Category: reminisce

Thoughts about the good old days… memories.

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a bush and a peek

It's wordplay.
Sometimes I wonder when you actually become an “adult.” I still look in the mirror and insist that the face staring back isn’t really all that different than the one I knew in high school. But it most certainly is different. I’m a year and a half away from thirty, earn my own keep, and own things like a house and car. I’m losing hair and gaining weight. Now, maybe I don’t see that face in the mirror because I don’t feel like that face in the mirror. While I’m not quite at the point where I worry about falling off the toilet and breaking a hip, I guess I am older than that kid from high school… perhaps even an “adult.” I’ve walked through the mall before and wondered, as I pass the other people, which of them look at me and think “kid,” and which think “grown-up.” Surely older folks recognize me for the relatively spry young’n I am, but just as surely the teenagers in baggy pants peg me as old and out of touch. I mean, a collared shirt tucked into denim shorts… with a belt?

When we used to live in L.A., there was a girl who lived across the street from us. I’m not sure who she lived with, but it was a woman – stepmother, mother, I don’t know. I was young, couldn’t have been more than five years old because that’s when we moved. This girl, Naomi, wasn’t treated well by the woman she lived with. Frequently, Naomi was not allowed in the house. In fact, my most vivid memories of her are freeze-frame scenes of her sitting out on the stoop… doing nothing, just sitting. Because she was so often not allowed in the house, she would sometimes come over to our place at odd hours to ask if my brother or I could play. Early-early in the morning, late-late at night; I didn’t really understand it until later on when I figured she was just locked out and probably bored or scared or both. I don’t think I really understood any of it at the time, I just played with her like she was any other kid on the block. Kids are beautiful that way. Class, station, economics, you’re blind to them all at five years old. In fact, overhearing my parents expressing sympathy for the girl was my only indication that anything was different than my situation.

I don’t think I’ve ever talked about this to anyone before, so it makes its debut right here on the blog, direct from wherever it’s been locked away in my head for all these years. One day I remember Naomi asking me if she could use the bathroom at our house. I’m not positive, but I’m pretty sure this little girl actually spent more than a few nights sleeping on that porch stoop outside… barred from entering the house. Considering that, what other option did she have? She had to use the bathroom somewhere. So, we struck a deal. Naomi could use the large bush in our backyard as her personal bathroom, provided she let my brother and I watch. I know people, I can feel you all recoiling in disgust, I know. Remember, I’m five years old. I’m not thinking about how exploited this little girl already is, or how humiliating of a situation we were putting her in, I’m just thinking I’d like to see how a girl poops and pees. So, we watched. She pooped, she peed, and we watched, fascinated. I don’t remember, but I’m pretty sure this didn’t happen more than a couple times total. Thinking about it today, I don’t feel much else but sad. I don’t feel guilty, too young to hold myself very accountable… just sad. Sad for that girl having to poop under a bush in a neighbor’s backyard while curious little boys watched from the wings, heads pressed to the ground to get a better view.

We moved away from that area when I was five years old, and it didn’t take me long to forget about Naomi. Years later, I remember being back in town with my parents, driving down our old street. I couldn’t have been more then ten or eleven at the time, and I can remember my folks commenting on how the place had changed. Then we saw her. A girl about my age, sitting on a porch. It took a minute before it hit us, but eventually someone, I think my mom, said, “Oh my God, that’s Naomi.” Five+ years later and still out on the porch. Sometimes I wonder whatever happened to that girl. Back when I was a kid, I can actually remember going in her house once. No details, just a still-frame image of a messy rug and coffee table. Can you imagine growing up on a porch? Just feet from where you should be – inside with your parents. Hey Naomi, if you’re out there, I just wanted to say “I’m sorry” for watching you poop. I’m pretty sure that at least my mom had an idea about what was going on. I can remember her being suspicious. Had I been able to understand…

Next paragraph. Goodnight.

