PRAGMATIK

Back.

2006-07-26T22:34:00.000-05:00

Back at Pragmatik.Org. See you there.

Where did PRAGMATIK go?

2006-02-17T22:59:00.000-06:00

I screwed up some stuff, and I had to clear the Wordpress database. Yeah, that means that I have to re-import, re-categorize and re-upload photos to all 400 plus posts. Yeah, I’m wondering if it’s worth it, since blogging has really become my narcissistic way of living with an audience. Not sure if that’s good for me, and so many people that actually know in real life (real life!) read it, that I find myself censoring myself to an increasing and alarming degree. Plus, it’s just become a very boring blog because I’m a grad student and — thus — lead a very boring life. I don’t write poetry anymore, and I pulled my bass out today for only what I think is maybe the tenth time since I moved to Illinois. I don’t read enough or write letters anymore or take enough photos.

I’m told I should still post photos. So I have Flickr. Maybe I’ll get a Flickr Pro account, etc.

Maybe I need a break of blogging or this blog. Maybe this break will be a weekend, maybe a week, maybe forever.

Maybe I won’t take a break at all.

Who knows? If you still read this crap, thank you.

Photo Friday: Baby.

2006-02-17T09:05:00.000-06:00

I’m going to get crap for posting this at all, let alone under the “Baby” challenge, but enough folks are going to post photos of babies, puppies and kitties. Besides, newly born and newly deceased are not all that different. And I think Uncle Walt explains it best:

“The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash’d babe, and am not contain’d between my hat and boots…”

Looks like we’re in for stohmay wetha.

2006-02-16T17:38:00.000-06:00

Yes, in the middle of February, we are under both a Tornado Watch and a Wind Advisory. This used to drive me crazy when we had the black car. Wind means stuff falling on your precious shiny black car that can scratch dent smash it. Maybe hail, which can do the same. All bad if you are the kind of person who worries about stupid shit. And that was me. My legs and bike are all inside and safe and dry. So bring it on, Mr. Thunderstorm, you bitch.

Let's all shoot our friends.

2006-02-15T14:52:00.000-06:00

I would like someone to help me prove a point, that point being that members of the Bush administration can get away with almost anything. Rather, I don’t want to prove a point so much as test a hypothesis. Proving a point makes it sound like I want to be proven right. The ramifications of being right in this case border on unbearable, so I think it’s more of a hypothesis. I am a moderately strict vegetarian (no meat, but eggs and milk), and I am not exactly into hunting. Aside from shooting guns at targets being among the few manly (!!) things I’m good at, I don’t go carrying or playing with guns very often. Really, I swear. Anyway. Okay. Now here’s where I need help. I need someone willing to go hunting with me so that I can shoot them. No, seriously, I need someone to go hunting with me, and I’ll let you shoot me in the chest. I want to see if you get charged with assault, with being an irresponsible idiot, some gun charge, etc. I don’t really know much at all about The Law, but it seems like shooting someone is a pretty bad thing to do, even if you did it by accident and even if you say you’re sorry. What happens if this dude dies? Will they charge the Vice President with involuntary manslaughter or some such offense? Or will they let him go? Is there some loophole in American Law (whatever that is) that makes killing a man not a crime, just because you said (but can’t really prove) that you didn’t mean it? I’m not saying Dicky did it on purpose, but would anyone believe me if I shot a dude and said it was an accident? What happens if Dicky goes to jail? I’m sure lefty bloggers (like me, though I rarely blog about political gear) are eating this all up and hoping the old dude dies just to see what happens (not really wishing for that, though, thanks). I’m sure the righty bloggers are trying to blame this in the liberal media and those America-hating bloggers. Yeah, well, you know, Dicky was thinking about the damage that the evil liberal media and anti-American bloggers do to the greatest country on earth, and he got distracted while toting his gun around shooting things. It’s our fault he shot that poor dude. I have really fallen out of the political loop, especially after too many lazy assed Americans didn’t vote and got us four more years of Mr. Winkydoodle, so I don’t pretend I have much to add to the discussion. I try to be practical — pragmatik. So my contribution will be my experiement, for which I need your help. Let’s go out and get me shot! We can pick up a gun at Walmart, or any pickup truck in the parking lot there, in these parts. But, dudes, I’m not paying for your lawyer if you get charged. Sorry.

Happy V-Day!

2006-02-14T14:08:00.000-06:00

(This is a photo from June 1999, when we were 18 and 19, together less than two years.) We played/are playing hooky from work and responsibility today, like we always do for Valentine’s Day. Slept until 11:00, had a big breakfast of frittatas (my specialty!) and gifts. Rather than totally play into the whole “spend money to prove your love” thing, we do a little V-Day of a small gift. I am the lucky repicient of the gnome book I’ve been wanting, and my Valentine scored a set of Faber-Castell Polychromos colored pencils — we’re strange, yes, a little. It’s fun and fresh, and that’s what’s important. For our first Valentine’s Day ever, we went hiking. Then we had to be apart (long distance relationship thing) for two years, and we sorta spent most of the rest of the V-Days after doing the sorts of things lovers do, like dinner, movies and the like. We resumed the hiking tradition two years ago. So we are taking a trip to the Marberry Arboretum which is a short walk from here but where we’ve never been because we were too lazy to go. While we don’t have any snow for photos and merriment, we have sun and a nicely warm day to enjoy. And my camera batteries are charged, for some photos to share with you lovely people.

Jealousy.

2006-02-13T09:15:00.000-06:00

So New York got a record-breaking blizzard or some such. Baltimore City is buried. All we got were some some dustings. Like flirtations from the person you want for Valentine’s Day, only they are forced, half-assed, hardly there, and so you don’t even want them. After several grey days that didn’t give me any snow to take photos of or to construct dirty snowmen and snowwomen, I’m glad the sun’s out today. But I know, buried people with buried cars who can’t get to their hurried jobs will tell me that I don’t know what I’m asking for, that I’m better off. Like unhappily-joined people tell single people on Valentine’s Day, as if they really know other people’s hearts or as if everyone will fail to appreciate what they have like they have.

Photo Friday: Blur.

2006-02-10T00:13:00.000-06:00

Dang, it’s hard to choose a blurry photo — ever-present caffeinated shaking makes so many blurry.

New blogs.

2006-02-09T07:31:00.000-06:00

One of my favorite things to find on my favorite blogs is a group of links for my pleasure. But I feel like a nerd when I do it. For some reason. But screw it. I’m gonna do it anyway.

Flow to Bliss: Gary’s blog is back, with a new direction and gorgeous look. Inkmusings: Gary’s main blog is back. I’ve been looking forward to its return. Binky Boy: Fellow Carbondaley blogs his heart out.

Two years old.

2006-02-08T23:32:00.000-06:00

Despite going on hiatus for nearly a month after while I posted at Blog Collective, this here blog is two years old tonight. Blogger to TypePad to Blogger to Wordpress. Etc. Who knows where it will be next week, or what the template/theme will look like tomorrow? Or when I’ll get off my ass and add the links, etc.?

Gnomish beard.

2006-02-07T22:39:00.000-06:00

It seemed, at three this morning, that one of the gnomes on my desk looked like me, but with a whiter beard. And smaller, of course. It was like looking into a tiny mirror that made me appear as a two-inch desk ornament fifty years older than I am. Okay, so it wasn’t like a mirror. Funny though.

Photo Friday: Disguise.

2006-02-03T00:00:00.000-06:00

My brother in New York, December 2004. I think this looks like a Rene' Magritte painting, in a nowhere near as good kind of way. We were waiting for a table at a fancy pizza joint, and I tied that yellow balloon to his bag on our way to our table, which he was not happy about. Funny, though. For Photo Friday: Disguise.

Story. Soon.

2006-02-01T07:59:00.000-06:00

So I have a story about my Magic Gloves. My Magic Gloves and how Tuesday can't stand up to them. But I'll have to tell it later today or tonight. Been very hectic, moving the pencil blog to Wordpress, for reasons I can't talk about yet. You know the love I have for Blogger, etc. So you know it's for good reasons. Here's more snow village, cause it's going to hit 60 degrees today in Carbondale (cold planned for the weekend, though).

Not cold enough.

2006-01-30T08:32:00.000-06:00

So I must be crazy. We either walk or bike everywhere we go, and I am pissed that it's not"cold enough" for winter. We sold our car at the start of winter (December 1st!), and the dude at the dealership thought we were nuts. We sorta told him we were moving sooner than we are. Didn't want the nice guy to think we were trying to pull a fast one on him. "Yes, we're dropping a lot of money doing this. No, the car has never been in an accident. No, we don't owe any drug money. We are not trying to screw you over, nice man." Etc. But I think the dealership homey was crazy. It seldom gets very cold in Southern Illinois. Of course, this is only my third winter here, but I checked the almanac, and things are pretty normal. One of the things I got excited about when we moved to Boston was the idea of a long and cold winter. The first one was not so great. But the second winter (three years ago) was cold, snowy, and long. Perfect for me. People told me I was nuts, and I will admit that I was glad to see spring come that year (in May). Yes. Okay. But I don't think it follows from these or any other guidelines for human sanity that I am crazy for wishing it would get colder here, damn it. Thank you.

Photo Friday: Vanity.

2006-01-27T00:07:00.000-06:00

I don't really like to take photos of myself, much less put them on the net. But here is me, without a beard, lit by a red lamp. Summer 2004. Bored as hell, and hiding from the heat in the AC. No, I don't live in a brothel. For Photo Friday: Vanity.

Men and women.

2006-01-25T08:06:00.000-06:00

Stephen's comment makes me wonder why there is no science of the sexes? My wife does work in gender studies, and I know there is a new thing going on that is more or less the male version of feminism but isn't just dudes in an alley beating the shit out of each other -- or so I've been told. But I mean a science. Forget Mars and deep-sea exploring. They don't make our daily lives easier. At least not yet. But if those of us of the male persuasion understood those of the female persuasion (and vice versa of cource, lest I get labeled as sexist), think of how much easier life would be? How much better -- how much more time we might have to explore Mars and the murky deep if we didn't have to spend days a month trying to figure out our significant other or how to get one or why we don't want one. In the Bigoted States of America at least, there are myriad reasons that homosexuals have a tough time, so much so that I feel guilty for being of the other orientation, the same as those damned bible-fuckers. But at least you nice folks are lucky enough to not have the darkness of the opposite sex to muck with. Of course, even in same-sex relationships, there are certainly problems. It's not like women all understand one another or like I have a clue about my guy friends sometimes. So maybe we need a science of other people. But damn, that might take a while. I'll quit philosophy for it, though.

G2 mini.

2006-01-24T14:01:00.000-06:00

I know, word about these is all over. But for anyone who doesn't read Moleskinerie enough (and why not?!), the new Pilot G2 Minis I was talking about this summer are here. Gary found them at Staples. And apparently, they've had them for quite some time at Jet Pens, in blue, black and red -- with good US shipping rates -- cheap!.Not to mention from Cult Pens in the UK.

True story.

2006-01-24T00:31:00.000-06:00

A syndicated episode of "Frasier" tonight reminded me of a dream my wife had over the holiday. Apparently, in this dream, I was a cad and then some. I slept with eleven women (other than the Mrs.) and impregnated one or more, I don't remember which. I was not at all sorry in this dream. My wife woke up in a mood, and after prodding revealed the dream. She was pissed because of something I did in a dream. "But Honey," I pleaded, "if that really happened, I'd at least be sorry!" She was not amused.

On foot.

2006-01-23T08:21:00.000-06:00

Some bridge that crosses Interstate 64 from Louisville, Kentucky into Southern Indiana. January 2006. We got to the mall in Carbondale on foot Saturday. Leg power anyway. We were going to bike the whole way, but we got out of shape over the holidays. I got softer and slower, anyway. Shame, since I was able to ride a good five or six miles at a time at a good speed and not get too winded. Anyway, we were too tired, so we rode about two miles to Faner and then walked the other two or three to the mall. It's all up hill to where our departments are, and we were pooped. I know, you fit Europeans are thinking, "So?" But we doughy Americans don't do anything like that. We don't walk anywhere. I live about five minutes from the market on foot. It's so close that I never ever bother to get my bike out to go there. My neighbor drove there yesterday. I don't know if it was because it was raining or because he's lazy (and I am, too, so don't take it like that), but he drove less than 1/4 of a mile, and he didn't even get a lot of groceries. I saw things on foot Saturday that I had never noticed in a car. Let's keep it at that. Streams that run through town, a huge motel I never saw before (I drive fast). Etc. There was one point where crossing the street got difficult and required some darting. While this sort of thing made me feel like a loser for some reason when we didn't own a car in Boston (because we didn't need one and didn't have the money for one), it doesn't anymore. I think it's funny, and it makes me feel a little braver. That's good, I think. We stopped by the liquor store and bought some local wine, at Walgreens and at the bike shop downtown to get lights for our bikes and more bungies. We wound up staying past closing talking to the nice owner, and I even found a tiny cable to lock my helmet to my bike so that I don't have to carry it around. Am I passing judgment on cars and car owners? Please, no. I'm beginning to view car ownership like meat: fine and good and very enjoyable, but just not for me. Believe me, I miss meat and wish I could eat it and feel Okay about it. It would nice to be normal enough to be able to order anything on the menu when I go out with people for dinner. In getting judgmental, I'm judging my Pre-December First (no more car day for us) self that was too afraid to do anything fun and who gave up the urge to travel because it meant scratches on the damned car. The guy who was too lazy to visit the market he lived across the street from for two years because, by golly, he's gonna drive the car he pays too much money for. The guy who was very lazy (and still is in a lot of ways) to try anything new. And a hundred other things I want to kick two-months-ago me in the nuts for.

Birthday.

2006-01-22T15:48:00.000-06:00

Happy Birthday to my wonderful wife, who turned 25 yesterday. Until she starts lying about, and it is then perpetually her 29th. Not that she would ever lie about that. But she kicks ass, so she'd be allowed to lie all she wants. (Not that she will need to.) Etc.

Photo Friday: Pink.

