Yes we've got no money!

Here's a good memory for you all!

Once, right after I got married and we added Maggie to my account, making a joint checking account, I said to myself, "well, no sense keeping these old checks with only my name on them around. I might as well throw them out!"

Little did I know that we had a dumpster-diving vitamin fiend living in our neighborhood. On second thought, looking at where we lived at the time (in The Hyatt apartment building on the corner of 47th Ave NE and NE 15th St in Seattle) the existence of such a person shouldn't have surprised me. Also, little did I know that I was such an unstoppable moron that I would throw away perfectly good checks without tearing them up. Stupid, Stupid, Stupid.

Anyway, cut to a couple weeks later (financial aid day!! WOOHOO!!!!!) when we go to the bank to deposit some money. "Hmm.." I think while I look at the balance, "I don't always keep exact track of how much money we have, but it should be.....well, quite a bit more than this.... So we get home and call the bank and they tell us of all these mystery checks for random amounts that have check numbers not listed in our checkbook register. "Oh crap!" I thought, "My second-worst fear has come true! Someone stole our checks and is out there pretending to be me!" (For your information, my worst fear is falling out of bed into some kind of weird space-time vortex or bottomless pit or something)

So we went to the bank and filled out all kinds of paperwork to get the fraud fixed. The woman who helped us at the Roosevelt Ave Washington Mutual was very helpful (thanks, whoever you were!) The only problem was that we had to wait, like, 20 business days to get our money back. So, we basically ate no food and bought no stuff for awhile. We tried to heat our apartment by lighting copious amounts of candles. It was pretty cool, really. Then, one day, we went back to the Yak to visit family and we totally scored a whole bunch of food from our parents because they felt really bad for us. HAH! Suckers, little did they know, but we actually got all our money back two days before we raided their kitchens! Oh man, they totally got OWNED! (To all of you who think that using OWNED or one of the typoed variations of it is really cool, let me tell you this: There is a big difference between cool and stupid that is immediately obvious to everyone. Except for you, apparently.)

Rawlly Practisum Firedog

I'm sorry, but some people just have the stupidest tatoos. Has something like this that looks like some kind of crappy new age painting that you might find on a cheap pack of tarot cards ever been cool? That'll look pretty sweet in a few years, I bet.

This reminds me of a friend of mine. I really love her, she's a great mother and all, but she once got a tattoo of, are you ready for this, a tiger......holding a rose.....in its mouth. That had to be the tackiest thing ever. To be fair, she did have it covered up by another tattoo. A tattoo of a pair of light blue angel wings. That's like selling your 1985 Chevy Cavalier and buying .......a 1986 Cavalier. Maybe it was okay in 1987, but 2004? Nope. Malissa, if you're reading this, I'm just kidding around.

If I ever get a tattoo, which I won't but I'm just saying, it will be on my stomach. It will say "THUG LYFE" in fancy gothic-style letters. That would look so awesome when I'm 75 and hanging out on the beach. Yeah, Thug life baby.

More Freaking Poetry Thursday: The Bukowski Edition

Normally, I don't really like Bukowski poems, but this one made me laugh.

I Met A Genius

by Charles Bukowski


I met a genius on the train
today
about 6 years old,
he sat beside me
and as the train
ran down along the coast
we came to the ocean
and then he looked at me
and said,
it's not pretty.

it was the first time I'd
realized
that.

Still makes me feel a little homesick

My mom and dad went to the coast this past weekend, just for the heck of it. On the way, they took these two pictures that I thought were quite lovely. I like it out here in DC, but part of me still feels homesick for the land of my lost youth.

Ahhh, that's the life...

I decided that if I could be any rock star in history, I would be Tom Petty.

First of all, the brickwife thinks he's sexy (don't ask me why, I mean, have you ever seen a picture of the guy??) so I'd have that going for me.

Second, he's a musical genius, but not in the way you usually think of that term. I would wager that half of his songs are in the key of G. The other half are probably in Am. But that's the beauty of this guy! His songs are so simple, yet so good! Almost every one is verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, verse, chorus. And yet somehow, they're all different! It rules. Also, he doesn't mess around with weird instrumentation either. One or two guitars, a bass, drums, maybe some keys of some kind, and that's it. That's the great thing about the "standard" rock band set up, it's so simple, and yet so variable.

Third, he's just famous enough. He doesn't have any rabid fans (think parrotheads or U2 fans) that are total lunatics, but he's definitely got a lot of fans. He still plays big arenas, but the tickets are relatively cheap.

Fourth, he got to be in the Traveling Wilburys. How cool would that have been to work and record alongside Dylan, Orbison, George Harrison and Jeff Lynne? Pretty damn sweet.

Plus, I bet he has a lot of money.

Which I don't care about.


Yes I do.

Poetry Freaking Thursday

The Road That Runs Beside The River

by Thomas Lux

follows the river as it bends
along the valley floor,
going the way it must.
Where water goes, so goes the road,
if there's room (not in a ravine,
gorge), the river
on your right or left. Left is better: when you're driving,
it's over your elbow across
the road.
You see the current, which is
what the river is: the river
in the river, a thing sliding fast forward
inside a thing sliding not so fast forward.
Driving with, beside, the river's flow is good.
Another pleasure, driving against it: it's the same river
someone else will see
somewhere else downstream -- same play,
new theater, different set.
Wide, shallow, fairly fast,
roundy-stone streambed, rocky-land river,
it turns there or here -- the ground
telling it so -- draining dull
mountains to the north,
migrating, feeding a few hard-fleshed fish
who live in it. One small sandbar splits
the river, then it loops left,
the road right, and the river's silver
slips under the trees,
into the forest,
and over the sharp perpendicular
edge of the earth.

Oh yeah? Well Emerge from this!

First off, let me say that I really love my church. And please don't be offended.

