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barrettchase.com
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Thu, 09 Feb 2012

But I miss the small, eclectic linkers, I wrote a few posts back. There used to be people who threw a couple of links in at the end of their blog posts, or wrote entire posts about the weird junk they found online. It was really fun.

Since then, I've made an effort to publicly share more links on Google+, with the intent of bringing some of them back here to share as well. Christa was inspired to link more. But my free-form, do-as-you-feel, no-pressure approach to this blog has meant that it hasn't happened. Yet. No big surprise.

Anyway, here are a few things I've enjoyed recently on the World Wide Web.

The Death of the Cyberflâneur | This gets right to the crux of what I've been trying to say about links. The web was built on linking and browsing, activities which seem to be falling out of vogue, or rather being pushed out of vogue by the huge forces of advertising and commerce on the internet as they promote and dominate social media. Instead of a web, I tend to think of today's online experience like shopping at a mall. Most people enter a few favorite chain stores, and that's all they do. In this metaphor, Facebook is like WalMart, trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator by offering a little bit of everything at an extremely discounted "price," often at the expense of quality. Totally hypocritical, since I found this via Fimoculous.

The Hip Hop Family Tree | I can't recommend this enough. An ongoing web comic detailing the origins of hip hop in 1970s New York.

New York in the 1970s | Speaking of which. I've often said that I want to spend a few weeks in 1970s-80s New York, which is the New York I remember from TV and movies while I was growing up. It's nothing like that anymore, of course. I suppose I could get a sense of that grittiness and edginess by going somewhere horrible like Detroit of Cincinnati, but that sounds dangerous and terrible in a bad way.

Donald Barthelme's Reading List | I've only read three books on this list. The rest intimidate the hell out of me.

January in Duluth | Milwaukee journalist Adam Carr did a bit of an "experiment" by spending this past January in Duluth, Minnesota trying to discover what makes the city tick. Unfortunately, it was one of the warmest and driest Januarys in recent memory. I walked around my neighborhood with him one day. He's a likable guy, and it's been fun to see my hometown through the eyes of an observer.

[filepath: /links]

Wed, 01 Feb 2012

A Steel-Town Girl on a Saturday Night

A few nights ago, I saw Flashdance for the first time ever, a mere 30 years behind the rest of the world. When it started (thank you, TiVo!) I pretty much assumed that I had seen it before, since it's an 80s standard. I figured that even if I hadn't seen it, I must have seen enough snippets here and there to be able to claim to have seen the whole thing. I was wrong. I'd seen the classic "Maniac" workout scene of course, and somehow I'd seen the climactic dance audition at the end. Other than that, it was all fresh to me.

The movie is basically Rocky with dancing instead of boxing, and with twice as many inspiring musical montages, which is a lot when you consider how many inspiring musical montages are in Rocky. Jennifer Beals is an 18-year-old wannabe ballet dancer who has no formal training. By day she works as a welder in a Pittsburg steel mill. By night she is a ... I want to say "stripper," but that isn't quite right because she doesn't take off her clothes. You might say, "burlesque dancer" but that would give the wrong image, too. She works in a dive bar full of blue-collar steelworkers that serves huge pastrami sandwiches and has entertainment that includes both stand-up comedy and clothed sexy dancing involving elaborate choreography, costumes, strobe lights, mime makeup, and stunts. The dancers take off some of their clothes, but they're never naked. The focus is more on the costumes and choreography, which the steel mill guys eat up, even though they never tip. There doesn't seem to be any kind of tipping system for the dancers whatsoever. They just come out, dance, maybe take off their jacket or something, and leave to thunderous applause from exhausted dudes in coveralls eating fried foods. You assume that the bar must pay them generously out of the pastrami-sandwich profits.

Jennifer Beals does all this because she wants to earn enough money to study at a fancy dance academy. She lives by herself in a warehouse loft, and you never see her parents because they live in Altoona, which is practically another planet. We never learn how long she has been a welder/burlequish dancer, but she must have been living on her own for years because we do learn that she's saved enough money to pay for the school and all of her expenses. All she has to do now is get up the guts to apply for an audition.

This movie really made me think, not about dancing or about pursuing your dreams (okay ... a little bit about dancing and pursuing your dreams) but about 80s movies in general and how they stand out in the history of cinema. Some thoughts:

It seems like it's been a really long time since I've seen a new movie that was shot on location in a city like Pittsburg, with lots of street scenes and unfamiliar cityscapes. I haven't thought this out very thoroughly, but it seems like movies now focus on LA and New York, with occasional movies set in of some sort of unmentioned, anonymous no-man's land in between. Attempting to document the majority of the American experience with specific settings just doesn't happen. You don't see movies set in Indianapolis or Boise or Cleveland.
Movies in the 80s had a lot of crap in the interior scenery. Maybe again in this is instance, it's due to it being shot on location. The old lady's house in Flashdance is jammed full of junk, like a lot of old ladies' houses really are. Years and years of accumulation. Likewise, the strippers' dressing room was filled with detritus. Maybe it's that they used real-life locations. Maybe it's that the 80s in general were extremely overaccessorized.
There's a really weird, subtle style of humor in 80s movies. It's innocent and charming, and like the set design, it's all about details. At one point, one of the strippers is backstage eating a banana. She isn't eating it in a sexually suggestive way. She's just eating it because she is hungry, which is really funny for some reason. The question I have is whether this is funny to me because it's actually funny, or whether it's funny because it's so typically 80s.

While I watched the movie and attempted to suspend my disbelief so I could enjoy it, I ran into a few points that might be troubling for younger viewers, who might find them odd or unbelievable.

Could this girl really afford such a sweet loft apartment? The answer, kiddo is yes. Loft apartments in the 80s weren't "sweet." They were gross and cheap and kind of awful. This place was literally an abandoned warehouse right before she moved in, which means she was living in an abandoned warehouse with a toilet in it somewhere. I'm sure there's no air conditioning. Obviously none of the windows are sealed against the cold. It probably smells bad and the roof probably leaks. But it's cheap and there's a lot of room to practice your art, which is why starving artists lived in these places before developers realized they could fix them up and charge, as we said in the 80s, "megabucks" in rent.
Is it realistic that when she goes to the dance school and has her audition, all the judges sit down and light up cigarettes and cigars? Yes. That was pretty much standard when I was a kid. The Clean Indoor Air Act happened in the mid-70s, but in the 80s, you could still pretty much smoke anywhere you wanted except for hospitals and in designated non-smoking sections of public places. People still smoked everywhere, and a lot of people smoked. Certainly no one ever went outside to smoke. Everything reeked like tobacco all the time.
It is weird that this older dude is after her, making no attempt to hide his skeeviness at all? Hm. Yes and no. Sure, guys are skeevy now, but skeeviness was expected and accepted even more back then. Plus, even though she's only 18, I think that age was considered more adult than it is now. Fewer people went to college. There wasn't really an extended adolescence that lasts well into a person's 30s like there is now. That's kind of a Gen X invention. None of this is to say that it wasn't skeevy, though, because it was.

So anyway, sorry this was so long. If it's any consolation to you, I also recently saw Girls Just Wanna Have Fun for the first time, and I decided to keep my opinions on that movie to myself.

[filepath: /assessment/film]

Wed, 18 Jan 2012

Make This

First, I just want to talk about how much I hate the word "make" when artists and crafters use it as an intransitive verb, as in, "I spent the afternoon making." I always ignore this, but inside I'm screaming, when used in this way, "making" means taking a shit! I wonder if these people are aware of that and are just trying to "take the word back" or if they're ignorant to its primary connotation. I'll never know because I don't want to have that conversation. It's one of my goals not to come across as the kind of guy who interrupts your story about scrapbooking to talk about defecation slang, even though I am exactly that kind of guy.

I also hate it because it's lazy and unclear, and because it is obviously some kind of setup for the question, "What did you make?" Well, I'm not falling for it crafters! I demand an object for that verb. Any object will do.

"I spent the afternoon making THINGS."
"I spent the afternoon making TURQUOISE AND SILVER MOUTHGUARDS."
"I spent the afternoon making HORRIBLE CHOICES."
"I spent the afternoon making UP FOR THE FACT THAT MY GRANDMOTHER HATED ME."

It isn't that difficult.

That said, I have a few ideas for some technological things I'd like to make, and by "I'd like to make" I actually mean, "I'd like to see someone else make," by which I mean I wouldn't actually care one way or the other whether someone else made them, because I'm not going to make them or even use them. I just want to write about them succinctly and fluently, as I am doing right now.

One is an idea that I call "Facebook for Narcissists," which seems redundant at first, but isn't. The normal Facebook is fine for entry-level narcissists, but if you're extremely narcissistic, you're going to need something more. This is a Facebook client that allows you to post status updates, post photos, view and respond to comments on your status updates and photos, and approve friend requests. Basically, it lets you do anything that relates directly to you. What it doesn't do is allow you to look at anyone else's activity. It's a completely self-centered Facebook experience where you can simply pretend that no one else is interested in anything except for your life.

The second is in the same vein, but relates more directly to my actual tastes. I kind of miss link blogs. I know there are still a few superstar link blogs out there, and that there are massive community link blogs like Reddit and Metafilter. But I miss the small, eclectic linkers. There used to be people who threw a couple of links in at the end of their blog posts, or wrote entire posts about the weird junk they found online. It was really fun.

Some people still do this now and then, but not very much. Some people only link on social networks, where the links tend to drown in the sea of everything else. Plus, a lot of other people post links on those networks that are either boring or politically ridiculous. What I want is a new, link-based community blog or social network, where the membership is made up of the 10-15 people whose links I'm actually interested in following, because right now they're scattered all over the place. I want them all in the same place, doing a special monkey dance just for me.

Google+ would be a great place for all of this to happen, and I suppose that's the whole idea behind it, but it just hasn't come together yet. Maybe I should start practicing what I preach over there. Yeah, I guess I should.

[filepath: /assessment]

Fri, 13 Jan 2012

Face Off

Get ready. Are you sitting down? Are you sure? Okay. Take a deep breath. You're about to read about my personal grooming habits.

I've decided to attempt to start shaving every day. This is startling news, because I'm pretty sure I have never done this before in the history of my facial hair. For much of my late 20s/early 30s I maintained a full beard. For the past few years, I've flirted on and off with the Northern Minnesota werewolf look. Other times, however, I shaved, but only when I deemed it to be necessary. In other words, when my facial hair got ugly and/or uncomfortable, I scraped it all off. This usually occurred about once a week, give or take half a week depending on how ambitious or lazy I was at that particular time.

Primarily, this method is inspired by a lack of caring on my part and by having a job where holes in the armpits of your T-shirt are practically a requirement, but on the surface I justify it with the fact that several people have told me that I look better with a few days of growth. I think I know what they mean. A day or so after shaving, my face takes on a sickly gray cast. Maybe two days after that I look pretty good. That sweet spot doesn't last for long, though. Next up, it's scraggly, dirty, full-on neckbeard, which hangs around worsening until frustration drives me to go in clear-cutting with hatchet and axe and two-man saw.

So I've decided to break this cycle. To make my project easier, I bought an electric shaver (a Panasonic ES8243 Wet/Dry for all you gearheads). I've never been a fan of the electric shaver. My parents bought me one when I sprouted my first whiskers, since my dad held a passionate belief that men who shaved the old-fashioned way were technophobes. I used that shaver while I was in high school, but as soon as I struck out on my own I started using a Gillette SensorExcel. This was among the first multiple-blade razors, and its two blades seem quaint when compared to the wall-of-blades razors on the market today. Anyway, I used that razor for many years before I got tired of having to take out a loan every time I wanted to re-up on blade cartridges. After that I just started buying the cheapest disposable out there, which is a bloodbath on a stick. Eventually I discovered that the second-cheapest disposables were generally easier on the face and I settled on those, until now.

Despite all the advances in technology since I hit puberty, my new shaver doesn't shave much better than the one my parents bought me back in the 80s. It's cordless, which is nice. Mainly the big breakthrough is a little LCD screen that shows how long it took me to shave. I guess this is so I can get really goal-oriented and competitive with myself, striving for shorter and shorter shave times.

I'm currently at a little over a minute and a half.

[filepath: /journal]

Tue, 10 Jan 2012

Teen Caffeine

I don't want to out myself as someone who watches ABC Family, so let's just say that I happened to slip and fall on the remote control, which fatefully switched the TV to channel 54. No, wait, let's say channel 732, because this scenario looks a lot better in high definition.

Here's something I've noticed: All of the teenagers on ABC Family are constantly drinking coffee. Actually, they never seem to literally drink coffee, but they are always pouring themselves a cup of coffee as they talk to their moms about the heavily organized day ahead of them. At other times, they walk around casually gripping a thermal travel mug (usually color coordinated to match their outfit) or a basic white to-go cup from a coffee shop.

Is this real? Something tells me this isn't real. I don't know a lot of teenagers, but the ones I do know never drink coffee. When I was a teenager, no one drank coffee except for the special-needs girl who drank it at room temperature out of a mayonnaise jar, punched out windows, and swore at passersby in French. Coffee was an adult beverage, and if you tried to sneak some, you'd be reprimanded about how it would stunt your growth and destroy your nerves. The gallons of Jolt Cola I drank until I was a quivering mess, however, was just fine apparently.

There are several possible explanations that I can imagine.

Teens really do drink a lot of coffee in 2012.
Teen shows on ABC Family are actually written for adults, and the coffee is a sneaky, subliminal way to allow then to better identify with the 16-year-olds on the screen.
Some sort of conspiracy theory about corporations presenting a sexy image to teens involving a hectic, coffee-driven lifestyle in which they are multitasking superconsumers.
The shows are simply written by adults who drink a lot of coffee and are out of touch with actual teens.
The coffee is one of many examples of who the characters on the shows are written several steps ahead of the average teen, since young people generally don't like stories about where they are or where they've already been, but where they are possibly headed.

[filepath: /assessment/television]

Conversation

Him: "How was your weekend?"

Me: "It was great. I read a lot. I slept a lot. Really refreshing."

Him: "WHAT? So the whole weekend was worthless?"

Me: "Uh, no..."

Him: "Well, I suppose there's nothing you can do outside. There's no snow, so there's nothing to shovel. You can't plow your driveway. And it's still winter so there's no yardwork or anything. I guess you might as well just call it a wash and let your whole weekend be a complete waste of time."

A little while later, I hear him talking to a woman about how she's planning to take a trip to Mexico.

Him: "You can't do that!"

Her: "Why not?"

Him: "Because it isn't safe!"

Her: "I'm going to be at a resort on the beach drinking margaritas. Besides, nowhere is safe."