2006-01-20T00:31:00.000-06:00

We had a freakishly rainy and warm Christmas in Baltimore this year, but there was a clearing around dusk. I was staying at my parents' house in the city, and they took a ride to drive a family member home. They called the house to tell me that there was a rainbow to the East, to go on the balcony and take some photos. I did. This is what the world looked like that day, as if through a pink lense. And that's the rainbow above Hampden and John's Hopkins University. (One hundred percent undoctored.) Funny thing is that it's almost exactly in the direction of the building I want to live in when I move back to Baltimore this summer -- not the one in the photo, rather. A sign? My entry for Photo Friday: Pink. Click the small version for a much larger view. And check out another rainbow, this one over Southern Illinois in July 2005.

Things people say about my beard.

2006-01-19T10:51:00.000-06:00

I suppose it's gotten a little ridiculous. I have not shaved since November 4th, for our graduate conference. Even then, I hadn't shaved in a week and expressed my intent to grow my winter beard to my wife. She insisted that I shave that day. So I did. Since then, we've decided to move to Baltimore, gotten rid of the car and have adopted a minorly different lifestyle and totally different outlook. I suppose that part of me is afraid this will all go away if I shave. Sorta like Sampson, minus the brute strength and whole hero thing. I guess I look strange. Etc. But how long can you get away with that, before you get a "real job"? I don't have any photos that I took of my beard, minus the one of Bowman and I from a few weeks ago. He's got some at his blog, though. Guess which one's me:) The top things people say about my beard, in no particular order: 1) Muslim/Terrorist. An un-named history professor said that I looked like a Muslim and that "when the Muslims take over," I'll fit it. Didn't know they were taking over, but I suppose it's better than the extreme religious Right. I get the whole, "You look like a terrorist," thing a lot. That's funny if you saw how short my legs are and knew what a wimp I am. If I didn't cap anyone at my father's step-mother's funeral, I never will. And I didn't realize that all dudes with beards were Muslims and that all Muslims were terrorists. Now I do. 2) A hippy. Yeah, I guess I've turned into one. Guess that's what I get for getting married barefoot and graduating from college naked (under my gown). Yeah, naked. 3) A lumberjack. I take this as a compliment. Tough and real. Funny that the first two people to mention this are muscular and each have a shaved head and scary beard and are both very very nice. Not funny, but interesting. The other one is a small guy. He could hide in my beard if he were so inclined. 4) A Thoreau scholar/Thoreauvian. One of the highest compliments I can imagine receiving. Though one person said it in the, "You think you're Thoreau, but you're not," kind of way. I don't give a shit, though, since she's an ass (no, she doesn't read this). 5) "Off the Pickle Boat"/Polish immigrant. Gotten that before, especially from my Library of Congress I.D. from January 2003. I'm exactly 1/4 Polish, so that makes sense I guess. Though I look exactly like my father at 26, and he's not Polish at all. So maybe not. My Polish grandmother exclaims, "What the hell do you think you look like?" "You!" I say. But I'm only kidding. Yeah. 6) Offers to shave by coercion or force. My Korean War veteran great-uncle (who is the coolest old guy around) told my Army Supply Division brother to hold me down and shave it. I asked my brother not to and told him I'd kick him in the nuts. But I think his decision not to pin me down and shave me comes more from a lack of desire to see my cheeks than a fear that I could actually get my leg up high enough to kick that tall sumbitch in the nuts. Or maybe he knows I'd never kick my brother in his fellas. I've gotten offers of up to $100 to shave it. But A) I'd rather have my beard; and B) I don't want to ransom anyone's children for $100 when they say they were only joking. 7) What tools it would take to shave me. Bowman's brother said it would take hedge clippers, and someone mentioned a sheep-shearing device. Don't know what you call that sort of clipper. 8) Evil/Good(Cuddly). I'm not evil. Thanks. Cuddly. I sure am that. Thanks. 9) "Damn, you're gonna be able to braid that soon!" Maybe. But that would hurt, and I don't want to have dreadlocks hanging from my neck, dude. I'm not quite a Viking. 10) The reddishness of my beard. Duh. I've had reddish-brown hair since I stopped being a blonde in pre-school. Thanks for noticing. Love you.

Roxy is sick.

2006-01-18T07:35:00.000-06:00

I know it's weird to post photos of someone else's puppy on your blog. Sorry, dudes. My brother in Baltimore has a little Pug named Roxy. She's feisty. And now she's sick. Here's to sending her puppy well wishes. Roxy likes ice-cream and chewing on your hands. And humping her bigger-than-she-is stuffed bunny. Too bad I don't have any photos of that.

Li'l Edgar.

2006-01-17T11:12:00.000-06:00

There is a shop on the Avenue in Hampden called Hometown Girl that sells Baltimore related gear. Much of this gear is Edgar Allan Poe gear. As if the name of our football team doesn't give it away, Baltimore claims Poe, regardless of his time in Virginia or his birth in Boston. So this makes sense. They also sell a lot of Rosie the Riveter gear, which my wife loves. She has a bobble head that my youngest brother got her last year. Hearing a rumor that I was drooling over them when I was home for Thanksgiving, the same brother hooked me up with the Poe bobble head and this cool little Li'l Edgar man. complete with comic. Well, it rocks so hard (almost as much as my brother), I thought I'd share the link to the flash version of the comic, available online and for free. Here it is.

Slider.

2006-01-16T17:32:00.000-06:00

Proving that I am not entirely just a bastard full of hate, here's a photo of a turtle. A tewwdul. Say it. Like that. There is a pond just outside of my parents' house, and in there live some very very large goldfish, large enough that the local falcon in Hampden ate one once. This falcon was devouring a pigeon in my parents' yard on this part very rainy Christmas day. Freaky. Reminds me a Mordecai from The Royal Tenenbaums, except Mordecai never ate any other birds (say bewds) in that film. Anyway, peacefully co-existing with the fish is a painted turtle named Slider. He's very old. This is him.

@#$% you, and...

2006-01-13T02:06:00.000-06:00

So I had to go to the funeral for my father's evil step-mother today, after all day and night at the wake yesterday. I can say that because her family is a bunch of seriously unattractive rednecks who aren't exactly into blogs and could never figure me out, since I keep my last name off of here. And, as it turns out, the morons didn't even know that the bitch had a step-son, let alone that I or my brothers existed at all. Long story about how things got the way they were. Very long. And you know what? Thinking about something that bad happening to my dad (who is so very kind) just makes me want to stab things with pencils. People, too. It's not conducive to having a nice view of the universe. I know that several family members that I do care about read this blog, so I don't go into details. Let's just say that even Uncle Walt Whitman would have trouble with his sunny disposition if he knew the truth about this woman. So we're sitting there in a very very tiny church in the country. The preacher man invites people to come up and share memories. Some woman with crispy hair and a bad attitude went up and said a lot of things that just had to be about someone else. I gripped a hymnal and wanted very badly to go up and tell them all the truth. The way I figured it, half of the people there would have left immediately if they knew the truth. Totally. Right away. You know that I am not a person who finds himself particularly inclined to public speaking or much actual speaking at any rate. But never have I wanted to get up in front of a room full of people to speak my mind more than today. Honestly, it was respect for my father that kept me seated, not fear of redneck reprisal. My large-statured brothers were there. It's not like the old rednecks could take me. Then this cranky piss-pot of a woman tapped the coffin on the way back to her seat, and I imagined it falling over, which made me chuckle outloud from the back corner of the church -- my father's evil step-mother was a very large lady. The nausea returned then when the preacher talked about how this woman was who she was because of her faith. She loved Jesus, and that's why she was the way she was. Etc. Well shit in my salad, no paradise is worth it at all if I would have to live my life like this bitch. All of the times I've been tempted back to church meant nothing when I sat there and heard the woman who ruined my father's childhood and his relationship with his father called a fucking saint. The stupid preacher said he always saw light in this old hag. I think the dumb sumbitch mistook hell fire for goodness. Any god or messenger of god who would ever claim this harpy for his own and hold her up as an example for the rest of us (and this guy actually did that) is no god of mine. And that's not just because I was raised Catholic, either. It's strange to feel nothing when you look at the corpse of someone you've known your whole life. It's strange to go out to eat and drink after leaving a cemetary not to celebrate someone's life and to share joy that their suffering is over. I think that my parents, brothers and I actually celebrated that this bitch was dead today. I suppose we're cold and evil and going to hell. Hateful Catholics we are or were and all that. But I don't really give a shit. If you knew this women and what she did and how she lived when no one was looking, you would be complete scum to have anything to do with her or even to defend her. I keep hearing that it's "not right" to rejoice at someone's death. But I think people just don't want to believe that there are plainly evil and bad people out there. What does that say about God and the universe if there are such abominations? But I think that not taking joy at the end of an evil life is what's sick and "not right." Get over yourself. Take one for the team. And toast to the fact that the world is better since she's dead. What, are you gonna cry for people like Hitler, too? Or will people really maintain that there are no totally evil people out there? That's a lack of courage and a voluntary shutting of one's eyes. I might be mean, but I'm no sissy with this bitch. I'm not sorry to say that I'm glad she's dead. And judging from the many sets of dry eyes at all the viewings and the funeral and cemetary, I don't think I'm alone.

Bye bye.

2006-01-09T19:51:00.000-06:00

So my father's step-mother died yesterday. If you knew the story of my father's screwed up childhood (way worse woman than the chick in Cinderella), then you would understand why this is more of a cause of inconvenience than sorrow. Or maybe I'm cold hearted or some such. But I'm not alone in not being especially sad. Hell, I won't talk about some people's reactions to the news, which were far from what you'd expect on hearing that a family member died. But my father is upset because his father is heartbroken. Though a complete bitch, she was his best friend. Being also married to my best friend, I can at least imagine part of his sadness. And it hurts me to see my father upset. However, I can't decide if it's sadness over seeing his own father so distraught (which I feel a little, too -- after all, he's my grandfather) or something akin to the end of Frankenstein, in which the monster weeps over his fallen creator, even though the two were enemies.

Congratulations, Bowman!

2006-01-08T00:41:00.000-06:00

My friend, comrade and cohort Bowman graduates in a few hours from the University of Baltimore. Visit his blog and wish him well and congratulate him.

Joint blogging ventures.

2006-01-06T19:59:00.000-06:00

One week ago, a dozen folks hit some bars in Baltimore's historic Fell's Point. Two of these lucky folks are bloggers. One even wore a Blogger T-shirt. The other is sexy. Both took photos of the other taking photos of the other at The Greene Turtle. It was historic. I present to you, Bowman. In all his glory and camera-dom. And Bowman presents yours truly: me (click that because you know you love it).

Avenue.

2006-01-04T13:17:00.000-06:00

I've ranted about how much I like what's going on with The Avenue in Hampden, where I grew up. Here, here and here. Hip and urban and all those other buzz words the cool kids like. But it means that it's safer. Good coffee (best in Baltimore actually). Book stores. Etc. But why get rid of this cool mural? I remember that it used to scare me when I was little. Then it was restored and lovely. I took this from the second floor of the Royal Farms headquarters, within a block of each house I lived in when I was a kid. Seems that some dude who's gonna come in and pretend that he "saved" Hampden (like I here a certain restaurant owner, er, accusing of claiming) is putting in lofts and did away with the mural -- not to mention displacing local gems like New System Bakery. How much is too much? And, dude, any chance you need a philosopher-type fella to live in your lofts in exchange for starting a blog about how you're making a ton of money, I mean, saving Hampden? Just saying, you know, I might know someone...

2006 is the fix.

2006-01-03T01:15:00.000-06:00

Some of the crazier members of my family wishing the internet a Happy New Year. I'm boring. I only wore eye glasses. And I think I'm shaving my beard when my wife goes out of town in two days. Maybe. If she's lucky. Love and kisses (again) to Mr. Rev. G-money. Word is bond. Bong. Etc. Don't do drugs. Dey is bad.

Happy New Year, Crackers.

2006-01-01T00:38:00.000-06:00

Yeah, so my brother decided to slip me extra vodka. Asti. Etc. So I'm totally like totally in the mood to love you all right now. In Baltimore. In the living room. At the home of my family. Far from my own home and gear and bike. And isn't my control of the shift key and punctuation just astounding? Yeah, I know. You don't have to tell me. Please eat a lot this year. Please. Please. I beg you. And please America, please please please be more sensible. I'm being nice saying it that way, too. You know what I'm talking about. You know. War, etc. You idiots. Not you though, dear reader. The other idiots. You know who you are, you shitheads. Love and kisses. Mostly just love though. My wife is a gorgeous but jealous lady. You know how it is. At least you're lucky if you do. If not, that sucks. Sorry about that. Happy New Year and stuff.

Merry We-Ass.

2005-12-26T23:26:00.000-06:00

Unless I'm crazy (resist, Anonymous -- resist lest I smite you with veggies and beer gas), people are getting really nuts with this whole, "I won't say 'Happy Holidays.' We're all Christians, and it's 'Merry Christmas' in America" crap this year. An un-named Scout leader for whom I have massive respect told his troop that last week, and I almost respectfully slugged him in the throat. The BSA is a fundamentally non-denominational organization, just like the good old U S of A. They have the coveted religious medal for all sorts of non-Christian denominations. And, much to the dismay of people who buy their religion at Wal-Mart along with a crate of cupcakes, there is no such thing as "Christianity." If we are a Christian nation, what kind of Christian nation are we? Catholic? Russian Orthodox? Like I said to a nice and reasonable -- although moderately radical -- member of the Right whom I love like a family member, if the religious Right didn't have the Godless Liberals (Godless and bearded! Oh my!) to fight against, they'd just be fighting against one another over who's right. You know, there is no "Christian" position on the birth of Christ that has the same implications for all Christian faiths. Same Bible, different interpretation. The whole American Christian Christmas does not exist. There is no such thing as an American Christianity as a whole of everyone who puts their faith in Jesus anyway. Take the gay marriage issue off the table, and I know some Baptists with some nasty things to say about Catholics, and vice versa. And any intelligent, scholarly or non-lazy person willing to do some research (or to at least watch The History Channel) knows that Christmas was never intended to be a Christian holiday. It had nothing to do with the birth of Christ. It predates him. And it is only recently a Christian holiday even in the United States. So take that my super white cupcake brethren. You're wrong. The whole "I wouldn't get offended if someone said 'Happy Chanukah' to me" thing is complete bullshit from anyone I've heard say it. If one is so narrow-minded and evangelical, this person would most certainly take offense at another religion. The insistence on saying "Merry Christmas" and meaning "Happy Christian Holiday" to a non-Christian indicates a closed mind and an implicite judgment. It's borderline violence if you ask me. The whole argument that starts from the supposed fact that "most" Americans believe the same thing (which is absolutely false anyway) and ends that the rest of us should suck it up and go along is abominable. Most of us are white, too. Should everyone else (and by that I mean everyone who's not a boring white person) go away or just "act white" the best way they can? Come on, are we really that stupid? Add this up to the long list of reasons (kept in a fancy notebook of course) of why I hate white people. Even the white dude I happen to be. But that might be a joke. I don't really hate anyone. Or everyone. Or whatever. And didn't "Happy Holidays" used to mean both "Merry Christmas" and "Happy New Year" anyway?