I think the "Emergent" movement is dumb. For all it's talk about a new "conversation" that is honest and doesn't have the baggage of a built-vocabulary like the "institutional Church," I don't think it's that much different. There absolutely is a set of buzzwords that you need to know, and the buzzwords, at least to me, appear to be synonyms of the horrible, soul-crushing buzzwords that "Fundamentalists(!)" use. But not the same words mind you. The emergent church can't use the same semantics as those they are emerging from, right?

I guess the most frustrating thing about it for me is that, while I agree with many of the things the movement says, I don't want to be a part of no movement. I want to be a part of a church that does things however it wants! I don't care if other emergent churches do things a certain way and go to certain conferences and read certain books. Once we all start doing that, we're nothing but another denomination that'll soon have mega-churches of its own. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It just seems that so often we are blind to our own ambitions, our own destiny. Without thinking independently, we'll all become that which we rail against. It's happened time and time again, both within the church and without. So 20 years down the road, don't say I didn't warn the movement.

And here's another thing. Can we drop the criticism of other churches already? Yes, I already know that we do things differently. Please stop reminding me of how stupid other churches are for the way they do things. Stop defining yourselves by what you are not, and start worrying about what you are! I'm not saying we shouldn't look around us, but there is a HUGE difference between saying, "eh, that's not really for me, but if it works for you..." which is what I thought the emergent thingy was all about and saying "what you are doing is different from my church in the following ways and this is why it is stupid and wrong and if I had enough guts I'd say you were going to hell, but that's what a IFB would say so I can't say it but I really think it."

Maybe I'm just not looking in the right places (i.e. Ginkworld and The Ooze). As an example of what I mean, read this article by Frank
Viola (imagine my disappointment when I realized he was not the same Frank Viola that led the Minnesota Twins to the World Series in 1987.) He's trying to be evenhanded, but the whole article is predicated on the fact that we all know how stupid this other person's church is. Grrrrrrr!

Maybe y'all can educate me on how "emergent" is any different in essentials from any other denomination. I already know we do things differently, but are we any less elitist? Do you have a good book I can read? If you tell me to read any more articles or anything else by John O'Keefe, I'll just pretend like I didn't hear you.

List Tuesday

Top 8 Things I Worry About

1. Levi


2. Money


3. Whether or not I worry too much


4. Levi


5. Maggie


6. Being a nice person


7. Real estate (or really any) Bubbles


8. Getting buried alive in radioactive dirt by a cult of Nancy Pelosi-worshipping Argentine midgets in Insane Clown Posse style facepaint.

Note: Number 8 narrowly edged out "falling onto the third rail and frying like a like a garage-fire causing turkey."

Dear Prudence

So, yesterday at church (check out the new website!) we talked a lot about worry, trust and life. Since we're looking at the sermon on the mount, we focused on the lillies of the field and the sparrows and what not. During our post-"sermon" discussion much was made of the balance between no worries and meeting our responsibilities. Or how worry could sometimes be a good thing. But I don't think I agree, and that scares me. Let me explain.

No matter how hard we try, I don't think we can divorce ourselves fully from our cultural frame of reference. We always have and always will (at least to some degree probably) desire what can only be called "success." I know I do. That's why I worked my tail off for four years in college to finish at the top of my class with a lucrative degree. Success. Bred through a lot of worry. If you don't believe me, ask Maggie who was there to see it all, including the time I kicked my backpack across the apartment when I only scored 4 percent above average on a Dif. Eq. test. But what was the point of it all? To have a good job? Sure, but what's the point of that? In God's eyes, am I any more of a success because I used fear and worry to differentiate myself from those that "sit at home all day playing the guitar?" I don't really think so. Aren't we explicitly told not to fear the wrath of men? Actually, that's not a rhetorical question. I don't know the bible nearly as well as I think I should (crap! worrying again!) so if someone could enlighten me as to whether or not that idea appears anywhere, I would greatly appreciate it. So, what does it boil down to? I'll distill it to one question that I have: Is there ever a valid issue about which to worry? I'll posit that the answer is no, but that won't stop me from doing it.

Second, I want to look at the idea of prudence. We talked a lot about not worrying, but still meeting our obligations. What obligations? Do we have any that outweigh God? Who cares about the ant and the grasshopper? I can't find any mention in the sermon on the mount that asks for prudence when it comes to money especially. Jesus didn't say to that one guy "Go sell all your possessions, set up a trust fund for your kids and make sure they have some insurance and then follow me." He just said "sell everything and follow me." It seems pretty ridiculous to think that Jesus really meant that, I mean, we can't just abandon everything, can we? Should we? Shoot, I don't know, but I do think it is a typically American thing to think that we can't. That we need to provide prudently for the future, as though by preparing we can somehow stave it off. I guess maybe it all boils down to attitude. If you can prepare monetarily for the future without letting money rule your life, do it. Also, my ignorance may be rearing its ugly head again, so if Jesus ever does say something in the gospels that advises prudence and planning for the future, someone please bring it to my attention. Because I am scared out of my wits that it's not in there and I don't think I can sell everything and follow him....

Yakimemories

Well, you know how the old saying goes; vicious mockery is the sincerest form of flattery. And if that's true, then my home town of Yakima, Washington is about to get sincerely flattered.

I was born at Memorial Hospital on Tieton Drive the morning of November 23rd, 1979. It was a Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. And while I would like to say that I was born into a region of fantastic culture and amazing opportunity, I can't. Well, that's not really fair. There are some good things about Yakima, but it's way more fun to ignore them and pretend the whole place sucks. It will always be uber-cool (ha! I used the word uber, which hasn't been a cool thing to do since 2003, and paired it with the word cool! Oh my, how my self-consciousness and self-deprecating desire to be cool is not at all obvious. Umm, now I don't know how to end this parenthetical comment....sooooo.....ummmmmm.....) to be from a small town, live in the big-city and pretend that everything there was retarded and everyone from your hometown is some kind of liberal-hating, truck-driving, homophobic, fundamentalist lunatic. But all y'all know that a part of you kind of, maybe just a little bit, wants to go back there someday. Maybe your family is still there. Maybe you still have friends there. Maybe there's a certain time of year where something in you just longs for the air of your hometown. Whoa. This is getting sappy. Let's just cut to the mockery.