Him: "Minnesota is safe. And if you do that, you'll just end up hating yourself."

Her: ...

Him: "Trust me. Laying around doing nothing. It won't be long before you'll be finding little jobs to do. Just to feel productive again."

Her: ...

[filepath: /journal]

Mon, 09 Jan 2012

Preferences

I don't understand other people's tastes in media. It's taken years, but I think I've finally learned to stop asking people on the internet for advice about what to watch, listen to, and read. Trent Reznor said about Spotify, "I don't care what my friends are listening to. Because I'm cooler than they are." Well, I'm definitely not cooler than anyone else, but I have to agree to disagree about almost everything media-related.

I think a lot of people define their own tastes by associating a certain type of person with a certain type of music or film or book, and then deciding whether they want to align themselves with or against that type of person. I don't agree with this tactic, but I get it, and I'm certainly not immune to it. For example, I really don't want to be the kind of person who recites TV catch phrases to their friends and co-workers. You'll never see me elbow someone, raise my eyebrows and cackle, "That's what she said!" Never. Consequently, I generally dislike catch-phrase-based sitcoms. The further a sitcoms sinks into that kind of pedestrian humor, the more I'll hate it, largely because I can't watch it without picturing the doofus with a "World's Greatest Boss" coffee mug cutting it up at the water cooler with last night's prime-time greatest hits rundown. As I said, though, this is generally not a good thing, and I like to think that I only do it in extreme cases.

The thing is, when other people express their prejudices, I generally don't understand them or share them. For example, if you don't want to be the type of person who listens to Florence and the Machine, well, I don't know what type of person that is. Heck you probably can't put it into words, either. Or maybe you could if you thought about it, but you never really have.

Other times, I do understand those prejudices perfectly, but I don't feel the same way about them that you do. Once when I was a kid, my sister tried to tell me why she didn't like John Cougar Mellencamp. She said he played music for guys who drink beer and play frisbee with dogs that have bandanas tied around their necks. Let me tell you, that is a spot-on assessment. The thing is, it made me like John Cougar Mellencamp. That whole scene sounded like a good time.

Lately, I've been trying to figure out what makes me love or hate certain types of books. It's really difficult. The only consistent thing I can come up with is that I seem to enjoy books that juxtapose two vastly different sets of characters. I also seem to enjoy magic realism sometimes, but strictly on a case-by-case basis. I like witty writing where the author uses totally original imagery and wordplay. I tend to hate books that are emotionally manipulative and books whose structure is so obvious that I can easily see the author's outline as I read along.

I do know this: Nine times out of ten, when someone recommends something to me and says, "You will love this," that just means that they loved it. I probably won't love it. I probably won't even like it. I might see its merits, but I'll probably spend a lot of time wondering what it is that the person recommending it loved so much. That's a losing situation. I can't even figure out why I like what I like, let alone how someone else justifies their opinions.

I think the perfect situation is when you come to something fresh, without any preconceived ideas about what you're getting into. I love watching movies I know nothing about beforehand. When I listen to music, I'd rather not know where the band is from and I certainly would rather not know what they look like. In the year 2012, the world wants the opposite experience for you. The world wants you to wear all of your media as if it is a fashion statement. The world wants to cram every funny joke into a movie trailer and show them to you hundreds of times before you pay $10 to sit and listen to the same jokes in a different venue. The world wants you to read a book because the author is a celebrity. The world wants you to like a song because you like the brands of clothes that the band wears. The world wants to craft a TV character and persuade you to identify with that character for the sole purpose of showing that character driving a Ford Explorer.

Meanwhile, the world is full of extremely talented people, and I want to hear what they have to say. However, if I don't understand other people's tastes, and if I can't even define my own tastes, and if I can't trust the marketeers, it's a difficult journey.

[filepath: /assessment]

Sun, 08 Jan 2012

Lucidity

A long time ago, I read somewhere on the internet that if you ever suspect that you are not in the real world but are actually in a dream, one way to test it is to look at a something that has a number on it. If the number is wildly inappropriate, or if the number changes after you look away and then look back, this means that you are dreaming and that it's okay to flap your arms and fly to Jupiter, or take off all your clothes and do jumping jacks in the Kmart parking lot, or otherwise fullfil the fantasy of your choosing.

Last night I was sorting newspapers at work, and I noticed one with a banner across the top reading "Happy Holidays." At first, I thought maybe they were extending their banner far enough into January to include Martin Luther King Day in their well-wishing, but when I checked the date on the newspaper, it was December 24, 2010. Odd. I looked at the paper underneath it: December 23, 2010. And the one underneath that: December 22, 2010. Maybe someone ordered some back-issues of the newspaper. Or maybe ... maybe this was (DUNDUNDUN!) a dream!

I found more newspapers and checked the dates. All of them were appropriately dated. Hm. It didn't feel like I was dreaming anyway. In fact, I'd never really suspected that I was in a dream. But I wanted it to be a dream.

About a half-hour later I took a break. There was a copy of the News Tribune in the lunchroom, but by then I'd given up on the idea. I checked the puzzle page. Damn. Someone else had already done all the puzzles. I read my horoscope, and the stars said I was going to have a good day. As I folded the paper up again, the date caught my eye: November 3, 2010.

There were two other newspapers in the lunchroom -- the Star Tribune and USA Today. I checked those, but they were not out of the ordinary.

I wasn't dreaming. But I was a little confused. I was substantially disappointed. And I was tremendously bored.

[filepath: /journal]

Mon, 02 Jan 2012

Resolutions

Like most people, I made a list of New Year's resolutions. I won't post them here, mainly because I've found that whenever I post about plans to do something, I never end up doing it. This runs counter to the advice you read online. I'm told that you're supposed to brag about your future plans to everyone, and then the social pressure will force you to actually follow through with those things. I find the opposite to be true. Once you tell people that you're doing something great, they'll mentally categorize you as the type of person who does great things without ever following up and making sure that you accomplished what you said you'd accomplish. There's no incentive to actually follow through as long as you don't mind being something of a fraud, which I don't mind at all.

When I come up with resolutions, I start out with a sort of vague, fuzzy image of what I want my life to resemble, and work from there. I absolutely avoid absolutes and specifically avoid specifics. You'll never find a number in any of my resolutions. No plans to exercise 20 minutes a day six days a week. That is a recipe for failure. My resolutions go like this: read more, write more, drink more water. Stretch.

These are actual items on the list. It strikes me that the whole list is pretty leisurely. How strange is it that I have to make a list to resolve to do things that are fun? I constantly have to remind myself to stop eating gross food and start eating good food, to stop watching dumb TV shows or movies and start watching good TV shows or movies, to stop wasting time on boring things and start wasting time on fun things. They're first-world problems of the highest order, but still problems nonetheless.

Lately I've exclusively been reading short stories, which has worked out very well for me. I've read a few collections in their entirety, but mostly I've just picked up a book here or there and read stories at random. There's no page count, no goals. Each reading session is a complete experience. I choose stories based on the length of time I want to spend reading. If I'm tired, I choose a very short story. If I want to read for a longer period of time, I choose a longer story or several stories. If I put a book down and never come back to it, it doesn't matter. This method lines up perfectly with how my mind works.

I always have to use methods like this one to trick myself into doing the things that I actually enjoy doing. My brain is like an obstinate child, and it only seems to be getting worse with age.

[filepath: /journal]

Mon, 21 Nov 2011

I didn't NaNo my WriMo

For the second time in my life I failed at National Novel Writing Month. The first time was in 2006. At that time I was working 12 hours a day at my regular job, and when I got to the point where I actually saw the end of the novel in sight, I lost all interest. It was kind of like running a marathon and seeing the finish line a mile or two ahead, then quitting to eat a plate of nachos. I guess I just wanted to know that I could do it, and when it became obvious that it was possible, I gave up.

It didn't bother me at all at that time, though, because the novel was ridiculous crap. I don't remember it very well other than that it was a piece of sci-fi absurdism, where each scene was intentionally more ridiculous than the previous scene. I walked away from it like Vin Diesel walking away from an exploding building.

This year, I thought I'd give it another try, starting at something like 12:09am on November 1. I had vague ideas about a trio of characters, but mainly I had a certain cadence in mind. This was going to be dark humor about a man who suspects he may have evil tendencies, and tries to counteract these tendencies, but the universe keeps cornering him, forcing him to do bad things. I wrote 1,300 words of this before realizing that my characters were despicable and not very much fun to hang around with.

Rather than plod down a road I didn't want to travel, I started over on November 2. My next attempt had exclusively likable characters. The trouble was, I didn't have much plot. I wrote about 16,000 words before calling it quits.

I know I used the word "failed" at the beginning of this post, but I hesitate to take that word very seriously. I had two goals I wanted to accomplish with this year's NaNoWriMo, each more important than putting down a novel-length story:

To re-establish the habit of writing daily.
To learn about the process of writing long fiction.

I enjoy writing, even though I find it much more attractive to avoid it for other things, so the first goal was pretty easy to accomplish. Number two was really interesting, however. I learned that I can't write a novel the NaNoWriMo way -- in a giant push.

I'm not a verbose person.

So even though I didn't write a novel in a month, or even come close, I'm still writing. I have a new story in mind, based on a tiny snippet of my second attempt this year. This snippet ended up having no place in the original story. I guess that's another thing I learned. Sometimes you have to write a bunch of extraneous stuff to figure out what you actually want to say.

I want to plot out my new story very meticulously. It's okay to sketch, but ultimately you have to draw.

[filepath: /journal]

Sun, 18 Sep 2011

Things Learned From Watching TV at 4am

People are deathly ill. Like seriously ill. If you watch TV at noon, the commercials will make you think that everyone on earth has a cold. But at 4am, everyone has stage 4 cancer.

People eat horrendous junk. During primetime, you normally don't see so many commercials for Long John Silvers, is what I'm saying.

People have no shame. At 4am, you'll see a lot of commercials for bizarre clothing items, most of which resemble large, zippered sacks made out of polar fleece. Pajama Jeans are a favorite, but last night I learned about Forever Lazy. I'd recommend watching the video on that website.

People want something for nothing. There are a lot of products and devices that allow you to exercise without really exercising or diet without really dieting. Basically what people want is to get the results they desire without having to put in any of the effort. They want to make money without working and to get their degree without going to school.

People are litigious. When all else fails, sue. There are lots of people on TV at 4am willing to help you squeeze blood from a turnip. But you get the idea that all the promises they're making to people who suffered terrible side-effects from a medication or slipped and fell in front of a Starbucks don't really ring true. It's just another way of wanting something for nothing. Someone is going to get rich off of this, but the thing is, it's not going to be the victim.

[filepath: /assessment/television]

Tue, 16 Aug 2011

Unlike

I can't even remember how long ago it was (maybe three weeks? a month?) but I recently deactivated my Facebook account. This both looks and sounds a lot more permanent than it really is. "Deactivate" sounds like "quit forever," and that's really what it seems like to the outside observer. I'm no longer there. At all. My girlfriend's relationship status has changed from "in a domestic partnership with Barrett Chase," to simply, "in a domestic partnership," which makes it sound like she bats for the other team which is priceless.

The thing is, you can't really quit Facebook entirely. Well, you probably can somehow, but it's difficult. They don't want to let you go. Clicking "deactivate" and then answering yes to "are you sure you want to deactivate" and then answering yes to "no seriously are you really certain you want to deactivate" just means you're going on a temporary hiatus. Simply enter your username and password (already stored in your browser!) and login again, and there you go — everything's just as it was before.

When I did all this, I said I was only quitting for a month or so, and then I was coming back. But now that I'm out, I really really want to be out for good. Not being on Facebook is awesome.

Facebook is Orwellian in many ways, but the thing that always irritated me was how it took nice people that I actually liked in real life, ground them up and spit them out in this disgusting-yet-boring ooze of humanity that I absolutely loathed. It's kind of like everyone you ever met in your entire life suddenly became a telemarketer or a creepy magazine salesperson and then came barging into your life in a constant stream. Both painfully boring and irritating at the same time.

This all sounds really misanthropic, but I'll say again that these are people that I like in person. I don't exempt myself from it either. I was a part of that ooze of humanity too, and I'm sure my boneheaded opinions and weak stabs at humor annoyed more than one of my online friends.

The moment I deactivated, I felt exactly how I feel when I clean off the kitchen counter, do the dishes and put everything away in its place. It's a feeling of tidiness. There's nothing in the back of my mind, waiting to be attended upon.

Around the same time, I quit Goodreads, a social networking site that keeps track of the books you read and lets you see what your friends have been reading. Theoretically, it's a good idea, and the way some people use it I can see how it would be really useful. I rarely updated it, however, and I never looked at anyone else's books or reviews. Still, there it was on my phone and on my browser's toolbar, constantly waiting and radiating disappointment.

I deleted it completely. No more loose ends. Once again, that great feeling like I've changed my oil and vacuumed out the interior of my car.

This made me realize something crucial in all this: I don't want to share everything I do. I don't want a system that lists every song I listen to for all my friends to see in real time as I'm listening to them. I don't want to post every book I read and every movie I watch. I don't want to post the results of every online game I play. And I don't want to see these things from other people either.

I do want to know real things that are actually happening to my friends and in my community. It should be more like running into people real life. "I just got into an accident!" is crucial. "Look at this photo I took of a guy walking an ostrich," is awesome. "I just had a great meal at the Thai place down the street," is just fine. "I just put up a fence on my virtual farm" is incredibly boring and not something you need to tell another person let alone everyone you've ever met.

Lately, I've been enjoying Google+, although not many people use it and those who do seem to use it infrequently. I think it has potential to solve a lot of Facebook's problems. Its core strength is that it allows you to direct certain types of content only toward the people you think will appreciate it, which I like.

Although, today Google+ added a games feature, with such Facebook-style games like Angry Birds and Bejeweled Blitz. This is one of the worst, most annoying features of Facebook and I'm sad that Google+ is going in this direction.

Social networks can learn a lot from Twitter, which does nothing more than what it should do, and consequently makes you enjoy the people you follow and meet there. And yes, you can follow people you don't know and gradually come to know them over time. This is the "networking" part of social networking.

I don't want to quit social networking entirely. I want to be able to know what's going on in the lives of my friends and family, and to read witty and interesting blurbs from people I don't know or only know slightly. The problem is, most of it is all wrapped up in this marketing and data-collection machine that tramples not only on your actual wants but on your rights as well.

Can't we just build our own?

[filepath: /assessment]

Tue, 02 Aug 2011

The Waiting

Last February, I noticed a rash on my arm, so I went to see my doctor about it. He didn't know what it was, but suggested that I go see a dermatologist. The nurse made an appointment for me at the closest possible date, which was in late July.