Baggage.

2005-12-20T23:48:00.000-06:00

I suppose this is a busy time of year and that not a lot of folks are really reading blogs. Add to that the small number of nice folks (YOU!) who read this blog, and you get the idea that blogging this week might be in vain. I'm glad that things are hectic and that the year is closing. I started this year with a lot of baggage and issues and crazies and obsessions and compulsions, etc. Mazda drama. No more Mazda. Focus drama. Moving drama. Getting rid of car altogether drama. Getting a little in shape challenge. Spinning my wheels academically. Personally. Not reading enough. Not working enough. Not going outside enough. I'll go ahead and say that 2005 is not my favorite year and that I'll be very glad to see it over. So glad I'm thinking about it a week and a half before 2006 starts. I'm ending 2005 in slightly better physical shape. With new ideas, academically. The resolution to read more, explore more, write more, draw more and to live more. A six-week with no trimming save the uni-brow (at the request of the Mrs.) beard that is far redder than the hair on my head -- yeah, like Santa in training beard. A dedication to leading a simpler lifestyle that's been working very well for the last three weeks. Recognition that I've wasted a whole year that I can't get back and the determination that I won't do it again, at least not this year. I'm not sure how I feel about New Year's Resolutions. I made one in 2003 to go totally vegan, and it lasted until late August, when I moved to Southern Illinois. I vowed to quit smoking several times, but that only worked when I quit on a whim in June 2002. Last year, I swore to myself that I would get in shape. That's only started to work lately. I think I'll be setting myself up for more self loathing if I have a resolution this year. But we'll see. Depends on libations and eating that night. Who knows? But I think I already have the implicit resolution to just make 2006 better than 2005 was. And I'm getting a running start already.

Chicago is awesome, etc.

2005-12-18T10:58:00.000-06:00

Here we are, in Balitmore City. The train from Chicago to Washington wound up running over five hours late. This is more the fault of the gubmint who values freight over people, outside of the "Northeast Corridor" than Amtrak. And the ride through the mountains of Western PA, MD and WV was more than enough to put one in a nice holiday mood. I mean, I've lost no love for the rail. It's still my pal and buddy, and I would buy Amtrak a coffee or beer if I could. So it was cloudy all day in Chicago, but it did snow a ton, which as awesome and cool and a nice change from too-warm Carbondale. Not to mention that I'm a city boy at heart. My friend says it's weird that someone who likes Thoreau so much would be a city boy, but I think my appreciation for the "outdoors" comes from living in cities my whole life. Now that I don't, I don't appreciate the clean air, the stars and the trees. I suppose it's a defect in me that I need to be deprived of something in order to appreciate it's value, but I think I share that malady with much of our species. I'm certainly not the first one to notice that. I'll write more about Chicago later. I'm busy enjoying the company of my family now, and I'm going shopping with one of my brothers today. Thanks for sticking around though. Love you.

Photo Friday: Depth of Field.

2005-12-17T03:10:00.000-06:00

Old Union Station. Chicago, Illinois. USA. A little late, my entry for Photo Friday: Depth of Field.

Leaving on a wet train.

2005-12-14T21:44:00.000-06:00

Make a song out of that! We're out of here in a few hours for a 3:16 a.m. train to Chicago. A little layover to kick around The Windy City and then a train from Chicago tomorrow that gets into Washington, DC Friday around noonish. Then a MARC train to Penn Station in Baltimore City. Home. Yeah, it would seem like this is more complicated than getting into the car and just driving, but no. It's not. I get to sit and read and write and listen to music. That's awesome. I don't have to psyche myself up to being a driving machine all night or all day or at all. Don't have to worry about the fact that I'm tired -- probably won't even try to sleep tonight. This kind of travel makes me excited, not stressed out. Trains are the slowest way to travel from here to Baltimore, and the most expensive. But totally worth it. Totally. See ya'll this weekend.

Bottom.

2005-12-14T00:54:00.000-06:00

I think I've been letting down some folks lately. Just thought I'd mention that. You know who you are. I am very sorry. Seriously. I am one of those people who can really take his friends for granted, and considering his semi-reclusive/academic lifestyle situation, he's lucky to have good friends. If you're in Baltimore, I'll make it up to you at the Hon Bar or One World Cafe'. If not, I'll send you some pencils. If not still, come to Carbondale, and we'll take a nice bike ride or walk around the lake nearby and confide in one another and be merry.

Bye bye.

2005-12-13T09:53:00.000-06:00

I miss the snow.

Setting semester.

2005-12-11T22:19:00.000-06:00

You know, with the idea of moving, the car drama (and finally, the resolution thereof) and assorted lifestyle choices that had to be made, I hardly got a lick of work done this semester. True, I thought about my dissertation prospectus a lot. Save for the "works cited" pages, I think I could crank it out tomorrow morning if I had to. But I'm supposed to really be working harder on it. My wife passed her "hearing" last week. Oh, well. Next time. That tends to be how I work. Lots of mulling, and a quick write. I usually work on papers for a while and then write them in a few hours (Okay, more like all morning) -- ADD and the writing process at work. Whatever works. I'm almost a little sad about leaving Carbondale and the idea that this is the last holiday season we'll spend here. We went to dinner this week after the Mrs. became officially A.B.D. and walked back to campus at dusk. Waved to the nice guy at the bike shop downtown. Rode our bikes into the sunset and our warm little apartment. Then again, life my wife says, anyplace is nice this time of year. Maybe so, but I'll sure miss the view from the side of our "balcony" and front door. There are some gorgeous sunsets out here. That's the sunset from today in the photo. But if you're from Baltimore (and Hampden in particular) then you might be familiar with sitting in St. Mary's graveyard on Roland Avenue with some Dunkin Donuts coffee, watching the set over T.V. Hill. Can't be beat. And there's always my parents' back roof, at their house in Baltimore, where I'll be watching the sun set for a few weeks, starting Friday. I'm very excited for the trainride.

First snowfall.

2005-12-09T12:10:00.000-06:00

I don't remember when, but I told you that there was an oak tree behind my apartment that never loses its leaves. And that I had photos from two years ago with snow to prove it. Well, here it is today. With the temperature in the teens and snow all around, with its leaves still attached. That's one persevering tree I tell you. It has the spirit that Thoreau talks about in "A Winter Walk" -- not shunning the unpleasant parts of nature, just because they are disagreeable to us. I know, this is weird coming from someone who cringes at the idea of leaving the house in 95 plus degree temperatures. Don't say it.

Photo Friday: Weight.

2005-12-09T01:10:00.000-06:00

For Photo Friday: Weight. A freight train along the flood wall in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. March 2005. It's been a while since I did a Photo Friday. I wanted to take one of my bike in our old parking space for last week's "Experimental," but the weather didn't cooperate. It's good to be back. (Click image for a somewhat larger one.)

First bike photo.

2005-12-06T22:50:00.000-06:00

My good buddy and bike champion Brian has been urging me to post some photos of my bike, especially since he's posted some of his wheels. There's always an excuse on my part. It's too dirty -- I'll do it after the tune-up at the bikeshop. It's raining -- I'll do it tomorrow when the sun's out. I'm too lazy -- no solution for that one. Well, here's one of the warning on the brakes. I'm not sure why it's there, since you can't exactly read it while you're riding. I guess the brakes are...complicated or something like that. I sure never mess with them and let the nice guys at the bikeshop (and I mean nice like I will hug them when we move because they rock) who know what they are doing adjust them. I know, I should take this stupid little sticker off, but I like it. Makes me feel dangerous.

"Drink this...

2005-12-04T18:03:00.000-06:00

....it's good shit!" Statue in front of the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg, PA. Really cool museum, but they do not allow cameras inside. Dang it. Went there the day after Thanksgiving. My old troop was going to take a trip to Frederickburg, VA, but only one kid was going to go, and let's just say all four of the leaders would love to leave him there. So we cancelled the "official" trip, and four of we leaders went to the museum in Harrisburg instead, on a very very cold and windy day. Stopped at the Amish market, where I found a cool red cedar pencil cup. Chinese food, then beer and cards that evening. Male bonding at its finest.

Decipher this.

2005-12-01T14:55:00.000-06:00

We did it. We ain't got no car no more. [Bike photos coming soon.]

Later, bee otch car.

2005-12-01T00:04:00.000-06:00

This was me saying "Don't let the door hit you where natural selection split you" to the Mazda last February. In the spirit of the death of the first Focus, etc. Drunk and cross-eyed and stressed out. A little bit of a beard. Long time readers and heroes of the useful will remember the stupid car drama of the last two and half years of my short life and how much of it was actually my own fault through a faulty worldview. It all ends tomorrow. I think we sign some papers, write a check for what we owe (after the dealer's check) -- which is more than I want to lose, but whatever; we start saving this week -- and leave. That's it. At least, I hope so. I suck at paperwork. We've had two weeks to really really think about this, 1,700 miles, etc. I have only driven the long trips to Baltimore since then. Didn't touch it in Baltimore for a week and a half, not even to get gas. Walked to the market since getting back to Illinois, which is actually faster. Same for biking to Faner Hall -- faster. Not to mention the lack of guilt and the nice cold air. We feel very good about this. Reminds me of how...romantic life was when we lived in Boston. A nice feeling, and a nice time of year to feel it. Between warm weather, car nonsense and personal failings, the fall just sucked this year. Hard. I'm trying to start winter off better. I should post a newer photo (or take one) of me saying "Kiss my bum" to this car. Which is (hopefully) going to be gone in like twelve hours. In protest of I forget what, I haven't shaved at all since November 4th -- not even my neck or uni-brow. That would be a fuzzy photo. I'll take a bike ride first, so I'll be sure to be smiling.

Stark.

2005-11-30T10:21:00.000-06:00

The wind and storms tore away the leaves as soon as they changed. I hope winter is prettier. Maybe some nice snow. And everything was still green in mid-October. Now I miss the color. Any color. Too bad my bike is black.

$Yall.

2005-11-29T15:03:00.000-06:00

I know, I promised photos. But I'm at the university, and my photos are on the home computer. Sorry. We made the last 850-mile trip between Carbondale and Baltimore by car. Can't say I'm sad, though I do get sentimental about things like that. In my mind, the car's already gone, though. It's sitting at home, while I rode my bike to school, with a package of mixed-paper recycling strapped to the rear carrier. How "poetic" is it to walk to a local market, get some goodies, pack paper for recycling in a paper bag and then bike it to the recycling center a mile or two up the road on a cold day? Then to have some hot coffee and do some research? Yeah, I can't be unhappy with the way my life goes. It's sweet.

Leaving.

2005-11-28T04:57:00.000-06:00

Leaving very soon for Southern Illinois. I mean in like a half hour or less. Very tired. Itching to not have to drive this way anymore. No more thinking so hard about being rested enough. Fed just enough (too much would be bad). Do my shoes feel Okay? Is this big cut on my finger gonna affect the way I drive through the Appalachian Mountains? Is the $25 in change I'm carrying gonna be Okay even though there are not any toll roads the way we are going? Are the "strong storms" in Kentucky gonna affect the drive? I miss the whole, "We packed?" "Yes." "The train leaves at 6:25, right?" "Yes." "Okay, it's 6:00, guess we should call a cab." Bickety bam, on the train, done and done and done and seated and reading and relaxing and looking out the window like the curious little dog I used to be. Can't wait.

Not dead in a mall.

2005-11-26T09:48:00.000-06:00

I'm not. Good news, no? I did manage to get pretty fat in a few days' time, but I'm telling myself that some bike-riding next week will help that. I'm telling. Myself. Not that 13-16 hours of driving Monday is going to help. At least it's the last time we have to do that. No more telling myself that I don't mind, thinking that I have to do it for three more years. Or using it to prove my "manhood" -- "Yeah, well, can you drive 850 miles non-stop?" With how hairy I am, you'd think I wouldn't do things like that. For Christmas, we're taking the train. Yes, it's more expensive than flying, and it takes longer than driving. But it's my favorite way to travel. I'm not fond of flying. Land at Logan enough, and you won't be either. I love trains. Always have. I'm actually looking forward to some travel. Gonna treat myself to a new Timbuk2 bag for it, since I'm sick of suitcases and am about to start saving a ton of money not having a car. And I really really really want to go to New York in December (hear that, Bowman? get Jen and Tom to planning!). I'm trying not to get stuck up about the no car thing or the bike thing, though. We'll probably have to get a car a few years anyway, if we get jobs far away or totally away, etc. You never know. I tried not to get all self-righteous when I went veggie and quit smoking. It's easy not to, though, since I often miss each thing I decided to do without. It's not like I ever had to force myself to feel a certain way about meat. I stopped eating it because of a feeling, but I still get crazy around turkey. (Yeah, Thanksgiving is fun now.) I do love to drive. Won't forget that. And I certainly have nothing against people with cars or who eat meat. Etc. You know this. Me be gentle on the beings on wheels and furry ones, too. Word.

Driving dangers.

