected some discomfort, not necessarily pain, I mean, it was a seemingly small hose. Upon contact, it felt as though a flatbed was careening willfully into me, a flatbed carrying a complete steam engine dipped in glass dust, a few nail-studded Abrams tanks, the rusty Lusitania, and the Cutty Sark (aflame). I saw visions in that fair moment, my friends. The heavens opened, and I saw a chorus of gilded and white-haired angels, pointing at me and laughing.

The worst part was the air, the air. Upon entrance, air was forcefully blown into my lower regions to offer clear sight inside. I felt like an inflatable camping mattress, and I had a strange Willy Wonka recollection of when Charlie Bucket and Grandpa Joe pilfered the fizzy lifting drinks. I wondered if this is how they felt, sans invasive ass tube.

The exit was splendor. It was sheer rapture. It was the four horsemen. It was elysian. It was…normalcy, the normalcy of 20 minutes prior. Stasis. Home base. My problems were expected, thankfully, and my multi-tiered solution manageable.

On the drive home—elated and full of odd, windborne groans and grunts—I made a shining promise to the powers that be. I will henceforth consume enough fiber on a monthly basis to fittingly evacuate a pod of whales. I will become rampantly herbivorous, I will become a bipedal swarm of locusts, a pair of wheat-loving mandibles, and I will daily offer my oblations at the altar of the almighty Bran.

21º 22'57.12"N 105º 13'43.33"W elev. 3"

2007-05-15T17:20:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a place that changed me. I haven't been to Mexico since I was 6. When we lived in Arizona, my family would take monthly trips down to Sonora state: Nogales, Hermosillo. But I have never been this far down. We flew to Puerto Vallarta and then drove 2 hours north to a tiny, remote village called Santa Cruz.

Fig. 1, Santa Cruz

We were staying with our very good friends (and relatives, for that matter) the Baums at the home of Jessica's dad, Captain Steve, whom we later dubbed "Stevezy" and "Papa Steve" (after watching The Life Aquatic together one hot night. They were nicknames that Steve was reluctant to adopt--but he was always down for a bottled coke and dried pumpkin seeds).

Fig. 2, Steve, aka Stevezy or Papa Steve, The Cap'n

Steve's home was excellent. Small, manageable, a good place to run away to, which Steve (in semi-retirement) had been doing for the last 6 months. On the roof of his home, Steve had built a palapa, complete with a nice hammock and plenty of seats. The roof was just high enough to catch the cool brisas del mar that would roll over the tops of the banana groves and invite you to just plop down and read a book in the shade, while geckos devoured giant spiders above your head.

Fig. 3, Steve's house, palapa

Fig. 4, Large spider (gecko fodder)

We spent most of our time on an isolated beach (seen in Figs. 2 and 5) that was not 10 minutes from Steve's front door. The desolate beach stretched for some 2 miles without a single rock--the water was warm and clear, the surf just big enough for long board or boogie. We spent hours upon hours in the tide, despite the fact that the water boasted some fairly daunting marine life. I stepped on countless large, surly-looking rays that would sun in the sandy shallows. We dodged abnormally large puffer fish which would scuttle indignantly out of the way. Wyatt and I spent hours catching agile blue spiny crabs that victimized both he and my wife with their carapaces/pincers. Flubbery jellyfish languished in the tide like translucent shopping bags--spiny sea urchins dotted the bottom of certain areas, just lusting after the arch of my foot. Our final day in the surf was wild. Wyatt and I had just snorkeled out some 100 yards where the rip was unusually fierce. I could see the sand on the bottom, some 18 feet down, flying out to sea with startling speed. Swimming closer to shore and grabbing some boards, we paddled back out about 50 yards when I saw a deep and swift shadow in the wave next to Wyatt. I told him with nonchalance, not really knowing what it was, and then the water came alive. A shoal of skip jack tuna had come in close, and lightning-fast gray sharks (which I couldn't identify) had followed them in. The sea was seething with sharks, tuna, and durado. We were ensconced in teeth. It was thrilling.

Fig. 5, Empty Beach, Marine Wonderland

Now, people have always told me that I missed my calling in life: that I should have been an entomologist or herpetologist or venomous-animal-appreciating-ologist. I can't fully argue. I love catching and observing bugs, snakes, lizards, toads, etc. Steve's acreage provided ample hunting ground, and every night Wyatt and I would venture out with headlamps to see the nocturnal happenings. Leafcutter ants would come out in force to gorge themselves on windfall mangoes and bananas. The above mentioned, lithe and giant spiders (whose circumference was about that of my fist--and I have freakishly large hands) would come out en masse, and prey upon anything moving, including my large hand. We would watch ants fall haplessly into the conical death-traps of ant lions that would then, like the sarlac to Boba Fett, ravage and feast. One night, we caught a juvenile centruroides scorpion underneath the red bricks of the walkway. I shot some video of it, but regrettably, it is very distorted. Another night, I found a very large toad, which looked a lot like a Rococo Toad (probably wasn't--i think they are only in South America). It was a gorgeous animal: it instantly started whimpering and whipping up milky toxins with its parotid glands. I set it down where I had found it: under a light on the side of the house, and it didn't move for hours--it was as if I had never handled it. It just went right back to devouring everything that mindlessly sauntered up to it.

Fig. 6, Intrepid explorer of the night and captured toad

The nights out in the yard were amazing. Enormous bats swooping around our heads, our bodies crawling with dozens of types of ants, countless lizards and geckos and frogs scattering every way: it took me back to the Sonora desert backyard of some 2 decades ago, and also reminded me of my time in Brasil, which beat nightly in my chest with an aching and agitated nostalgia. It is incredible to me that all that separates me from my home near the mountains and the haven of Santa Cruz is a few hundred bucks and a 3 hour plane ride. Astounding.

A few other pictures will follow. I hasten to add that Ashley would not let me take her picture, or if she did, she would scowl or make some sort of face to prevent me from spreading them around. Hence, the scarcity of the babe.

Fig. 7, Copper tub with cool water and a glass-bottled coke = highest of cottons

Fig. 8, Iguanas in the rock pile

Fig. 9, Wyatt @ the ol' swimming hole in the hills

Fig. 10, Barbed wire and Jesus

Fig. 11, Young boys playing guns, ironically, in graveyard

Fig. 12, Decorated grave

Y2K from a circa-1900 Perspective

2007-04-26T07:11:00.000-07:00

My buddy, the redoubtable Steamboat, sent me a link to some pictures that take a prognostic look at our time. These are collectible cards which were inserted in a certain brand of German chocolate circa 1900. A few of my favorites include:

Ambulating and Penny-farthing-ing on Water!

Sporting on the wind in your personal flying device!

Inordinately weighty steam-run amphibious vehicles!

Undersea tourist boats, now with Moray Eel illuminators!

And the old city roof, a la Monty Burns..

REQUIESCAT

2007-04-12T06:47:00.000-07:00

So it Goes...

F.E.A.R. Redux, The Lunar Cycle Brings Me 'Round

2007-04-06T12:27:00.000-07:00

This photo is my page holder in my copy of the Book of Thoth. I know it is a repost, but it is too good. I noticed that I have been relatively faithful with my Easter postings on this blog, so I continue, regardless of old material. I salute Gillz for subjecting herself to the matted fur of the Apocalypse for the future enjoyment and subtle nausea of so many.

Another Gillz submission, which has easter ties, some fine Engrish:

Digging carrots, muddy and muddy...

Buried beneath the pastel, peeps, plastic grass, and the Christian glossings of this season is that old Whitman-defined procreant urge. Everything begins to emanate a Van de Graaf buzz and tingle, even stone seems to. Wasps all over the world begin to sharpen their shit, just thinking of impaling my wan exterior like nails. The nights in a town not far from here become manageable for the draggin of 'main,' and in the west desert, mushrooms are erupting through solitary rib cages as ice creeps back into the basalt.