Five months later, the rash was still there, so I kept my appointment with the dermatologist, where I was assured it was nothing serious. Some tests were done to confirm the diagnosis.

Two weeks after that, I received a letter stating the diagnosis and instructing me to call for a follow-up appointment. I called. My follow-up will be in late November.

You could literally grow a human being in your uterus in the time it will take me to get my stupid rash treated. I think we need more dermatologists in this town.

My workplace has an retirement investment plan that's a lot like a 401k but isn't. I like to forget about this plan, as it's best not to think about it but rather just let things accrue. But recently I wanted to check and see how much I'd saved so I went to the website and tried to log on.

I couldn't remember my username, so I clicked on "Forgot your username?" and indicated that I did. Instead of emailing the username to me, the site told me that I would receive a physical letter containing the username within two weeks.

Last Saturday, I got the letter. I sat down and tried to log in, but I couldn't remember the password. I tried every password I could think of, but none of them worked. It had been quite a long time since I'd last logged in.

Sighing, I clicked "Forgot your password?"

I'll be receiving my password in the mail within the next two weeks.

[filepath: /journal]

Wed, 13 Jul 2011

Collector

I can't remember why it was exactly that I came up with our new household rule, but it happened about two weeks ago and so far it has turned out to be both brilliant and financially draining. The rule is this: whenever Christa buys a book, I have to buy a record.

There are no rules regarding cost equality. It's strictly a 1:1 deal. If she buys a hardcover novel that costs $37.99 and I buy a used record at a garage sale for a quarter, that counts. Likewise if she picks up a mass-market paperback and I splurge on a new 180-gram double album, that's the way the chips fall as well. The thing is, Christa reads a lot. A lot.

I have trouble buying crap, and it would be pointless to cheat the system by doing so. I don't want scratchy records in poor condition. Also I don't want Frampton Comes Alive. So saving money by hunting down cheap used records requires quite a bit of effort if you want to get something decent. And in order to get something truly good at a low price, you have to find a seller who doesn't understand the value of what they have, or someone who just wants to get rid of stuff they'll never use.

We used to only listen to records in the basement, or "rumpus room" as we call it. That was really fun. We have an old Sony turntable down there that I bought circa 2004 for about $20 on eBay, and a sofa that's just made for lounging. Recently, however, we upgraded to a brand-new turntable to use upstairs while we make dinner. The sound quality was so much better that it just made sense to move all the good records upstairs.

Another breakthrough: a few days ago while sitting at the dining room table I was staring off into space as I am wont to do, when my eyes landed on the built-in cabinets lining our walls (which I always considered to be a good-looking but kind of useless addition to the room). I realized that if I took off the doors, these cabinets would be perfect for holding records.

So now the records are tucked away neatly into built-in cabinets that look custom-made for that purpose. There's a new turntable that sounds great. I brought the good speakers upstairs as well to replace the Target shelf-unit specials that we originally were using. The setup is pretty sweet.

[filepath: /journal]

Sun, 03 Jul 2011

Patch Adams and the Severed Digit

While chopping up root vegetables for dinner on Monday night, I sliced the tip of my left pinky finger almost all the way off. Christa said she had a "premonition" about it, and I kind of did too, which leads me to believe I was actually just chopping like a maniac and we both realized I was being reckless without really acknowledging the fact before it was too late.

It hurt. Even before I saw it, I knew the extent of my injury. I could feel what had happened, and there was a moment between cutting my finger and looking at my finger when I hoped what I was feeling was not true.

When I finally opened my eyes and looked down at it, though, it looked exactly how I pictured it. Semi-severed, gushing blood.

It seems that whenever I injure myself, the injury falls into a grey area between severe and not severe. It's severe enough to cause me a great deal of concern, but I'm unsure whether it's severe enough to warrant a trip to the emergency room. I've been to the emergency room and I know how it works. They look at your gashed finger and think, "he'll live." Then they send you over to sit in a corner and watch informercials for the next five hours while they stitch some drunk's face back on.

I didn't go to the emergency room. Surprisingly, it was easy to stop the bleeding. I just stuck it the whole thing back together and applied pressure. Voila! Home surgery at its finest.

I promised myself that if it started bleeding again while I was at work, I would go have it stitched up professionally. It never did.

A few days passed and all seemed well. I changed the bandages frequently. I kept it clean. I applied antibiotic goo. After about four days, however, things started to turn for the worse. It got red and the severed part started to peel back, obviously no longer attached and probably no longer even viable. I went to urgent care expecting them to just chop it all the way off.

I check in, explain my problems to a nurse who takes my vitals, and wait for the doctor, a looming man I will refer to as Patch Adams. I start explaining my situation to Patch who shouts "antibiotics!" and writes a prescription before I finish my first sentence. He then leans back as if to say, "Problem solved. Anything else I can do for you?"

I ask if the antibiotics will interfere in any way with my rheumatoid arthritis drugs, or vice versa. He leans in for a closer look at his laptop and says, "According to the computer, you should be fine." Okay.

I ask him what I should do about the semi-severed bit that's still hanging there all lifeless. He tells me it will fall off on its own, and that if he cuts it off there will be more scarring. I ask for a Band-Aid.

Here he starts rooting around in the cupboards for Band-Aids, and doesn't know if he can find one. I start looking around for hidden cameras. He eventually locates a Band-Aid, which I can see through the wrapper is a cartoon Band-Aid made for children. He peels the backing off, tosses the Band-Aid itself face-down on top of his notes, then attempts to bandage my cut with the waxed paper backing strip.

"Oops, wrong one," he says. Then he notices that the actual bandage is stuck to his notes. I figure he'll go for another Band-Aid at this time but no, he just peels the spent one off the paper, ripping it somewhat, and applies it to my finger. It's at this point that he notices it's a purple cartoon bandage. "Hey, this is for kids," he says. "Well, you got Garfield anyway."

It's Daffy Duck.

This, friends, is why I usually just do my own surgery at home.

[filepath: /journal]

Sun, 26 Jun 2011

Morning Adventure

It's 9am when I call my dad to see if he wants me to help fix his crumbling front steps, a chore I was kind of looking forward to. If I'd been asked to do this when I was 15, I would have said, "Sorry, Dad, you'll have to do it alone. You always taught me to wear out the old tool before starting to use a new one." But I'm an adult now and hopefully less of a dick.

"No, I can't do it today!" he says. "I have a gun show to go to."

"Okay," I say, thinking: Hm. I must've missed seeing a flat surface that doesn't have a .357 magnum on it last time I was there. Can't leave the bathroom sink undefended and unarmed! That's the most vulnerable spot in the house! "We can do it tomorrow or something."

Normally, I'd just go home and refresh my Google Reader over and over until I fell asleep. But I was mentally prepared to do something outside. Driving home, I noticed that there was a lot of yard sales going on in the neighborhood. I figured I'd go home, then walk around the neighborhood under the guise of shopping for junk but really just taking advantage of an opportunity to wander around snooping in people's garages without getting arrested.

Yeah, the thing is, I think, I don't have any cash. And even if I did, I'd probably end up finding something I wanted, then I'd have to try to carry it home on foot. This idea sucks.

This is how I end up driving to the bank to cash a check, then driving to a rummage sale a few blocks from my house.

"I'm only interested in one thing!" an out-of-breath old man says jogging down the alley toward the sale. "String instruments! Do you have any guitars?"

"I've got guitars," says the guy manning the sale. "Lots of guitars. None of them are for sale."

"Okay, okay," says the old man. "Can't talk — I've got 20 more sales to go to."

Finding nothing interesting at the sale, I decide to drive over to Superior, Wisconsin to the Vinyl Cave and look at records. This is what I've been spending money on lately. Records. It's kind of become a nightly ritual in our household to listen to records while we make and eat dinner. There are worse vices.

But Vinyl Cave had nothing for me so I decide to hit Retro Mall, a new antique store downtown. (Is that an oxymoron? I'd don't think so ... new ... antiq— never mind.) This place is awesome. Moments within entering the door I find two records I want to buy, in near mint condition, for $3 each.

"Do you have a record player at home?" the guy working at the store asks. "I'm looking for one of those portable ones where you can listen to records in a stack."

"I have two," I say. "They're just normal, average record players."

"You can't play them in a stack? I want to play them in a stack. They don't make music anymore. When those synthesizers came out — I thought no one would ever make music again. That it would all be done automatically. I guess people make music but it's all that rap stuff. People talking to themselves."

The rest of the store is a maze of old costumes, furniture, and weird junk. I literally get lost twice. Another time I end up looking at a section I've already seen, without even noticing it.

I take my records up to the front of the store to buy them. "You want to buy those?" the guy asks. I nod. "Okay. Right after I make this phone call."

What the hell is he serious? I think. Then I realize that this is way preferable to the insincere, corporate glad-handing customer service they dole out at chain stores. Hi, I'm Chad and I'm here to maximize your shopping experience. This guy at least speaks my language.

He picks up the receiver on an antique Goofy phone and dials a number. I browse the stuff near the counter while trying not to eavesdrop, but it's impossible since he's yelling everything he says.

The gist of the conversation is this: There seems to be an estate sale going on this very minute. The people there have come into possession of all their grandparents' antique stuff. There are some quality items. They have no interest in making money. They just want to get rid of the stuff. He repeats the address — I want to be conservative in my estimate here — thirteen times.

I figure this is fate telling me that I need to go to this estate sale. I jump in my car and speed off, repeating the address out loud over and over.

It isn't until I get to the place that I realize it's in the worse neighborhood in town. Duluth doesn't have "bad" neighborhoods, really. Still, every city of this size or larger is capable of ranking neighborhoods from best to worst, and this is block is definitely in contention for being the worst. I'm not sure what could be so great or desirable in any of these houses, which seem like glorified tarpaper shacks.

Plus, there are almost no cars parked on this street. I thought an estate sale was going on? There should be tons of cars lining the block. I look around for a sign advertising this estate sale and can't find one. Finally I locate a sheet of green paper tacked to a telephone pole near the alley, a note written in pen in a hand too small to read unless you are standing right next to it.

The entrance to the house is in the alley. I drive down the alley slowly, thinking, there is no way I'm going into this house. This is some kind of a setup. This is how you lose a kidney.

I get to the house and notice that the entryway is on the second floor, at the end of a staircase that is half-staircase/half-ladder. We're talking about, I'd say, a 75-degree incline. Rickety. Paint flaking off. Dry rot.

Once again, I think, I'm not going in there. Then I notice my friend Jamie descending the staircase.

Jamie has his two kids with him. The place seems less ominous suddenly.

"How is it?" I ask. "Any cool stuff."

"One thing they have is an old jukebox full of country records," he says. "But this place, this place is ... well ... just go look at it."

So I park my car in a vacant lot alongside some graffiti that expounds the virtues of cannabis and climb the rickety ladder stairs into hell.

The first thing I notice is the smell. At first I think, did they even bother to move their grandparents' bodies out before having the estate sale? But after being exposed to it for a second or two, I realize the aroma isn't as much decay as it is a burny, chemical smell. Meth lab? Or maybe just an extra plasticky house fire.

Inside the door, an enormous man sits in a kitchen chair, leaning forward to block entrance into the apartment. "Excuse me," I finally say. He lazily looks up at me before sitting back to allow me access to the goods inside. At this point, the chemical smell is in full force. I start to cough. There is junk everywhere, and some of it is even cool, but I want to bolt. I don't know why I can't bring myself to bolt, and the only reason I can come up with is politeness. For some reason I need to be polite to this guy who doesn't even realize that he's blocking your way, and doesn't care one way or another anyway.

I poke around for a bit, even though I would never bring any of this toxic stuff home no matter what the price. I find the jukebox, which is turned on and operational. I find a stack of old 78s. The record on top has a plain white label with ancient handwriting that says, "newspaper headlines." As intriguing as this is, I have to bolt.

I scamper down the ladder stairs without even saying thank you. When I hop in my car, I realize that I can still taste the apartment in my mouth. I roll down the window and hawk some spit into the vacant lot. It doesn't help.

Around the corner I see Jamie and his kids walking down the street. I pull over and say, "That place was poisonous!"

"Yeah it was," he agrees.

All the way home, I keep swishing spit around in my mouth and hawking it out the window. I can't shake the taste. When I get home, I brush my teeth for about five minutes, then use mouthwash.

It helps a little, but the taste is still there.

[filepath: /journal]

Mon, 13 Jun 2011

Kids These Days

"There's no TV. Have you seen a TV, Mike? I haven't seen a TV. Do you know what it means when there's no TV? No MTV." — Corey Haim, The Lost Boys

Last week, we watched the MTV Movie Awards. I'm not sure why exactly, since watching award-show TV or really any kind of TV as it is airing is not something that is typically done in this household. But it ended up shining its flashy images in front of us and sucked us in and I guess that's how these things happen.

MTV is extremely good at what it does. I don't know how they do it, but I think it involves hiring unsuspecting suburban 18-year-olds as guinea pigs, making them sign a contract they can't be bothered to read, then chaining them up in a warehouse somewhere and flashing provocative images in front of them while measuring their vitals. They're kept alive exclusively on Adderall and Monster. They get paid less than minimum wage, but they earn a semester of credits from the University of Phoenix. Plus the room smells awesome.

But anyway, the movie awards. I can't recall if I'd ever seen this particular award show before, but holy shit was it a mindfuck.

As you might expect, every person accepting an award was under 25, or at least it seemed that way. As you might not expect, many, many of the people presenting awards were much older. It was incredibly embarrassing. Standing at the front of a room full of beautiful young people with hair and abs ... Jim Carrey? Seriously? Twisting his neck and making a funny face and doing a funny voice and oh god it's like your dad just came down to chaperone the make-out party.

Not only is it embarrassing, but it's embarrassing that it's embarrassing. I mean, Jim Carrey isn't even 50. Of course it might have something to do with how he was never actually funny, but that's not entirely it either.

Reese Witherspoon won the "Generation Award" which I guess is something akin to a lifetime achievement award? Jesus. Reese Witherspoon is 35.

I'm not exactly sure who this award show is made for. I guess you can get some insight by realizing that the awards are all people's choice style, and that Twilight and its cast pretty much won every single award for which it was nominated. So ... 12-year-old girls and their moms? That's the audience?

Lupe Fiasco performed his song, "The Show Goes On", which bears a striking resemblance to Modest Mouse's "Float On." I'm not sure about the business end of things like this, how things like this happen. Of course sampling has been around forever, but this isn't really sampling. It's more like sampling/remixing/parody. Basically, it's taking a song that already exists, changing the lyrics so that they're (let's face it) dumber, and putting more of a hip-hop/pop spin on it.