Let's start with the low hanging fruit: There is a sign on the freeway as you approach "downtown" that reads, "Yakima, the Palm Springs of Washington." Based on the fact that if you Google that phrase, in quotation marks mind you, you get 732 results, I am definitely not the first to point out that the sign is kind of stupid. Let's just say that Yakima has an average high temperature of below 60 F and an average low of below freezing for 5 months out of the year. Palm Springs' average high never dips below 70.

In other news, Yakima recently landed an Applebee's! This was front-page news in the Yak. That should give you an idea of what it's like there.

When I was a kid, you had to drive to the Tri-cities (Richland, Pasco and Kennewick) to do any good shopping. And by good I just mean "not sucky."

And don't even get me started on all the fruit that they grow around there. Oh, wait. The apples are actually really good. You can even buy them back here on the east coast, though believe me, they are way better when they haven't been shipped all the way across the country.

In high school, the best thing to do on the weekends is drive around. That's it. Just drive around. You can usually find groups of hooligan kids all up and down Nob Hill Ave at car washes, empty lots, and even the Burger King parking lot. At least that's the way it was circa 1997.

Yakima has the highest ratio of very poor to very rich in the whole state of Washington. Way to go fruit growers. Keep those migrant Mexican workers in poverty with your low wages, and if they speak up, call INS and ship their asses back to Mexico (Note: this actually happens. Growers actually do call INS on their own illegal employees).

I still don't understand how a town as small as Yakima has a gang problem. What turf is there to fight over? Yo, vato, we totally claim all land South of the 5th Ave Safeway and North of Front Street between Yakima Ave and Lincoln as property of the Surrenos!

Stupid Yakima Brewing Company went out of business. The company that opened the first post-prohibition brew pub in the country ran itself into the ground. Probably because they're from Yakima and everyone that didn't leave after high school at least for college is an idiot.

The white people that live there (about half the population) thinks that the North and East sides of town are "the ghetto." You want the ghetto? I can show you the ghetto. Go drive down M-53 through Detroit. Go hang out in Anacostia. That, my friends, is the ghetto.

Well, there's so much more to complain about, and I don't have the time, so I'll stop here. But as a final piece of advice, if you ever find yourself in Yakima, make sure you check out as many random taco busses as you can. You may not always know what the meat is, but those are some good burritos.

Randizzle Piznicture Frizzledizzle

Dude, is that kid playing in a field of pot plants??? Somebody call the Feds! Oh, wait. No. I just found out that this picture sprang from the loins of Russia, so who cares.

Poetry Thursday

Boadicea

by Alfred Lord Tennyson

While about the shore of Mona those Neronian legionaries
Burnt and broke the grove and altar of the Druid and Druidess,
Far in the East Boadicea, standing loftily charioted,
Mad and maddening all that heard her in her fierce volubility,
Girt by half the tribes of Britain, near the colony Camulodune,
Yell'd and shriek'd between her daughters o'er a wild confederacy.

`They that scorn the tribes and call us Britain's barbarous populaces,
Did they hear me, would they listen, did they pity me supplicating?
Shall I heed them in their anguish? shall I brook to be supplicated?
Hear Icenian, Catieuchlanian, hear Coritanian, Trinobant!
Must their ever-ravening eagle's beak and talon annihilate us?
Tear the noble hear of Britain, leave it gorily quivering?
Bark an answer, Britain's raven! bark and blacken innumerable,
Blacken round the Roman carrion, make the carcase a skeleton,
Kite and kestrel, wolf and wolfkin, from the wilderness, wallow in it,
Till the face of Bel be brighten'd, Taranis be propitiated.
Lo their colony half-defended! lo their colony, Camulodune!
There the horde of Roman robbers mock at a barbarous adversary.
There the hive of Roman liars worship a gluttonous emperor-idiot.
Such is Rome, and this her deity: hear it, Spirit of Cassivelaun!

`Hear it, Gods! the Gods have heard it, O Icenian, O Coritanian!
Doubt not ye the Gods have answer'd, Catieuchlanian, Trinobant.
These have told us all their anger in miraculous utterances,
Thunder, a flying fire in heaven, a murmur heard aerially,
Phantom sound of blows descending, moan of an enemy massacred,
Phantom wail of women and children, multitudinous agonies.
Bloodily flow'd the Tamesa rolling phantom bodies of horses and men;
Then a phantom colony smoulder'd on the refluent estuary;
Lastly yonder yester-even, suddenly giddily tottering--
There was one who watch'd and told me--down their statue of Victory fell.
Lo their precious Roman bantling, lo the colony Camulodune,
Shall we teach it a Roman lesson? shall we care to be pitiful?
Shall we deal with it as an infant? shall we dandle it amorously?

`Hear Icenian, Catieuchlanian, hear Coritanian, Trinobant!
While I roved about the forest, long and bitterly meditating,
There I heard them in the darkness, at the mystical ceremony,
Loosely robed in flying raiment, sang the terrible prophetesses.
"Fear not, isle of blowing woodland, isle of silvery parapets!
Tho' the Roman eagle shadow thee, tho' the gathering enemy narrow thee,
Thou shalt wax and he shall dwindle, thou shalt be the mighty one yet!
Thine the liberty, thine the glory, thine the deeds to be celebrated,
Thine the myriad-rolling ocean, light and shadow illimitable,
Thine the lands of lasting summer, many-blossoming Paradises,
Thine the North and thine the South and thine the battle-thunder of God."
So they chanted: how shall Britain light upon auguries happier?
So they chanted in the darkness, and there cometh a victory now.