Almost exclusively at this time of year comes the nearly overbearing impulse to head south, then west, over the expanse of Nevada, up and down the Sierras and forward until a bay, a Half Moon bay. Somewhere near the bay is an upward climb above the sea. On a high cliff wall I buried something. To go, and dig.

Here's to Eoster and the urge and urge and urge...

What's beyønd.........

2007-04-01T20:14:00.000-07:00

So. The wheels are turning. Change is looming. The next step. I feel I should post an entry about the happenings and prospects of Balky "The Atom Smasher" (Ashley) and myself. As an update: Smasher and I are currently house sitting for a friend of mine who is in Norway for a year. We are living, completely rent-free, in a shotgun bungalow smack-dab in front of a big city park in Idaho Falls. I am filled with anxiety knowing that things will likely never be this excellent nor honey-dipped. Work continues at a frantic pace. I am still writing for Admiral Grossenbacher at INL--and still learning how to do it. But it has been remarkably rewarding, aside from the mail robot for whom I carry a bloody vendetta. Each day that beeping bastard passes, and I envision shivering capacitors torn forth from his soldered underbelly. It is the only robot I have ever truly hated. I have also been working as an adjunct english proff at BYU-I. It keeps me semi-sharp. The side money is a good perk as Asher and I fulfill our mutually exclusive goals of 1)Ridding ourselves of all debt, and 2)Travelling as often as possible (Remote pacific coast of Mexico..28 days from now).

A few folks who stop by this blahg have asked about Graduate skool. Well, the skinny is that I got accepted at U of Chicago and NYU for interdisciplinary Master's programs in humanities, but I deferred because work was so good (although my deferment indicates that I have to reapply and get re accepted). I also got rejected at U of Washington, but I think the school is run by mail robots, so I am fine.

It looks as though Ash and I will be in Idaho Falls for yet another year until March 2008 when two things happen. The first is that my friend for whom we are house sitting (Ron Boring) will return home from his comfy position as a Human Factors Psychologist in the fair country of Norway (thus rendering us bereft of golden-parachute living arrangement). The second thing that will likely (at this juncture) happen in March 2008, is that Ashley and I will be leaving on a Peace Corps assignment to "very remote pacific islands with little or no outside communication for the purpose of teaching and community development work." We talked about serving in the Peace Corps together, before we were married, and late last year we came to the conclusion that we should consider it again. We had originally applied to work in sub-saharan Africa, but then, to expedite the process, we changed our preference to include any area of the world where the PC operates, and here we stand. We are currently getting our medical paperwork underway and trying to pay off all debts as we progress toward leaving. Excitement.

So, it looks like grad school will once again take back seat for a few years. I will be 30 before I begin school again, but I am not worried. I learned more living in Brazil than I did hitting the books in college, and that is a stone fact. I think the Peace Corps experience will help me apply some rigor to what I want to study in grad school, and I think it will clarify my interests. I have been too much of a generalist. I need focus. This will move me, I believe, in that direction. I hope to reapply to grad schools during my final year in the PC, including the programs at UofChi and NYU again, as well as UCBoulder, UCSantaCruz, SFSU, maybe one of the big boys (Stanford) or the big big boys (Trinity College, Dublin) so it wouldn't hurt if you'd start crossing your fingers for me now.

I guess the idea of this post was to let these ideas out myself so that the few of you who read herein wouldn't hear of these things second-hand. I care like that.
Unless a mail robot reads this.

The Sailing Ship of C.A.P.

2007-03-03T14:52:00.000-08:00

I digitized some old footage of Cross-Eyed and Painless, the first band I ever played in and the only band I loved playing in--despite the fact that we stole outright from the Talking Heads, the Doors, Anthony Burgess, the Police, and Ricks College (thanks for the Shure Mics!) The quality is lacking, and this show took place in an airplane hangar, so our regular pyrotechnic showboating didn't occur. This was at a birthday party for a friend of ours, so it was really just an informal jam session. But these were the real salad days. Note: a young Preston Pugmire in the crowd, Jason Price holding down his usual spot (really another member of the band), a roving Brent Heiner with shorn head...but sadly, no Matty Z on bass, nor Andy Jacobsen: both MIA for this one.

And update: Rob and Sam and I will be getting together, one time only, in the Spring of 2007 to re-record our songs. If anyone reads this and is interested in a copy, let me know.

Brief List of Things I Have Recently Said in Dreams

2007-02-09T08:15:00.000-08:00

(To my wife Ashley, while she attempted to fill a derelict pirate ship up with water) “Well, if you can’t fill the pirate ship up with water, then don’t come bitching to me.”*

(While trying to swing across a ravine on a chain to fight a snarky Mexican boy) “I don’t trust the strength of my left arm.”

(While relaxing in the basement with my wife, my cousin, and cousin’s wife, all of whom were startled by an eerie sound emanating from underneath the stairs) “Oh. The Demon Noise? That is just an old MP3 player that someone left on repeat.”

(To complete, neoprene-clad stranger, standing together on a platform 100ft above my college swimming pool, watching killer whales below) “So, when did this place get these Orcas?”

(To same stranger some 5 minutes later) “I have exactly one minute to swim through the maze? Okay, now are you going to turn the lights off on me or some shit like that?”

(To my friend Tyson) “Jesus Clown? What a nice clown that would be.”

(To my wife in my dream, which she also claims I said aloud while talking in my sleep) “Jesus Clown! You’re gonna see that in a movie someday! Ha ha, Jesus Clown.”

* My wife and I discussed this the following morning and had a good laugh

Apocalytpofragalistic-expialidocious

2007-01-18T10:47:00.000-08:00

My wife and I recently had a fancifull time at Ye Olde Nickelodeon watching Mel Gibson's marginal film 'Apocalypto Now'. I mean 'Apocalypto'. This film, set against the backdrop of Mel's other films, indicates that Mel dare not deviate from his die-cut pattern. The only variation between Mel's films (Braveheart, Patriot, Passion, Apocalypto--whether in the director's chair or just as actor) are the cultural signifiers.

I think Mel is into SM. He has to be. Find me a Mel film sans emphatic torture scene which not only is a transcendent moment for the character, but always seems to border on the oddly sublime.

Mel Gibson: answering, with a resounding YES that age-old question of "Can a anti-semitic Australian with an evisceration fetish win an Oscar for directing?"

Also, I highly suggest Children of Men, if even just for the scene involving a King Crimson song...no lies. Only people who knew me in my prog-rock mania days could truly appreciate my utter glee when the chilling strains of "In the Court of The Crimson King" spilled forth in all their sonorous glory.

Go see it. And James, put some pants on!

The Wind Bloweth Where it Listeth

2007-01-15T09:18:00.000-08:00

The diagram? Don't ask. I just liked the idea...

For the next few seconds, let me opine unfoundedly and in a profoundly unqualified manner, basing my opinions on nothing more than my unoriginal observations. It appears to me that news broadcasting has *shockah* lately attained new heights of rampant, sky-is-falling sensationalism. On a nightly basis, I can hear of about a half dozen new ways that I (or my “children”) can die on any given day. Before I even get weather predictions, I get prognostications on my untimely, bloody, painful, and generally unexpected manner of death (“Wow. A baboons tooth could do that to my skull? Oh, I shouldn’t have been eating 5 of those a day for my entire life?”). The bottomless torrent of chaos spewing from journalism and teh intarnets fosters a human urge for order and a semblance of clarity. The manifestation of this urge is also presented by television and the internet: list orgies! List obsession is sweeping the globe. Am I wrong in assuming that lists are on the rise? It seems that lately, even the most inane set of variables needs to be packaged, lumped, compartmentalized, ranked, or merely pigeonholed until further scrutiny can be applied. The other night, I was half-watching a nature show about the animal kingdom’s “MOST EXTREME” that was ranking the contestants vying for the crown of the planet’s biggest freeloaders (spoiler warning: the Tapeworm edged out both the Bat Fly and the Remora to claim number one…my dark horse was the Ear Mite who came in fourth).