All of which is fine, because obviously Modest Mouse or whoever owns the rights to the original song signed off on it and just wants to make money off it, but what gets me is that the fans singing along and taking cell-phone photos of the performance are completely oblivious.

Speaking of which, after the award show, MTV showed its latest remake, a TV version of Teen Wolf. Of course, this has pretty much no relationship to the 80s movie starring Michael J. Fox. The rebooted Teen Wolf is handsome, ripped, broody, and completely humorless. Even his sidekick, Stiles, is humorless, and Stiles was originally the comic relief within a comedic movie. That's how it rolled in the 80s. Today, everything gets the Twilight treatment.

I mean would it have killed them to at least refer in some way to Stiles' awesome "what are you looking at dicknose" T-shirt? Nah. Just give Styles a graphic tee with a target on it from Urban Outfitters. That's good enough. He isn't traditionally handsome, which I guess is what passes for funny now in and of itself. Kind of like in the 1950s how a character was considered funny merely by being Chinese.

I wonder about this. I mean, I know a handful of 18-year-olds, and they seem to have a sense of humor. But none of their mass media recognizes that. They also don't seem to be all that interested in their mass media. It doesn't carry much weight for them. When they want to laugh they go to YouTube and watch people get kicked in the nuts.

During Teen Wolf there was a trailer for the upcoming remake, Fright Night, which is also based on an 80s comedy/horror movie. They even used the original font for the title. And likewise, all of the humor seems to have been drained away. Abs, hair, and despondency.

Oh, Twilight. You've ruined an entire generation.

And their moms.

[filepath: /assessment/television]

Wed, 01 Jun 2011

A Nod to Bob

Last week, the town I live in, Duluth, Minnesota, celebrated the 70th birthday of its most famous native-born one-time resident, Bob Dylan. I didn't attend any of the festivities. But that doesn't mean I don't like Bob Dylan. I really do.

Duluthians have two major attitudes toward Dylan, and both of them are embarrassing. The first attitude is the one that's officially sanctioned by the city government, all the community leaders, and most residents. This is: Bob Dylan We Love You And We Need You To Come Home. Please. We are begging. Literally begging. We'll do anything for you. Anything. You are the best thing that has ever happened to our little community and oh my god we are dying financially and culturally please help us please help please please please.

Toward this end, the city installed two commemorative manhole covers along Bob Dylan Way, which is not actually called Bob Dylan Way, but they put some signs up a few years ago indicating that a string of streets running through the tourist district may be called Bob Dylan Way if you are so inclined, even though the official street signs and names remain unchanged. There is no evidence to suggest that Bobby noticed.

The other attitude is one perpetuated by Duluth's hipsters and philistines, which goes something like this: Pfft. Bob Dylan. So overrated. Can't sing. Pfft. Not so special.

Anyway, like I said, Duluth did its thing last week, in the style that Duluth is good at, which is to install some public art, trot out a handful of our 86,000 musicians, prop them up on stage, pass a jar of smelling salts under their noses, hand them a Dylan song book and then pour cheap beer down everyone's throats until it's fun. Oh yeah, there was also a train ride during which all of these same things happened combined with the danger of everyone trying to publicly urinate off of said train, which is reportedly especially fun to watch when the public urinator is female. No one died, surprisingly, even though the event was titled "Blood on the Tracks," which is kind of like asking for tragedy to strike.

But like I said, I didn't go to any of this, which doesn't really matter because I grew up here and I could more or less script it without even having to change out of my sweatpants.

The first time I ever heard and loved Bob Dylan I was in 7th grade, watching Weird Al Yankovic as guest VJ on MTV (or AL-TV, as those segments were called). Al played the video for "Subterranean Homesick Blues," the one where Bob holds up all those homemade signs while Alan Ginsberg wanders around in the background. I can't realy say why, at age 13, I found this video to be so totally mint, except for the fact that it actually is totally mint. The only reason I don't think of it as totally mint at this point in time is that I've seen it so many times, and know it to be a culutural staple. And I guess back then, my mind was a cleaner slate, and I was experiencing it for the first time ever.

A few years later, INXS came out with their "Need You Tonight/Mediate" video which uses the same concept, and I got it.

Anyway, after I saw that video, I became somewhat of a Dylan fan, and set about gathering his albums over the years. Is there anything more insufferable than a young boy discovering Dylan for the first time? Listening to "Blowin' in the Wind" with fresh ears? Ugh. It's like reading The Catcher in the Rye or On the Road. Embarrassingly cliché.

But unlike fricken Kerouac, I still like and listen to Bob Dylan, probably because he has been so prolific over the years. There's still plenty of Dylan I've never heard. And it's still totally mint.

[filepath: /assessment/music]

Mon, 23 May 2011

Brown Noise

I don't like hearing other people's music. It doesn't matter what kind of music we're talking about. I'm tempted to say that it's slightly worse if the music is something I wouldn't listen to, but that isn't true. Even if the music consists entirely of all my favorite songs, if I have to hear it through a wall, my inner Tom Cruise still flips all my rage dials to max and dances on my brain stem clad in nothing but wayfarers and Y-fronts. We all know what that's like.

A few days ago, one of the teens next door must have had a sick day, because pretty much immediately after their mom SUVed herself off to work, the radio came on at full volume and stayed that way for the rest of the day.

When I say "radio" I mean radio. As in DJs and car commercials. Have I mentioned this is not an apartment but a house? There is no sharing of walls involved here. They are inside, I am inside. Windows closed. Dishwasher running. Actual earplugs screwed into my head. I could still hear every word. Maybe not every note, but certainly all of the bass notes.

Have I mentioned that I sleep in the daytime?

You can't really complain about noise during the day. I mean, you can knock on the door and try to reason with a 16-year-old who's playing hookie, if you think that's going to help you get to sleep. You can attempt to call the police, and explain to them that your neighbors are playing the radio inside their house with the windows shut at noon on a Thursday. Go ahead and try that.

So I did what I could. I dug out the fan, plugged it in, aimed it at the ceiling and turned it on. This actually helped quite a bit. Then I put swapped out the earplugs for earbuds and downloaded a white noise app for my iPhone.

And that was when it happened. That was when I found my favorite sound ever: brown noise.

I should point out right away that I'm talking about brown noise, not the brown note, which is still theoretical at this time. If there really was an iPhone app that would play a brown note, you'd know about it because all the middle-school teacher in the world would simultaneously quit without hesitation upon its release.

No, I'm talking about brown noise, aka red noise, aka the sound of heavy rain, waterfalls, rivers and the like. It's totally dope. I was asleep within minutes.

Anyway, here's my idea: We already have eyeglasses to improve your sight, and hearing aids to improve your hearing. What I propose is exactly the opposite. We need equivalent devices that temporarily eliminate your hearing and/or your sight. It would be easy, really. I mean, they kind of already exist, but they need to be made more stylish and more socially acceptable.

You want to tell me about your day at work? No problem. Hold on a second while I turn this up. While I'm at it let me put on these glasses.

Okay, there we go. Much better.

[filepath: /journal]

Wed, 18 May 2011

Quotes from Recent Reading, pt.1

"Life is, to some extent, an extended dialogue with your future self about how exactly you are going to let yourself down over the coming years."
— Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

"In my experience, the thing about girls is — you never know. No, you never do. Even if you actually catch them, redhanded — bent triple upside down in mid-air over the headboard, say, and brushing their teeth with your best friend's dick — you never know. She'll deny it, indignantly. She'll believe it, too. She'll hold the dick there, like a mike, and tell you that it isn't so."
— Martin Amis, Money

[filepath: /assessment/reading]

Tue, 17 May 2011

Highway to the Prednisone

When it first started, it felt kind of good. Of course, I had no idea what was going on. I had a tough couple of days at work, and each day I woke up feeling sore all over. "Nice," I thought. Years ago, when I first started my job, the job got me into pretty decent shape. Since then, I'd become efficient at everything, and hence got a lot less exercise.

I'd never really experienced a situation in which soreness was a bad thing.

The pain got worse each day, and so I started taking it easy. By far, the worst pain was in my hamstrings and knees, but truthfully I felt bad all over. Finally I told Christa that I thought something was wrong with me, and I described my symptoms. Her first reaction was exactly what I'd been thinking: Lyme disease.

Finally it got to the point where I couldn't go to work at all. I called in sick and made an appointment to see my doctor.

The visit was brief. I described my pain. My symptoms. The doctor made me lean back on the table while he manipulated my legs. I can't describe that pain. He walked out of the room and returned with a blue sheet of paper. Stretching exercises. He told me I had tendonitis in my hamstrings. I asked about taking more time off work and he said he couldn't help me with that, muttering something about some other bureaucratic department I should contact while he ran out of the room with the word "lawsuit" flashing above his head.

I tried the stretching exercises. They didn't help at all. In fact, they caused more pain than I had before. I went back to work and tried to do my job. People there were understanding. I figured out a way I could rest more while I was there. It wasn't enough.

Each day when I woke up ... that was when it hurt the worst. I would lay in bed and dread the thought of trying to stand up. Sometimes it would take up to two hours to get out of bed.

And then I'd have to walk down the stairs, which can only be described as a "process."

All of this got progressively worse until I could barely walk at all. At that point I called in sick and went to the emergency room. My ankles were swollen. My wrists also hurt. Obviously this wasn't tendonitis.

The ER doctor said what I had thought all along. This is most likely Lyme disease. He ran tests, which wouldn't be processed for several days. He prescribed antibiotics for the Lyme disease and narcotics for the pain. I spent the next week watching TV in a narcotic haze, which sounds fun, but lost its shine after about two hours.

The Lyme test came back negative. My regular doctor was at a loss. But really there was only one option left: an autoimmune disease. He sent me to a rheumatologist.

The rheumatologist tested me for Lyme disease again, and also for a handful of viruses as well as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. Everything came back negative, which didn't really mean anything in the case of RA, since RA reads a false negative in 30% of cases.

He prescribed prednisone, which had me feeling relatively great almost immediately. Hyperactive, insatiably hungry, but able to walk at least.

Over the next several months, we set about ruling out every possible disease other than RA. Eventually, there was no other choice. Rheumatoid Arthritis it is.

RA is no picnic. Do a Google Image search if you want to see some nasty worst-case scenario nightmares. If you're not into body horror, just think of Igor in the old Frankenstein movies. Just think of twisted old ladies in rocking chairs in the Appalachians.

No one knows what causes this. They say it's partially genetic and partially environmental. Apparently I've been exposed to something, some virus or some toxin, that flipped a switch inside me. My immune system now thinks my joints are the enemy.

Lucky for me it's 2011. RA is still incurable, but there are treatments for this now, unlike 20 years ago. Sure, they're expensive, somewhat dangerous treatments. But there are treatments. I'm thankfully no longer on prednisone, which is a temporary fix with a lot of inevitable side-effects. I can walk just fine. You wouldn't know that I'm diseased if you met me.

So has my life changed in the past year? Hell yes. I think the worst thing has been being hyper aware of every little problem with my body, always wondering if something is a new symptom or a hideous side-effect of the treatment. It usually turns out to be something unrelated and benign. But I'm still in the beginning stages of treatment and there's a lot to figure out still. We don't know if my current treatment (a type of chemotherapy that I take in very small doses) is going to really take, or if I'm going to have to switch to something more serious.

Last August, I quit drinking alcohol as it can potentially complicate my treatment, which is already very hard on the liver. And the way things are now, quite a few of the things I eat are beginning to disgust me. I can't believe the poisons we put into our bodies on a regular basis. I'm not sure where I want to go with my diet. It's already pretty good but I want it to be better.

Yeah. Shit happens I guess is my philosophy. The Rheumatiz is pretty bad, but there are far worse things. I try to keep a good sense of humor about it, which is pretty important.

[filepath: /journal]

Tue, 03 May 2011

Tech Nostalgia

So not only did I respond to Christa in that last post, but Jodi also weighed in on her blog, listing various reasons why she isn't quite ready to start reading books electronically. She makes a lot of good points, but what I want to talk about is this sentence, which really grabbed me:

I never look at Enid, my laptop, sigh dreamily, and think "wow that reminds me of a really good post I read."

About a month ago, I was searching for something online — I can't remember what — and I came across a photo of a computer that I used to own in the late 90s. It wasn't my computer, but it was the same model, an IBM Aptiva E-Series. It was just a plain, off-white tower, with a CRT monitor, ugly speakers, and a "rapid access" keyboard that had a lot of useless-but-colorful buttons that were just shortcuts to various IBM websites. The keyboard also had dedicated CD player controls on the upper-right-hand side, which was actually kind of nice.

Anyway, I saw this photo and immediately I felt a pang of nostalgia for the old machine. I've owned a lot of computers, but this one was special. I learned a lot of things from it, and did a serious amount of creative stuff on it. It was on this computer that I first learned HTML. I created not only my first website but also my first blog on it. I also wrote the code for the blog that eventually became my most successful internet endeavor to date.

I paid $150 for that computer. Its list price was something ridiculous, like $1500. But I remember getting all these deals and rebates. There was money off for buying all the components in a package. Each component had a mail-in rebate. If you signed up for internet access at the point of purchase, you'd get a huge chunk of money off. I had to shell out a lot for it at the time, but almost all that money trickled back to me eventually, which was great because I was really poor in those days.

Don't get me wrong. I don't want the damn thing back. It had a 4-gigabyte hard drive. (I have USB sticks that are way bigger than that.) The monitor broke three times. It didn't come with a CD burner, but I installed one and eventually wore it out. I still have those ugly speakers for some reason. They're in the garage. Recently someone broke into our garage, rooted around, and didn't take anything. No one wants enormous, 90s-era computer speakers. Not even me.

I don't feel nostalgic about any of the other computers I've ever owned, except maybe for my 15" G4 Powerbook, which was my first Mac and cost more than the car I was driving at the time I bought it. That computer's logic board crapped out during an electrical storm. I still haven't recovered from the loss, and dream of one day restoring it to its former glory. This is not actually feasible, since logic boards cost like $900 and are incredibly tricky to replace.

I think the hardware I use, for some reason, is capable of helping or harming my creativity. Is that stupid? I don't mean this in a superstitious way. I mean that certain machines work for me as extensions of my creative mind. There are computers I want to use to their fullest. I want to open them up and dig around inside of them. I want to fully learn how they operate. Others computers, they don't intrigue me. I don't feel comfortable with them.