Posted on

all that glitters

Gwee-tar!
Work today was an all-out assault. I don’t remember feeling so completely taxed in a long time. It was one of those days where I just couldn’t get away from the distractions and interruptions. Whenever I got focused on something, something came up and sidetracked me. Phone calls, working with people, my brain was switching tasks too fast and I got burned out. To top it off, I didn’t get a proper night’s sleep the previous night and it was my first day trying to cut back on both the amount of, and kind of, food I eat. I figure I have to do something about this gut… I just can’t abide it any longer.

The other day I was IMing with my old friend Andy, and mentioned that I was also multitasking and trying to write an entry. Since I’m not entirely sure if this not-writing jag I’ve been on is a product of me being so busy lately, or just me not having something decent to write about – I asked Andy for some ideas. He bounced a couple ideas off me before the words “Robin’s birthday present” come across the IM. Once my memory was jogged, I agreed that this had to be written down. Before the story, let me set the scene.

Robin was the first person I met when my family moved to Florida before I started the 6th grade. Her dad was our real estate agent when we were searching for the place we’d eventually call home. During the house-hunting process, my folks formed a decent relationship with our agent, Robin’s dad, and after we’d decided on a property and the deal was done he asked the family over for dinner at their place. That’s the night I met Robin. She was a smart girl, we were both around the same age – and me being a 6th grade boy I was of course mildly attracted to her (as 6th grade boys tend to be to any and all females). I remember that night, she had a book on handwriting analysis and she had me write a paragraph to analyze. Turns out the book said my handwriting showed I was conceited… at the time I didn’t know what the word meant, but I suppose that book had me pegged.

When I started the 6th grade at my new school, Robin ended up being in almost all of my classes. (When I was in the 1st grade, I took a test and was branded “gifted.” It was by virtue of this taxonomic classification that I met and stayed with my clique of friends, including Robin, for my entire middle-school career). Around the 8th grade, Robin became my first real girlfriend and we dated on and off (mostly on) for the next two-ish years. Come Robin’s sweet-16, we had recently broken up for what I think was the last time. It wasn’t a nasty breakup, our relationship had been mostly one of convenience… y’know, someone to sneak into the woods with and fool around, someone to talk to and hold hands with, etc. I mean, we were kids after all. Anyway, although freshly-estranged, I was still invited to her 16th birthday celebration, along with 15-20 more of her closest friends.

At the time, the group of friends I ran with was pretty tight. So it was no surprise that the afternoon before the party found us all hanging at my place kicking around potential gift ideas. I’m not entirely sure what the genesis of our eventual gift was… I imagine that it had something to do with the fact that none of us had given the matter any though until the day-of, and was compounded by our inability or lack of desire to “run out” and pick something up for the occasion. Either way, someone came up with the idea to get a medium sized cardboard box, line it with plastic, and then fill it with a vile mix of random substances from around my house. Once we had the leakproof plastic-lined box prepared, we began dumping in the ingredients. I had forgotten a lot of what went into the box, but a quick consultation with both Andy and Kyle helped reconstruct what I think is a pretty accurate rundown.

The base of the box was dirt. We piled in a decent amount of soil from the backyard. After that, we began rooting through the pantry. Chocolate syrup, ketchup, two swiss cake rolls, whip cream, raw ground beef, flour, milk, a can of kidney beans, one egg, cream corn; it all went into the box and was mixed thoroughly with a stick. Now, I don’t think it wasn’t part of the original plan, and was even a bit extreme for my taste… but I heard a rumour that someone may have even relieved himself into the box during the ingredients procedure. #1, not #2. Actually, that’s not a rumour at all… I saw my buddy straddle and pee into the box of crap right before my eyes. We all knew it was taking it a step to far, but once the pee was in the box it became part of the plan. As you can imagine, the varied nature of our box’s contents favored the nose with a super nasty stank. Once sealed and wrapped, the little square box looked rather unassuming – and its considerable weight worked in our favor as it piqued curiosity over the possible gift contained within.