I am, and have been for some time, firmly ensconced in the listy urge of the world. I am going to start 2007 with a list of things that “got me through” 2006. This list does not include obvious things such as my legs, my Wife the Atom Smasher, autonomic functions of the body, or friends and family and such, but will likely focus on things such as books, food items, songs, films…etc. Note: these things might be old classics that I have picked back up and re-used or re-abused. I have a tendency to hoard the good stuff.

Musics:

The Ladies’ album “They Mean Us” —what could happen when Rob Crow of Pinback and the rolling Oort cloud of drumming mayhem, the rocktopus himself Mr. Zach Hill combine to create an album? Songs that alternate from the frenetic to the sublime.

Smoke "Heaven on a Popsicle Stick"--Benjamin Smoke lived the life that Tom Waits only aspired to. I love this album in all its grotesque glory, the obvious highpoint being "Curtains," which might be the most expressive song i have heard in years.

The Knife “Silent Shout” (album and song)--just buy the damn thing.

Silkworm “Chokes”--the final EP by these guys since the tragic death of M. Dalhquist. I just can never get enough of SKWM.

Toto “Rosana” (song)--through the slow processes of time, I have come to realize the stamina of this song. If you are laughing at me right now from behind your glowing computer screen, I call you out into the road to face me…I defy you! From the Jeff Porcaro shuffle beat to the finger snapping goodness, touching upon the brassy blasting horns and culminating with the onanistic guitar solo outro, this song is a timeless, resounding, unabashed classic.

Tom Waits’ “Orphans” (box set) Anyone who didn’t include this on their “best albums of ’06 list” should be beaten with a pillowcase full of doorknobs. I had one of those sublime moments with this album just a few days ago—something that warrants its own entry. “Down by the Train” is incredible. Any song with the lines “there’s no eye for an eye, there no tooth for a tooth, I saw Judas Iscariot carrying John Wilkes booth, down there by the train” elevates itself to the status of royalty for yours truly.

The Advantage “Elf Titled”--I will simply never tire of hearing Nintendo-cover songs. There, I admit it.

Jose Gonzales I have always foreseen the day when someone would bring the nylon-stringed percussion of a classical guitar back to hipster status.

Gorecki--incredible. All the symphonies. Incredible.

Final Fantasy “This Lamb Sells Condos”--this was a good song from an album that I lost interest in after a month or so, but for the rotation it got, it served me well.

The Grifters “Eureka I.V.”--sometimes I think things like ‘If I could be responsible for writing one song from any existing songs, which would it be’. I think this song would be it. It just captures something for me, and the steel guitar is crippling.

more will come…here is a jpg to break up the text-monotony

other 2006 listening trends that I am not going to write anything superficial about: Devotchka, Ruins, Smog, Don Caballero "World Class Listening Problem"--highly recommended, and a reemerging interest in pre-'Blood Sugar Sex Magik' Red Hot Chili Peppers (True Men Don't Kill Coyotes), Supergrass "Caught by the Fuzz", Otis Redding, Silver Jews...too many.

Films:

Why We Fight--the hound mentioned this one. I loved it. One view concerning the military industrial complex and the profitability of war campaigns.

Hoop Dreams--I know this is an old documentary, but it really was one of the best docs I have ever seen. It was one of those films that throws the petty complaints of my life under a microscope for scrutiny.

Following--Chris Nolan (Memento) film about a writer turned stalker turned criminal—done brilliantly. Shot for $6,000.

Le Peuple Migrateur (Winged Migration)--I couldn’t believe some of the footage from this 2001 documentary. I had never seen it and it became a favorite. I am a bird fan though, so there. I admitted it.

The Departed--although the violence of this film was unnerving, I have to say that I have rarely been so tense in a film. I left exhausted, realizing that my muscles had been taut for the duration of the show. Leo DiCaprio was great in this one. Now I just need to see “Internal Affairs”—and no, that isn’t some blue movie, but the basis for “The Departed”.

Turtles Can Fly--one of the few movies that have made me weep openly. I haven’t watched it since the first time, because the blind child scenes just derail me.

Paradise Now--film about 2 Palestinian friends and the dynamics of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. This show kicked off a subsequent 2 hour discussion between my wife and I concerning the influences of organized religion.

Primer--not a recommended watch if you aren’t going to devote attention to it (lots of technical info—at least to the layperson, yours truly). Don’t watch it like me: while sorting through mail and picking my teeth with a matchstick. Give it some attention, so the dramatic effects can strangulate you.

that is all I can think of…this is getting long, I know…here is one of the best pictures i have seen all year:

Favorite books and such read in ’06

Brett Easton Ellis “Less Than Zero”--privilege, drug use, excess, L.A…some very objective moralizing by Ellis. I enjoyed.

Herbert Asbury “Gangs of New York”--nonstop. Some of the ‘stranger than fiction’ moments from this book still have my mouth hanging open. This book is exceptional just for using terms like “sneak-thievery”.

Dave Eggers “You Shall Know Our Velocity!”--I finally got around to reading this, and I enjoyed it much more than “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius”, mainly because it reminded me of backpacking through Europe with Dangrond.

Joseph Campbell “The Power of Myth”--this book reaffirms thoughts that I have had concerning the religion that I am ostensibly a member of. Campbell’s ideas on metaphor in the religious experience could do the world well.

Gerald Durrell “A Practical Guide for The Amateur Naturalist” This book was given to me by my grandparents in 1988. It has been my favorite thing ever, and I think everyone should have a copy. It shows you how to pick apart owl shit, for hell’s sake.

Okay…no laughter on this one pleaseColm Kelleher and George Knapp, “Hunt For the Skinwalker: Science Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utah”--okay okay okay. I had to buy this from the new age section of a bookstore. I felt so much shame I wanted to pull the whole shelf down on me. I thought this book would be interesting, because it touts itself as a scientific endeavor to explain some odd phenomena occurring on a ranch near Vernal, Utah. Little did I know that this book would have my arm hair trying to pluck itself out from sheer terror. I don’t know why, I don’t know how, but parts of this thing really, genuinely bothered me at the time. I look back now and laugh, but I was leaving lights on when home alone. There, I admit it.

…no one is going to read all this, and you aren’t blamed. I am ending the list here. I expect some severe criticism from some of y’all within the next few weeks, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Distracted by Sheeny Objects

2006-11-03T07:28:00.000-08:00

Last night I was enchanted by the polish of my drums. After returning from Brazil, I found my '71 Ludwig Oystershell Kit to be in a serious state of disrepair. I finally have the time and financial means to go through them piece by piece and replace the vintage hardware. Last night, I was working on my bass drum, when i just got lost in the Oystershell waves...I just sat staring into the weaving blue folds for 20 minutes or so, caressing the side of the drum. It was like watching the sunlight play off of the surface of the ocean. Just mesmerizing. This has happened to me before, while cleaning a Vintage Remington .12 Gauge..the gunmetal sheen pulled me in like a deep-sea fish. I am too much like a racoon.

Bari, Italy

2006-09-02T00:08:00.000-07:00

The first time i saw this video, i was in Bari, Italy, alone in a oily and ant-filled hotel room watching MTV Italia at about 3 AM.