When I replaced that dead Powerbook, I replaced it with a decent enough laptop that started a creative low point for me. I did almost nothing with that thing. I didn't write anything noteworthy. I didn't organize the files I saved on it. Even my music collection ended up being a mess when that was my main machine.

Some computers do it for me, others don't. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with price, or power, or the way they look. It's almost like the whole thing is trial and error.

I wish I knew the formula.

[filepath: /journal/history]

Fri, 29 Apr 2011

Work in Progress

I suppose now that Christa has gone and spilled the beans, I should probably explain how and why I changed my mind about e-readers enough to actually go out and buy one. That's right, friends. The big bad Amazon corporation finally wore me down and convinced me to buy a Kindle.

This is all very embarrassing to me because a mere month ago I admitted my belief that people only buy e-readers because they feel guilty about not reading. Then a mere week after that, I admitted that I personally have not been reading much lately. So now when I say that I just actually bought an e-reader ... ugh.

Don't think I'm not aware of my own hypocrisies. Don't think I'm above hating and ridiculing a person for the simple reason that I'm exactly like that person. Apparently.

But this isn't true. Not exactly. I love reading and I don't believe I need help to force myself to do it. I was just skeptical of the e-reader, while at the same time being pretty damn curious about it. I didn't want to like the e-reader, and I had a list of reasons why I didn't need to explore that particular branch of technology. But most of my problems with e-readers had to do with comparing them to mp3 players. While the mp3 player does solve a problem -- how do I make my music portable -- the e-reader is not built to address this problem. Obviously, unless you are a student, you probably don't need to take your library with you everywhere you go the way you do with your music library.

My problems with e-readers, having never used one, were as follows:

If your device breaks or malfunctions, you lose all your books.
It's not as aesthetically pleasing as reading a paper book.
You can't lend or borrow e-books.
I hate digital-rights management. I don't want to buy things with DRM.

One by one, I've investigated or at least thought about these issues, and have managed to debunk all of them:

Kindle books are stored in the cloud. If your device gives up the ghost, your books are all still out there, and they're still yours to re-download for free.
This is pure idiocy. The aesthetic value of paper books varies on a case-by-case basis. I've refrained from reading a lot of books based on how they feel or how they look. I hate reading large hardcovers or books with embarrassingly garish or feminine covers. When you place a leather case on the Kindle, it isn't the same experience as reading a paper book, but it's enjoyable enough, and it's the same no matter what the content is.
I don't actually care about this. Our basement is full of paper books, and far too many of them are missing. Often Christa will suggest an author to me, and I will go down and pull one of that author's books off the shelf. "Oh, don't read that one," she'll say. "That one's awful. Read his other one." Well, you guessed it. The other one -- the good one -- isn't in the house because someone else borrowed with intent to keep.
It's true that Amazon e-books have DRM, but Amazon has always been a pretty good citizen about this issue. Their mp3s come without DRM, which is one reason I like to shop with them. I'm okay with some compromise here, and if I end up not liking this compromise, the Kindle isn't all that expensive anymore. It can be written off as a fun experiment. No one is forcing me to keep using it.

Here's what I like about the Kindle thus far:

Free classics. When it comes to books whose copyright has lapsed (i.e. books written before 1923), you can download them for free from Project Gutenberg and read them on the Kindle. Amazon also has some free or cheap classics you can get right from their site. Right now I'm reading The Trial by Franz Kafka, which I've been wanting to read for quite some time.
Seriously long battery life. Since the screen doesn't light up but rather looks like paper, the battery life is "up to one month."
Magazine subscriptions. It's going to be great to be able to read magazines without having magazines strewn all over the place. The selection is pretty small, because it's limited to text-heavy magazines, which are really the only kind of magazines that make sense to read on a Kindle.

Here's what I don't like so much:

The buttons take some getting used to. It's easy to forget where the page-turning buttons are and accidentally flip a few pages while you're putting moving the device around or otherwise adjusting your posture while you're reading.
There's a little glare. While the glare issue is way, way, way better than a glossy computer screen, there is still some glare. There's no glare with paper books.
The music player could be way better. You can put mp3s on the Kindle and listen to them as you read, but you have no control over them. They are played in the order you put them on the device and that's that. Why even have this option if it's going to be so useless?

So there you go. I bought a Kindle. It's been fun so far. I'll still read paper books. But I'll probably end up reading more old stuff on the Kindle. Or maybe just huge hardcovers with garish feminine covers.

Valley of the Dolls, here I come.

[filepath: /assessment/reading]

Tue, 26 Apr 2011

You haven't changed a bit

It took me at least half of my life thus far to realize that not everyone has a small indentation on the left-hand side of their hard palate, a neat little saddle-shaped groove perfectly suited for resting the tip of their tongue. I remember trying to describe that particular body part when I was a kid, and getting frustrated when no one knew what the hell I was talking about. Eventually, somewhere in my mid-20s, it struck me that this was an idiosyncrasy created by my habit of pressing my tongue on that particular spot.

Chicken, egg, etcetera etcetera. Evolution didn't put a groove there so that I'd have a place to habitually press my tongue. I habitually press my tongue there, therefore I have a groove on the roof of my mouth.

My chin has always had a strange shape to it. It's roundish on the bottom, and right where most people have a small indentation, I have a large crease. I had a lot of trouble with this crease as a young child, because when you're four years old you kind of eat with your entire face. A large crease right below your bottom lip is a great place for Spaghetti-Os sauce to lodge itself.

Anyway, I always thought this crease was hereditary, a part of my elaborate and obviously beautiful DNA makeup. Truthfully, I never gave it much serious thought because it's always been there.

The thing is, none of my relatives have this kind of a chin. Certainly no one in my immediate family has it. I can't think of any distant or mid-distant relatives who have it either. I've never seen it in any old, grainy photos of my ancestors, but then again, I've never actively looked for it there.

It's only been in the past few months or so that I've realized I created my weird chin, just like I created the groove in the roof of my mouth. I've always slept on my side in something like the fetal position. But I'd never noticed that I sleep with the first knuckle of my left hand firmly pressed against my chin. Apparently I've been doing this for four decades. Who knew?

I have all kinds of bizarre shit like this going on, and it goes way beyond the physical. Ever since I could talk and continuing into the present day, I have always misused the interjection, "Ow." Or rather, I use it both appropriately and inappropriately. Inappropriate moments I use it include: when I touch something cold, when I see something embarrassing, and when I almost drop something. This is, as far as I can tell, completely uncontrollable.

I'm not a big believer in free will. The concept doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Sure, people change, and people are capable of changing themselves. But in my experience, people change by becoming more like their real selves.

Maybe believing that is some weird unexplainable habit of mine as well.

[filepath: /journal/history]

Mon, 18 Apr 2011

Two Wheeler

All winter, I've had big plans to start biking to work this summer. A few weeks ago, I guy I know informed me that gas prices were going to skyrocket this summer. "Dammit," I said. "I've been planning on using a bike for transportation once the weather warms up. If gas prices go up and other people start biking too, that's going to put a serious dent in my self-righteousness."

My reasons for wanting to bike are manifold, and probably predictable. For one thing, I now live just a little over a mile from work. Last week I was going to make a CD for my car, since I've been driving in silence for quite some time now. When the burn malfunctioned, I just shrugged and realized that I really don't need music for my two-minute drive anyway. My "commute" lasts less than one song. Silence is not even noticeable; it's not like I'm going to be bored.

I figured out awhile back that I average fewer than 20 miles per week in my car. There's the 1.5-ish miles to and from work every day, which adds up to about three miles for those of you who are even worse at math than I am. The grocery store is in the opposite direction from work, and is about a mile away. Sometimes I have to/want to go downtown for a doctor's appointment or to go to a movie or to the public library. I really would like to get that mileage down somewhere around eight or nine miles a week, if that's possible.

A few years ago, I tried biking to work, and that adventure lasted exactly one day. I did live further away from work back then -- about three or four miles of hilly terrain which normally wouldn't have been a problem -- but in addition to that I also did just about everything wrong. For one thing, I picked what was probably the hottest day of the summer to start biking. I woke up really dehydrated, and instead of gulping down water in preparation for my ride, I gulped down coffee, which is a diuretic. Then I strapped a black helmet to my head and took off. When I got to work, I didn't feel well at all. I hydrated some, but my job is very physical and involves a lot of sweating. Eventually, some flu-like symptoms set in, and instead of going home sick, I toughed it out. Then I rode my bike home again, like an idiot, and when I got home, I was dizzy and shivering with fever. I think I might have thrown up.

I'm confident that that won't happen again. For one thing, my hours have changed, which means I'll only be riding in the cooler hours of the day. For another thing, I now know what heat exhaustion is.

The bike I own now is about 15 years old, and is not the ideal bike for general transportation. It's geared way too low. I've been meaning to upgrade for quite some time, but it's hard because there's nothing wrong with my old bike. Today I went to a local bike swap, but all they had were huge, knobby-tired mountain bikes, and skinny, vintage road bikes priced in the $600-$800 range. If those are my options, I'll stick with my old Trek.

Will I actually do this? Well, I want to. There are no good reasons not to. But like most things of this nature, the bad reasons are very compelling. We'll see if they wind up being too compelling. Yeah, we'll see.

[filepath: /journal]

Wed, 13 Apr 2011

I'm walkin' here ...

Last week I had an awful day. Mainly, I just hated people. I hated their faces, and especially, I hated their voices. This happens to me from time to time. I kind of wigged out.

I need a vacation, I thought.

I know I just had a vacation. But that was in Los Angeles. I need a vacation away from people. I wish I could take a vacation and just go off in the woods somewhere. It's been so long since I've been to the woods. That's what I need.

That whole thought process actually occurred to me, in those exact words. And then, these exact words popped into my brain:

Oh wait! I live in Northern Minnesota! I completely forgot! I'm already in the woods!

Fifteen minutes later, I was bounding down a trail, surrounded by the smell of white pines and the sound of a raging creek swollen with the spring melt. It was morning. Birds shrieked everywhere. I never saw a single person the whole time I was out there. I returned with a permanent grin stuck on my face. Anger? What anger?

I've been taking a lot of morning walks lately, but most of them have been in town. It started as a desire to take photographs of dirty alleys and abandoned buildings. People who live in my town always talk about how beautiful it is. And it is beautiful, but it can also be ugly at times, especially in the so-called "spring" when the sun is low and glaring in the sky and everything is brown and covered in a winter's worth of salty garbage left behind once the snow has receded.

What I'm saying is I've spent a lot of time in the grime. So much that I actually forgot that these little patches of filth are surrounded by water and forest. Go figure.

[filepath: /journal]

Tue, 12 Apr 2011

Time Traveler

When I was about ten years old, I developed what I thought was a great scientific way of discovering whether or not I'd ever get to travel through time. The way I saw it, barring anything tragic, I'd get to live way past The Year 2000. And back in the early 1980s, everyone knew that as soon as The Year 2000 hit, we'd most likely have time machines, sidewalk conveyors, and phaser guns, whatever phaser guns are supposed to be.

The plan went like this: I would simply commit a specific date, time, and place to memory. Of course, I could write this information down and keep it with me at all times if I wanted. But the best way would be to just remember it.

Let's say the date was September 24, 1983, the time was 5:45pm, and the place was my childhood bedroom. I'd simply remember these coordinates (I'm fairly certain that's how I described the information in my mind: as "coordinates") and in the future when I finally got the chance to travel through time, the first place I'd travel would be to those coordinates. The 10-year-old me would wait at that place and time for the future me to arrive. That way, I'd have confirmation -- immediate confirmation -- that someday I'd be a time traveler. The plan was foolproof.

I chose my set of coordinates, making sure to remember a time that was 20 minutes ahead of when I got the idea to commit the coordinates to memory. That way, I could sit and wait in anticipation of the arrival of Future Me.

Future Me never showed up. I found this kind of disappointing, but I shrugged my shoulders and went downstairs to watch The A-Team or something like that.

About a week or two later, I started thinking about my plan again. Too bad it never worked. It would have been nice to see Future Me last ... Tuesday? At ... was it 3:25? DAMMIT. I'd already forgotten the coordinates! No wonder it didn't work.

Clearly, memorization wasn't going to do the trick, so I'd have to write everything down and keep it in a safe place if I wanted this to work. I picked another date, time, and place. I wrote the information down on a piece of notebook paper. I waited. Once again, Future Me didn't show.

Frustrated, I threw the paper away. But wait. If I threw the paper away, then how was Future Me supposed to find it? It wasn't enough to write the information down. I would have to commit to keeping them safe and accessible for the rest of my life. That's the only way it would ever work.

So this time I wrote down the coordinates. I waited. Again, no Future Me. Still, I put the paper in a safe place where it could remain undisturbed until I needed it.

As I'm writing this, it's 2011. I'm sorry to report to my childhood self that I still do not have access to a time machine or a phaser gun. I've used sidewalk conveyors in airports, though. And I have a really cool pocket communicator that I'm sure you'd love.

I have no idea where that paper went, or what I wrote on it. It doesn't matter though. If could travel through time, do you really think I'd go visit that little freakazoid?

[filepath: /journal/history]

Wed, 06 Apr 2011

I Just Can't

After writing that blog post yesterday about how I haven't been reading much this year, I decided to pick up The Pale King and burn through a serious chunk of it. Um. Yeah.

I can't read this book.

I love David Foster Wallace's writing and I consider myself a pretty big fan. Infinite Jest was -- I'll go ahead and say it -- the best reading experience of my life. I've read a lot of his essays and I've never been sorry that I did. I listened to The Broom of the System audiobook, which was a mistake, but the problem was not at all the book but the format I chose to experience it in.

The thing about DFW (especially in the long form) is that you have to trust him implicitly in order to make his writing worthwhile. Reading Infinite Jest, you get at least 150 pages in before there's any inkling of a point, and even then it's only a minor inkling. The story doesn't really begin to coalesce until about halfway through the book.

I like to think of it like jumping out of a plane and trusting that the parachute will, eventually, open. But at first, you have this panicky free-fall where all of your instincts scream at you that what is happening right now is the worst thing ever. It takes a lot of courage to ignore those instincts, enjoy the fall, and admit that what you're experiencing is actually fantastic.

But The Pale King is an unfinished novel. How can you trust an unfinished novel? I can't, that's for sure.

I think if the book was as funny and entertaining as Infinite Jest, I would still enjoy the read. And even though I'm only about one-fifth of the way into the book, I'm pretty sure this is going relatively nowhere.

Consider this line from a review of the book in Esquire magazine:

You don't have to read it in a couple days or even a couple months. I'm not sure you even need to read it in any particular order. It's not that kind of book.