I remember taking the gift to the party, along with the card we’d done: a greeting card (not even for a birthday) that we’d all signed and then purposely put in the road and run over with the car so it had tire-marks and road-burn all over the…

Wait… wait…
This is bad.
I feel more and more like a dick the more I write about this…

Sometimes the stuff we did back then confounds me, but y’know, I wouldn’t trade those memories for anything. Like driving around subdivisions late at night and spotting a Big Wheel left out on a porch, then pulling it to the middle of the street and running it down at 40mph in the Nissan Sentra. Or cruising the K Mart parking lot for a car with its sunroof open so we could drop a lit “Mammoth Smoke” inside, then watching the firetruck from the bank parking lot across the street. Some kid’s Big Wheel! Someone’s car! We had no hearts. Anyway… I digress, back to the story.

The party was a grand event, and all our friends were there. When we walked in with the box and handed it to Robin, Andy remembers her saying, with excitement, something like, “This is the heaviest gift, so I’m going to save it for last!” I don’t remember much from the actual party, as my nervousness and anticipation about the gift-opening probably occupied most of my thoughts. Having a reputation as jokers, a considerable amount of “buzz” developed about the gift. So much so that, when the time came for Robin to open her gifts, people crowded around the dining room table. As she promised, she saved our gift for last. I vaguely remember not being able to bring myself to watch the event transpire in real time. Instead, I think I turned my head and waited for the crowd’s reaction. From here on out I get the details mixed up, but I can remember a few things. I remember people saying, “What is that?!,” and, “It smells so bad!,” and I remember a guy named Paul laughing loudly.

Robin cried.

I don’t remember how long after that it was that I swung a stick and shattered their porchlight, quite by mistake I might add, but I guess that was the final straw. Her father, who was red in the face with anger, promptly called us foul words and banished us from the party. I think we actually left through the screened in porch in the backyard, he didn’t even give us the chance to walk back through the house and say goodbye. Apparently, due to the smell, quite a few people assumed we had given Robin a box of shit for her 16th birthday. It was a box of “shit,” I guess, although not in the literal sense. And, despite how things now seem when I look back, I don’t think we really understood the utter rudeness and downright meanness of some of the things we used to do. At the time, we were just into pulling pranks and doing stupid stuff.

Sharaun hates it when I cuss on my blog, and I generally agree with her. It’s usually not necessary to swear to make good comedy, and, in general, it detracts from the perceived intelligence and couth of a person. But some stories, like this one, absolutely require the use of a few bad-words. Them’s the breaks I guess. I guess the story may not be as funny to someone who wasn’t there or doesn’t remember it, reading it back I got a little chuckle but I’m not sure how the uninitiated will receive it. I thought I’d float it out anyway, so now it’s over.

Well, tonight was the Bravery show and I must admit it was mighty enjoyable. Short, but good sound and nice bouncy 80s-synth-rock goodness. Local shows are always the best because I can be home and in bed before midnight, all with a good show still ringing in my ears. Goooooood night.

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around the 4-layer spiral

Watch out, we're coming to the crossover.
I set out to take this weekend slow. And what’s more, to make the most of it by waking early each day. My original plans were to finishing up planting the various flora and fauna we’d purchased but not completely installed last weekend. But some late-season rains put the brakes on that. The rain was nice tho, it was particularly heavy for California – with thunder and lightning which is a rarity here. Back in Florida, thunderstorms are a daily occurrence in the summer, so they tend to make me a bit nostalgiac.