2005-11-22T01:07:00.000-06:00

We went to the automatic car-wash Wednesday to wash the car, put the bra on and then not think about it. We had to take our bikes in for check-ups Thursday anyway. The "touchless" carwash decided to get stuck on our car. The soap ate through some paint by the time I got to the manual carwash to wash it off. And I noticed that some coal that blew out of the powerplant at school did a sand-paper job on the front of the car last week. Fucking hell. Not to mention what a bitch the lady at the gas station was about the whole thing. You know, I'm sorry your expensive piece of shit of a machine fucked my car up. Sorry! The wife and I were talking about how much we wanted to get rid of the car next year anyway, just the day before. But the loss on the sale would equal paying for it for a year. So we though, Okay, we'll just keep an expensive car we don't need or want. But I got pissed Wednesday. Really pissed. So we decided to get rid of the car as soon as we get back from Thanksgiving break, start saving money for our last months in the Dale and just bike around. When I rode my bike Thursday downtown to the shop and then home again in the evening, I had the same big stupid smile on my face that I had the day we bought them, when we thought we were getting rid of the car. (I call it my Bike Smile.) The decision to keep the car has never sat right with me, and I feel guilty for driving to school and good for biking. So that should tell me something. Thursday, I woke up, feeling better about getting rid of a car I'm sick of owning, worrying about and paying for. And, I'll say this, too: sick of driving. Carbondale drivers make driving in Washington D.C. at rushhour on a Friday seem like fun. I'm sorry. Maybe it's not the locals but the kids at school or the people from out of town who come to the "city" and have no idea how to drive around other people. Whichever, driving in Carbondale is scary. I've driven there and in D.C. enough times to know this. Being stuck in traffic is better than almost dying at the hands of someone who never pays attention to the people they walk into at Wal-Mart, let alone the people they almost run over in their big-assed land-yachts. I didn't want to drive to Baltimore on an hour or two of sleep Friday. I was too keyed-up to sleep. So I announced that I wanted to leave forthwith. Damn. Right away. As in, it was 11:00 p.m., and I wanted to drive nearly half-way across the country non-stop right away. And I did. On the way, the damned Focus got hit with tons and tons of rocks from asshole truckers who can't even do what they do for a living (drive) properly. Mind you, I love truckers. I'm talking about like one in a hundred that drive like assholes and will probably kill someone one day. I drank enough coffee (some good, like from 24-hour Starbucks, some terrible) to kill several horses, I think, provided said horses are not caffeinated to the extent that I am. I only almost fell asleep once, and that's not my fault. It's Ohio's fault. Thank you. We saw three wrecks. The first was some little white boy in a Neon with a damned wing on it. I said outloud, as he passed us on the right in Columbus rush-hour traffic, "Damn, dude, it's only a Neon," as in, "you're going to blow up your small car driving like that and I should know since I'm driving one." A minute later, he was in the far left lane, having totalled the damned thing on the back of a very nice pickup truck. He was Okay, though. Standing, not bleeding. Another was I don't remember where. There was a Land Rover with a wheel missing, the windows smashed and the other wheels buckled in. There was no one there, save for a state trooper directing everyone around it. The people were gone. Don't know if they were hurt, dead or Okay. But their luggage was in the trunk still, and it made me feel sick. After everything that happened to the car and the two accidents, I decided to accept three wrecks as a sign/indication that we should indeed get rid of our car as fast as we can. The third accident we saw was when we were only an hour from Baltimore, and we were stuck there for well over an hour. The chopper came three times. When we finally passed, we saw too mangled wrecks of what used to be cars (one with the roof cut off) and someone's body under a white sheet, with their feet sticking out. We drove the rest of the way in almost total silence, and I won't be sad if I never drive a car again.

Baltimore beats the Dale (sorry, little dudes).

2005-11-21T20:52:00.000-06:00

Yeah, so I'm tired of convincing myself that I don't wish I were back in Baltimore, especially since I'm here now. It's nice to feel welcome and that people are happy that one might be back next year. Very nice. So I'll take some photos. And post them here. And all will love them. And etc. It's a good program! I don't feel welcome in Carbondale. I said it. I'm sick of people staring at me because it's fall and I don't have any camouflage on and that my wife is not some over-fed white lady with big hair. Yes, I wear sweaters and sandals. Yes, I shave like once a week or less. Yes, I'm "not from around here." Yes, I read for fun. Yes, I think you're funny-looking, too. There, I'm staring back via the net.

Teaching them there kiddies.

2005-11-17T13:19:00.000-06:00

My "mentor" in philosophy once told me that philosophy is "the science of everything." I'm certainly not into philosophy of science, but I've always liked science, regardless of not really having a talent for it (patience, focus, imagination, etc.). I was in the Biology Club in high school; I was even the dude holding the skeleton in the yearbook photo one year. I helped a friend of mine dissect something after school (I held the skull open) even though I wasn't taking science during my last year of high school. What I mean is, I think science is really interesting, fun, etc. My old metaphysics professor writes a lot about the nature of science in his magnum opus on metaphysics, a discipline which he counts as the science of being qua being. I took a year long course with him and argued about some things (he hates Pragmatism, and I can't seem to stop being a Pragmatist) and really admired the sheer rigor of his thinking. I've never known anyone to be more on top of practical concerns (paperwork, meetings, grading) than this gent, and he was in his mid-70s! I don't know why I mention this, but this is just disturbing: Kansas is changing their definition of science to leave room for the supernatural. Now, I'm not against accepting the unseen. Hamlet's words to Horatio are true, I think. Any good Pragmatist and any good Jamesian (which I suppose is a fair label for me, in a way) is aware of the strange mix of science and religion/belief in the supernatural that we inherit as Pragmatists and the openness which characterizes Pragmatism and calls us all to accept all parts of human experience. Even -- and especially, I think -- the parts we can't quantify. What I mean is that I am not against exploring what goes beyond the physical in human inquiry. But science is the not the universal study of the universe. Sciences are particular. Philosophy is universal. There's really no such thing as "science" anyway, just sciences. They all have their own methods and subject matter, as Blanchette points out. So the solution is clear. Less science for the youngins, and more philosophy. Come on, learning about cell structure is over the head of a fourth grader anyway, else the youngins would not learn that same stuff again in middle and high school. Maybe the whole idea of intelligent design or humankind's place in the universe is over the little dudes' and dudets' heads, too. But come, on. It's good exercise! There, Kansas. Your solution. Someone should start paying me for my services now. Kansas State School Board, call me. We'll talk. You can pay my student loans and buy me a laptop, and I'll teach ten teachers Plato, Aristotle, James, Nietzsche and Sartre (good start for the youngins). I have never taught before, and I probably don't know what the hell I'm talking about. But I just kick enough ass that you should pay me for this anyway. Okay? Okay. I'll check the mail for your check when I get back from Maryland, for which I am leaving first thing in the morning.

Shoes!

2005-11-17T00:36:00.000-06:00

It went from spring-like storms (and my complaining about it) to very cold weather which requires even the likes of me to wear shoes and socks, over-night. Hell, our heat come on last night, and this completely charmless shoebox (eggwhite, of course) is pretty damned airtight. I even went shoe shopping for a brief bit, with no fruits. Turns out that I have extremely wide feet and skinny ankles. Damn it. Nothing like Tevas for that custom fit. I wonder if I can pull off that freaky Bohemian sandals with fleece socks thing...then again, Teva makes shoes now. And some are non-leather. I think Teva even makes running sandals now, too. Hmm.

Washed not away.

2005-11-16T10:15:00.000-06:00

So Carbondale is still here. I saw on the news yesterday that part of downtown got flooded a little. Then we had another round of storms. But the tornadoes missed us. Missed Jackson county. Someone un-named whom I know said it's because Jackson was the one blue county in this part of the state -- which would of course confirm my theological suspicion that God's not quite on Bush's side, regardless of who thinks whom is an avenger for Goodness and all that is Right. But yeah, I don't know anything about that.

Cracker storms honky cakes.

2005-11-15T11:14:00.000-06:00

One tires of the constant "severe weather" we get in this part of the country. And it's not like it's even as bad as what the folks a little further North and West get. A "Tornado Watch" until 5:00 a.m. in November is a bit much. Come on. And all of the major weather networks are calling for the end of the world tomorrow. So, like, if you don't hear from me for a while, Carbondale's gone. If you do, then it's not. See, very easy. Simple. Teach Mother Nature that. November is for cold. Cold rain, maybe snow. Not thunderstorms and tornadoes. Geez. Not weather such that Johnny is still in Tevas and that Johnny wore shorts today to the market. And you know, I've never been a fan of warm weather, but it's not like I'm always hot and that I'm crazy for wearing shorts and sandals. I saw one of those Moms who thinks she's hot at the market today wearing flip-flops, too. And the Mrs. wore them today, and everyone knows she's the sane one. Etc. Oh, Mom who thinks she's hot? Come on, you know what I mean. Leathery skin from too much tanning, half the make-up aisle on her forehead, dangerously low-cut shirt to take her daughter to the market and that "I want me a bagboy" smirk. Come on, you know. You know you know. Hot Moms are Okay; don't misunderstand. If you have a hot Mom, please don't send me hatemail, nor if you are offended by the term "Hot Mom." My Mom's hot, but not in the leathery way. And my Dad, well he's one sweet piece of Southern tail!

Moving (no question mark).

2005-11-13T16:22:00.000-06:00

Yeah, so we're out of here. I like Southern Illinois. I like SIU. I can stand Carbondale on good days. Time to leave before it gets so that I hate them all. For crap sakes, I was wearing shorts and Tevas yesterday. It's November. Hello, Southern Illinois, it's November. I haven't resorted to shoes and socks yet. I'm in for it when we leave to visit Maryland in a few days. I haven't Okayed anything with my department of my disseration director. But I don't think they'll mind that I don't expect them to pay me for the next two years. And I don't think many people will notice anyway. I suspect that my wife is unhappy in her department anyway. There are a few unpleasant people there. Why the hell would you send someone an email with social advice, when you're a veritable shut-in and nasty person who is just...creepy? I can understand the nosey questions she gets about her degree progress and her pre-SIU background. But some people just cross lines that even freaky graduate students don't usually traverse. A crazy white lady tried to tell her how to be black! That just takes the cake. (My wife is black, in case you're new here.) At least I'm lucky enough to not have that bullshit in my department. Half of the folks there don't even know me, since I don't go to parties enough and since my fellowship relieved me of teaching duties since I've been here. I don't have any beef with the philosophy department at all. In fact, I maintain that the philosophy department has to be the one full of the most "normal" people of any graduate student body of philosophers in the nation -- despite one or two people I'll celebrate never having to see again. I really like my department. It's just time to go. In thinking of being here for five years when I got to SIU and Carbondale, I think I thought of that as semi-permanent. I mean, I hadn't been in one place for that long since I started this academic circus game of jumping through stupid hoops and trying to learn something along the way. The idea of leaving, working on my dissertation full-time next year and applying for jobs next year (rather than in two years) and of even looking for a job outside of academia is a strange thought and an unnerving feeling. It seems risky, unwise and likely to end with me working at a bookstore again but with "Dr. Johnny" on my nametag and a serious chip on my shoulder. But this was inevitable. I'm just pushing it up a year and getting through with my very long education a year early and getting on with the rest of my life. I think some people think of graduate school as the start of a academic career. They are very concerned with publishing, presenting, teaching and what they can put on their precious C.V.s. Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that approach. The free time and flexibility that comes with being a graduate student can't be beat! But I just want to get it over with now. I'm stagnating. Whenever I get a "good idea," I have to do something else, and it has to wait. Such is my dissertation topic. I've been thinking about it since the month I got here, but I haven't been able to do much with it. And having a fellowship has made me lazy and bored. I know myself and how I sometimes need what my father would call "a swift kick in the ass." With teaching for the next two years (assuming I even get the funding) and writing, I know what's going to happen. I'll take longer. I'll get depressed. I'll be too scared and too busy to go to the conferences I need to go to. I'll start to hate SIU, Carbondale, philosophy and academia altogether. So this is me kicking myself in the ass -- swiftly. I just hope my foot doesn't get stuck and that I don't wind up living in my parent's garage.

Moving?

2005-11-10T15:47:00.000-06:00

If you know me, then you know I'm not wild about the idea of teaching next year, when my fellowship runs out in mid-August -- assuming that I even get departmental funding, which is likely but not certain. I've developed a stuck-up and bratty life-style with this fellowship. Not getting paid in the summer and getting paid less the other months will make it necessary to either move to a cheaper apartment, get rid of the car, stop my gourmet coffee affection (never!), take out student loans, or several of the above. No matter what, I want to get rid of half the junk and bullshit I've been dragging around the country with me over the last few years and to move to a smaller apartment. I'm sick of lining my landlord's pockets paying for an apartment I don't need. And I am sick of car ownership, regardless of the recent decision to keep the Focus we made a few weeks ago. I biked to school today, and I feel good about it. When we bought the bikes, we boughter "nice" ones, because we had an eye to not owning a car and to using them for transportation. And you know, I don't at all feel guilty about how much those bikes cost. Plus, I don't know how I'm going to write my dissertation with teaching four sections of logic, intro or ethics. Let's put aside the absolute horror I feel with a sickness in my stomach when I picture myself teaching next year. If you know me, you know how good of a public speaker I am. Or am not, as the case certainly is. So apparently my wife wants to leave Carbondale and didn't think I would want to. She was wrong. We've been talking about it, and it looks likely that we're moving this summer. At the very least, to another apartment. More likely, out of Carbondale. Perhaps to Baltimore or Boston. We both miss the East Coast and the city. And Dunkin' Doughnuts. We will apply for fellowship after fellowship. And the worst case scenario is that we will have to take out student loans and live in Baltimore for a year and finish our doctorates. I did the math, and the amount I'd have to take out to stay here for two years and make the amount of money I make now (which is embarrassingly little) is more than enough to live in Baltimore city for one year of full-time dissertation writing. Finishing with school is a weird thought. I suppose I've ignored the fact that it's around the corner anyway, even if we were to say here. I've been in "higher education" since 1997, a few weeks before I met my wife. I've had my eye on the prize for so long, that the idea that I might finish my doctorate and be Dr. Kickass in a year and half is strange. Freeing, but scary, too. It's definitely high time that I quit screwing around and thinking about the future ("Can I put that on my C.V.?") and making a career out of being a student. If leaving here, busting my ass over my dissertation and job-hunting for a year of grad-student no money, that's fine. This cushy fellowship has made it too easy to waste time with things which are not work and that in fact get the way of work. And these days, I'm not so sure about how much I want to be an academic or teach. The more I get into Pragmatism, the less I want to be a "philosopher" in the academic/professional sense of the word. We have some professional connections in Baltimore and Boston, and I think that having a PhD won't exactly hurt me on the job market. And damn, I miss my friends and my brothers. A lot lately.