After mounting tensions and some sarcasm, Darren and i had recently exchanged mutual "Fuk You"'s and then split up for artistic reasons. I had wandered through the dirty streets, past white churches where i contemplated sleeping in the doorways. The roaming packs of crazy dogs and dagos had convinced me otherwise.

An hour later, I found a hotel. The nightman looked like Saul Bellows with a glass-eye. He took my Euros and led me to a hotel room that may as well have had the door cemented shut: he and I together could scarcely open it. I got in my room and took a shower, noticing just in time that the water in the bottom of the shower was stopped-up and slowly rising toward a bundle of loose and exposed wires dangling out of the back of a wall socket.

Freezing to death, utterly alone, not giving a damn, i turned on the television, and the first thing i saw was this video in its entirety. Watching the video in the green glow of the television, in the state I was in, with my system full of pills, I had a feeling so strange I don't know if I have ever felt it before. Something of apathy and terror intermingled--with an intense nostalgia--but that description still falls short. I don't know what I was experiencing. It was like watching a snuff film, family video, and compelling drama at once. The next day, after intermittent sleep, it was on to Brindisi, where Darren and I patched things up (to later come undone on the streets of Belgium) and booked passage on a ship bound for Greece. We spent the night swaying on the Adriatic, swapping tales with two Australian girls and an Albanian named Claude.

But the video...i had fogotten about it until i came upon it on YouTube. I don't know why it hit me so hard. I was out of myself, I was beyond normalcy, I was full of things, utterly alone next to the dark sea in my Kafka hotel room. It is a song by an Italian satirist/comedian named Daniel Luttazzi, and it did something to me.

1.21 Watts...

2006-07-27T14:54:00.000-07:00

Okay. The picture was just to grab attention...

Somewhere in Rexburg sits a British-made radio transmitter that is broadcasting a steady stream of hiss. Some of this noise might be cosmic background radiation; in essence the genesis of the universe. But i gots me a bettr ideer...

We need to bring KFLO back. And by 'we,' i mean myself. The only people who ever even grace this page live in Florida, Canada, and New York, and Utahr. My other compadre is a slave to the green bitch-goddess of the fairway. It looks like a solo endeavor.

I bring it up in case anyone else in Rexburg comes across this blog and is interested in contributing somehow. I have already garnered some support from total strangers, but familiar faces (and voices on the air) would be heartily welcomed.

High Priest

2006-07-12T09:04:00.000-07:00

Syd Barrett died. Sadness.

I don't know who else really cares about this, especially because his best music (very arguably) was made decades ago. But if you spent a large portion of your life driving through the hinterlands of Idaho in Brian Beesley's truck listening to "Piper At the Gates of Dawn" at ungodly hours (or had a similar cathartic experience), you might wince just a bit.

I mean, lets face it, as far as overall listenability goes, Gilmour-era Floyd gets my money, but there is something very unique about Syd's works, like "See Emily Play," "Bike," "the Gnome" etc. It's Floyd that you just don't hear on the radio, but it represents a musical innovation that was cut down early.

Well, I still have the songs.

Jose Gonzalez

2006-06-20T20:40:00.000-07:00

No, not my alter-ego Jose Gonzalez of many years back, but the Swedish singer-songwriter. He's been stuck in my head for a while now, and I welcome his stuck-in-my-headness. The included video is a sony commercial that uses a cover song ("heartbeats" by The Knife) performed by Jose Gonzalez. I love this commercial not only for the stellar music, but also for the street shots of San Francisco (looks like Kearny, running the length to Coit Tower).

"you..kept us awake with wolves teeth, sharing different heartbeats"

that is just...perfect.

Slaves!

2006-06-12T09:38:00.000-07:00

The Great Magnetic Equalizer

2006-06-06T14:37:00.000-07:00

Today, a colleague and I were talking about how great it would be to have an Etch-A-Sketch screensaver. Immediately after mentioning it, I realized that if I could imagine it, someone else has already done it.

a quick Google search brought up not only the screensaver, but THIS WONDER

Virtues of the electronic version: the diagonal lines have become somewhat easier.
Drawbacks: no shaking it up, no starting from the corner, and unless you have a laptop, you can't use the Etch-a-Sketch as a distractionary device in a boring setting.

And also, as a tribute to the date, this Wiki article on Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia

S.o.a.P.

2006-04-25T06:51:00.000-07:00

The upcoming smash-hit (guaranteed) film of the summer, "Snakes on a Plane," represents the current (and glorious) trend in modern film of combining phobias and letting the script take shape..

I can imagine the writing process as something like this:
Dalessandro: "All I have come up with is a batch of Snakes..."
Heffernan: "Hmm...lets put 'em on a plane!"
Dalessandro: "This thing will write itself!"
Heffernan: "I hope they get a stunt man to direct this movie."
Dalessandro: "No worries...I know someone in the industry who owes me a favor."

See how the phobias meshed seemlessly to produce cinematic fools-gold?
Snakes + Plane = a smash hit. (this is the arithmetic of drama...haven't read Aristotle's 'Poetics'? they took a page out of Aristotle's book..i promise, there are at least 2 pages that talk about the dramatic potency of combining snakes and aviation)..

This cinematic mogul (as profound as it will no doubt be) is merely a call to the age-old Mesopotamic idea of "blame the snake." In grade school, I was taught the revisionist history of snakes and their slithery ilk--although i believed none of it, i was taught to believe that at the heart of most events with historical significance, there was a serpent.

*Lee Harvey Oswald didn't fire bullets from that Mannlicher--he fired snakes.
*Ghandi was not a victim of assassination by gun--someone offered him some "Beer Nuts" in a can, but this time the springy snakes within were real.
*Custer at Little Bighorn? Strangled by an Anaconda, whose presence in the Montana Territory remains unexplained.
*Patrick Henry has been grossly misquoted through the ages...he really said "Give me liberty, or give me a gaboon viper!" (synonymous with death)
*William Snakespeare, Humphrey Boa-gart, Anacondaleeza Rice...So many well known figures have had their names altered
*Martin Luther didn't nail points of reform on a door...he was merely tacking a snake-hide.
i could go on..

St. Patrick must be jumping for joy in his grave...evolution has been cruel enough to them: depriving them of legs, ears, proper vision, warm blood--now, in a cruel twist of fate, the snakes have to go up against a well-armed Samuel L. Jackson.

F. E. A. R., Eostre, and the Moveable Feast

2006-02-27T07:46:00.000-08:00

F. E. A. R.
Originally uploaded by S = k log w.

Fluffy-Easter-Antichrist-Rabbit

This is a photo of my friend Emily G. and a "bunny" that her grandmother took her to see years ago. It reminds me of a few months ago, when Jon and I were commenting on Christmas and the pagan, and he chose to insert Bill Hicks' commentary on the lincoln-log in the sock drawer. "It's the story of Jesus.." Jesus, who I believe to be an embodiment of all things good and empathetic, would have nothing to do with THAT lagomorph...

This polaroid, in all its saturated goodness, manages to both entertain me and terrify me at the same time. For some reason, the fact that such a horrifying rabbit is sitting in a large wicker chair scares me even more. Poor Emily...

Anyhow...this is my way of wishing you all a happy Easter, a few weeks in advance...when Easter comes around, go raise a rocky monolith somewhere based on lunar activity, roast some dove, spin in a circle, repeat miscellania into a mirror, and search the grass for eggs of unborn fowl--being sure to devour them before they take wing. Its the miracle of the tomb, right?

Harpo Winfrey and the Hoop of FIRE...

2006-02-01T17:27:00.000-08:00

So many Americans are aghast and taking up arms with that literary matriarch Oprah Winfrey over recent revelation of falsehoods in James Frey's "A Million Little Pieces."