Y’know, I’ve heard of anger management problems, and I don’t think I have one of those. I do think, however, that I have a frustration management problem. Sometimes, I get unbelievably frustrated – with everything. Today is one of those days. Usually, some small legitimate thing triggers the frustration… but from then on everything else just seems to get picked up and added to my big rolling snowball of irrational frustration. On days like today, everyone drives infinitely slow. Everywhere I am is just an obstacle that’s keeping me from where I want to be. Everything I’m doing is just a waste of time keeping me from getting to what I really want to be doing. I finally get to a point where I feel like I’m about to jump out of my skin, then I realize I’m upset over nothing and just let it go. It’s usually right about then that have to use the bathroom and a stray pubic hair somehow gets plastered across my pee-hole and splits my normally manageable precision stream of urine into an un-aimable V shape consisting of two separate streams. It’s God’s little way of telling you to give up. Yeah, I definitely have a frustration management problem.

I haven’t talked music in a while. Maybe that’s because the latest records stacked on my multi-platter arm are somewhat well known to begin with. It seems that either the collective ears’ of America’s youth are finally responding to the weekly subliminal indie dosing they get from the OC, or I’m simply experiencing a loss of power to my commercial-acceptance shields. But you gotta admit, the recent explosion of MTV2-phyllic new-new-wave rock acts really do have an addictive sound. And with that in mind, I was pretty pumped that Sharaun and I managed to score a bunch of tickets to a local small-club show by one of the aforementioned aforenamedcoattail-riders, the Bravery, that’ll be going down next week. With their album in-hand I’m really looking forward to it. Aside from the best the “new alternative” stable has to offer, I’ve recently acquired the latest Ben Folds album, as well as the new Stephen Malkmus joint. Both are worth investigating if the Killers and their extended family-tree are beginning to wear on you.

Work on the digital migration project continues. I’m halfway through Lennon, and have started my first real attempt to cross-check what I’ve ripped with the complete database of what I own. The goal is to find holes in the ripping, and make dang sure everything I own is digitized before I start selling off the then-redundant discs. When I started all this, I actually printed out a copy of my database and highlighted each album as I ripped and verified it, sometimes making notes if something was notable. But the whole effort has dragged on so long that I’ve not only lost track of what I was doing, I’ve lost the printout. So now I’ve got this folder full of music and no real way to check it against what I own. But, with a little creative manipulation of the DOS ‘tree’ command, and some fancy cutting/pasting tricks – I managed to get a side-by-side list of my collection and what’s already been ripped to the drive. I’d like to thank OpenOffice 2.0 beta for most of my data manipulation and srpreadsheeting, if you haven’t yet – check it out.

Speaking of software – having the right tools has played a large part in my willingness to pick up this project again. Ripping discs is not so bad when they’re all commercially available and the ripping program can look them up in freedb to get all the track names. But bootlegs, transfers from vinyl, and other rare/odd discs just won’t freedb – meaning the only option is to type all the information in by hand. I recently downloaded a couple more utilities that have proved perfect for the task of tagging those pesky non-freebd-able albums. Moosic Organizer lets you actually search the freedb site and manually apply an album to one that won’t lookup on its own. And MP3 Book Helper has an “import from CSV file” feature, which allows me to copy a bootleg’s tracklist off any website into a spreadsheet, save it as a CSV file, and tag the album in one-click that way. Sure beats typing every track in by hand.

Finally got around to watching Ray tonight, great movie. Watching some of those club scenes was really powerful. Seeing greasy, sweaty, hard-working musicians pouring their every ounce into their instruments… it reminds me of the feeling I got the first time I heard Otis Redding’s set at the Monterey Pop Festival. Kyle brought over a tape his dad had made. Side A was Wilson Pickett; side B was Otis. Some was live, some was studio, and it was my first real chance to actually “listen” to soul music. On that day, we had decided to pretend we were kids again – and had broken out our old slot car tracks. His track was compatible with mine, so he brought over his cars and track, and we pieced together a massive circuit that sprawled and twisted its way around the floor of my bedroom. We must have listened to that tape three or four times through as we gunned our little cars on to victory. Up the side of the bottom bunk along vertical U-turn, around the 4-layer spiral, down the extended straightaway and into the hairpin around the closet door. For some reason that memory stuck with me, the four speakers I’d arranged in each corner as a mock quad setup blasting Try A Little Tenderness over the clicks and clacks of little cars moving from section to section on the track. Some things I think you’re just supposed to remember.