Brian is back (Call Chris, too).

2005-11-09T10:15:00.000-06:00

My cycling exemplar, philosophical cohort and very very good friend Brian has a blog. But he hadn't been posting to it. Now it he is! And you should read it. Because he is awesome, and you know I reserve that word for things like coffee and pencils. So you know it's true. I figure that, if people read Brian's blog, Brian will continue to post. And he's into collages now, so we're in for treats as his readers. He made me one for my birthday called "Current Still-Life With Babbling Buddha." I won't post a photo of it, since that would be best on Brian's blog. See, you always learn something cool here. Hug me, dudes. Now we have to work on getting Chris to post more of his awesome photos on his blog...

Freedom?

2005-11-07T11:22:00.000-06:00

So I have that George Michael song "Freedom 90" in my head, and I have for two or three weeks. Hell, I arranged it for the mandolin and learned the bassline and downloaded the video. Come, you know you like that song, regardless of whether or not you are a reasonable George Michael fan like I am. (Reasonable fan: like the music and think he's a cool being, but I have no posters of the Faith era look, regardless of the fact that I totally wore a cross earring like that in the early 90s because I've always thought he was an awesome guy.) Our philosophy conference was this weekend, and it was a big success. That seems like it's par for the course these days. Carbondalies throw a kick-ass conference. And myriad thanks go to the dudes and dudets who made it happen. Anyway, there was a paper Saturday morning (and I confess to being groggy, foggy and froggy that day) wherein the presenter argued for a notion of moral responsibility without the necessity for free will. There's all this "science" and all these "statistics" that point away from free will. She said that Buddhists don't require it. Etc. Maybe I'm too much of a Sartrean, Jamesian, or maybe my Catholic upbringing in a Catholic city is something I can't get over. But the whole idea that anyone would believe that we don't have free will was completely abhorrent to me. When I see closed-minded people, fundamentalists, evangelicals and moral dinosaurs (yeah, I said it) get all upset and indignant at the idea of gay marriage, inter-racial couples and religious pluralism, I always look down my nose at them. "I'm more enlightened than that," I tell myself. "I would never have a gut reaction to something that is entirely alien to me and say that it's wrong right away and that I am right and that the perpetrator is evil. Not me." But I did it. I had a gut reaction. I got really upset inside. Turns out that I didn't have the intellectual bravery that I thought comes with being a philosopher. For at least a few minutes (or hours) Saturday, I was as bad as the hags that protest gay rights and who protested racial equality decades ago. I was talking to a colleague after a guest lecture Thursday about not being able to turn off being of a philosophical mind-bent. I think it can be a sickness at times, and the inability to turn off the hyper-critical world-view leads to nothing but unhappiness or discomfort very very often. I can't help but approach most things critically, whether it's finding ten things wrong with a particular pencil or feeling nauseous when I see obese mothers buying their already obese 8 year olds $6 coffee ice-creams from Gloria Jeans. These are not sources of pleasure at all. But I turned it off Saturday and thought just like a moronic, unreflective ape of a person who gets upset because someone disagrees with him and is ready to piss his pants. I was told not to feel badly, that "everyone" does that. But that's the worst excuse I have ever heard for doing anything. I was going to blog about free will, and I might work on an essay on it just to make myself feel better. But not here, and not now.

Photo Friday: Warmth.

2005-11-04T11:02:00.000-06:00

For Photo Friday: Warmth. I know, it seems like there's nothing warm about this photo. But there is! It's from last holiday season when I was visiting my parents in Maryland. This is the back roof from where the second floor does not extend as far as the second on their house. They live on a hill in Hampden, which is already on a hill, and you can see all the way to the Key Bridge and Harbor from there. If you look West, the direction the photo is facing, you can see the sunset. One of my brothers and I used to go out there when we were teenagers and when my parents weren't home to play bass and guitar for the whole neighborhood. I distinctly remember cranking out a decent version of Bush's "Everything Zen" one time and getting compliments from the drumming low-life who mooched off his girlfriend and "lived" up the street. I used to go out there to smoke and to think when I was 15-19. The first time I inhaled the cigarette properly, i.e., made myself sick from the sudden rush of nicotine, was on that roof. I used to write bad teenage poetry there by the fading l ight of the sunset, since it was too high for street lights to reach. Whenever I am in Baltimore for a visit, I like to look out that window at dusk and remember. Because while I thought I was going through the worst time of my life back then, I can see now that I was lucky and that everything is probably downhill from there. I just wish I appreciated it more when I was sixteen.

Fallin'.

2005-11-03T10:03:00.000-06:00

The winds have kicked up enough today that I think any leaves which are not the most hardy will find their way to the ground and off of the trees where they have been shining against the bluest sky all week. There are some oak leaves that I'm sure will make it, but oaks usually just turn brown before they lose their leaves. There's a small oak tree behind my apartment that actually kept most of its leaves (in a tan, leathery form) all winter two years ago. Seriously. I have pictures of them with snow on them, but I don't really feel like digging them up. Come on, you trust me! At any rate, I'm sure my landlords are happy about the wind. The parking lot which was full of dead leaves and the dust of dead leaves being driven over repeatedly by autos and my bike is now bare. The winds have swept it completely clean and pushed all the mess into the woods behind the place. That's good, since the dudes would just wake me up with a leaf-blower and pick up the leaves with a shovel, put them in a pickup truck and probably throw them away in the trash. I prefer it this way, and not just because I can sleep until 9:00 a.m. All you Southern Illinoisians and Salukis, don't forget the Building Bridges Philosophy Conference that kicks off tomorrow afternoon at 3:00 p.m., with a keynote talk by a Boston University gent tomorrow evening. I'm sure there will be free coffee, and comtemplation is always free, not to mention good for the soul.

B.B. and the leaf.

2005-11-01T09:35:00.000-06:00

I always get sad when October's over. I think I spend half the month waiting for fall to "really" start (cooler temperatures and leafy color) and then miss my favorite month. But November is a nice substitute for October, since it includes a holiday and a trip home to Maryland. So I can't complain too much. And for those of you in Southern Illinois enjoying the nice day today, stop to think about your existence and it's meaning and your place in the universe for a second. See? Fun? Good. Come on out to the Philosophy Department's conference this weekend, Building Bridges. You'll be glad you did and sorry if you don't, and come on who really wants to be sorry?

Happy Halloween!

2005-10-31T10:41:00.000-06:00

Happy Halloween, from my pumpkin to yours.

Happy Birthday, Bowman!

2005-10-30T10:57:00.000-06:00

Very happy first Blogosphere Birthday to my very good friend and fellow-blogger Bowman today!

Photo Friday: Delicate.

2005-10-28T09:24:00.000-05:00

For Photo Friday: Delicate. Some really cool witch balls for sale at Vulture Fest this year. I have one from Spring Fest 2004 in my living room.

New camera.

2005-10-25T23:17:00.000-05:00

I treated myself to a cheap tripod today and played with the "My Colors" settings on my camera tonight. This is a cool [fake] Tiffany lamp that always reminds me of chilly and rainy March days and reading reading reading (reading) over a pot of coffee in tiny cups. With these settings, you can select a color that will come out, while the rest of the image is black and white. I didn't think I'd like it, but it's sure fun to use. And I love that lamp. It's about time I got around to posting more photos. I'm glad I bought a cheaper camera, too.

A410 in the house.

2005-10-24T11:33:00.000-05:00

Why don't I use a Canon Powershot A520 anymore? Well, I don't want to talk about it. I'll talk around it and mention that I have owned four and rejected two more at stores. Not to mention the two A620s I had to return (and pay the restocking fee on one because the jerk Geek Squad bonehead didn't believe me about one). Canon's new 4X zoom lense is crap. They all have lint, dirt or hair under them. One of them was actually chipped! Every photo I've taken since getting that damned thing has a huge white dot in it. Damn it. So I thought I'd give Canon my consumer finger and buy something from someone else. But I couldn't find anything anywhere made by anyone that didn't get bad reviews, cost too much or look and feel ugly to me. Nothing else worked. So I was ready to spend a lot of money I don't have on an expensive Canon. A fancy one or a sexy one that is the size of a credit card. Then I thought about it. Number one, John ain't got much money. Number two, I'd just baby it and never use it. Number three, I didn't want to give Canon much more bread. Number three, why complicate my life more by getting a complicated camera for hobby shots? So I bought the Powershot A410. It's brand-new (came out like last week), but it only has 3.2MP. So what? It does more than the A520 (and A620, since the A410 has a supermacro mode). It has full manual controls and some cool modes. And it was cheap. And sexy. Since my photos are for blogs that get reduced in size and quality anyway, I really don't care about the MP. I don't print photos anyway. If I did, I'd get a film camera and save some money. This baby has the new DIGIC II chip, is USB 2.0 compliant, is very small and fits 535 pictures only my SanDisc Ultra II memory card. And it can take close-ups wherein a pencil point fills up the whole shot. That's sweet. Yeah, sweet. The LCD screen is small (which I like, since I'm always paranoid about scratching them), and Canon cut a few more corners to make it cheaper. But at only $149 for a really nice camera from Canon, you can't really complain much. However, Canon, if you can read this, I'm flipping you off right now from my computer for making me run around like I did. Wankers.

No Pity: a little ditty.

2005-10-20T10:02:00.000-05:00

NyQuil is great, it is good, it is true. You can't have my NyQuil, no, not even you. It helps me to sleep because I'm a little sick. The green kind tastes yucky, sucky - ick! Once in college I tried that crap Thunderbird, And it tastes like garbage, soaking in terd. Well that green NyQuil tastes much worse, And I wanted to drink Thunderbird or poop from a horse Or something more foul or disgusting than this, Such as waking up an ulgy old hag with a kiss. Cherry NyQuil is also bad, tastes like trash, And it's a sick color, like fake blood or a rash. But I can swallow it without gagging And get around without lagging And buy it without nagging* And build up my nice winter time stash. [*They took out the Pseudoephedrine, that redneck drug dealers use to make meth, so the old ladies at the store don't eye me up for buying it anymore.]

Fests.

2005-10-19T07:13:00.000-05:00

I'm always sad that I miss the Fell's Point Fun Festival in Baltimore, the first weekend in October. I had already developed a taste for going every year when I met my wife in September of 1997 and had our first official date at the Festival on October 4th. True, it's gotten more "commercial" over the years, but it kept Fell's Point from getting booted for a highway. I didn't get to go when I lived in Boston, nor for the last two years, but I made it in 2003. We got married exactly six years after our first date, so the festival was that weekend. We stayed in the Admiral Fell Inn that night and hit the festival the next day. When we got out here to Southern Illinois, we checked out Makanda on my birthday in late August, and I immediately dug it. I was excited when I learned that there would be a festival in October, my favorite month. We went, and I found Vulture Fest to be way...cooler than the one in Fell's Point. Less food and beer and more hippies, artists and interesting people that you are thankful to learn live around here and don't wear camouflage all fall, even to the mall and the market (not that there's anything wrong with blending in with the hunting aisle at Wal-Mart). I don't have the blog power to convince you to go to the Vulture Fest or the Spring Fest in May. Nope. You'll have to trust me and go. I'll even give you a ride, maybe, as long as it hasn't rained around then.

Letter B.

2005-10-18T08:36:00.000-05:00

So, I think I have concluded that bloggers are some of the nicest people you are likely to meet. Either that, or especially nice people like to blog. Behold the bountifully bestowed bevy of beautiful chocolate and sugar that I received in the mail Friday from fellow blogger and Baltimorean Neighbor Girl! Damn, I say, damn. That's a lot of candy. Good candy. And yes. What you're wondering about: my pants do fit a little more snuggly since Friday. I'm cool with it. I'll ride my bike soon, promise.

Photo Friday: Conspicuous.

2005-10-14T10:18:00.000-05:00

So, yeah, this is a re-post. Sorry. But come on. This is the epitome of this week's Photo Friday challenge: Conspicuous. Bet you can't guess what's in this can. I'll have some new photos from this weekend's Vulture Fest, I'm sure. There are always some...interesting people there to steal photos of. And my parents are coming to visit. Hey, I like my parents. We will go hiking, shopping and get a little drunk. Bonding! Yeah, my folks kick ass. They are driving 850 miles to visit me for a weekend, and I haven't seen anyone in my family since the spring -- won't see anyone else or my beloved Baltimore until Thanksgiving week. I miss you, Mobtown.

Sleepless under this blanket.

2005-10-12T17:09:00.000-05:00

Yeah, that's my bedspread blanket type thing. My 2006 IKEA catalog came the other day, and guess where that cover-up dealy is from. It's warm, but not too warm. I can't sleep if I'm hot. So, dude, I was up the other night/morning at 4:30 because I was waking-dreaming about Nietzsche and pencils. Re-read Twilight of the Idols that day and was organizing my pencils that night. Yeah, I have that many pencils. Come on, you know this. Love dictates knowing it. Love! One particular German pencil I have had affection for is not made of cedar, and I was jolted. Had to revaluate my pencil values. Kept me up. Yeah, that's the second best philosophy joke ever. Maybe the third. I'll tell you the other two one day, if you haven't heard them. Call me, dude. I can feel your anticipation. But you have to have been force-fed Thomas Aquinas at some Catholic school or university to get the second one. Force-fed because oxen are not fun, no matter how good the exercise is. Ah, so much philosophy humor. I should go on tour. Leben lang die Jesuits!

Dooty.