About a year ago, I wrote a blog entry about the book, endorsing it wholeheartedly, and I do not now feel the need to retract anything I said about the book, nor will I anytime soon. In my original post, I mentioned the book's honesty. To me, there is an honesty in the pages that transcends the mere "factual." There is an undeniable truth about accountability in the book.

If they discovered that nothing, absolutely nothing in that book was even remotely true, they would still be hard-pressed to challenge its originality of style and its caustic poignancy.

I can't wait until Harpo finds out that Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (a grand book that she also endorsed) is magical realism. It's gonna hit the proverbial fan.

Oprah and her quest for the truth...a country content with lying to each other--with being lied to. As a generality, we as a nation are lie-merchants, but just let some uncouth young writer commit the cardinal sin and lie to Oprah...

(note inserted picture: see the disbelief in Harpo's eyes? Heartbreaking)

Get behind the Yule

2005-12-27T19:49:00.000-08:00

pam and steve forever
Originally uploaded by deadsy.

Congratulations to Matt and Chalene. For photos of their wedding, go to my flickr account HERE

to slake, you've got to turn your head and quaff

2005-12-06T20:50:00.000-08:00

PX002567 (woods--Corbis Photography)
Originally uploaded by deadsy.

some great things that have happened to me in the last few days (in no particular order):

i read ralph ellison's "invisible man" in about 4 sittings

i had a dream in which tyler "cruz" christensen and i were collecting ant collonies in rotting logs..i held my ear up to one log full of enormous oily carpenter ants and exclaimed "it sounds just like a hydroelectric plant"

i climbed to the roof of my building at about midnight, and in the blistering cold 2 misguided snow geese swooped low over me--heading due north in december

i learned that Robert "Major" Wood is coming home from Iraq, this time permanently

forthcoming on this very blog (tell your friends and folks): a tribute to my friend Matthew Zollinger, in light of his recent revelations (the positive ones)..keep your eyes peeled for the comprehensive list of classic Zollingerisms...until then, be safe, do good work, and keep in touch..don't drive like my brother--and don't drive like my brother...good day.

under a stone

2005-11-14T15:15:00.000-08:00

street
Originally uploaded by deadsy.

time to post an update for all y'all. as of the 22nd of October, my tax status changed drastically. the wedding went off flawlessly...it was a memorable event. thanks to all those who travelled to make it...i love you folks. i wish everyone could have come, but i understand how it goes. i love you folks just as much. i love egg yolks.

so, aside from my recent marriage and my recent obsession (addiction?) with 'Google Earth,' things continue at the same pace. marriage is a pretty sweet plum. it realy hasn't been an incredible adjustment...we have long been aware of each others pecadillos and pecados, so transitional turbulence has been non-existent.

i was working as a technical writer for a counseling agency (a great job), but providence shone forth in the form of the US Department of Energy, and Batelle Industries offered me a job at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratories, or is it the Idaho National Laboratory?, or the Idaho-Cougar-Mellencamp Laboratory---i can't keep the sobriquets in line. So, anyhow, my recent sinecure finds me catching a hydrogen powered bus at 5 AM monday through thursday to travel deep into the west desert and edit for "the beast." i feel torn working for the DOE, but i'm not enough of an idealist to starve for want of better work. besides, i am thrilled at the prospect of actually working in sector 7-G. and the DOE is a variegated beast as well; weapons and alternate energy sources...toss it up.

ashley and i are living in 'downtown' rexburg, in a building that harbors quite a few memories. i posted some pics of the facade...many of you might recognize it as "the galleria," "the bay," "the underground," "the joe?," as property of Barrett, Inc. about 15 years ago this building housed an arcade..Bice and i would play Shinobi there until our thumbs bled. Years later, Cross-Eyed and Painless played there under the auspices of one Bradley Barrett, a man who we thought stiffed us from our cut of the door. I remember my first contact with Brad was an altercation at Craigo's where a bunch of punk kids confronted him demanding money...if only we understood the depths of elitism we were meddling with. in retrospect, it was like the "Little Rascals" taunting the entire A-Team. Luckily, Brad saw past our disrespect and took most of us under his dark wing..what a place he had. So many memories were formed in that building...Weimer and his cronies "unleashing the spider," a 'security-guard' named Barf, a surly and shoeless Matt Zollinger destroying endless bass-guitars, my first introduction to JonRex, chess games with Markus listening to Bitch's Brew, and mind-bendingly dissolute and decadent pictures from a drag party that i was too far gone to attend. What a place.

i feel sad that the soul has been drained from the block. now, the street is a row of recruiting offices for security systems and bug-spray..something that rexburg has an unstaunchable lust for. I walk home late at night and the wind swings the old sign on the corner. cigarette butts fill the gutters like teeth. i climb stairs that groan under me, up to the third floor and my warm apartment. it feels good to look down onto the street, to remember all the nights spent in this building in the company of friends. every night, i sleep on a pile of ghosts.

club vortex, rexburg idaho
Originally uploaded by deadsy.

Øh, Høw we laughed...

2005-10-12T23:22:00.000-07:00

updates and anecdotes...

it is true. i am betrothed, to be wed on October 22, 2005. here in one week. i always thought that i would be more apprehensive about marriage, but Ashley (my fiance) and i have really reacted with a passive nochalance. we have known each other long enough...we fit like skin, despite having very little in common. we don't listen to the same music, we don't read the same books, we don't interpret anything the same way, we have disparate views on politics and ethics and certain points of religion, and we deal just fine. we balance well. i am excited and ready. if any of you read this and have not as yet received an invitation, you are all most certainly invited. the reception will be held in the Spori Art Gallery on the BYU-I campus, from 6-8pm on the 22nd. if you don't come for me, at least come for the sitar/guitar that will be playing..

let me give you a whirlwind tour of other significant events in my life:
new job--technical writer for a counseling agency. pays great, boss is stellar.
i took a drunk man to the ER, i'm working on material for a home-recorded album, bought a new automobile (lets not even talk about debt), came upon the body of a dead man just seconds after plumetting from the earth in a glider accident, lost my best friends mark and matt to NY and SLC (respectively)...

other news: in a bought of mid-life crisis, my padre recently purchased a '65 Porsche (see pic)...just the anodyne for the perplexities of a dwindling mortgage and an improving golf game--???. the car really fills a void of nostalgia for the old guy though. he once owned a similar model Porsche when he was about 25, cruising the hills of San Francisco. it's good for him. it is the first thing i have ever seen him purchase expressely for himself.

i want to include my most recent listening digs...i promised Price i would give an update of what i am currently spinning. lets do it by category. (most of these tracks are available on iTunes)

acoustic-halcyon-goodness:

2 tracks from Martin Tielli: "voices from the wilderness" and "i'll never tear you apart"--i wish i could write such non-linear beauty. what a voice. what skill on the guit-fiddle. thanks to jonrex for the Tielli. canada's finest.

Smog. a load of Smog. smog's latest album is finesse..especially "drinking at the dam." some older smog too, namely "anniversary" and "truth serum." fine audio.

Iron & Wine with Calexico...good news.

Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, the song is "friends" and it melts you.