Hm. It's a rave review. All the reviews I've read are rave reviews. Who wants to be the only person to diss a long-awaited posthumously published book by one of the greatest American writers of all time?

Then there's this quote from the book's Editor's Note by Michael Pietsch:

The pages of the manuscript were edited only lightly. One goal was to make characters' names consistent (David invented new names constantly) and to make place names, job titles, and other factual matters match up throughout the book. Another was to correct obvious grammatical errors and word repetitions. Some chapters of the manuscript were designated "Zero drafts" or "freewriting," David's terms for first tries, and included notes such as "Cut by 50% in next draft." I made occasional cuts for sense or pace, or to find an end point for a chapter that trailed off unfinished.

Yeah, that doesn't inspire confidence. Sure, the book might be pretty good, but I can't imagine that it's anywhere near the book we would have seen if DFW had lived to finish it.

I'll keep it around of course and most likely I'll pick it up now and then, maybe reading portions of it as if they are short stories when I'm in the mood for that kind of thing. There is one character I encountered that I'd like to learn more about.

But right now, no way. Sorry, DFW. I just can't.

[filepath: /assessment/reading]

Tue, 05 Apr 2011

Keeping Track

BOOKS & MOVIES

Just for fun, I started working on a text file that lists all the movies I've watched and books I've read in 2011. The idea came to me when I realized that I frequently forget certain types of movies I've seen. Sure, I remember the biggies. And I remember anything I've discussed with anyone. But I watch a lot of movies alone in the middle of the night. These films are usually pretty bad, and pretty forgettable. It would be fun, I thought, to keep track of them and post them here at the end of the year, and while I'm at it, why not keep track of books, too.

Oy. At the end of 2010, I think I read a decent number of books. But guess how many I've read so far in 2011? Four. That's right. Four. I am mortified.

It gets worse. Two of those four books were graphic novels, and one of those had hardly any words in it. Basically, I read two novels while flying to and from LA at the beginning of March, and those were the first novels I'd read since December.

When I think about it, I'm weird when it comes to reading. I absolutely love it. Hell, I have a degree in it. But for some reason, it's easy for me to fall out of the habit, and once I'm out of the habit, it doesn't even occur to me to pick it back up again.

On the other hand, when I do get into a book or even a chain of books, I don't want to do anything but read. I sink into those other worlds. I dream about them. I daydream about them.

A few days ago, I was struggling to fall asleep when I heard a noise on the porch. I had ordered a new case for my camera, so rather than lay there and think about it, I decided to head down and bring my parcel inside. But there were two parcels, and the second one turned out to be David Foster Wallace's new posthumously published novel, The Pale King, which I'd pre-ordered months ago and wasn't expecting for another two weeks.

I had to start digging into it, of course, even though I was dead tired and up way too late. I burned through about 50 pages, and haven't picked it up since. This is partially because: 1) It's an unfinished novel and it shows, and 2) One of the major themes of the book seems to be boredom. This is maybe not a great book to choose to break myself out of this literature-resistant phase I seem to be going through.

TELEVISION

When I had the idea for that text file I mentioned, I thought about making another one to keep track of all the TV I watch. Of course, I wouldn't be able to fill it in retroactively as I did with the book and movie lists.

If I did this, I wouldn't include shows that I watched in marathon form on DVD. I'd only include shows I'd seen as they aired, or on TiVo soon after they aired. I seriously considered this for about 20 seconds before shame made me put the idea on the back burner.

Such a list wouldn't be much fun for me to look at. I think it would just be embarrassing and stressful, like looking at a list of all the food I eat, or a list of all the money I spend. Sure it might be useful for persuading myself to watch less TV and/or better TV, but what fun is that? I have no desire to go on a TV diet. And any personal blog is bad enough when it comes to assholes looking at your life and judging you for sport. I don't need to give these people itemized lists of detailing how many hours of Jersey Shore I've watched in the past year. (Okay, I've watched every second of it, if you must know.)

MUSIC

Speaking of TV and lists and Jersey Shore, I've really been getting into MTV lately. Well, "really getting into" is a bit of a stretch, but it feels like it to me. What I should say is that I've been getting into watching music videos on MTV.com.

My technique is to start out watching actual MTV in the wee hours of the morning, when they still shows videos. I wait for a decent video, which mainly happens during their show Subterranean, which is the new name for the show that used to be called Alternative Nation and before that 120 Minutes. When I see something I halfway like, I go to MTV.com, find that video, and then watch related videos. If I find something I really like, or even kind of like, I go to Amazon and find that song. Then I look for related songs on Amazon until I find songs that are free, and then I download the free songs.

(Why is it I haven't been reading, again?)

I've thought about making a text file listing all the songs I've downloaded, but once again shame dissuades me. I think the stuff I've been listening to is decent. I mean, I like it. But music fans are so damn judgmental.

I have to keep some things to myself.

[filepath: /assessment]

Thu, 31 Mar 2011

Ratholing

I don't really believe in the impending 2012 apocalypse. Don't get me wrong, I wholeheartedly believe that the world is going to hell and that we're on the cusp of something terrible. Definitely. But all that Mayan mumbo-jumbo is ridiculous. This has nothing to do with prophecy. Simply put, you can't look at what we're doing to the planet and actually think we'll continue to get away with it indefinitely.

Still, there's not much that an individual person can do at this point to stop it, aside from growing a long beard, donning a secondhand army jacket, and ranting on the corner while holding a makeshift cardboard sign. It sounds like a hell of a lot of fun, for sure. But it's not terribly effective and it makes life even more awkward than usual when the in-laws come to town.

The only sane thing to do in this situation is to start squirreling away lots of non-perishable food items along with household necessities like toilet paper, guns, and Hardy Boys novels.

Normally, in this household, we do our shopping European-style. That means that although we keep a healthy stock of various items such as spices, sugar, flour, beans, rice, and the like, we generally shop for food on the day it will be made. All told, we probably hit the grocery store about four or five times a week for small, produce-heavy shopping trips. In other words, if a catastrophe were to happen here tomorrow, we'd have a few days of unsatisfactory meals made up of tomato paste and vanilla extract before totally caching our pantry and having to fight the zombie hoards to get to the Rice-a-Roni aisle.

DIGRESSION: I once stumbled on a message board where people were talking about the bird flu. This was maybe three or four years ago. The people on this board were getting very prepared for a pandemic, and leaving no subject unexplored. One of the more fascinating threads was about how, in the event of a mass chaos and looting, to dispose of cans and the like without drawing attention to the fact that you have food in the house. One person said that they had designated a spot in the crawlspace under their house where they planned to dig a hole and bury the cans, as any kind of wrappers or food waste stored in a visible location would be an invitation to hungry, desperate people who might do you harm.

For a long time now, I've wanted to have a well-stocked pantry. Though my parents always bought a lot of food, I grew up in a highly populated house where the food stock turned over very quickly. But every now and then I'd visit friends whose cupboards were stacked with food choices. At any given time, it seemed like their parents could whip up any one of twenty meals, and there were always plenty of choices for snacks that any of us kids could just go in and grab any time we wanted.

That probably isn't the healthiest way to live, but I think there is a lot of room for compromise. I'm not going to go out and buy 20 cases of Coke. I'm not going to use the whole thing as an excuse to eat more. But there's something great to be said about running out of toothpaste, then, instead of going to the store to buy more, simply going down to the toothpaste shelf in the basement where you have enough Aquafresh to fight cavities well into the 2020s. You'll need strong, healthy teeth and claws if you want to do battle against the robot armies, John Connor.

All of this, of course, is just my way of telling myself that it's okay to join Sam's Club. Your life may depend on it, Barrett. It's completely justified.

Ach. No. No it isn't.

[filepath: /journal]

Wed, 23 Mar 2011

The Hierarchy

J: There weren't very many photos from your trip on Facebook. Didn't Barrett take any photos in L.A.?

C: No. He kind of runs hot and cold with his hobbies. He gets interested in something for awhile, then loses interest when he discovers something else. Then he picks it up again.

J: So what is he interested in now?

C: The Sopranos.

This is true. But it's also worse than that.

Sometimes, I think of all my hobbies, interests, and creative endeavors in a sort of hierarchy of procrastination. At the top of the pyramid are the things I am actually good at, along with things that are good for me. In other words, these are the things that I should be doing with my free time, things that either expand my horizons and/or lead to growth in some important aspect of my life. Reading and writing are in this category, along with some other highly rewarding things like photography.

Also here are things that I don't necessarily enjoy, but are very important. House projects fall under this category, and they take up a lot of the same kind of creative energy and time.

Underneath that, however, are things that I'm merely interested in. These are less advocations and artistic endeavors and are more along the lines of hobbies. Included here are artforms that I'm not actually good at, but are still fun to try out. For example, awhile back I really got into baking my own bread from scratch. Fun, yes. And healthy. But not really necessary. Mainly, I just wanted to try it, and while I do enjoy eating fresh bread, I don't really need to bake it every other day.

At the very bottom are random media interests like the above-mentioned Sopranos marathons. I never watched The Sopranos when it was actually on. (Well, I caught a random episode here and there but I didn't know the storyline or details about the characters or anything like that.) Another thing I've been getting into lately is contemporary music videos.

So what happens is, I get into B so I don't have to do A. Then I get into C so I don't have to do B. Then I get into D so I don't have to do C. What makes all of this stupid is that A is something rewarding that I really enjoy. Hell, so are B and C for that matter.

But procrastination is so addictive that I dream up all kinds of ways to avoid doing fun, enjoyable things. Ultimately, it doesn't even matter, because it's my free time and I shouldn't feel guilty for spending it one way rather than another.

For some reason, though, I do.

[filepath: /journal]

Sat, 19 Mar 2011

Idiocy

Like everyone else on this planet, I've spent my entire life listening to people who are older than me talking about the negative effects of aging. And the whole time, I've truly had the belief that none of it will ever apply to me. That's right -- all these things that have literally happened to every single person in the history of the human race? That's about other people. I'm special.

If you share this belief (and I'm assuming that you do on some level, since nothing this stupid can be all that original) you'll start to make a lot of excuses as you notice the normal process of aging begin to work its way with your body. Whoa, whoa, whoa. This lethargy? I must not be getting enough B12. These wrinkles? Antioxidants! I've been slacking when it comes to antioxidants!

And that is part of a larger problem that Americans have, which is the equally stupid belief that whenever anything negative happens to someone, it's because on some level, they deserve it.

Americans think bad things happen to people only because of some mistake they made. People are poor because they are lazy. People have heart attacks solely because of dietary choices (or, ironically, because they worried too much about their own health and got too stressed out). The reason behind this is simple: If bad things only happen because of poor choices, it's possible to have only good things happen to you if you figure out the appropriate choices and stick to them.

Unfortunately, no one has actually had a worry-free life yet. Ever. Because the entire reasoning behind this idea is idiotic and selfish.

Shit happens. Bad shit happens. For reasons completely beyond your control. All the time.

I'm not saying that your choices have no impact on your life or the lives of others. Obviously people eat, drink, and smoke themselves to death every day. People build factories that unleash chemicals and give cancer to entire neighborhoods. But just you watch from now on. Whenever someone delivers any kind of bad news, the listeners immediately start asking questions, the point of which is to figure out just how exactly the victim is to blame for what happened. The subtext of the questions is, "Is this going to happen to me? No, no, it isn't. I don't wear those kinds of clothes in that neighborhood."

I don't live where earthquakes happen.

I don't eat simple carbohydrates.

I went to college and majored in a practical field.

I practice the only true religion.

I'm going to live a happy life, forever.

[filepath: /assessment]

Sun, 06 Mar 2011

Horror of Humanity

I once tweeted, "The only reason I've never pushed anyone down a flight of stairs at Target is that there is no flight of stairs at Target."

Actually, all public places in mall-like areas equally give me a case of the screaming meemies. Knowing this, I try to go during off-peak hours. If a store is open 24 hours, I'll gladly go at 4am to avoid as much cognitive dissonance as possible. Target opens at 8am, but if you think that getting there at 8:01 on a Tuesday morning will save you from insanity, you're dead wrong.

I hate when couples are cruel to each other for no reason. By the time I'd collected my four or five Target treasures and started heading for the checkout, I'd overheard two pointless arguments, one of which involved a husband repeating his wife's words in a whiny, mocking voice. I took my place at the one open checkout behind a couple in their 50s. The woman watched every move the cashier made, angrily micromanaging the bagging portion of her job. "I want these frozen foods kept separate from the non-frozen foods!" she instructed. "They have to be separate, do you understand?"

The cashier said that she did understand. She checked out a stack of pot pies as the woman watched. When she got to the end of the stack, the woman shrieked, "WAIT! That last one was a different price! Why was it a different price?" The cashier held it up and told her that it was a different size from the rest of them. It was a little bigger.

"Well. I guess we know how THAT happened," the woman said. "SOMEBODY picked these out ALL BY HIMSELF."

The husband giggled nervously and said that he tends to just buy the flavors that he wants to eat. The wife then sighed, flabbergasted, and said to the cashier, "THAT CANOLA OIL GOES IN A BAG BY ITSELF!" She indicated a gallon jug of peanut oil. I smirked, imagining the woman frying her eggs in it and subsequently gagging. She'd hate it, and be stuck with a whole gallon of it. Hopefully, she's allergic.

Of course, the husband would be blamed, but I didn't feel bad for him either. This is what he deserves for not manning up and flushing that marriage down the shitter back in the 80s.

[filepath: /journal]

Mole Man

So I'm watching American Pickers and it's the episode where the Pickers are being led around the property of a guy the locals refer to as the Mole Man. He's short and dodgy, and it's hard to determine his age though he appears to be in his 50s. He wears a purple hoodie with the hood up and cinched tight around his face. Immediately you realize that the guy is nuts.

The Mole Man leads us around the exterior of his property, warning to be careful near a rickety wooden tower, which is apparently full of old books. There's a one-room schoolhouse, which he purchased, disassembled, and then reassembled in his yard. Eventually we get to the entrance to his underground network of tunnels, and that's where things get good.

I call Christa over to check this out. Christa doesn't like this show, but I think she'll appreciate this whack job who's hoarded old toys and Christmas decorations and whatnot underground, burrowing further into the earth whenever he needs more room for his junk. Admittedly, it's nice junk and a lot of it has real value. He's not the type of guy you see on other shows who hoard, y'know, used Kleenex and dead gerbils. He's a collector, with an eye for beauty, even if he is insane.

Christa eyes the Mole Man up, and eventually points at him. "If not for me," she says, "that would be you."