2005-10-11T22:39:00.000-05:00

Trying to sound smart is not my thing. Should erase the last post. Ever wake up dreaming of pencils? I did last night/this morning. That's alarming. Very.

Book burning.

2005-10-10T09:04:00.000-05:00

Two weeks ago, I got to go to a reading of banned books organized by the staff of Morris Library. It was even a gorgeous morning for the reading. I don't remember anyone's names, but I'm pretty sure that this lady was reading from Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. Whomever was going to read Ginsberg was ill, so there was nothing from "Howl" read. I have to admit that I was disappointed that no one selected any Hemingway, since he's as banned as Steinbeck. I was suprised by the kinds of things that books get banned for. Hemingway's A Farewell To Arms is banned because of the extra-marrital affair and pregnancy and because of the drinking. Harry Potter encourages witchcraft and general cheeky-ness. It seems that books get banned because they have naughty characters. But how come no one bans things like Nietzsche for the ideas (save for Communist books, I suppose)? It's probably a good thing that books don't get officially banned because of the ideas as often as they get banned because the characters drink and sleep around, and I am sure that there a lot of books that never make it to publication because of the ideas expressed in them. I realize I'd be setting myself up if I were to ignore that. But it is strange to think of how Puritanical and judgmental we are as a society. I suppose that the gay marriage debate comes more from this than from the Bible. And with a lot of other things. There's nothing in any holy book that says that weed is a sin. But it's illegal. Etc. We're not pious. We're uptight.

Photo Friday: Five.

2005-10-07T08:36:00.000-05:00

(Click HERE for larger version!) The nerd in me wanted to get a photo of two people giving/taking five. Or of myself with five arms or heads or something -- but I don't use photo-editing software, really, save for resizing. So, for Photo Friday: Five, here are five Moleskine Diaries/Planners, including my current big fat daily version and the 2006 daily desk size that a friend sent me for my birthday. The pocket weekly was ruined (if you ask me) when they went verticle. I even tried to use it, but I liked the page a day version. However, I find that it's an unhappy medium. With the weekly versions, you only get enough room to make lists, even the larger one that my wife uses. With the pocket daily, you think you could use it as a planner and diary -- maybe even for notes and doodles. But there's not enough room for that, so you wind up having to still carry a notebook with you. Carrying two books is a pain. I'm really really excited to get started on my 2006 large daily format, because I know it's the only book I'll have to carry with me. There's enough room for planning, recording what I already did, notes and library books to check out, addresses to jot down, doodles to doodle and pencil haiku to write (yes, I actually do that). True, it's the "large" one, but large Moleskines are no bigger than a trade paperback or other academic book or modern novel -- smaller, often. I always have a bag or the car, so that's no problem. And I get the convenience of carrying one book. And, you know, that might just be the sexiest Moleskine I've put my hands on yet.

Big belly.

2005-10-05T00:59:00.000-05:00

"Look into my eyes!" the gnome says. Gned, rather. Gned with a G. You get it. I didn't name him. The person who gave him to us did. You can see my sexy new camera in Gned's eyes if you click the image. Gned has a divining rod for finding water, and someone (not me) kept putting him behind the flying pig on the table between the chairs, in front of the window. The height of the rod was equal to the pig's tail. Yeah, use your imagination. They had to be separated. (I didn't do that, either.) So today I ate a lot. And I think it's funny. I ate three left-over veggie tacos (they have fake ground beef in them), a handfull of Quakes (some weird cheesy puffy dealies that the wife likes and I eat all of before she touches) after dinner. Pasta for dinner. Three left-over fake meat "hot dogs" for lunch. A croissant and half a box of candy (movie theatre) for breakfast. One cup of tea. Three Diet Cokes. Six or seven cups of coffee. Yeah, I just think it's funny that I ate half a box of candy for breakfast. Charleton Chews. Oh, yeah. Biked a lot (over an hour), so I don't really give a shit that I ate too much. It's the what, not the how much. What's the line from "Doo Doo Brown"? Something like "Never drink Pepsi, always Coke/You got the right one, babaay"? Yeah, that makes no sense. That's the Pepsi slogan from the early 90s. He's saying to drink Coke. Still, if you're from Baltimore, imagine the doo doo doo doo doo da doo part sung by a drunken white guy with a thick Baltimore accent, serenading his Baby Mama (her name is always Ashley) with this little tune of moderately short-lived fame. That's as funny as eating candy for breakfast and waiting behind your front door for the FedEx man to leave, pissing yourself like a kid on Christmas because your Dick Blick order is here. I'm a barrel of laughs tonight, I tell you. That, and fake meat.

Poopy.

2005-10-04T10:46:00.000-05:00

I took this last year on my wedding anniversary (today) in Paducah, Kentucky on the riverfront. My nickname in high school was Poopy, applied by the principle, a nice Friar. Long story, but it didn't involve any lack of control of my own body functions, more like art class. Yeah. Whenever I talk to the very very few people from high school that I ever have contact with, they still call me Poopy. I think it's funny. I dont' dye my hair red or wear my golf-green Dr. Martens anymore.

Who you callin' maladjusted?

2005-10-03T14:30:00.000-05:00

So, like, I was thinking last week. But I didn't want to say anything, because I'd prefer to avoid having internet stones thrown at me. I was watching "The Simpons" and wondered about smart people, more specifically, the over-achieving kind. And I'm married to one, so think of that before you accuse me of not liking the intellectually blue-blooded. In the episode of "The Simpons" where Bart is in danger of failing the fourth grade (a very early episode), Martin is reading under a tree while the other kids play ball. The ball comes over, and he's clueless about what to do about it. He has no idea of how to be a normal person. Yeah, I'm gonna assume some level or type of normality out there. Yeah. So, I wondered it, to some extent, the over-achievers start to run the country (our present fearful leader excluded, of course). Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar, for instance. They run companies. Etc. Is that why nothing works? Or maybe I have my facts all wrong. Maybe the over-achievers never amount to anything usually. Maybe it's the terrible under-achievers (like me, and proud of it, sucka) who run things. Lazy people who don't like to work for work's sake. Maybe they run things, and that's why nothing works. Maybe there's no connection between them, too. I've been known to imagine connections that are not there. But do at least some people become academics because they are too entirely maladjusted to function as normal people? They don't know how to play ball, so they just read under trees? I'm trying to think of some successful academics who are still regular people, and I can't think of very many. I'll brag that I prefer the company of writers, carpenters and computer geeks to my fellow academics, most of the time. The exceptions are the few academics who are still normal people. People who can get drunk or hyped up on caffeine and never once want to talk about some damned philosophy book that "everyone" has read or the current state of public schools. I disagree with the implied adage around universities that a person is fun to be around and an adept conversationalist because of the books he or she can work into "casual" conversation -- because the GRE words one uses daily. I sometimes respect people more to the degree that they can exist without having to mention the latest fucking translation of Twilight of the Idols or anything by Milton in conversation. Or is the problem that we marginalize smart people as a society, so they don't feel like they can play ball and that they have to find something else to do, like read under a tree? That we always lord over smart people that they can't catch a football or get laid -- so that they throw their German-speaking abilities and vast knowledge of Shakespeare in everyone's face in retaliation? Whenever someone makes fun of me because I don't know how to fix a car or rock-climb, I admit that I love to respond that "At least I'm not a stupid piece of shit who can't read Kant" -- whether I actually say it or just think it. And come to think of it, being able to read Kant is not necessarily a desirable quality in a person. I do feel the prejudice against intellect in the United States. And it always makes me want to call everyone I can stupid. I've spent entire afternoons in Carbondale making fun of the stupid ways that people try to drive automobiles: "Look at that dim-witted sumbitch trying to handle that Excursion!" has become my favorite saying. And I love to point out how stupid celebrities and talk show hosts are. I know I'm not alone in this, since my favorite people all do the same thing. Maybe it's a vicious circle (or least a mean one) where smart people act like asses, and we treat them like crap. And they act like bigger asses, so we treat them even more like crap. And so on. Or that we treat smart people like crap, so they act like asses, etc. Whoever does it first, it doesn't seem likely to stop anytime soon. But that's Okay. Watching inane television is all the more fun if you feel superior to the host.

Photo Friday: Darkness.

2005-09-30T10:07:00.000-05:00

Apologies that I've been absent most of the week. It was a very busy few days, in a good way. To make up for it, here are some photos for Photo Friday: Darkness. The first was taken in the upper floors of Morris Library before they were closed on August 1st for the expensive and lengthy renovations that probably mean I'll be Dr. John before I ever set foot on the upper floors again. I think that darkness in the library is appropriate this week because it is still Banned Books Week. (See the pencil version here.) When I think of a world that bans things in practice like Hemingway and Catcher in the Rye, and where myriad other works can be banned at will in principle by well-meaning people who think they know what is best for us all, all I can think of is a dark world. Sounds trite, yes. But true. I attended a reading of banned books on the library lawn Tuesday, where library staff members read from banned books of their choosing. Unfortunately, no one was up for any Hemingway, but they raffled off some banned books, wrapped in brown paper. My wife won Jon Stewart's book (I don't know who bans it, sorry). It felt almost subversive, since being in the Heartland, I was most likely sitting there not that far from possibly well-intentioned people who want certain things banned. I'm anticipating resistance if Brokeback Mountain is released in one of the Carbondale movie theaters, not necessarily from Carbondalies, but from local judgmental types who only want what's good for us (right?) and might be willing to come from surrounding areas and states to protect us (HA!) from the subject matter of the film. I'm experiementing with some counter-measures to protesting films and burning books. I call two of these measures "Protesting The Protesting Via The Wicked Spank" and "Flaming Dog Doo On A Stick." The former involves me riding back and forth through the homophobic protestors on my bike with no pants on and my hairy bum hanging out, asking the protestors who only want what's best for me to spank me with their picket signs, since I have such a filthy mouth. The latter is just that: stinky poop on a stick, lit on fire on the lawns of book burners. Now I just need my own personal army, Project Mayhem or police force to help me in these measures. But then again, I have faith in the people of Carbondale that they won't protest a movie just because it's about two cowboys that fall in love. Love is certainly nothing to protest.

Spiders in the house.

2005-09-26T20:51:00.000-05:00

Well, outside, really. I spotted this frighteningly large fella outside of my apartment this afternoon. I ran away from it like a sissy though. I mean, no I didn't. That's a joke. I'm not scared of spiders. I splattered one the other day, all over the hallway wall. Splattered. Yeah, them's no scaring me. I've blogged about the scary spiders that live outside the front of my apartment before. See, two sets of photos. I ain't afraid I tell ya. Really, though, I leave them alone, and I love them, since they keep me just a tad more bug-bite free. Nice little creepy things.

Photo Friday: Burn.

2005-09-23T16:10:00.000-05:00

Burnt Arm, ii.

For Photo Friday: Burn. I think I've been going over-board with waiting up Thursday night for the weekly challenge to come out and then finding a photo I already have to use and get posted ASAP to try and have the lowest number on the list of submissions. Kinda defeats the challenge part to not actually take the photo for the theme -- at least, for me. I have been neglecting my sexy new camera. So I used the A520 for the first time in a week, and I took a new photo for the challenge today. Which is easy because I'm stupid enough to burn myself with an alarming regularity. Yes, I burned my arm getting a pizza out of the oven earlier this week, and this is what it looks like today. Yes, I did that a few months ago, too. Yes, I'm just that clumsy. At least I didn't fill the kitchen with the smell of burning hair this time, and it didn't hurt as much. It looks much worse than it is. Long live Neosporin!

Perfectionism?

2005-09-21T23:00:00.000-05:00

So I went for an hour and half bike-ride today and sweated my rear off. Despite tomorrow being the first day of autumn, it's hot in Southern Illinois. Big surprise. At least I haven't ventured to the "winter beard" yet. Did the math. For a 150 pound person, you burn 300 calories in a half hour biking. I weigh more than that and biked three times that long, so I'll assume that I burned 1000 calories and sweated out more water than my modest bike bottle holds. That's not bad. Despite being hot as hell, sweaty and tired by 2:30, it felt good. Felt good to do something. I've been feeling fat-assed, lazy and wasteful lately. It was good to do something about it. I honestly wanted to go for another ride before dinner, but the old legs were just not having it. That's Okay, though. Then I saw what appeared to be a ding on the door of our car. I shouldn't admit to spending an hour (actually more like eighty minutes) outside looking at it from different angles, stopping only because the sun went down. I shouldn't admit to going back out in the darkness to feel for it. I could see something, but I could feel nothing, and there's no reason for me to go back out and look to anyone who looks on as if I'm contemplating breaking into my own humble car. See, the Mrs. is pretty sure that there's something wrong with the paint that plays a trick on the eyes in that spot. I know that Ford's computers half-assed the paint on that car. For being seven months old, there are a lot of bubbles between the clear-coat and black paint, and it's not put on evenly at all, etc. Not to mention what happens when bug guts get baked on a black car in direct sunlight all day. I've become Okay with the paint stuff. It happens. To hell with it. But dents from jerks I am not ready for, not since what happened to the other Focus. But what's up with that? I'm not a car nut and never have been. I don't even change the oil myself. I know how, but I still don't. I seldom bother to wash it, and my interior-care gear has never been used. But I get so protective -- obsessive. I can't explain it. My wife thinks it's because I have not been working very much and that my mind looks for something to think about. Not sure if that's it exactly. I think it's probably some control issue or something. I have tons of stories about what a perfectionist I was as a child. But when I stopped caring about my grades in high school a long time ago and stopped being in shape and not a fat ass hairy guy with a bad haircut (think Dignan from Bottle Rocket), I really began to hesitate to identify myself as a perfectionist. What kind of perfectionist has two B's on their graduate school transcript? What kind of perfectionist has a beer gut that has nothing to do with beer? And all that. Are perfectionists only so about certain things, though? Maybe that would be me, then. I'm anal about the dumbest things, but I let important things slide. Backwards, yeah. Stupid, yeah. Pointless, yeah. The solution is not necessarily to lose myself in work. I did that during the first year that the Mrs. and I had the long-distance relationship thing in college. It kept me from thinking about how shitty things were, but it also kept me from dealing with it. Besides, doing nothing but philosophy and loathing when you're 19 is not good for your sanity (very good for getting the fundamentals of Western philosophy though). I realize that I'll have to act differently. You can't just change the way you experience the world and the way you act toward it through thinking about it. I'm not naive enough to believe that's possible, that I can reason my way out of this little rut. I don't have the life I want. Neither did Henry D. T. So he did something about it. I could take the tire-iron to the car and solve it's metallic perfection right then and there. I could vote to get rid of it. But I don't really think the car is the problem, just a manifestation of whatever the problem is. The problem. I suppose I should figure that out somehow. What it is, and all that.