Devendra Banhart's album Cripple Crow..."now that i know"

My Morning Jacket. song "Gideon"

Elbow's new album and song "the everthere"

some freewheelin' Bob Dylan (girl from the north country...what a gem of a song)

Other Music:
NIN latest is terrific. i have realized that Trent Reznor knows how to arrange songs..particularly his songs that end albums..."right where it belongs" got about 300 rotations on my pod in a couple weeks.

i've been crankin a lot of Joe Cocker lately..ever since watching "Layer Cake"

Frank Zappa's "St. Alfonso's Pancake Breakfast"--the mothers of invention could really play their instruments. sometimes the quirkiness of the music occludes that fact

the pogues, the pleased, and my recent rekindled love affair with
SILKWORM---go download "treat the new guy right," "white lightning," and "oh how we laughed"...play any of those three tracks and i am destroyed.

that about wraps it up. except for one more thing, this website, Weather Wars, which is the site of a guy named Scott Stevens. i have been following Scott's story closely as of late. Scott was a meteorologist here in Idaho Falls. he had worked for years at his position when he abruptly quit his job to research a theory concerning the Yakuza and their ostensible ability to control weather by "scalar energy." Evidently the japanese "mafia" is responsible for hurricane Katrina. scott recently appeared on AM Coast to Coast with George Nory and i rue the fact that i missed the airing.

well...this has been my longest blog entry to date, i believe. i know that if anyone even chances upon this page, they may read a paragraph in and then click through. i don't mind.

let me insert my obligatory philosophical note..so much misery in broadcast. i really sometimes feel like a complete swine, so relatively far from it, doing what i can to help, but not feeling satisfied. just being myself, undeserving of providence, never worthy of a Christmas, gorging myself in the land of milk and honey, seeking the higher ideal. anyone feel the same? i need to do more. big love to all.

Corvidae

2005-07-21T21:05:00.000-07:00

my relationship with crows has been a varied and dynamic one.

i used to have recurring dreams about crows. there was a gray crow with shark eyes that would always swoop down at the end of each dream and talk to me. it was usually hostile, and my life was always threatened. the most vivid dream i had of crows still haunts me: i was traped in a sleeping bag that was pulled tight around my neck, exposing only my head. a murder of crows descended and slowly approached me. laying on my back only offered me a view of the zenith of the sky, and occasionally a crow would venture into the peripheral. i could hear them growling and cawing in my ears, and then suddenly the gray crow appeared. he told me in a muzzled voice that i would die, that he would kill me, and if i came back he would kill me again, and again, and kill me again, and again (repeated endlessly). the bird finally pecked my eyes, and my last vision was that of a wizened gray evil crow towering over my vision as my eye sockets pooled up with blood. i could see the gray crow through the lens of my own blood.

at 16 i was still uneasy about crows. one night, walking the long and lone distance to Zollinger's Dad's home, i was followed by a crow that would eye me from a power pole and then fly to the next pole in line along my path..this continued for about a mile.

i used to sneak out at night with a girl named Aubrey. despite being named after a song by 70's soft-rockers Bread, Aubrey was a slice of fried gold, and she and i shared a mutual fear/respect for the corvids. we would roam the streets at night, stealing stop signs and donations from the DI donation ramp, and our discussions always seemed to center around crows. she once wrote and told me that everytime she saw a crow she thought of joe..only a few years later did i begin to take it as a compliment. crows are incredible.

for more facts than i care to relate at the moment, go HERE

my reason for this post is because tonight i held an injured crow in my hands and it may as well have been a pterodactyl. they always fascinate me.

my neighbor shot a crow out of the sky with a pellet gun, for reasons i can't yet understand. i saw it hobbling across the road, and i followed it into some bushes where i calmed it enough to pick it up and gently carress it. there was a small perforation in the gunmetal feathers, it was panting, it bled on my hand...i held it, i lamented the fact that it was hurt, that it wouldn't fly again, that it might die..it got away from me and lodged itself so deep in the junipers that i could no longer retrieve it, a creature of the air brought low to deal with our grating, terranian existence--a harsh world of cats and dogs, slingshot children and loony squirrels.

if squaking, eating trash and shitting where you weren't supposed to are grounds for immobilization, then we should all have our legs broken. love your blue black friends of the four winds, please. crow blood is strawberry red.

Voice of Authority

2005-07-20T21:15:00.000-07:00

free song.

eat and enjoy.

Spoon "Car Radio"

Out of Honey

2005-07-15T23:29:00.000-07:00

outofhoney
Originally uploaded by deadsy.

i am never going to apologize again.
if i haven't written on here, then it must be for a definite reason. i am no fatalist: kismet and I don't jive...give me causality.

i need to go to the bay. if any of you (with more dependable cars) feel the sudden urge to hit San Francisco, i'll sponsor.

i live..the lights are back in the sky at night. a more descriptive entry forthcoming. a more lithe and limber joseph. a hot bath. a new set of teeth. a face to meet the faces. there are some mornings when the sky looks like a road.

watch the lightning
for all your cues--Silkworm

Lifetime Piling Up

2005-04-28T15:01:00.000-07:00

Rita

It's a tumbleweed-dust-distant-dog-droning feeling. Crickets. No top hat wearing, moralizing, animated Aretaic Crickets, just the squeaking chirping variety. Long ago a man named Smith rented a mule and beat it within an inch of its life. The beast recovered enough to stumble away to the wide expanse of the Snake River Valley where it fell at the base of the Big Hole Mountains and named itself Rexburg.

Just living in the interim..the interstices between life as i knew it and "college." High School Redux, actually. Sad: the things I forego for mercenary reasons. "The Graduate" instantly became my favorite film the first time I saw it years ago, but only now do I understand the feeling...the malaise...the immediate decadence that preceeds the next big push. I only wish I were cruising an Alpha Romeo between Berkeley and Santa Barbara, sleeping with a circa 1965 Anne Bancroft [somewhat].

If only the knives were as long as the days.

I have managed to be somewhat productive in the meantime. I fixed up an old acoustic guitar of mine. New strings, cleaned frets, a truss rod adjustment. Magic. I am trying to re-hone my acoustic guitar skills, messing around with simple applications, recording with my external (eternal) mic. Here's a sample

I have been on a stencil-making binge as well, hoping to set some part of the spillway ablaze with something really unoriginal in a metropolitan sense, but something incredibly vanguard for southeast idaho. Rita. Jimmy Stewart. A Tap Shoe. A Stormtrooper. Judy Garland. Boredom.

all my beautiful friends, they've all gone away. (the cult "revolution")

iPodCast Away.......

2005-04-13T13:18:00.000-07:00

Hey team...

soon enough, Zollinger and Myself (+ secret special guests) shall be delving into the world of Podcasting, creating a weekly show for your auditory perusal.

we are thinking that the site for this endeavor might be found HERE...but nothing is set in stone.

we are excited. this is as close to re-broadcasting on KFLO as we will probably ever be.

details forthcoming...

Joanna Newsom

2005-03-23T17:17:00.000-08:00

Joanna Newsom

I really wanted to resist liking this musician...i managed for a while, but I think the harp eventually got me..

Joanna Newsom "The Sprout and the Bean"

Hella

2005-03-21T19:34:00.000-08:00

Acid rock? Anti punk? Prog? Hyper fusion? I don't know how you would classify these two. If you haven't ever listened to Hella, I suggest you do. If there is any forefront left in rock music produced by natural instruments, these guys are there peering over the edge. Not since my prog-rock adolescent obsession with Rush, Yes, ELP and King Crimson have I ever been so thrilled by musicianship. Hella's new album double album "Church Gone Wild / Chirpin Hard" is shipping as of today, March 22. I have yet to hear this album, but I guarantee that we will be hearing more of them in the days to come. I think that Hella's uncomparable ability is better appreciated by musicians--on various occasions I have shared their music with people who have little or no musical training, and the response is always less enthusiastic than when Hella is heard for the first time by a musician.

The thing I love about Hella is the feeling of musical deconstruction. There is assuredly the noise-band feel, but listening through and paying close attention, the latent patterns soon emerge. For me, Hella is a breath of manic and chaotic fresh air, a rescue from the current Lo-fi trend so prevalent in music. Don't get me wrong-certain players of the lo-fi set deserve more praise than they get (namely Iron & Wine's Sam Beam and the entire line-up of Hood), but I defy anyone to find a band that sounds like Hella. After seeing them live, so many bands who I thought were incredible musicians just seemed so bland. I really can't say enough about this band--and nice guys too.