Hear Icenian, Catieuchlanian, hear Coritanian, Trinobant!
Me the wife of rich Prasutagus, me the lover of liberty,
Me they seized and me they tortured, me they lash'd and humiliated,
Me the sport of ribald Veterans, mine of ruffian violators!
See they sit, they hide their faces, miserable in ignominy!
Wherefore in me burns an anger, not by blood to be satiated.
Lo the palaces and the temple, lo the colony Camulodune!
There they ruled, and thence they wasted all the flourishing territory,
Thither at their will they haled the yellow-ringleted Britoness--
Bloodily, bloodily fall the battle-axe, unexhausted, inexorable.
Shout Icenian, Catieuchlanian, shout Coritanian, Trinobant,
Till the victim hear within and yearn to hurry precipitously
Like the leaf in a roaring whirlwind, like the smoke in a hurricane whirl'd.
Lo the colony, there they rioted in the city of Cunobeline!
There they drank in cups of emerald, there at tables of ebony lay,
Rolling on their purple couches in their tender effeminacy.
There they dwelt and there they rioted; there--there--they dwell no more.
Burst the gates, and burn the palaces, break the works of the statuary,
Take the hoary Roman head and shatter it, hold it abominable,
Cut the Roman boy to pieces in his lust and voluptuousness,
Lash the maiden into swooning, me they lash'd and humiliated,
Chop the breasts from off the mother, dash the brains of the little one out,
Up my Britons, on my chariot, on my chargers, trample them under us.'

So the Queen Boadicea, standing loftily charioted,
Brandishing in her hand a dart and rolling glances lioness-like,
Yell'd and shriek'd between her daughters in her fierce volubility.
Till her people all around the royal chariot agitated,
Madly dash'd the darts together, writhing barbarous lineaments,
Made the noise of frosty woodlands, when they shiver in January,
Roar'd as when the rolling breakers boom and blanch on the precipices,
Yell'd as when the winds of winter tear an oak on a promontory.
So the silent colony hearing her tumultuous adversaries
Clash the darts and on the buckler beat with rapid unanimous hand,
Thought on all her evil tyrannies, all her pitiless avarice,
Till she felt the heart within her fall and flutter tremulously,
Then her pulses at the clamoring of her enemy fainted away.
Out of evil evil flourishes, out of tyranny tyranny buds.
Ran the land with Roman slaughter, multitudinous agonies.
Perish'd many a maid and matron, many a valorous legionary.
Fell the colony, city, and citadel, London, Verulam, Camulodune

A Ton of Retrospective

Today, I want to take a little time (or a lot, I’m not sure yet) to reflect on the long and illustrious history of this beacon of internet integrity: A Ton of Bricks, the Blog.

It all started back in June. I was bored, and typing things at work makes me sound busy. I’ve got this big old keyboard that makes loud clackety-clack noises when I type, so everyone thinks, “oh, wow, he must be very busy, he is typing so much.” So I thought to myself, “hey, why don’t you write some crazy garbage and then,” and this is the clincher “put it on the internet so everybody can see it?” And then I answered myself, I said, “Self, that might be stupid, but let’s do it anyway!” And thus was born A Ton Of Bricks. Actually, thus was supposed to be born Anthropomorph (a way cooler name, don’t you think?) but that was already taken so I had to think of something else. And what sucks even more is that the Anthropomorph blog really sucks. I mean it hasn't been updated in like, ten months!

Within 4 days, my readership grew by over 500%. I mean, it went from me to me, my wife and three (of four!) friends. One of my friends, Mike, already had his own blog so I could even put a link on my blog to his. It was sweet. It was even sweeter when he put a link on his blog to mine. And from there, things just blew up! My wife started one, and so did everybody else! Literally. I think the ratio of blogs to people in the world is now approximately 15:1. But a lot of those blogs are just trying to sell me stuff like Viagara and real estate and those weird protein shake things. What was I talking about? Oh yeah, things blowing up. Once, I saw a video of a chemical plant blowing up.

Anyway, before we get to my greatest hits and moments from the past four months (you knew that was coming, didn’t you?) let’s do some scientific analysis of my blog’s history. If you are reading this and thinking “he has too much time on his hands,” you are wrong. My watch died three days ago, so I have no time on my hands and it is driving me crazy. Back to the topic at hand (why am I talking about hands so much???), the blog. The following chart shows both the trend in cumulative words written and the weekly rolling average of words per day, that is, the average number of words written per day for the last week.


As you can see, prior to this post, I have written almost 40,000 words. Okay, a lot of those words come from poems I didn’t write, but I still had to take the time to copy and paste them. The bottom line is that that is a lot of words. And they are all completely useless. I could have used those 40,000 words to write the first 75 pages of a novel or something. Instead, I just polluted the internet with worthless tripe. Unless you’re a publishing agent and you like what you see, then give me a book deal! I will turn you down flat, but then I can tell people at parties that I was offered a book deal by a big company but I turned them down because I am not a sell-out. Unless the money is big enough. Then I’ll be a sell out. Also, please notice that there are no long term trends in the rolling average of words per day. I guess that means I’m pretty consistent. Although there is a trend that I never write anything on the weekends. That’s because I’m not at work. My overall average words per day is 364.7. On days that I make a post, the median is 444 words. The following chart shows how that is broken up among the days of the week.


I guess it should come as no surprise that I apparently get more and more bored as the week goes on, that’s why Friday has the most words. And I know that I just claimed not to write on the weekends, but those average numbers for Saturday and Sunday are just vestigial results from my first few weeks when I had so much to say that I just had to write on weekends.

Finally, to give you a good idea of how the words are distributed in terms of words per day, the following chart shows the frequency distribution of words per day over a range of values.


You can see that this distribution is definitely not normal. It is very highly skewed to the left, and would probably be best modeled as a Poisson distribution, since it is indeed discrete. A Poisson distribution is defined as a discrete probability distribution that expresses the probability of a number of events occurring in a fixed time if these events occur with a known average rate, and are independent of the time since the last event. If you don’t believe me, check this out smarty-pants. I’d estimate the lambda for this distribution, but I don’t really feel like it.