Goodnight.

Posted on

kick the can

Ward.
7:30am on Monday morning… I’m sitting here watching the minutes tick by before I have to get up and go to work. Back to the US and the reaction is pretty standard: I see all the things I’ve been putting off as if for the first time. The backyard that I’m not quite done creating, now overrun with winter-rain-fed weeds where sod should be. The front yard planters not weed-blocked yet, also blooming full of winter-weeds. The 2″ high grass waving in the breeze. It’s all calling to me, “do something.” The backyard has been so close to done for so long… I use the rain as an excuse to not get out there and do it. But now is a great time to get sod down, when there’s still some moisture before the ovens of summer.

July is my ten-year high school reunion. Ten years; I’ve been out of high school for ten years. Only thing is, talking to the friends I still talk to from high school – not one of them is planning on going. They just don’t want to go. Up until recently, I was thinking how it might be fun to see everyone again. But, if no one is going… why am I going to fly across the country? I imagine the idea of a high school reunion might be scary to some. Maybe to the the go-nowheres or the do-nothings. Maybe to those who got fat or those who lost hair. Maybe to those who feel old without the children so many others have. Maybe to those who are afraid their success will make others feel bad, or those who have no success at all. Maybe to those who have gone those ten long years without a relationship to speak of. Or those who feel those who’d actually attend are beneath them. Whatever the reason, I’m certainly not making a several-hundred dollar trip home to see no one. And before you say it, yes I realize some may just “not want to go,” rather than being afraid for one of the above reasons.

I’ve been quiet about it too long now, but Pitchfork’s new site layout really blows. It’s cluttered, poorly organized, and requires hated side-scrolling because it hangs off my screen edge even in large resolutions. One of my favorite features, “Best New Music,” has been moved off the mainpage onto some clickthrough link. The news is buried somewhere mid-page which requires scrolling, and there’s way too many flashing/blinking ads to distract from the content – it looks like a freakin’ Christmas tree. I miss the A-Z artist list for easy review access – now you have to search for everything. It just plain out sucks compared to the old layout. On top of it all, they don’t have an RSS feed so I can read it in the uncluttered interface of Feedreader.

Longer than a child's face on the first day of kindergarten.

I rumble and grumble a lot about mowing the lawn, trying to find some excuse to get out of it, but when I’m actually out there watching my late-evening shadow stretch out long in front of me – I really enjoy being a homeowner. I take a certain pride in it, almost smiling like Ward Cleaver would as he tread the lines on any Saturday. And even though it’s barely 70° I still sweat like it’s 95°, it’s just in my blood. This time though, it took forever. I left work at 4:30pm to get a jump on the task, knowing the lawn was extra-long. And forever it took, I finished up just as there was no light left to work by. It looks good though, and it was long overdue. The only thing that coulda made me feel better woulda been if I’d managed to fit a haircut in today as well. Maybe tomorrow.

‘Nite.

Posted on

grow old with me

Hear here.
It’s late, and, like always, I write this paragraph last, so all the stuff below sounds like it mysteriously predates whatever I say here. I usually try and make this intro paragraph as time-neutral as possible, since it can get confusing reading sequential paragraphs that are really chronological. But, tonight I wanted to talk about how late is is right now – and how I don’t know why I’m even up right now… I guess I got too wrapped up in fiddling with the databases (read on). So, the “last nights” and whatnot are all confusing… it’s all the same day really. Enjoy.