I have included a sample of a Hella track for the listening audience. Bear in mind that this is just a single electric guitar and a 4 piece drum kit with a single kick pedal--this is a 2 person band. I would like to see the White Stripes do this..

Biblical Violence

Lux

2005-03-14T20:44:00.000-08:00

February 18, 2005:

i am on a night train from Innsbruck
Munich bound
the power is off in the train car
i am alone
the world outside is a tide of
dark trees and glowing churches

far down the hill, on an adjacent rail
we pass a man walking the tracks
with a flashlight.

who?

a man who has lost something:
a wife or a wallet or a way into
the life ahead

a man on a walk. a transient. a surgeon. a civil servant, a pedorast, a pediatrist. perhaps looking for the route to a former life, crawling home
to the bible or
the bottle

but he's really just a man like me
walking the cold world with a flashlight
a small light
carrying the tiny light
through a great globe of dark.

Aghios Nikolaus

2005-02-14T09:00:00.000-08:00

agnik .

Touched down in Aghios Nikolaus today, on the island of Crete. Last night was spent in Iraklion, which was interesting...very happening place, a little too happening if you understand..felt like Sundance. I was hoping for a somewhat more pastoral tour of Crete, but due to the fact that I will only be here for 3 days or so, I might not get out to too many sleepy little fishing villages. Tomorrow we are planning on fishing from the pier in front of our villa (which we are renting for 30 euro). Greece has been stellar: Santorini was unlike anything I have ever seen. Saw the Agora and the Acropolis a few days ago and felt an interesting sense of awe considering the life and lives whose feet pounded the dust there for thousands of years. The Acropolis was incredible, and I think that we might go back there on our last 2 days in Athens after seeing the Archaeological Museum. Food-wise and hospitality wise, Greece has been unrivaled. Most everyone I have met has been very warm and courteous. The souvlaki is cheap and delicious. Things are fine...I apologize for not having anything too important to say, big love from the big island...Minotaur sightings: Zero...Ninja-proof hotel rooms: 1....

Hiatus

2005-01-28T11:40:00.000-08:00

highway

for the 3 of you that read this blog, i probably won't be posting much for the next month. i will try to post some updates from areas where i will be spending more time (Greece)...godspeed, here is a song to go with the picture...

Hood "Further Woodland"

1996

2005-01-26T11:47:00.000-08:00

left the house at 2 am...down the street with pocket full of coins...threw them at her window....the smallest light turned on....

Hood--To Emphasize Words

From the Mouths of Bums

2005-01-22T13:58:00.000-08:00

This is a post primarily for Little Black Clambo in NY. I found an apt picture for your current project: A Hobo/Transient Joke Book...the picture was taken when i was working in SF, 2001, a photo I have entitled: I Haight Jokes. Some people might be offended by your project, but not I. I sense the importance of preservation, and I see you as a fledgling Ken Burns figure, compiling the best comedy stylings of those napsack-on-a-stick members of society that we always walk right by. For anyone who might find the project insensitive, let it be said that every contributor is documented and rewarded as well. C'mon...laugh a little.

HIGHSTICKING on Jesus...Two Minutes in the Box

2005-01-19T16:24:00.000-08:00

que tristeza

today, matt and i spent far too much time delving into the mawkish world of Radical Christian Art...for those who dare, click on the above photo to see some gems posted in flickr (just click on "Deadsy's Photostream" to see the rest). Warning: not for the faint of heart or meek in spirit. Don't try this on an empty stomach...eat some shewbread or something...

The Gematriculatør

2005-01-19T01:23:00.000-08:00

if you have a website or sliver of text that you want tested, simply inquire of The Gematriculatør

The Seasøn's Best tø Yøu and Yøurs

2005-01-07T15:09:00.000-08:00

† The Chürch øf Jøbbs †

2004-12-08T23:37:00.000-08:00

I broke out the old Mac SE Dual Drive (which I can never abandon) for a rousing game of Gunshy. I was prompted by the recent discovery of a virtual Mac 9" emulator by Dublin's Finest, mister Rich Bannister, who has been the flag-bearer of my post-adolescent nerdery and emulation needs. This emulator allows you to play classic Mac games such as the legendary Dark Castle series. (by the way--if anyone has a copy of Dark Castle on disk, i will give a lung and my firstborn) I am a devout acolyte in the Church of Jobbs, and this nerdy discovery is outcast paydirt. It lets me get away from the iPod waving Church-of-whats-happenin'-now set and relive some moments that I thought were gone...any favorite Mac memories?

A Few Gøød Men

2004-11-26T23:33:00.001-08:00

I have to thank a few friends on this post, namely Jonrex and Stephen. I like to think that I am creative, I like to think that I create, but my friends always seem to do it better.

Jonrex sent me a set of iPodermis covers that he concocted himself. I am still impressed with their functionality. Jonrex is an icon-bender, a media wrangler, a visionary of visual art. The Pop-icon manipulation can get so trite, but Jon's work is always, always fresh. I lick my chops at each of his creations. He never lacks in perspective.

Steve (Sleeve) Samüelsøn is one hot dog himself. He is a craftsman, he makes books, he has a woodcut press, his soul is made of well-aged leather. He made me a sheath for the iPod of supple blue leather (the picture isn't gratifying...my values are all messed up) and it works in perfect conjunction with Jonny's gift. These two get a bow from me.

to all of you. shine øn...

Dåppled Thîngs...

2004-11-08T20:29:00.000-08:00

Last night the Northern Lights were unusually strong here in Idaho. I will never tire of watching them, and I found that Sigur Røs is suitable music for Aurora Borealis, if music is preferred (because it is not at all necessary, in my opinion). It was incredible. The muse was truly shaken. I would go on with a lengthy description of the natural scene, but I would rather leave such an endeavor up to Burns, Bly, or Gerard Manley Hopkins. Let it be known that I walked more reverant today. Mark, I know that you are doing great things at Columbia, but I must say that last night you missed out on the sublime.

Hail to the Chump

2004-11-01T09:36:00.000-08:00

it was a dog parable...the dog could return to his own vomit or stick his nose in the poop. the dog went back to the vomit. God help us all. Souza is rolling over in his shallow grave...

Sly like the Driven Snøw

2004-10-28T23:05:00.000-07:00

First fall of the year. The flakes were gargantuan today--like swan feathers swarming out of the sky. Here's a piece of Mogwai's "Nick Drake". This song is one of my favorites of all time. Such a soothing, euphoric, minimalistic song. Even the obnoxious trombone playing faintly in the end just seems to work. I apologize for not being able to provide the full song, I am still having uploading troubles. I hope to make it up in the future. It is a great song; it is a song that always reminds me of snow.

K F L Ø

2004-10-22T19:06:00.000-07:00

years ago, my friends and i had a pirate radio station. i can remember the day we got it running: i risked my life on the icy roof to install the antenna, we made the fine adjustments to the dip switches, then we drove around in Steamboat's convertible caddy listening to The Clash play "Radio Clash" on the very radio waves that we harnessed...we felt like gods. it was incredibly popular, incredibly entertaining, and incredibly controversial. i must say that it was one of the more pleasing endeavors of my college career thus far. i miss that little 12W transmitter. we all operated clandestinely from an undisclosed location, under pseudonyms such as "Steamboat," "Hash Brown," "The Taco Prince," et al. as a result of our efforts, we were payed quite handsomely to DJ some raves (not really our indie-rock-cum-wanna-be-art-school shtick, but we aquiesced). i found a few photos from a party we threw, which ended in mass hysteria. there were fights. there were broken windows (we maxed out the place). there were cops. there was a firemarshall. there was estrogen and testosterone and sweat and music and free Jamba. there was a squirrel, a sparrow, a steamboat, and someone's lambchop...and there was Samuelsauce and myself scratchin' up a storm...

well, recently there has been talk of a KFLO revival, for which i am absolutely pro. my main reason in posting this is due to the fact that Steamboat, who is at grad school in Fargo, recently got a 1 hour spot on the school station...i have been listening to his show via iTunes, streaming it in on friday night while waiting for my friends to get off work. you should check the Steamboat himself...i see that his spelling remains amusingly deficient, one of those unexplained "phenonmen"..why is it that some of the brightest people i know cannot spell, whatsoever? (not that i am a Samuel Johnson myself, just an observation. if any of you know Zollinger, then you will understand my thinking)...i love the steamboat, wishing him the best, hoping that he plays plenty of Al Green, Tom Waits, Neil Young, Dilated Peoples, Shins, and T. Rex, in honor of KFLO. if you tune in to Steamboat's hour, you should also hang around for the woman who follows him--she plays prog rock...scandanavian, canadian, and british prog. bless her suede-clad heart.