So, after hitting you over the head with some pointless and inconclusive statistical analysis, let’s get to what we all came for in the first place. Remineshen….Reminescences….Reminiscences. There, that’s got it right!

So, follow me as we step back in time and relive some of A Ton of Bricks greatest moments.

This beauty is from July…. “And I was like, "weird, man." Could it just be a coincidence that, within ten minutes, we had seen both the original song and the spoof version ON THE VERY SAME TV???? No way. I figure that the universe was about to "do me in" or something, but at the last minute, totally wussed out because it had grown accustomed to my face. Lucky for me I've got such a lovable face.” That was such an awesome post!

And do you remember this one from July 15th? “And to think that this post started off in my head as a social commentary on why yuppies and hipsters are so stupid. Maybe next time I guess.” I don’t even care what the rest of the post was about, yuppies and hipsters ARE stupid! Ha ha ha!

I still stand by this quotation! “Even if I became the most famous blogger in the whole wide world, I would still never write a book related to it because, come on, that's just stupid.”

And who can forget my first List Tuesday post? You know, the one that included this nugget of wisdom? “The black squirrels that can be seen in various places in the district, especially in the northwest, are not indigenous to the area. Although they are the same species as the common grey squirrel, the black variety were originally brought down from Canada around the turn of the 20th century. Much like the all-too-common Labatt's Blue.”

Let’s not forget this one! “So I take the exit, turn right towards where I can see the truck sitting at a stop sign waiting for me. The following conversation ensues.

Me: Is something the matter?

Him: Can I interest you in a blowjob?

Me:..............Ummmmmmmm..................What??????

Him: Can I interest you in a blowjob?

Me: No! (while simultaneously flooring it)”

And then, remember when I introduced Random Picture Friday? That was so cool. “I stumbled across this little beauty: Livejournal pictures (I'd put the link directly to the post, but I don't know how. It's about 2/3 of the way down the April archive). This post contains the link to a great little page that shows you the last 40 pictures uploaded on Livejournal by anyone, anywhere. It is......fun, to say the least. Here ya go. Enjoy. Please note that some people post some really weird (alright, sick) stuff to their Livejournals, so watch out.”

And I know I still don’t like the misuse of irony! “Rain on your wedding day.
Not ironic, it just sucks.

10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife.
Not ironic. What would be ironic is if you had 10,000 knives yesterday, but you needed a spoon.

A free ride, when you already paid.
How could it be a free ride if you paid? Not only is this not ironic, it doesn't even make sense!

A death row pardon, two minutes too late.
Okay, that is ironic.”

And now, for my penultimate hit, that one time when I wrote about that one thing, remember? “Anyway, in reading this biography I have been formulating a horribly hackneyed and clichéd theory that dying or killing yourself will make you more famouser than other people. The following are a few unresearched and undocumented and sketchy case studies to "prove" my point.” Yeah, that was great.

And now, for the my greatest hit, I know you all remember this one….. “It is very highly skewed to the left, and would probably be best modeled as a Poisson distribution, since it is indeed discrete. A Poisson distribution is defined as a discrete probability distribution that expresses the probability of a number of events occurring in a fixed time if these events occur with a known average rate, and are independent of the time since the last event. If you don’t believe me, check this out smarty-pants. I’d estimate the lambda for this distribution, but I don’t really feel like it.” That one is so good I almost peed my pants.

Actually, there's probably some more good ones, I just got tired of looking. If you have any favorites that didn't show up on this list, let me know so I can read them and then do a total retread of them and pretend it's a new post!

Well, peace out, y’all.


There are 10 links in this post.

List Tuesday

Places I want to go

1. Paris


2. The Grand Canyon


3. Disneyland (Again)


4. London


5. Madrid


6. Disneyland Paris


7. Alaska


8. There


9. India


10. Turkey


11. Crazy (Getting close I think!)


12. Disneyland China


13. Home


14. To the Restaurant at the End of the Universe



15. Seattle


16. Disneyland Japan


17. Round and round in circles!

More Boring Memories from 1986!

So, like I promised, I'll try to recount some more cool things that happened on a cross-country trip with my family during the summer of 1986. So, last time I left off after I attended my very first pro-baseball game. After that, not much happened in Minnesota. It was the trip back that was interesting.

We now had my parents, us four kids, and my grandmother all riding in our Olds. I bet is was pretty cramped, but I don't remember. I was a pretty scrawny kid, so I'm sure I had no problems. Anyway, while crossing South Dakota (I still can't believe that the US has a need for two Dakotas), we stopped at Wall Drug. Okay, who's been there? Anybody? Anybody? They have Jackalopes at their online store! Hmm, well, I don't think I'd recommend it anyway. Basically, it's a tourist trap that sells random crap. It's honestly pretty stupid. What I remember most is that, while I was browsing the "Random Crap" aisle with my mother, she found a "pneumatically" operated hopping frog. It had a bubble you could squeeze to send air to its balloon-like legs, thus making it appear to hop. My mom seemed to think it was pretty cool, but deep down, I thought is was stupid. I said, "no, I don't think I like it," but felt so guilty that a few minutes later I went back and bought it. That kind of thinking has stuck with me my whole life, so if you ever see me abruptly change my mind about something, now you know why.

More on South Dakota! I finally learned to whistle in South Dakota! We were camping next door to a pulp mill. It smelled terrible.

Also, I distinctly remember listening to Patch the Pirate tapes. See this link for an interesting commentary on them. I don't remember any specifics, but I do remember that I loved those stupid things. Although it was a brief affair. I don't ever remember listening to them after we got back home.