Last night, I did some quick modifications to my StatTraq plugin which stops it from adding known referrer spam links to the database. I realize a solution using .htaccess is more robust – blocking referrer spam from my entire domain – but I could never get .htaccess to work right. So, I made some rough hacks to my stattraq.php file that tell the plugin to ignore spam referrers based on keywords; they never make it into the database. I didn’t make it pretty, meaning you have to go in and add new keywords to the actual stattraq.php file when you want to update the block list. I borrowed the base keyword list from a post at Caveat Lector, and it seems to work pretty well using wannabrowser to test. I also created an SQL statement that can be run from phpMyAdmin and will do row deletes based on the same referrer spam keywords, cleaning up the stattraq table a bit and making my statistics relevant again. Referrer spam is the ultimate annoyance to me, so I’m ecstatic that I’ve made some progress at blocking it.

From the music department: With memories of liking their stuff on an old Bright Eyes split, and Ben’s recent recommendation, I picked up the new Ambulance Ltd. LP. It’s really good. There’s one song on there that I absolutely love, track 3, “Anecdote.” With a Beatlesesque whimsy and uber-catchy hook – I must have listened to it on repeat for an hour at work yesterday. Great plodding beat that makes me think of a trotting horse… good for working as it somehow implies steady forward progress. You can check out the song here, as well as every other song on the album for that matter.

I can remember buying blank tapes in bricks of ten and twenty from Wal Mart. Not the razor-thin 120min “Wal-Dub” brand, but 90min Maxells or TDKs. It would have been middle school… 7th, 8th, 9th grade even. I’d always been a fan of music, but meeting Kyle expanded my listening canon exponentially. He was into all kinds of music, and his dad would mail him huge boxes of tapes every couple of months. He got me hooked in no time, I was constantly borrowing his tapes so I could make copies of my own. His dad had a varied taste, so we got exposed to a lot of good music. I remember being so proud when I had over 100 tapes, then 200, and eventually tapes got pretty uncool right around ~300. I hand-labeled them, sometimes laboriously, drawing pictures or getting artistic. Sometimes Kyle’d have to tell me to “relax” because he hadn’t even had the chance to listen to stuff before I wanted to take it all and mass-dub it. That’s when this monster was born in me. My hording problem continues to this day, although now one 90min tape takes up roughly 200MB on a disk instead of half and inch on a shelf.

One time I had a thought, that you can map the phases of a growing kid’s life to the Beatles’ musical evolution. Well, OK, at least, it kinda worked for me when I thought of it.

You’ve got the “first four”… which I’d equate with the “innocent” times growing up… before you’re troubled by much… when things are simple and easy. There’s a formula for everything here, and you don’t stray from it much at all – it works and it’s comfortable, and you know nothing else. It’s a carefree time, remembered fondly.

Round about 10 or 11, you’re suddenly a little more world-aware. Not everything comes on a plate, you’re starting to have non-standard thoughts. This is your “Help!” phase. You’re maturing, slowly but surely… there’s something different under the surface here, something very non “first four.”

Enter age 12… the last pre-teen year. You’re hearing and seeing things you’ve never imagined, absorbing information faster than ever. You’re impressionable, you’re thinking more about relationships and have become more introspective. Welcome to your “Rubber Soul,” where you’ve taken a complete right-turn and have now established that there really is something very different going on with you.

Years 13-14, your “Revolver.” You are now worldly, you’ve got some street-smarts, you’re experimenting with some very unconventional ideas. It’s obvious now to anyone with ears that you have changed. You are far beyond the innocence of the first four, you’ve distanced yourself from the am-I-or-aren’t-I phase. Here and there are subtle hints of what’s to come… a revolution under the surface.

15-17; holy crap you dropped the hammer, the throttle is wide open. You’re at the apex of your coming of age and you’re squeezing every last drop of excitement and newness out of the world. In this, your “Sgt. Pepper” phase, you’re brain is wide open to anything… and it’s obvious to all. Filled with wonder, over-indulgence, and reckless invincibility. Nothing will ever be like this for you again. You are unstoppable, you are high on life, every second of every day is bursting with some kind of feeling, good or bad.