To tell you the truth, I waffle between two extremes. Though what she's saying is a joke, I can definitely see where it comes from. I'm not a hoarder. Not at all. But I am the kind of person who might find an old piece of junk laying on the side of the road and think, "Cool." I could image that, unchecked, I might descend into a lifestyle that involved mass acquisition of useless items.

This would involve a lot of "giving up" on my part, though. While I am attracted to useless stuff that simply looks cool, I'm also repulsed by the useless stuff I already own. On one hand, it's kind of nice when these useless items suddenly become useful. I love those times when an unforseen need for something arises and I think, "Hey, I have one of those," before scampering down to the storage room and digging to find just that.

But for the most part, one of the things that makes me really happy is uncluttered space. When I say it makes me happy, I'm not kidding. Clean spaces literally make me smile. Maybe that's just because I'm not used to seeing them. I don't know.

One of the things I pride myself on is my ability to travel light. When going somewhere for a week or so, I rarely need more than what will fit inside a backpack. What does a person need beside clean socks and underwear anyway? A decent pair of shoes, an ATM card, a phone, and maybe a book.

Sometimes I have this fantasy that I extend that to the rest of my life. That we get rid of all this material junk and start living a stark, clean life where everything we need is stored electronically on tiny devices that can easily be stowed out of sight. You have a bed and some comfortable places to sit, some clothes which are neatly put away. It's all very science fiction meets Dwell magazine. I think on some level that would make me happy.

But then. Then there would be that time when you're making a great dinner and you need that weird combination egg separator/vintage meat fork/flour sifter combo, and it isn't there, so you either have to go out and buy one or somehow make do, and you look around your clean Gattaca living space and think, "maybe the Mole Man was right after all."

[filepath: /journal]

Tue, 22 Feb 2011

Worthless

Up until a few days ago, I'd never in my life read the comic strip Mary Worth. I guess it's for a combination of reasons, the first and foremost being that the strip has never run in the local paper, and that shaped most of my pre-internet comic reading habits. The second is that I've never been able to get into the "soap opera" style of comics. I think I ironically read Rex Morgan, MD for a few months back in the early 1990s, and I checked out Gil Thorpe fairly recently when it made reference to a local high school, but other than that, I've generally stayed away from the serious serials.

The current storyline in Mary Worth, however, kept creeping its way into my online reading. It seemed like the universe was telling me I needed to check it out, so I did.

Here's the skinny: Mary's friend Wilbur is concerned, because his daughter appears to be addicted to the internet! She walks around like a zombie, barely listening to him as he prattles on and on. As he scrambles for her attention, just speaks in monosyllables, not even glancing up from her smartphone. "Maybe I should follow you on Twitter so we can relate better," Wilbur says.

Wilbur confides in his problem to Mary, who admitted knows nothing of this strange online world that Wilbur's daughter semi-inhabits. And in one of those most inadvertantly hilarious sequences I've read in the comics in a long time, Wilbur invites Mary over for a quick primer on current cyberculture.

All of this comes off a sub-storyline setup where Mary is confronted with the idea of e-readers. And here, my friends, is where things get personally embarrassing for yours truly.

I read that sub-storyline and hissed the word "SHIT," while squeezing my phone to keep myself from throwing it at the wall in disgust. I say these things. I say these things about e-readers that MARY FUCKING WORTH is saying in these fucking panels.

Is it possible for a man in his 30s to check himself into a retirement home?

I don't understand e-readers. I used to say "the e-reader is the Segway of reading," but then I amended that to "the e-reader is the Nordic Track of reading." Americans are always feeling guilty about the things they don't do, and, being Americans, think that the only way to assuage that guilt and to fix their lives is to buy something expensive. This gagdet will solve all my problems and make me a better person, they tell themselves. So they empty their bank accounts, bring the object home, and let it collect dust in the closet while they watch episode after episode of Minute to Win It.

But I could be completely wrong about the e-reader. It might be an awesome piece of technology that I would use all the time. I'm often wrong about a lot of things.

Mary Worth says, "I like looking at the books lined up on my shelf," and "I like reading something that doesn't rely on batteries or electricity." While I do really enjoy listening to mp3s, I can't help but think of how many of them I've lost over the years to technical failure. I have mine backed up pretty well nowadays, but still, the issue of DRM comes up all the time. I flat-out own most of my music collection, but there are some that I am merely renting.

Enthusiasts of the Nook were excited a few months ago when users of that platform acquired the ability to lend books to a friend for like two weeks or something ridiculous like that. I HATE that. When I buy something, I want it to be mine. I should be able to lend it to whoever I want for as long as they need.

Yeah, I understand. Copyright. File sharing. All of that. I'm not stupid. But still.

Advances in electronic technology tend to be really good at improving existing electronic technology. What I mean is that the iPod is better than the Walkman. TiVo is better than the VCR. But it's hard for current technology to truly replace ancient technology. The automobile is better than the horse. But Pop Tarts aren't better than pie. Are e-readers better than books?

I can't quite bring myself to believe it. I would like to borrow one for awhile, though.

[filepath: /assessment]

Tue, 15 Feb 2011

Onslaught

One of the most difficult things about owning a 90-year-old house is trying to convince wild animals that it's not a great place to live. This is a battle that I find myself fighting all too frequently, and usually it ends with a humiliating loss on my part. The best a person can do, it seems, it to drive the menagerie back into the walls and out of the general human living spaces, at which time you think you've solved the problem, but of course there's no way to actually be sure of it.

We currently have a three-headed army keeping us at seige.

Mice

Some people are squeamish about killing mice, but I will do whatever it takes to lessen the numbers of this little motherfuckers, if not stamp them out entirely. In their case, I've always found poison to the be the best weapon against them. If you ask the internet how to get rid of mice, almost every site you come across will try to dissuade you from using poison. Simply put, they are all wrong. Is it inhumane? Who cares. Does it work? Yes. Do the mice die and rot in your walls, smelling up the place? Generally not. The poison dries them out, either leaving husks of mouse-mummy in their hiding places (as warnings against their kind when they attempt further infestations) or driving them outdoors in search of a water source.

I'm not entirely sure the mouse problem has been fixed. There's been no signs of chewing lately, and we haven't heard them crawling around in the walls. But you never can be too sure. It's best to be vigilant.

Squirrels

There are definitely squirrels living in the attic right now. We knew there had been squirrel problems before we bought this house, and were led to believe that these problems had been dealt with. I think they were. But new squirrels have chewed their way in again, and are having a squirrel party in the attic, burrowing in the insulation and probably humping up a storm.

I'm not sure how to get rid of the squirrels, other than live-trapping them and driving them out to some remote location to set them free. You can actually do this with squirrels, provided that you don't have like a whole extended squirrel community living in your attic. I've never actually seen a squirrel up there, only evidence of their nightly shindig, so I can't believe there's more than one or two. The problem then involves finding their entrance and patching it up. It seems almost futile, since more squirrels will simply bust open a new hole next winter, but I guess it has to be done. I'm waiting for the weather to warm up to do any of this, because it seems more human and because I'm lazy.

Birds

There's a huge flock of birds that I think might be starlings that like to infest the front porch. They aren't there now, of course, because they're still rocking out in Miami or wherever they spend the winter. But they'll be back soon, and it's important to at least attempt to prepare for them.

The front porch roof has these little round holes under the eaves, presumably to let air in and keep the wood from rotting. Each of these holes is plugged with a plastic vent to lessen the entryway. This is no problem for the birds, who simply pry those vents out and move in.

My guess is that I'm going to have to buy some more vents and somehow glue them in place with an ultra-strong adhesive that the birds can't budge. This is another one of those things that seems almost futile. But I guess I have to try. The idea of dozens of birds living in your house is disgusting, even if the birds aren't living inside your living space but only in the porch roof. Besides, I think they're messing with the wiring of the porch light, because it doesn't work properly. That's pretty scary.

Does everyone have these problems? I think a lot of people do, especially around here where most people live in older homes. But it's one of those things where if you don't share these problems, you're freaked out and think that there's something wrong with the people who do.

[filepath: /journal]

Wed, 09 Feb 2011

Bug-Eyed and Loving It

One day last week, I got so cranked out of my mind on coffee that I thought I was going to tear off my own skin. I don't know what happened. I don't think I drank very much more than I normally do, but I did make it somewhat stronger than I normally do. Without going into too much detail, I wigged out and cleaned the kitchen, groaning in frustration the whole time at all the clutter. I dropped everything I picked up. I tripped over everything that was trip-over-able. And I did all of this when I already was pressed for time. It would have made far more sense to just leave the house early, or to sit on the couch and drink some water, but no, I was possessed by evil, apparently.

That night, I devised a plan to stop drinking caffeine. Or rather, I looked up plans on the internet, and then modified them to suit my ideas of what is workable for me. The plan was to keep track of how much caffeine I drink in on average, then try to reduce it by 25%. After a week or so, I'd knock off another 25%. Then after a few days, I'd only drink caffeine every other day. Then every two days. I'd keep reducing the frequency and amount in this way until my habit was broken.

This plan lasted about 24 hours, before I intentionally drank two large energy drinks (the most I've ever had in one night) and stayed awake for like a whole day. That was actually intensely pleasant. Remember those cut-shots in Requiem for a Dream where they'd show someone's pupil dialate and you'd hear that servo-motor sound effect? Yeah, like that. Drink. "VVVVVVTTT!!!!" Cut to me doing parkour in the living room at 5am.

My plan wasn't to quit entirely. I just wanted to break the actual physical addiction. I don't like the idea of needing caffeine, even if I have no problem with enjoying caffeine.

I think energy drinks are not long for this world. Whenever I drink them, which is usually about once or twice a week, I'm always appalled by how great they make me feel. I keep picturing a time in the future, like 60 years from now, when people say, "Can you believe there was a time when you could just walk into any convenience store and buy a can of panax and guarana?" It'll be like when Coca-Cola used to contain cocaine.

Here's something I've realized in recent months: There are all kinds of legal stimulants you can buy at gas stations and grocery stores. But the only legal depressant you can buy over the counter is alcohol. They ("they" being, I don't know, the Man I guess) don't want you going in that direction. What? You want unhealthy, tooth-grinding amounts of energy that makes you get off your ass and do stuff, preferably for the economy? Sure! Pick something from that wall over there. Oh, wait. You want to calm down, relax, and reduce stress? Well, I guess you can have a glass of wine, but really, a better way to reduce stress is to clean out your garage and then go shopping.

So I guess I'll have to try the caffeine ween again this week, before someone stages an intervention. Wish me luck.

[filepath: /journal]

Tue, 08 Feb 2011

Don't Know About the Future. That's Anybody's Guess.

There's something incredibly awesome about sitting in a darkened basement, drinking enengy drinks, and doing maintenance on a website. Headphones blasting a punk rock/hip-hop playlist. Washing machine and dryer quietly grinding away behind you. That's the state I'm in as I write this.

Moments, literal moments after I finished writing the previous entry, I took to the internet to find the answer to all my technical difficulties. I found them immediately in the form of a turn-of-the-millenium blogging platform called Blosxom.

It's hard to talk about why Blosxom is so great without coming across as if I've suddenly turned autistic. Most people would consider it woefully outdated. It certainly isn't easy to work with, but it accomplishes exactly what I want it to accomplish. The gist is this:

You write all your posts as plain text files, using whatever text editor you want: OpenOffice, Windows Notepad, Microsoft Word, TextEdit, Emacs, etc. I'm using JDarkRoom, which quintuples the fun.
You then upload the text file to your server.
Bloxsom then displays the text in familiar blog form. You can of course use CSS and HTML to format the blog any way you want. I'm sticking with gently formatted user defaults to keep with my original ideas about readability.

There is an RSS feed now, which I originally didn't want. What the heck. If I'm all about readability, people should be able to read the blog in an RSS reader if that's what they want to do.

There will never be comments.

There are categories, for which Blosxom's method is both archaic and hilarious. You simply create a different directory on the server for each of the categories. Blosxom then displays which directory the text file is in at the bottom of each blog post.

I have this strange appreciation for antiquated technology. It's a bit of a paradox, because I really love brand-new technology. What it is, I think, is I just hate throwing something away when it's still perfectly good.

Maybe I'll write about that next time. It's too much to go into here.

[filepath: /meta]

Eating My Words

I apologize for the post I'm about to write here. It's going to be very boring, but it's what's on my mind, so so be it. It's my blog and I go meta if I want to.

In the first post I wrote on this blog, I made a big deal about how it's all hand-coded in HTML, and it's all on one page, and "the plan is for it to stay that way." As I'm writing this, I'm not quite sure that's the best plan for the site. (Duh.)

I did a lot of research while I was going back and forth about whether I wanted to start blogging again. Most of the OG bloggers I started reading back in the day have moved on to other projects. The ones who still blog either do so very infrequently, or have found some monetary success and now commandeer something more along the lines of a advertising/marketing firm than a personal blog.

What I wanted to find out was why (hell, IF) anyone has a personal blog anymore. I also wanted to find some great personal blogs that were still going strong, because at this point, I only know about a few of them. So I took to the Googles, and what I found wasn't pretty.

Basically, it all looked like this: "BLOG BLOG MAKE MONEY FROM YOUR HOME SEO MONETIZE SOCIAL NETWORKING FACEBOOK TWITTER!!!!!!!"

Disgusting.

I also found a lot of advice about what I should do if I have a business and I want to jump on this whole Web 2.0 bandwagon. It pretty much looked like a team of marketing jackholes barfed up a gutful of buzzwords onto their keyboards, then hit "send" before all heading to Applebee's for happy hour. In other words, helpful to no one.

So I never found what I was looking for. The only thing I found that was written in decent English all had to do with how your blog should look. I've been blogging for the better part of a decade. I'm also part owner of a somewhat successful blog that actually makes money. I feel comfortable saying that everything I read was a steaming wad of bullshit fired out of a high-powered douche-cannon.

The whole thing made me kind of sad, like visiting your favorite playground from your childhood and discovering that it was razed to make way for a tourist bar that constantly pumps "Margaritaville" onto the sidewalk.

My response was that I devised a plan. I owned up to the fact that I don't want anything to do with blogging in its current formation. I don't care about the quantity of my visitors, only the quality. I wanted to make it a little bit difficult for people to read my blog. Not too difficult, but I didn't want anyone to read it because they felt obligated because they know me or because they live in my town. That means I didn't want an RSS feed. I've never liked comments, so I wasn't going to include those either. After thinking about it, I didn't want any interactivity of any kind. What I wanted was a static website that I could update frequently. I wanted to write, and to post, and to get my hands as dirty as possible while I was doing it.

This is why I decided to hand-code the site, and also to use as little web design as possible.