Well, that's it. Nothing terribly interesting, though sometimes I'd like to go back and see all the interpersonal relationships from that trip. Unbeknownst to me at the time, my mother was terrified of my grandmother (her mother-in-law) who was apparently pretty judgmental.

Nope, You're Not a Non-conformist Either

I also thought of this while reading Spin magazine yesterday. They mentioned that, at this years Lollapalooza, there was a huge banner ad for Comcast Cable that said "Here we are now, entertain us." Somehow, this was supposed to represent the corporatization of some underground culture, but let me tell you, nobody is un-corporatized. Yes, even you. And you there in the back with your stupid tattoos and indie label record collection.

Here's why. Contrary to popular opinion, we do not live in the land of the individualist. We live in the land of the reactionary individualist. I mean, this dates back all the way to the Revolutionary War! The independence fighters were just reacting to the rule of the British. Today, we hear about people, and yes I'm looking at you Ian McKay, that stick it to the man by adopting a DIY, independent lifestyle. But guess what, if it weren't for the corporations you are fighting against, you never would have done it. They have you wrapped around their little finger just as much as they have those whom you look down upon as corporate stooges. They say jump, and you say, I'll jump higher in the opposite direction. In fact, your life might even be MORE controlled by the corporations than are the lives of those who don't care at all. They know who you are and they know how to market to you. Why else do you think most "non-conformists" dress pretty much the same, like the same things, and talk the same way? Because there conforming, just to a slightly different norm than are most people.

To sum it up, non-conformance isn't being anti-anything. That just lets whatever your anti- towards control you life. Non-conformance is just not giving a rip either way about anything and just doing whatever you want.

And no, I am not a non-conformist.

Thoughts from the Train

So, yesterday I took the train up to Philadelphia and back. I like riding the train. It's relaxing. It gives you time to get stuff done. I, however, did not get anything done. I spent the whole trip up and back reading Spin magazine. For those of you that might not know, Spin is a music mag that's a little pretentious, a little hipster, a little annoying, but overall entertaining in a non-informative kind of way.

Anyway, the issue I read contained a bunch of relatively short interviews with big name musicians/artists like Courtney Love, Tim Burton and Marilyn Manson. While most of these interviews were pretty vapid, there were two in particular that stood out to me as being reasonable when it came to the socio-political questions. I even found myself agreeing with them. The weird part is that the two I agreed with were: Chuck D, formerly of the rap group Public Enemy, and Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of Southpark (which I can't stand).

Here's what Chuck D said about rap and kids. I think it's applicable to most popular culture, not just rap.

Spin: You once talked about rappers filling the void for kids who didn't have fathers. How do you think that's evolved?
Chuck D: Are you asking has there been more damage than good? Of course there has been. In hip-hop we've got a couple of generations of fatherless kids who haven't veen given any direction, and there's a certain type of face that's put out there because of what sells, and that's gonna have an effect. A nine-year-old is gonna be influenced by what a 20-year-old says. And if the 20-year-old sees himself as having a child's mentality, then you're gonna end up with some side effects, and we're going through 10 or 15 years of living with those side effects.

S: How did you address that in Public Enemy?

CD: I chose not to share my adult life with kids. If I'm at a party, why the hell do I want a 12-year-old next to me at the party? By the same token, if I was gonna say something on a record, I had to be conscious of the fact that not only are the so-called streets watching, the kids are watching. And ultimately, the streets are less important than the kids. They always have been. You can't share these street things with kids unless it's something they're ready for and can use. I've always thought that way. I thought that way before I had kids all the up to now when I have teenagers. My attitude with my music and Public Enemy was always the same. If I'm gonna say something to kids, it's gonna be beneficial to them in some way in the long term.

S: But people in the music industry usually say they're just giving consumers what they want or they wouldn't be buying so much of it?

CD: Here's the double-talk: The record company says that they need to get their 12 to 17 demographics poppin'; the radio says they've got a youth audience, but at the same time, they're all promoting a song about a strip club. The videos are appropriate for, like, 30-year-olds, and the artists are between 25 and 35 years old, so I'm like, "Yo, how is this for kids?" But these companies can get [the kids'] money and their minds, and to me that's virtual pedophilia, exploiting young people and not giving them anything to help them grow up and fight off what the world's gonna throw at them. At two in the afternoon, you got records on the radio talking about "Face down, ass up." What the hell is that supposed to mean?

S: But what about the argument that these records are providing a cultural voice that needs to be heard?

CD:A voice that needs to be heard by who? There's always somebody saying that shit who lives somewhere else. I live in the black community; I have to seriously look at the cause and effect and say there's got to be a better way. That voice needs to be heard by people who can make some sort of social or structural change in the community. It doesn't need to be heard on a record. One think I just can't nod my head to is the fact that there's a lot of people who know better and are smart enough to defend against this, and they just don't. Maybe they don't wanna be called a nerd. Well, I don't care if you think I'm a fuckin' nerd; this is just what I am.

Now I've never listened to rap (save for a Christian group called JC Crew when I was in the sixth grade, but I don't think that counts) but if this is the philosophy behind old school west coast stuff, sign me up. I would welcome the rise of Black pride rap. Anything would be better than the mysoginistic, violence-laden imagery of current stuff. We need more guys like Chuck D; articulate, thoughtful, caring. We could use more people like that everywhere, not just in rap. And we need less thugs, less teenage harlots, less "virtual pedophilia." And less of me starting to sound like a crotchety old man, but hey, this is what I think. Especially since I have a child.

And here's what the Southpark dudes had to say. Warning, as you might expect, it is a little profanity-laden.

Spin: Did you guys vote in the 2004 election?

Parker: We did an episode of South Park right before the election and it will tell you exactly what we did. We didn't believe we had to choose between a turd sandwich and a giant douche. And we weren't going to waste one minute of one day. If it would have been between a giant douche, a turd sandwich, or an awesome guy who speaks really well and is really cool --- Stone: Or maybe just even a normal guy. Parker: ---we absolutely would have gone and voted.