Up close.

2005-09-19T08:15:00.000-05:00

The world looks very different[ly] when you've driven through it at 60 mph, riden a bike through it at 10 mph and then walked through it much slower. There's a lot that you miss when you're walking and not crawling or standing or sitting. So there's even more that you miss when you're driving in a car with the stereo turned up loudly and the windows closed, since you're too lazy to wash the windshield that the Southern Illinois humidity always fogs up at night. You might see the two deer on the right of the road, stairing at your black car in fright or wonder or a combination of the two. But you might also miss the four other deer on the left, only a few yards behind the treeline, doing what deer do when no one's around with a loud car. You miss a lot of smells in the car. Leaves are either dry and annoying as they fly around after you drive over them, or they are wet and slippery. On a bike or on foot, you can appreciate the fragrance of wet leaves, dry leaves, burning leaves, green leaves, the absence of leaves. But you know, there's a lot to be said for the big-picture, too. Thoreau must have know this, with his prodigious surveying abilities. Not only was he familiar with his own corner of Walden Pond. He surveyed and mapped the entire pond. So he had the big-picture bird's eye view and the close up macro shot of a man in love with the earth. While the close-up, non-motorized view of the world is desirable for its...candor, the big-picture view is another way of looking at things that you miss on foot. Of course, there is the even bigger picture, such as from a plane or celestial camera. I used to love to find my apartment on the shores of Quincy Bay from the plane when leaving Boston to fly to Baltimore. And you can get a seriously big-picture view via Google these days, too. Maybe we'll call the car-view the fast picture. I can't favor one view over the other. The combination seems to me to grant one an interesting way of looking at things. You can tell what your home looks like up close and how it fits into the surrounding area, how the surrounding area fits the rest of the world. How you fit into the world. The universe. Everything. Without sounding like I'm going to wax mystical on a Monday morning, self-awareness can be gained this way, no?

Photo Friday: Divine.

2005-09-16T10:20:00.000-05:00

Photo Friday, Divine. So my relationship with the Catholic church and the faith that I usually ignore is now a long one, and a strange one. If you are a long-time reader, you know how I almost went into the seminary once when I went to a shindig with the Cardinal and that I went militant atheist for a while (like most philosophy majors) but then cooled down into a mild Transcendentalist who never goes outside. I mean, I don't read the Good Book for solice, but I can read St. Augustine and find some very useful things. Nice way to be. We went to see The Exorcism of Emily Rose last weekend. I think Tom Wilkinson is awesome ("I'm the money."). It even has Laura Linney, who played The One on "Frasier" before NBC yanked it -- a year too soon, if you ask me. Now, this is a movie that is definitely worth seeing, if you like thrillers or if you like movies that are decidedly Catholic (like Constantine or Dogma). So I will try not to give anything away. There is an element in the film where Linney's character is walking outside in the snow and finds a locket on a chain. The locket has her initials. She talks to the priest and tells him, and they agree that this cannot be a coincidence, or it can be. She can look at it either way. She takes it as a sign that she's on "the right path." Well, we leave the theatre, get some caffeine in the adjoining mall, etc. and head back to the car. What do I find on the ground in my way but a wooden cross on a string. I'm not in the habit of pocketing what I find on the ground, but I did this time. It was too...weird not to. I've been avoiding thinking about what this could mean, if anything. Calling me back to Catholicism, even though I really have issues with their more politically-oriented teachings (birth-control, gay marriage, priests marrying)? Telling me I'm Okay going the way I'm going? Warning me that the Mrs. will leave me and render me fit for the priesthood? I know it's the coward's way out, but I really don't want to think about it right now.

Maybe keeping the car.

2005-09-15T23:24:00.000-05:00

Talk about see-sawing. We actually bought nice bikes yesterday and rode around Carbondale. Very fun. Riding by the apartment and seeing our little car made me sad, though. We thought about keeping it. Then it rained hard early today, and we had a whole car full of recycling to take to the center, and we were glad to have it. In the afternoon, it cleared up, and we took a long bike ride just for fun. Felt nice. Shrink the gut, get some air, see parts of Carbondale up close. Good to do. After dinner, however, we thought, what if we kept the car and the bikes? Not to ride bikes all the time and just pay $500 a month to have a car on Saturdays or to make it to the movies on time. We're sure as hell not rich enough to have a weekend car. But to have a car for transportation and bikes for fun and exercise. Sounded good. So we went to Target (far enough away that you would really not bike there just to get Method products that you can buy online) and a late-night trip for something for me to put my dozens and dozens of pencils in. Turns out that we just worry about the car and the nice black paint and wiggity biggity boo too much. Not a very good reason to get rid of it. When we bought our first Focus, we went nuts. Happy nuts. We were in Baltimore for five weeks after two years in Boston and before moving out west to Southern Illinois. We were driving 200-400 miles a week, since we just never stayed home. It had been three years since I had a car at the time, and I was enjoying it. I really love to drive, and Foci are fun to drive. Maybe it's my aversion to Baltimore's buses, but you can't have much fun in Baltimore without your own set of wheels. I lived there for a long time with them and a long time without them, and you're gonna want an auto in Mobtown. For sure. We went nuts because car ownership was freedom, and we could go wherever we wanted. When that Focus got killed, and we put that stupid car bra on the new black one, we were convinced that it was invincible. But it turns out that no car is (duh), and we went nuts over every single paint chip. Ones from idiots. From the landlord carelessly murdering an asphalt curb all over the side of our car with a weedwacker. From getting things in and out of the back hatch. But, you know, this shit happens. Cars get scratches. I dont' think I could handle a deep dent in the side from Betty Sue getting out of her big-asses SUV, but I should be able to handle getting a few scratches. I might as well say that I don't want to own a car anymore because Carbondale drivers make driving in Washington DC fun (yes, I mean that). Shit happens. Yes. But why is it so difficult to change the way I react to it? Those little things drove us nuts. We never drove anywhere, unless we had the whole lot to ourselves. Stupid, yes. Very stupid. We wound up paying almost more than we can afford for a car that was only driving us crazy most of the time. For me, that was the biggest reason I wanted to get rid of it. Paying all that bread for something that takes my sanity away didn't seem to make sense. But hanging out downtown and chilling and driving in the rain (which I love to do for some reason) and going shopping for a $3 plastic box until 10:30 on a Thursday night reminded me of why having a car can be fun. Why I shouldn't sit here in the apartment wondering if a tree branch is going to fall on the hood or if I'm right that the sun is ruining the paint. Damn. How anally, materialistically, and insanely of a waste of energy is that? Confronted with selling our car and having the fact that I've lost sleep worrying about its state not make any difference at all, I could see how foolish I've been acting and thinking. And, confronted with being less...mobile, I suddenly appreciated what having a car means to us. So we're keeping the car, at least for now. We can always change our mind and sell it. But, if we sell it, we can't swing getting another once, since we'd stand to lose close to $7,000 instantly. We're thinking about re-financing it, since we have totally kick-ass credit these days, and if the paint gets worse, the whole damned car is still under a warranty. And now we have bikes, so maybe I can shrink the gut. My wife thinks that we wanted a change of life-style. And hell, I think I'm looking at the world differently tonight than I was at the start of the week. I feel like going out to get a beer, and I haven't felt like that in a long time.

AutoMOTIVE confessions.

2005-09-14T08:56:00.000-05:00

So we noticed yesterday that the paint and clear-coat on our nine-month-old car is getting melted from the sun. Talked to a few people who said it's a warranty issue and that the damned thing needs to get repainted. Repainted! On Ford's buck, but still: Repainted! That's insane. Which got the Mrs. and I to thinking and talking: Why the hell do we drive ourselves crazy with owning a car? We were afraid of being stranded in Carbondale when we moved out here. Okay. Makes sense. We didn't know about the university shuttle system that goes all over town and how bike-friendly Carbondale is. Or how terrible the parking at the university is. We actually wind up walking half-way to Faner Hall as it is, since we have to park so far away. During the last year of my undergraduate work and the two years we were in Boston, we didn't have a car. So moving away from Beantown and getting a car felt free for some reason -- going where we wanted to, etc. And we felt that way for a long time. After all, I really do love to drive. But looking back on the subway, walking, cabs, etc., it's sort of...romantic. With a newish car now, it's almost like we're just grown-ups who go to school and don't really have any money or kids. So we have had nothing but car drama since the first Focus was totalled in May 2004. Thought it would end when we sold the Mazda (at a bit of a loss) and bought the Focus this February. But no. Owning a new car, there are too damned many things to worry about. Paint scratches. Dents on the side from really really inconsiderate people. Tornados and sever thunderstorms with hail and falling tree branches. Moronically drunken neighbors. The fact that you're PhD students and don't need a new car! Since our oil change on July 5th, we've driven around 1,200 miles. In three months. We used to drive that much, and often more, each month. We get gas once every two and half to three weeks. We live down the street from the university, and there's a market within a 5-10 minute stroll. Everything we need is within walking distance of the university, and the shuttle goes everywhere else. It would seem that we don't need a car. We can rent one to drive to Maryland in, with the added bonus that it getting chips on the paint and windshield from rude drivers won't get me upset anymore. Hell, there are day trips from Carbondale we've always wanted to take but didn't because we didn't want to mess up our shiny new car that we can finally take now in a rental car. To boot, I've become a bit of a fat ass. My eating habits aren't that much different than they were when we lived in Boston and walked a lot -- and walked for fun -- but the fabled beer gut persists. And I don't even drink a lot of beer and haven't had one in nearly a month at all. That's just sad. I was sweating and huffing and puffing when Chris and I last went hiking in a way I've never done before. The Mrs. denies it, but I've really become quite round. The idea of burning 300 calories in a half-hour of biking and thereby almost effortlessly becoming less pudgy is a very attractive one. We could just get bikes and ride to school and loss weight. Yes. But paying $500 a month for owning our car (payments, insurance and gas) leaves no money for nice bikes. And then, what the hell would we have a car for, if we don't drive it to the one thing we do everyday, i.e., go to the university? If we have bikes to ride to our daily destination, why would we continue to pay $500 a month for the car that sits home except on weekends? Good questions. Is it worth all that money to be able to pop out to the office supply store because I'm jonesing for some new pencils after dinner? Is it worth having a car for the three or four times a year that we go home to Maryland, especially when we can rent a car or take the train? Is it worth all that money and trouble just because I can fight my way up Route 13 to get the cleaning supplies I like from Target? Getting to the mall easier? Going to Wal-Mart to save $1.50 on frozen pizza? It seems like the only things having bikes in place of a car would make difficult involve buying things. We have too much stuff as it is. I recently had a long talk with a friend of mine about simplifying, and I felt guilty. It's bad enough that I have enough pencils for two life-times and still keep trying new ones; that we have literally over 100 DVDs; that we lost count of our books; that we go through nearly two pounds of "gourmet" coffee a week and spent lots of money at Starbucks daily. But trading away $500 a month on something we don't need that only drives us crazy seems really stupid to me, now. Don't get me wrong. If this were Baltimore or if we didn't live exactly where we do, I might feel very differently. But owning a car costs more than the money. In Walden, Thoreau talks about cost a lot. At one point, he defines cost as the amount of life traded for something. That's why he doesn't want a big house -- not because he has anything against palaces. Just that the cost in living is too high. That's the way I feel about this car. It is no longer a source of freedom, but is instead a burden -- and an expensive one at that. Worrying about and taking care of this car have become far too expensive in life-cost. I know that the flaw is in me when all I can think about on a day where the weather dude is calling for severe weather is whether our car will be Okay. I know it's all in me. But why put myself through that for a car we don't need? It makes no sense. So we realize that we are going to lose money on the sale of this car. No matter what. The value is considerably less than what we owe on it. But we will also save even more by not having to pay for it. So we cannot allow money to dictate our decision, since getting rid of the car to save money would be foolish we we decide that we need to have a car. Essentially, we owe $18,000 and will owe whatever Ford gives us less than that. We have thought about this. A lot. And it feels like the right thing to do, even though I'm sure that my family and friends will tell us that we are completely nuts. Maybe we are. But we are going to the Ford dealer today to see how much they would value this car that came from there, after all, and only has 6,000 miles on it. I'm taking my CDs out of the changer and taking my maps and assorted gear out before we go. Because we are crossing our fingers that we might be free of a car by tonight. Please cross yours with us.

Summer's Gone (Almost).

2005-09-12T11:33:00.000-05:00

I can smell summer's death today. I woke up this morning to cloudy, dewy windows that masked the fog from me. I opened my windows, and the sills smell like sweat. People sweat. I put on my big red robe and went out on the balcony only to smell death in the air. Summer's death smells like old burnt wood. Dead bugs. Rusted metal. Too many people mourn the death of summer. They have to come back from exotic or merely restful vacations or to school or university. Gone are cook-outs, iced-tea, swimming on weekday afternoons, getting away with another shirt button undone and sweet delicious corn on the cob. Late August means melancholy over having to get back to work. Early September means getting up to actually do it. Party's over. So is nap time, lunch time and tea time. Get thee back to work. However, the official start of autumn remains weeks away, while actual fall weather may be even further off in some regions. What remains now are all the bad parts of summer. The heat and humidity. Bug bites. Inconsiderate neighbors using their weekwackers at 7:30 on a Sunday morning. Sweat and the smell of it. Couple all this with catching up on all the responsibilities we've slouched off for so long, and you get the misery of very late summer. I thoroughly enjoy watching summer die, however. I put on my bug spray and sit outside with a pencil and a Moleskine and bask in the hot season's last throws before my favorite season starts. While I can appreciate that a lot of people are sad to see summer go, I really cannot understand it. Summer remains, to me, the meteorological nadir of the entire year. And I love to watch it sink further and further until it gets eaten by autumn, who digests the green leaves and excretes them in myriad hues that can make even the most fervent lover of summer forget all about barbecuing and short skirts.