You’re 18-19, “legal.” The insanity of your Pepper years has waned as the independent forces in you become more evident. You’re less about me-me-me. Welcome to your “White Album.” The forces that have been swirling in turmoil within you for the last few years are beginning to gel. Some might see this as “going soft,” but it’s actually the first real time you’ve been able to take stock of the emotional person you’re becoming. You’re taking the threads which you’ve been busy growing and finally weaving them into something. As such you may seem more many-sided than ever, but it’s the breaking down before integration.

19-24 years old. The “Let It Be” times are uncertain, tumultuous. There may be infighting withing you, as you realize you’ve been doing this for quite a while. It’s almost time to grow up and part ways with the activities of youth. You’re paying bills, on your own, dealing with people like you’ve never had to before. At times you party like you have no responsibilities… at times you’re serious. Your friends have the same cycles but not necessarily at the same times. The youth of your “first four” seems far off, and you’re sad for it at times. Things are just too complicated… you find yourself wishing for a return to the “first four” days, and may even indulge in silly nostalgic “reliving” activities.

25-30. Welcome to adulthood. You’ve made the transition and your “Abbey Road” swansong is a perfect mixture of newfound confidence in maturity and owing nod to the things that came before. The end of youth isn’t ugly, or bitter; you’re doing some of the best work of your life. You bid a fond farewell to youth, but it’s obvious you still know how to enjoy youthful fun. You’re not reliving youth out of yearning anymore, the learnings of your youth are a part of you and evident in what you’re creating. Enjoy it, because after this it’s only Wings and Yoko.

Well, I guess that’s it. I spent entirely too much time on that Beatles thing. Check it. Goodnight.

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i’m a consumer

Right-o, chap.
I dunno if you noticed, but the entry is “late.” Usually I automate these things to post at midnight the day I want them up, which means I have them written beforehand. Not this time. I got home last night and decided I didn’t even feel like sitting in front of the PC. I debated even writing… but I have some kinda built-in thing now that makes me.

Saturday I did it. I bought a bike. Remember, I wanted to… to see if I could make it my >50% time method of transportation to work? It’s Sunday now, so I can’t really report on how that worked out yet. Although I do plan to bike the commute tomorrow, despite the cold and damp mornings we’ve been having. Later today I’m going to do a time trial, to get an idea of when I need to leave. In the end, I settled for a cheaper bike… since I’m no cycling enthusiast or anything. I guess anything with two wheels would’ve served me well… but I couldn’t stand the thought of cruising to work on a Sam Walton special. So I settled for something the hovers slightly above the department store generics and below the bike store name brands. Either way, it rolls when peddled… so I think I’m OK. If you never hear me talk about it here again, the shame of buying it and not using it as I’d hoped has become too great – and I’d advise not bringing it up.

It’s Monday now as I write… I got to work early to finish today’s entry. And, because I took off early from the house to give myself plenty of time on the ride in. Yup, I totally did it. Biked the commute for the first time, beat yesterday’s time-trial by 5min this morning. Riding through the cold fog-mist was kinda nice. I put the new Early Day Miners record on the flash player and peddled away. It felt good… I maintained a good pace, didn’t get too tired. I’m so self-conscious when it comes to exercise; I know it’s stupid. Everyone knows me as the guy who “doesn’t care.” So when I do things that are contrary to that, it’s a fair assumption that I’ll give them up shortly or that it’s a fad. I mean, the precedent is definitely there. So I ride to work and hope I don’t pull up next to a car with someone I know in it, for fear of feeling “dumb.” Oh, no doubt it’s psychosomatic… but it’s a real thing nonetheless. I’m just glad I’m doing it. If I can stick to it, there’s a potential 8.2mi per day… ~1hr more exercise than the zero I was getting previously.

I left the 5th grade 10 days before the last day of school, because my family was up and moving to Florida. Our classroom had a party that day which served the double-purpose of a “graduation from 5th grade” party and a sendoff for me. When we got to Florida, dad’s work put us up in a condo until we could find a house. A condo that was right on the beach. I remember that summer like one long vacation. Frank and I would roll out of bed and onto the beach. Move from the beach to the pool, pool to running around the complex ringing doorbells. It was great. I remember listening to “Parents Just Don’t Understand,” “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” and “Nightmare on My Street.” I guess there was a period where I was listening to some top40… but I did have Speak and Spell in the cassette deck.