The thing is, I don't know how much longer I can keep up this one-page nonsense. I didn't really think it through. My reasoning was that back in the 90s, people threw default, text-heavy, Times New Roman pages onto the internet all the time, and other people opened and read them fairly easily on a dial-up connection.

But what I didn't think about was how people didn't actually write much on the internet back then. They might post a few things, then leave them sitting there for years, as opposed to now when if you want to blog and do it right, you have to post every day. At least.

What I'm getting at is that the page is already becoming a bit heavy. Before I wrote this post, it was already 20K, which doesn't sound like much because it isn't. But multiply that times six months, and you're staring to get something. Multiply it by four years, and suddenly that simple textual web page is taking forever to load even on a very fast connection.

Since I don't want to have to copy and paste hundreds of posts somewhere down the line, I have to decide fairly quickly here what I want to do with this blog. I'm considering a few options:

Keeping things as they are and saying screw it.
Staying with the hand-coding, but coming up with a system for archiving.
Coming up with a system for archiving, and writing my own blog engine that only does the few lightweight tasks I actually need.
Going back to Wordpress or Blogger, and writing my own template that relies heavily on browswer defaults, like the (lack of) design I'm currently using.
Trying out some other content-management system, just for fun.

This is what's occupying most of my head-space right now.

[filepath: /meta]

Conspiracy Nerd (with spoilers)

It all started when somehow I wound up on the Wikipedia page, "List of The X-Files episodes." I can't remember how I ended up there. Maybe I read an article or a blog post about the show, or maybe I happened to catch a rerun on TV and decided to look it up myself. What excited me was how there are asterisks after certain episode titles, indicating that those episodes collectively make up The X-Files ongoing mythology. The so-called X-Files "Mytharc" relates the story of how the planet Earth is on the cusp of an alien invasion, and how conspirators within the US government are simultaneously covering up the impending invasion, are helping the aliens subdue the human population in exchange for key positions after the invasion, and are secretly developing weapons to fight the invasion if the chance should arise.

I was a big fan of the show when it was on TV in the late 90s. I watched it on TV, but also rented the videotapes as they came out so that I could re-watch and study the conspiracy. I had an extremely worn copy of Entertainment magazine that listed an episode guide for the first several seasons. The problem was, whether on TV or on videotape, watching the show chronologically meant watching not only the Mytharc episodes, but also the much more common "Monster-of-the-Week" episodes, which are fun but tend to drag you out of the Mytharc and make you forget key details of the conspiracy. Staring at the Wikipedia page, I realized that since I now had this all-encompassing guide, and since every episode of the show was available on Netflix Instant, I could finally watch the entire Mytharc in one long stream.

Also, I could finally figure out why, if I loved the show so much, I stopped watching it long before the series reached its last season.

Tonight, after several months of viewing, I watched the series finale.

The first few seasons were familiar territory. Somewhere along the line, there had been a weekend-long marathon. And even though I didn't have cable at the time, I commandeered a VCR at my parents' house and recorded the whole thing. These were also the seasons explained in that copy of Entertainment magazine. I'd often watch them when I was sick or when I had insomnia or after coming home from the bars. They were good, but a little worn out in my mind.

Seasons 3-5, on the other hand, were much less familiar and were utterly, utterly awesome. Even if you've never seen the show before, I think if you watched it for the first time you'd have to agree that this is where the show is most on-point. The character development in particular is incredible, but also every episode is funny and suspenseful, not to mention creepy.

Next came Fight the Future, which is the feature film that came out in theaters. It's okay. I'd give it 3/5 stars. But it's kind of soured in my mind, because it's also the beginning of the end. I think a big reason why the series was so good had to do with David Duchovny, and likewise, I blame most of the show's downfall on him as well. Here's why.

Up through season five, the show was filmed in Vancouver. This really affected the show's aesthetic. Everything was green and lush and, consequently, shadowy. The forests of British Columbia made it easy to believe that you were watching events unfold all across the country: in Michigan, in Maine, in West Virginia, or in the forests of New Jersey. In season six, Duchovny stipulated that if he was going to remain with the show, shooting would have to be done in Los Angeles. The entire aesthetic changed, and while there were some good scenes set in the desert, for the most part, The X-Files began to look like every other show on TV.

Speaking of which, this was also the time when other unique aspects began to melt away in favor of cliche, as the show attempted to appeal to a broader audience. The solidly platonic relationship between Mulder and Scully, I always thought, was its strongest aspect. This isn't supposed to be a romance. Despite Duchovny's looks, you're supposed to believe that Mulder is an obsessed geek so deep within his own thoughts that he barely has time to feed his pet fish. Scully is a careerist and a scientist thrust into an adversarial relationship with Mulder. I'm not saying the romance that eventually develops in implausible (implausible would be either one of them falling for a third party), I'm saying that it was refreshing to see a show that resisted romantic cliches.

Another problem with the later seasons is the introduction of several less-interesting characters, who almost completely take over the series not to mention the actual X-files. By the time seasons eight and nine roll around, Fox Mulder is barely even in the picture anymore, frequently getting kidnapped or in hiding, even imprisoned. Two other agents, John Doggett and Monica Reyes, take over the X-files office, while Dana Scully goes about the business of gestating yet another alien baby. Practically every one of Scully's scenes post-birth involve her placing the baby in its crib or taking it out of the crib.

Some critics say that the show ultimately failed because the conspiracy became too elaborate. This might be the case, but only because of the often weeks-long lapses between Mytharc episodes when they originally aired. Consumed the way I just did, the story is baroque, but certainly manageable. I also read somewhere that some blame 9/11 for the show's demise, citing a 1/3 loss in viewership after the terrorist attacks. Well, it might be that viewers stopped watching because they were suddenly too patriotic to watch a show about government conspiracies, but I'd wager it had a lot more to do with the fact that one of the show's main characters was unseen for months on end while the other was suspended in a seemly infinite loop of lifting a baby out of a crib and putting it back again.

Personally, I stopped watching because while the show's creators and stars were trying to keep all the balls in the air at the same time -- the story, their careers, their egos -- they lost track of what made the show great in the first place: the characters.

[filepath: /assessment]

The Hard Winter

It snowed this morning, and I wanted to write a tweet that said, "I love when it snows, because then Minnesotans are shocked and dismayed on Facebook by the fact that it's still winter in January, rather than by the fact that once again Monday has followed Sunday." That's way longer than 140 characters, and I tried few times to edit it down to size before giving up. There's already too much bile on the internet anyway. No use adding to it.

It's true, though. Minnesotans constantly complain about the weather, as if it has ever been balmy at this time of year, what the old timers would call, "the hard winter." Up until January, winter is easy. Up until January, winter means Christmas and presents and pies and quiet nights by the fire. In January and February, everyone's inner Jack Torrance comes out to play. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

I, on the other hand, love the hard winter. It's this time of year when I actually begin to dread the end of winter, and what that brings. I hate on December 22 when people become fake excited that the days are getting longer (yeah, like 10 seconds longer or something like that). You know what I hate? Long days. June. There's nothing worse for a nightshifter than the sound of birds chirping at 3:30am. For me, daylight means the end of the day, the end of the fun. I hate when that comes early.

In the wintertime, sleeping is great. I don't know the exact number, but there's something like 14 hours of darkness right now, and when the sun does manage to creep up above the horizon, it doesn't really have its heart in it. It puts in a weak effort, then heads back down for the night. Meanwhile, I'm drinking energy drinks and doing karate kicks. I don't need the sun. That's what I have a vitamin D prescription for.

Sure, you have to dig you way out of your house every couple of days. Sure, it physically hurts to be outside. But it's quiet out there. It's dark. And it's pretty.

I think if you live here and you don't like the winter, you might need to reevaluate your life choices. Because winter in Minnesota lasts a long, long time.

[filepath: /journal]

First-World Problems

I've come into some money. Actually, I shouldn't phrase it that way, because that makes it sound like a lot more money than it really is. I'm not talking about quit-your-job money, or buy-a-new-car money, or anything close to that. But throughout the end of last year, I worked a lot of overtime. I worked my ass off, in fact. Involuntarily. It sucked.

While I was working so much, I made a promise to myself: That when it was all over, I would take a big chunk of the extra money I was making and buy myself something awesome. I didn't really think much about what I'd get. I didn't think about it at all in fact. I just knew that eventually things would return to normal, and when they did, I would reap some kind of super-exciting award, yet to be determined.

This brings us to last week, when I finally felt that I could breathe easy. The overtime seems to have eased up. The holidays are over. The time seems right for me to splurge. The thought was fun for about twenty minutes.

I thought about it. And I thought about it some more. I spent a whole night thinking about it. But in the end, there wasn't one thing that I really wanted.

That isn't to say there isn't anything that I need. Need is not the issue here. I need lots of stuff. But this was supposed to be spent on wants, not needs. It was supposed to be fun.

I don't have a lot of wants that can be purchased. I want more free time. I want that free time to occur during the day, rather than in the middle of the night. I want to be able to stop having to explain my weird lifestyle to other people. I want to see movies in the theater. You can't order any of this stuff from Amazon.

Likewise, I don't have expensive tastes. My wardrobe consists of a closet full of $5 black T-shirts from Target and a couple pairs of Old Navy jeans. I drive a Ford Focus with no options. I check books out of the public library. I do have an iPhone 4, but these days I generally listen to music on Pandora for free. Besides, I got a $50 iTunes gift card for Christmas. I'm typing this on a computer from 2003, whose keyboard was literally built in 1984 -- both work great.

Sure, I could put the money toward one of my needs, such as more insulation for the attic, or gutters for the garage. I could replace some of my grungier black T-shirts or buy some new thermal underwear. But that would be lame. I mean, I like being warm and all that, but I didn't make all those sacrifices for an attic full of foam or a pair of long johns.

I've been thinking about this for days, and I still haven't come up with anything. I feel stupid complaining about it, but it's actually kind of depressing.

What do I want?

[filepath: /journal]

The Old Stomping Grounds

About a year ago, we moved to the neighborhood of my childhood. It's hard to explain why I like this part of the city so much. It isn't nearly as pretty as the areas near the lake, although it does have its charm. There are absolutely no good restaurants out here, except for a couple of diners. Entertainment options are practically nonexistant. It's a lot like living in a very small town. I guess it just feels comfortable to me.

One of the things that strikes me as interesting as I walk or drive down the neighborhood streets is how familiar I am with the bums and/or weirdos who wander around out here. Many of them I actually remember from way back when I was a kid. That guy with the huge backpack staring up at the flagpole outside of McDonald's? He's been doing that since 1985. He'll probably be doing that for many years to come.

Some of these people are really beginning to show their old age. Others are around my age or even a few years younger. I know some of their names. Others I only know by sight.

It's easy to become nostalgic as I travel through the neighborhood. I often eat breakfast in a greasy spoon on Grand Avenue. Sometimes I'll look out the window and try to remember what it was like before they tore down the buildings across the street to make way for Kmart. Sometimes I think picture the old wooden railroad trestle that used to snake its way through the area. The buildings are gone, and the trestle is gone, but the whack jobs who used to hang out underneath the trestle are still around, and chances are, they're probably shopping at Kmart.

Maybe these people are part of the reason that I feel comfortable out here. Not that I want to be friends with them or anything, but they're part of what anchors me to the place. In a world where everything morphs so rapidly, things change here glacially. I might not know what 2015 will look like in the world at large, but here in this neighborhood, I can rest assured that that blonde lady with the orange bandana will be somewhere within nine blocks of Memorial Park.

Walking down Grand Avenue or Central Avenue, it's easy to travel through time. I'm so intimately familiar with these streets that at any given moment, I can blink and be back in 1990 or 1981 or even forward to 2020. They only things that change are the cars. I have to mentally alter those, but otherwise it's no problem at all.

And as I do this, someone in one of the cars inevitably says, "Hey," looking at me. "There's that guy."

[filepath: /journal]

Back to Basics

So after a hiatus, I've returned to the internet in the form of this weird thing. Welcome. Let me show you around the place.

As you can see, it's very plain. This is on purpose. I'm not using any blogging software or content-management system whatsoever. Everything is hand-coded using a simple text editor (either TextEdit or Gedit, depeding on whether I'm on MacOS or Ubuntu -- for you Windows users, think Notepad). The "design" if you can even call it that is an extremely gentle tweak of your browser default settings. Everything is on one page, and the plan is for it to stay that way. When I write a new post, I'll just tack it on at the top of the .txt file I keep on my desktop, and upload it. This is all very Web 1.0. Hell, this is Web 0.9.

A great metaphor for what I'm doing here is the idea of getting rid of your car (or at least leaving it in the garage) and riding your bike to work instead. Sure, it sounds like a pain in the ass. But if your commute is short and relatively safe, and if the climate you live in is comfortable enough for your tastes, it definitely becomes an option. You don't really need all the luxuries that a car provides -- cruise control, sound system, air conditioning -- if you're only driving for five minutes a day anyway. All you need is to get from one place to the other. The bike is a cheap, healthy option that is quicker than walking and much cheaper and cleaner than driving.

Also, biking keeps you in shape. That's my favorite part of the metaphor, because it's a big part of why I'm returning to writing on the internet. I'm in horrible writing condition. I need to start seeing life in terms of the written word again, to slow down and see artistic potential in physical things. You probably rolled your eyes at that last sentence and I don't blame you. Like I said, horrible writing condition.

So much of blogging is about things other than writing. It's about social interaction. It's about how many comments you can get. It's about commenting on other people's sites so that they come back and comment on yours. It's about how many hits you get. It's about how many subscribers you get. It's about getting reblogged. It's about getting likes on Tumblr and Facebook. It's about reblogging and liking, trying to build an audience of fellow rebloggers and likers, who reblog and like you in return. It's exhausting. And kind of disgusting.

I don't need any of that, and to keep myself on the right path, I've rendered it all impossible. There is no commenting system. Hell, there isn't even an RSS feed. If anyone is going to read this journal, they're going to have to bookmark it and keep coming back.

I know. I know. No one is going to read this journal. Not under these circumstances.

I'm okay with that. Before I started this, I tried a few other things. I had a secret blog for awhile. I got so bored with it that I actually forgot where it was, and had to search through my browser history to find it so I could delete it. I tried writing in a file on my desktop and keeping it there, but there was no accountability. I could write any kind of crap and it wouldn't matter. Those cheesy writing books always say that is a good thing, but it really isn't. Writing crap isn't fun.

With this, I'll be publishing stuff on a URL with my actual name on it. I did this for seven years, and it was almost always enjoyable. Except when it got unenjoyable and I quit. But I think all I needed was to wipe the board clean and start afresh.

Ugh. Like I said. Horrible writing condition.

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