Bowman's hurt.

2005-09-11T22:54:00.000-05:00

My future cousin-in-law and good buddy Bowman has been injured. And it looks bad. He needs surgery. Please visit his blog to send him well wishes!

Photo Friday: Massive.

2005-09-09T00:21:00.000-05:00

Massive Abe.

For this week's Photo Friday challenge, Massive. A huge head of Abe Lincoln at Morris Library, in a fuzzy hip-shot. I shot this when my friend Chris and I spent an evening taking photos in the upper six floors of Morris, before they were closed on August 1st. This hunka hunka hugo head is in the lobby, however, so I should have taken a better (read, more focused) shot, and with my new camera. But that's just not in the cards at this time of night.

Little sharpy.

2005-09-07T21:31:00.000-05:00

While I am very sad to retire my Powershot A60, I am very happy with the A520. But there's so much pressure to make the first A520 photo a good one. Of something important or at least significant. Nothing comes to mind. I'm an unimportant little dude who sees unimportant little things all day long and who thinks unimportant thoughts like about the meaning of human existence and what we can know. You know, that old chestnut. But behold, something very important. I have this little sharpy in my pocket more or less whenever I am away from my cozy (read: air conditioned) little apartment. It comes in handy. And I can't find this particular model for sale online anywhere, and have only found them in Baltimore. I always but a handful when I can, and I usually give them all away, so this one is special. I just used it to sharpen some nice and expensive German pencils. Yeah. I am just that interesting.

You so crazaay!

2005-09-06T21:38:00.000-05:00

So, I can read your mind again. Because I can. It's a nice talent, believe me. You're thinking: "Didn't this dude get a new digital camera for his birthday last week? Where are the new photos?" Yeah, see, I had to return my camera twice. To Dell, who I love. Seems that they decided that throwing the camera box into a box large enough to hold three such camera boxes would keep it safe during the trip to my apartment. This arrangement didn't work. Each camera arrived with dirt under the screen. And I went to my local OfficeMax to see if theirs had it, too, before I sent the second one back. It didn't. None of them did. So we bought one there. Don't get me wrong. I still love Dell. They did overnight the replacement to me to make it right, and they wanted to pay for that one's return shipping, too. I won't hold this against Dell. But I sure as hell will not buy a camera over the internet to save $50 on it again. Never, even if it's a gift. I pretty much ruined my Christmas shopping this past year by ordering too many things online. My wife's gifts were late because some idiot in the shipping department where I ordered her gifts from sent them to Illinois, while I was in Maryland, even though the invoice said to ship them to Maryland, and they knew I was right and that they made a mistake and hunted the box down at my door in Illinois and got it to me in Maryland in 18 hours, but it was too late, etc. Being able to get cool things you can't find because you live in Southern Illinois is great. But internet shopping gets to really be a pain in the ass. Hell, the mini-tripod to go with my camera arrived looking like it was run over by a truck -- literally, the metal was ground. So I had to send that back, too. Damn it. I know, poor me. I have a nice new camera with a super-fast and pretty large memory card. I should be thankful, not bitching. I am. Getting there. So where are the photos with the new camera? I'll get around to it, promise. I've just been too afraid to touch my pristine camera lately. I'll get over it. And no more photos of my nasty toes, honest. And none of my butt, either.

The Constant Gardener.

2005-09-05T09:58:00.000-05:00

Well, I know what you're thinking: "Johnny rarely blogs on weekends, and it's a holiday in the US. That lazy Johnny is surely not doing anything on Labor Day!" So, yeah, you'd be correct. I'm going to the market, and then I'm going to read and lounge all day. And night. So you'd get a cookie. At this point, Johnny gets defensive and says, "What the hell are you doing reading blogs on Labor Day?" You get angry with Johnny for his gumption. But you have no answer, other than that you are bored. "Cookouts get old, and I don't want to drink today, since I have to go back to my boring job tomorrow. I'm bored, so I'm reading blogs, especially the most kick-ass of blogs. I just finished reading that one about pencils," you say to Johnny. Johnny says that he feels for you. Take away work, and most of us don't know what do to with ourselves. Well, I should say yourselves, since Johnny is a master of relaxing. So you're bored. Since you're bored, go see The Constant Gardener, not that you have to be bored to enjoy it or that you will be bored watching it. I didn't read the book (never heard of it). I didn't know anything about the movie, other than that it is set in Africa and stars a very sad Ralph Fiennes. That's more than you need to know. I'm not going to tell you what it's about or hint at the ending. That would ruin it. But trust your lovable blogging philosopher, and go check out the film. And tell me what you think of it.

Photo Friday: Order.

2005-09-02T00:28:00.000-05:00

Line of Rocks. For Photo Friday: Order. Some rocks that my friend Carrie lined up when she and Brian came to visit in March. These are from Giant City State Park.

Blog Day.

2005-08-31T22:15:00.000-05:00

So, I think that Blog Day is a really good idea and that good will come of it. But I am not really sure that I know about a lot of blogs that everyone who reads this does not also know about. But you know, I's gots a few, so I won't be stingy. Here are my five, in no particular order, just in the order they came off of my FireFox bookmarks when I looked for them. Timberlines -- Pencil royalty. This is a very new but also very well-done blog by a nice guy whose living is making pencils. What more could you ask for? He's also gotten himself some nice Moleskines recently and a hidden talent for drawing, so I know we're in for some treats. Front Porch Living -- Deliciously impish blog by Neighbor Girl who is from my hometown, of all places. If you don't get the title at first, watch a nice John Waters movie and notice how everyone in Baltimore likes to sit on their porch or steps or stoop. The newest post is called "At least I'm rockin the cleavage," so you know you're in for some good reading. That Shadow My Likeness -- Alcarwen kicks ass because she is also from Maryland and because we went to the same college that I did, though I can't say that we ever met. Her boyfriend does look familiar, though. Good graduate student blogs are really hard to come by, and this one definitely qualifies. Slimbolala -- Great stories and drawings, and a nice guy who, luckily, got out of New Orleans before Katrina hit. Been a steady reader for a full month or two now. Criminently, Nutsey! -- The brain behind Notes to Netflix. And a pencil fan, to boot.

Aliens and lazers.

2005-08-29T19:32:00.000-05:00

So a certain forum on which I can occasionally be found has a section about UFOs and aliens, with the question, "Do you believe?" Because I am being birthday-lazy a day early this year, I am just posting a rant from there here. I never claimed to not be lazy, so don't look so shocked! (Sorry you have to be subjected to this again, Bowman.) Really, though, I'm just boring and have nothing to say to the masses tonight. Woogity boogity boo.

There most certainly is intelligent life out there from other planets. When I go to the store in Hick-land (where I live), the rednecks tell me, "You don't look like you're from around here, bo-ah." I say, "I'm not. I'm from the East Coast." They say, "I can tell." Then I tell the rednecks that I am not from the East Coast but am actually a spy from another planet, "Uh, Jasper, I'm from another galaxy, brother," I say, but they always think I'm joking. "That queer-looking sissy bo-ah from the ocean state says he ain't from around here, and he means it, by golly! Bubba, get me ma gun." Then the rednecks make fun of me for my educational pursuits, for the fact that I voted for Kerry but still love my country and because they think I look gay and and think that gay people are either evil or funny. So I get upset and send a message to my home planet to come and get me. Because I'm not finished with my work here (that being to study Western philosophy in an attempt to get to the true nature of what it means to be human so that we can figure you all out before we take over the universe and everything in it), the elders of my planet refuse to come and get me. This is very annoying, since the Earth body they picked for me is too large and hairy, and it's hot in the Bible Belt. So I beam the elders back an official letter of complaint. In order to shut me up, they do allow me seven lazer obliterations after this. So I hunt down the redneck who made fun of where I come from and displayed an apalling homophobia, and I use one beam on his fat ass. One on the rest of him. Three on his huge pickup trick. One on his tractor and another on his mailbox, just because that's funny. This makes me feel better, so I can stay here and complete my mission. I'm patriotic. I work hard for my planet and our cause of interplanetary conquest. Okay, intergalactic conquest. I do get paid a lot of alien bucks for my work from the elders, but I can't use it on this planet. You humans and your lowly plastic and paper money. Damn you. So yeah, I believe in aliens. I ain't from around here.

Thanks to "Sgt. Slaughter" for letting me share his story with you. But, between you and I, I think he might really be from another planet. Seriously. That dude is scary.

Cameras, boredom and boogies.

2005-08-27T22:42:00.000-05:00

So I just haven't really felt like taking a lot of photos lately. The kiddies and little dudes are all back on campus now, and the people watching is the best it's been since April. I've spent a lot of time in Starbucks this week enthralled. Still, no photos. I don't think that my camera has set it's lense on campus since July. But, you see, my old Canon Powershot A60 is just not that fun to play with anymore. A few times this month, high humidity has made the screen flicker, and the photos I took at the department picnic last weekend look terrible, since the temperature without the humidity was above the "operationg temperature" for the camera. I know, it's my fault for whipping it out in a sauna like that, but it's never been bothered by it before. I can't count how many times I dropped that camera or got parts of it wet and got who-knows-what under the screen. Hell, I almost dropped it into the Mississippi River once, and still got it a little wet from the splashing Mahtay Mississipp'. I can't really complain about the durability. When my family and wife asked what I wanted for my birthday next week, I said that I would like everyone to chip in and get me a new camera. Because either I rock or they rock (come on, it's me who does it like that), that's just what is happened. So my new camera is coming Monday from Dell. The faster memory card is right behind it. And the mini tripod and case later in the week. At first I automatically decided on the Powershot A95, since it's an evolved A60. But I think that moveable screen is going to drive me nuts. Plus, that thing is heavy and is a year old. I changed my mind when I held the Powershot A520 at the store around here. It's smaller and lighter and newer and comes with better software. It does not have as many megapixels as the former (four, rather than five), but I have literally never ever ever printed a photo of mine. The bigger the file, the worse off I'll be. Truly, the A510 (3.2 MP) would be fine, but the sale at Dell made the price difference only twelve dollars, and I like the color of the 520 better. I know, that brings up why I don't just keep my current camera. Come on, everyone likes new toys. And I am going to start being a birthday brat tonight, and continue until after Tuesday. I really hate secure digital cards, but I found the SanDisk Ultra II that promises to be fast. Canon is fazing out Compact Flash, the memory type I like (hey, they are big, but they are fast). Time for me to get with it. And all that. So there you go. That's why I haven't been making other people's lives more awesome lately with photos and goodies and etc. But that will change soon. I'm always strangely sober on my birthday.

Photo Friday: Chaos.

2005-08-26T00:15:00.000-05:00

Punks In Car Window. For this week's Photo Friday challenge, Chaos.

This is a photo of my two brothers that I took in the reflection of Tom's Focus while I was in Baltimore for the holidays in December 2003. In fact, I think that's Christmas. Why chaos? Come on. They look like punks, especially with that spray paint behind them on the wall. They look like they are getting ready to steal my new camera that I had just gotten that day. Or my kidneys. Even in their p.j.'s. Especially in their p.j.'s.

Let them eat evil!

2005-08-25T09:26:00.000-05:00

Nevermind how I know. Nevermind where I found The Oprah Magazine that has it. Nevermind etc. Let's just say that I little bird told me that Jodie Foster contributed a list of six books she wants everyone to know she likes to the "Bookshelf" section of Oprah's ad-fest of a publication. The first on the list is The Flowers of Evil, by my personal favorite French poet of the macabre, Charles Baudelaire. You know, I'm just gonna quote this, because I won't get it right otherwise:

"I went to the French lycee in Los Angelos, and, like every high school student in the French school system, I studied the work of 19th-century poet Charles Baudelaire. At 15, the height of brooding and dark self-discovery, I recited his poems by heart and thrilled to the exotic language, filled with taboo ideas and strange metaphors involving death and decay. It's a must-read for any depressed adolescent."

Wow. Personally, I hit the adolescent nadir all through the ages of 15-17 and only came to be a little (very) more sunny when I got to college. I did my duty and read my Poe constantly when I was a teenager. I memorized several of his poems, and I can still recite "The Raven" if I've had enough to drink. A friend of mine tells me that she knows someone who had her life saved by Poe, by realizing that "there was at least one more fucked up person out there" and that her dark thoughts did not necessarily kick her out of the herd of the rest of us. But I still don't think I'd actually recommend this stuff to depressed teenagers. Look what reading too much Poe did to me: I'm a philosophy student. The sad little dudes should read their Whitman. Uncle Walt can save the day. Or if they really want to read the French, they should read Rimbaud between math and lunch. Totally. Though for you grown-ups, you should read Baudelaire's Paris Spleen. That's yummy stuff.

Sorry I'm so lazy.

2005-08-23T12:40:00.000-05:00

The start of the semester is always busy, whether in a good way or in a bad way. For me, it's busy in a good way so far this year, that is, since yesterday. A lighter schedule and a dissertation prospectus to work on, getting more exercise and getting to read more of what relates to my dissertation topic. Life is good this week. No more exams for a while and the promise of cooler weather in about a month. It is strange to see the new students coming to the university this week, though, especially yesterday. It's been eight years, but I remember the feeling of getting to a new and bigger school and of not knowing anyone but assuming that everyone else knows one another already through some esoteric meetings that we shy kids didn't know anything about. I think that I can pick out the little dudes who don't know anyone yet out of a crowd of people who are all walking alone to class, just by the look of sadness and fear on their faces. Little do the little dudes know that they will have more friends than they can ever keep in touch with by the end of the first month of classes. They'll come out of their shells, fall in and out of love, make friends in the faculty and not want to leave when graduate looms yonder. Poor little dudes. I wish I could tell them, but I don't think that they would believe me. That, and I am probably more shy than they are.