Spin: DO you get the sense that the youth of America now are just totally fucked?

Stone: I don't. I think they're smarter than we ever were. Kids get so much schooling, even kids who don't go to private schools, and there's just so much more stimulation and sources of information. I spent the 1980's riding my BMX bike around town and having nothing to do. You could go to a movie, but there was no cable, no DVD, no internet, iPods, cell phones -- what the fuck did we do back then? We played around in the dirt. We were totally bored.

They also have a few comments about Michael Moore that I found funny, or sad. Apparently they turned him down when he asked them to do some animation for Bowling for Columbine so he just faked their animation and put it in the movie right after his interview with them. Of course, Mr. Moore is not exactly famous for playing slow and tight with the truth. Anyway, the point is, people always look at the past as some idyllic time when everything was better, and the kids weren't Godless heathens, but I don't think that's true. Pretty much, life has always sucked, you just don't remember it that way. Me? I look back at my childhood and it seems like a relatively wonderful time, but that is only because of my ignorance at the time. I mean, we were in the middle of the cold war for crying out loud. We were in the greed decade! The economy was in the toilet! So just because I remember certain times as being good doesn't mean they really were.

Also, do you know what you never see out the windows of a train? The nice part of town. Nope, it;s just slums and chemical plants as far as the eye can see.

Also, I think it's sad how easy it is to predict which people entering a subway station are going to get on which line. White people? Red Line to Shady Grove. Black people? Green line. Seriously, when I take the train home, it's almost always white people exclusively. Or other non-black people. So I can't let it go to my head that I live in such a diverse city. I don't. I live in a very segregated city. And another thing I hate about the subway is that it makes me see my own bigotry. Sometimes I feel like I have more in common with the black or hispanic blue collar construction guys in or near the stations than I do with the other besuited men with briefcases. But if that's true, why do I walk faster, look down and hold my briefcase tighter when I walk by the blue collar guys on the street? Damn me and my ingrained prejudices!

Decidedly Non-random Picture Friday

This picture is in your local neighborhood DC Examiner today.

RPF

Just what the world needs: another teenage pop-punk combo a la Bowling for Soup. I just hope their name doesn't suck that much. And yes, I am a little jealous, because this is exactly what I wanted to do in High School, but I never did.

Bad Poetry Thursday

No genre today, just some of my awful, bizarre, and ultimately meaningless poetry. Seriously, don't read anything into it. I wish I lived in the 20's because then I could write ridiculous crap and just call myself a surrealist and the literati would eat it up. Probably with some absinthe.

The Day The Earth Stood Mostly Still
by Schuyler

On the day that the whole earth
almost stopped moving
my feet were swollen up with pride
and in my hand i held a dearth
of worms with compasses inside
which by way of that were proving
that a worm can be a navigator
and tell north from south and east
but not west.

The dogs on my block all
ate their breakfast at a very unusual rate
and the food all spoiled rotten
in their dishes in the hall
of neighborhood houses long forgotten
by the owners of the dogs that ate
the flesh of the owners
of the neighborhood houses
who had fallen into their dogs' plates.

The sun shone down on metal
robots made of metal gleamed
in sunlight cast from nuclear reactions
and absorbed by petals
on the flowers whose pigments came in fractions
of the colors that I saw in a dream
i had the day the earth
came to a halt and sent us spinning
off into space.
Almost.

Poetry Thursday

Myrtle
by John Ashberry

How funny your name would be
if you could follow it back to where
the first person thought of saying it,
naming himself that, or maybe
some other persons thought of it
and named that person. It would
be like following a river to its source,
which would be impossible. Rivers have no source.
They just automatically appear at a place
where they get wider, and soon a real
river comes along, with fish and debris,
regal as you please, and someone
has already given it a name: St. Benno
(saints are popular for this purpose) or, or
some other name, the name of his
long-lost girlfriend, who comes
at long last to impersonate that river,
on a stage, her voice clanking
like its bed, her clothing of sand
and pasted paper, a piece of real technology,
while all along she is thinking, I can
do what I want to do. But I want to stay here.

On Growing

Yesterday, at our relatively disorganized but very fun birthday party for our son, a friend of mine asked me what it was like to be the father of a one-year-old, something he'll be before too long. Now, my initial response was pretty lackluster. Something like, "Well, it involves a lot of chasing around." In my defense, he asked me, a guy who's been on a diet for over a month, while I was eating some awesome chocolate cake, basically the first sweets I've had in weeks. So my answer was actually more like "Mmmphh, well, [chew chew] it involves, mmmmmmmmm, a lot of...chomp, mmmph, chomp.....chasing around." Also, that's a hard question to wrap your head around. But here goes.

First things first, I have a hard time believing that there is a typical answer everyone can give. Children and child-rearing vary so much across the spectrum that I can't answer what it's like to be the father of a one-year-old. I will, however, try to answer what it's like to be the father of my one-year-old. Second things second, children double in age between 1 and 2, so asking what it's like in that year is akin to asking a 60 year-old man what his life has been like for the last 30 years: there's no answer that can really do the momentous events and life-altering experiences justice.

Probably the very best thing about being the father of a one-year old is that he starts to notice when you're not there. Nothing is better than seeing your son get hopping-in-his-seat excited to see you when you get home from work. Before he turned one, he was happy to see me, but didn't understand that I had a schedule. It was more like, sometimes I was there, and sometimes I wasn't, that's all.

Another great thing is all the talking. Levi seems to talk more and more every day, and his vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds. It's incredible to see the day to day changes. I can just imagine everything that's going on in his head!

A mixed blessing that happened for us in Levi's second year was that he started walking. Up until he started walking (kind of late compared to average) we were both hoping for and looking forward to him walking. But then he started walking and you have a whole host of new problems. Streets become dangerous. Stairs, likewise. And boy can that baby climb. If there's a chair, anything is within arms reach. But there are good things about him walking too. Now we can race down the sidewalk saying "Running! Running! Fast!" We can go for walks through out little wooded park and look at trees. We can play tag. Like most things that happen as children grow, walking has two sides of the convenience coin.