!retsaM ym si nataS

2004-10-08T09:59:00.000-07:00

once on KFLO radio, we played Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" backwards on the Techniques and convinced quite a few people about the hidden message of marijuana use...i found this great link via Metafilter, and i think it is worth checking out. Listen to each of these and tell me what you think...the Zeppelin is pretty uncanny, and even the Hit Me Baby One More Time seems like it might have something to it...(albeit, coincidentaly)..

Reverse SATAN!!!

A Milliøn Little Pieces

2004-10-06T21:38:00.000-07:00

i have typed and re-typed my entry on this blogpost quite a few times tonight...i am finally resolved to just post the following: Read James Frey's arrestingly honest novel "A Million Little Pieces." Read this book. i keep coming back to it. i have read no finer statement on personal accountability, acceptance, and seeking the whole person. as a caveat: it is a tough book, full of sinewy diction and razor sharp prose delivered in stacatto Hemingway style. although it is a book about institutions and addiction, it is somehow elevated above its genre (Burroughs "Junky" etc..) by the small acts of heart-breaking humanity. everyone has an addiction. everyone has their own version of reward-based self-defeat. this is an account of a man turning toward his demons with a stolid glare and firm chin, never swaying, never yielding. the book engages from the start, gripping until the ending--so incredibly bitterwsweet that i stared at the print for a solid five minutes, mouth agape. please, read this book.

Kåbbånå

2004-09-30T22:54:00.001-07:00

cabin
Originally uploaded by deadsy.

Recently there has been talk of a trip to Larkspur for the Beesley Cabin Experience...I hope something materializes. The mere mentioning of Last Chance and Highway 20 near Mack's Inn brings to mind simpler times: doctoring the surly and soused Zollinger/Jim Bridges duo at a Playmill Dancehall...Beeser and the incessant shooting of the moon in a dismal 4 AM game of hearts...The genesis of the five rules for a highly stressful situation, blunders made after smoking then sleeping in the loft, cooking bacon naked, et al...The guitars, the trivia, the endless and eternal bottle of Austin Nichols Wild Turkey, debauchery and breakfast, taxidermy and an 8-track...John denver, E.L.O., Robert Zimmerman, and Gordon Lightfoot all providing the proverbial bread. Here are some of my favorite photos from the cabin...I will perhaps post more photos of the cabin experience in the future (I can't find my Jimothy Bridges photos or the infamous Frat Candy Cycles...those shots pending..). We have some jonrex and little black clambo both in full regalia (aphex twin hoodie and my martin backpacker for jonny, beard and straw hat for mark), Beeser, Rob, and Sam with their respective axes, and then myself with a surly Matty Z in the foreground with his coke chaser...the days were golden.

release

2004-09-26T14:24:00.000-07:00

Originally uploaded by deadsy.

it is a good time to be alive in the pacific northwest...how fortunate I am...it is easy to make superficial comments concerning the larger world when I am stuck in the mountains, relatively far from the storm. so, no politiking in this addition, no shallow sarcasm or attempted wit, just some digital bells from Squarepusher and a gary young poem that i wish i could have written

"[My brother's in Wyoming ...]," by Gary Young

[My brother's in Wyoming . . .]

My brother's in Wyoming, and I've had that dream again. We're fishing. The trout rise, take our bait, and keep rising. In love once with a woman, and with my own capacity for pain, I fell in with some cowboys, and broke my neck riding bulls in a little rodeo. That night, drunk in the bunkhouse, not knowing how badly I'd been hurt, I thought it can't get worse that [sic] this, but I was wrong. That was twenty years ago. Thunder rolls down South Fork Canyon. The Milky Way is a great river overhead. My brother is in Wyoming. I miss him more than ever when he's there.

YAHWEH or the Highway

2004-09-22T22:38:00.000-07:00

post this
Originally uploaded by deadsy.

Today I read about US Authorities denying Yusuf Islam (aka Cat Stevens) entrance into the United States of America, blacklisting him as a threat to national security. The rationale of the intelligence community is a tenuous claim that Stevens somehow supported terrorist organizations. I think Stevens has been misunderstood since the whole Salman Rushdie incident--if you listen to his commentary on the issue, he is not opining about wanting to kill Rushdie, he is merely offering the layperson (myself) an interpretation of Muslim law... Well, regardless, The Patriot Act has spoken. How disturbing. Maybe I am missing the latent interpretations of songs such as "Peace Train." ...Coincidentally, today I also read a poem which was related, in an interesting way.
Poem: "MORE SHRINES" by David Kirby

MORE SHRINES

No, I don't think we would
be orthodox believers
had Charles Martel not turned back
the Moslems at Tours in 732,
thus allowing the West to grow up
Christian, Jewish, and,
for the most part, slightly perplexed
about but mainly oblivious to
such matters as good, evil,
and whether or not we will go
to Paradise when we die.
But even though my hometown
of Tallahassee contains the name
of Allah, and even though
we have Arabic words in our language,
such as algebra, which sounds
Arabic and even looks that way,
or did in the eighth grade,
still, this is America,
and while I cannot see us adopting
the placid temperaments of
the desert people, so self-composed
in their long, loose robes
yet struggling continuously with
the malicious djinn who rule
the kingdom of death that begins
just a few feet from the oasis,
we need, do we not,
more places in this country
that are solemn and serene,
although there can be only one holy stone
set in the corner of the Ka'aba
in Mecca, white when given
to Adam at the time of the fall
but black now from the sins of
those who have kissed it.
I like this: a kind of sin-magnet
that would pull all of
the wickedness out of us,
because, as it says in the Koran,
you can run, pretty momma,
but you can't hide.

The Advantage

2004-09-16T23:24:00.000-07:00

Years of my life were spent watching a young man named Todd Samuelson wrangle a rectangular game-pad in order to interact with an 8 bit realm of infinite possibility. More years were spent wrangling that controller myself-commanding a pixelated protagonist to hurl vegetables, eat food off the ground, jump on turtle's heads, etc etc...Nintendo has been a formidable influence in my life, for good or ill. More posts concerning the gray box of wonder pending...

For the time being, I hope you enjoy a track from The Advantage. They are an amalgamate group, formed from various members of various bands, including the supergroup Hella.

These gents do nothing but cover Nintendo audio tracks, and in the process set off a conflagration of nostalgia in my chest. I recently took out the old console, and after breathing into the cartridge and toying with the loading tray for about 15 minutes, I had Wizards and Warriors up and running and was able to pass the game once again. For those of you who understand, may i present to you, The Advantage...

Wizards and Warriors

The Advantage will be playing Salt Lake City's Kilby Court in October...Ω

A Yen for Money

2004-09-14T23:21:00.000-07:00

i had to link this in...i enjoy it. you might too.

asianmoney