The other night Sharaun was watching this reality show where these fat people are competing to lose the most weight (yes, I know the name of the show, but chose not to use it as if I didn’t to demonstrate my disdain for such programs). Anyway, they had a competition where there was a insanely huge mountain of food on stage. All kinds of food, cheese, pastries, breads, anything you could think of and all stacked to the stagelights. The group was split into teams, and the goal was to move as much food from the huge pile over to a little podium – the catch being that they had to use only their mouths to transport and stack the grub. Imagine the scene – ten overweight people grabbing hunks of food in their mouths, shuffling across stage, and pressing it drool-covered onto a growing mound of similarly disgusting stuff. Food was dropped in transit, stepped on, mashed, squished, and gummed and toothed – but not consumed.

I watched it, and transformed from the mindless, wasteful American consumer I am – to that ever-popular American alter-ego of the caring (but just a tad less than being moved to act), world-conscious good Samaritan. How appalling would this video be if we took it on a tour of Somalia or something? It really was disgusting, it made Double Dare’s milk-battles pale in comparison. America’s food supply is so abundant that we have to find alternate uses for our stores – like playing games or building things with it. I remember a Sharaun telling me about an exchange student who was helping the homecoming committee clean up after the dance, and who broke down in tears as she watched the pounds and pounds of uneaten food go right into the trash. We truly are the land of plenty.

Random, but done.

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hate and bass

I just don't get it.
Midnight now, definitely time to go to bed. I do this all the time… stay up for no good reason. Just sitting here, surfing the net, reading about this and that.

Related to my entry yesterday about comment spam, it seems Google heard the blog-collective’s cry and has decided to do something about it. I’m hesitant to call it a solution, because all it does is remove the “reward” spammers get from putting links in comments (Google calculates a webpage’s “PageRank” by the number of other pages on the web that link to that page, so getting your URL on as many webpages as possible yields an elevated PageRank and the resultant higher prominence in search results). I guess, eventually, when there’s no direct benefit from polluting comments with spam, comment spam will cease. But for a while, those bots will still be running… and the spam will still be there. Still, it’s cool to see that WordPress has signed on to support the feature in a future version, I love WordPress.

On the way home from work today, I arrived at a red light in the middle lane of three lanes. Shortly, I was flanked on either side by teenager drivers. The new Decemberists album was on the stereo, filling the truck with high-pitched, warbly, folky nasal crooning backed by soft acoustic guitar. The two sideways-hat-wearin’ teenagers were having a good ol’ fashion whiteboy bass-off, trying to outdo each other’s bumpin’ – and I was caught square in the middle. So there I was, entombed in bass and poseurs… realizing how un-young I am. I had a brief urge to flip on over to the frequency modulated bands and put on 97.1 BEAT or 101.5 BLNG or whatever’s hot with the yunguns these days… but I resisted. Wait… I’m old enough to joke about not being a teenager, right? I mean, for Jah’s sake… I’m pushin’ 30 y’all.

I dunno how many people know about Google’s Zeitgeist, I read about it a couple years ago. It’s really awesome to watch internet search trends over time, or maybe it’s just me. Statistics are rad, there’s a voyeuristic feel about them – not the crazy statistics I took in college that was all triple integrals and 4th order differential equations; nay, that kind of statistics sucks. Anyway, they’ve got some cool data that’s kinda fun to poke through. To round out this paragraph of two unrelated thoughts: I exchanged mail again with Bob from yesterday, you know the guy who runs TWOBITS.com? He sent me a link to his personal webpage. Check out the “Roadie” story, it’s a fun read – as are they all. And, we’re done.

Goodnight peoples… until tomorrow.