I could go on for pages on what it's like to be Levi's dad, and if anyone is interested or wants to know more, I will. However, I do think there is one thing that succinctly gives the right impression of what it's like. Children this age have almost totally uninhibited emotions. It gives me such joy to hear the heartfelt excitement in Levi's voice when I ask if he wants to take a bath. It pains and frustrates me to hear his screaming when he doesn't want to wash his hair. It's like living with someone who has not concept of hiding anything. Actually, that IS what it is, for most children at this age haven't learned the fine art of lying yet. They don't understand that not everyone necessarily knows what they know. Lying is an important developmental milestone, I guess, since it means that they see themselves as an individual separate from you, but for the time being, I'll take total and complete candor over anything.

I hope this gives you some idea, Mike, of what it's like. If not, I can try again, but believe me, it is awesome.

List de Mardi

Things That Make Jack A Dull Boy

1. All Work
2. No Play
3. All Work
4. No Play
5. All Work
6. No Play
7. All Work
8. No Play
9. All Work
10. No Play
11. All Work
12. No Play
13. All Work
14. No Play
15. All Work
16. No Play
17. All Work
18. No Play
19. All Work
20. No Play
21. All Work
22. No Play
23. All Work
24. No Play
25. All Work
26. No Play
27. All Work
28. No Play
29. All Work
30. No Play
31. Apple Sauce

Nerdiness is cool

A while back, I wrote a list of potential band names that I would probably never use. But now I've changed my mind. It won't be any of those, and I'll explain why.

Dorkiness/Science will be the next cool thing. If not in mainstream stuff (read network TV and Major Labels) then at least in the just-off-mainstream stuff. If it was a stock, I would change my recommendation from "hold" to "buy." You might think that dork-chic hit its high point with Napolean Dynamite (A terrible movie by the way, who's with me here?) but that is patently untrue. First, Napolean wasn't a dork in the true sense. He was just an idiot. It had the fashion and culture sense of a dork with none of the redeeming qualities, like an aptness for science, or mad programming skills. Second, the ND related popularity of dorkiness was like the dork internet bubble. Everybody got excited about it and involved in it. Then, blam, it suddenly lost it's popularity and only the true believers were left. I think of dorkiness as a sort of Google, part of a huge rush of mainstream interest, but now even cooler with those in the know, while maintaining mainstream popularity. Sort of an internet tastemaker. Well, that's what nerdy science related stuff will be within a year. Trust me.

To this end, I came up with this band name that I will use for all future songs that I don't record: The Chandrasekhar Limit. Actually, that's a pretty cool name even if you don't know what it means. But if you don't, briefly, it's the mass a star needs to have in order to someday become a black hole. The value ranges from about 1.2 to 1.46 solar masses depending on the chemical composition of the star. (So, as you can see, we're safe here on earth because our sun is only, suprise suprise, one solar mass. It'll just turn into a white dwarf, not a black hole.) Basically, it's the limit at which gravitational forces outweigh electron degeneracy pressure and cause the star to collapse. Subramanyan Chandrasekhar won the 1983 Nobel prize for his discovery. I can't believe I remember this from Maggie's Astronomy class!

The Scharzchild Radius would also be a good name.

Monday Memory Day

Do you ever wonder how memories work? I do. I am confident that research is being done regarding the formation and recollection of memories though, so I will patiently await the results of said research. Particularly, I want to know how we can "think of things." What is going on in our brains when we try to remember something, the name of a song for instance, and eventually remember it? Is it like Google for the brain that does it? Anyway, on to something that I remember, regardless of how I actually remembered it.


The first major trip I remember taking occurred in the summer of 1986. This was shortly after I really learned to read, which might be one reason that my memories are so vivid; there's text that goes along with them. The trip consisted of driving to Minnesota and back. Driving. In a big ol' '79 Olds. On the way out, it was just my little brother, my parents, and I. My older brother and sister had flown out a few weeks earlier. We were going to visit my grandmother, did I mention that? Anyway, a lot of great things happened on the trip and here are a few brief descriptions.

In North Dakota, the night before we got to Owatonna, MN, there was a huge Midwestern thunderstorm. We stopped at a rest area to sleep, but the storm was so cool, that neither I, nor my little brother could sleep. So after about one hour, we hit the road again, which is when I promptly fell asleep.

The day we got to my grandmother's house, there was a tornado warning for her town.

I went to my first pro baseball game while in Minnesota. It was the Twins against the Mariners. Before the game, my dad and I were down at the wall watching the players warm up. One of the pitchers tossed a ball into the stands, right at me. Some adult leaned out and caught it. The pitcher, seeing this, said "Hey, give it to the kid in the green hat!" That was me! I was wearing my green t-ball hat! So I got the ball, and my dad took my down to have it signed by the pitcher, who just happened to be Bert Blyleven. Only one of the best pitchers ever. I still have that ball. On the way back up to our seats, we were climbing over some seats (I don't know why we didn't just use the aisles) and I accidentally stepped on the back edge of the seat which made it fold up on my leg like....umm....something that folds up. I am terrible at analogies, sorry. So not only did I get an autographed ball, I also got hurt! Then, during the game, I swear the announcer was saying that one player's name was "Curvy Bucket." He was actually saying "Kirby Puckett," who would later become one of my favorite players (remember the '91 World Series? Kirby carried the Twins to the title that year. I still have a Homer Hanky from that series). Then, on the way home, my sister, who had eaten a combination of honey roasted peanuts and cotton candy for dinner, puked all over my grandmother's lap. My grandma had plastic bag to catch the puke, but it had a hole in it.

Wow, so many cool things at one baseball game! I'll leave the rest of the trip for next week, sos I don't bore you all to tears right now.