1. The Road , Cormac McCarthy (2006)
2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling (2000)
3. Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987)
4. The Liars' Club, Mary Karr (1995)
5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997)
6. Mystic River, Dennis Lehane (2001)
7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991)
8. Selected Stories, Alice Munro (1996)
9. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997)
10. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (1997)
11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997)
12. Blindness, José Saramago (1998)
13. Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-87)
14. Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates (1992)
15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers (2000)
16. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood (1986)
17. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez (1988)
18. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike (1990)
19. On Beauty, Zadie Smith (2005)
20. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding (1998)
21. On Writing, Stephen King (2000)
22. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz (2007)
23. The Ghost Road, Pat Barker (1996)
24. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry (1985)
25. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan (1989)
26. Neuromancer, William Gibson (1984)
27. Possession, A.S. Byatt (1990)
28. Naked, David Sedaris (1997)
29. Bel Canto, Anne Patchett (2001)
30. Case Histories, Kate Atkinson (2004)
31. The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien (1990)
32. Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch (1988)
33. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005)
34. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (2002)
35. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
36. Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt (1996)
37. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003)
38. Birds of America, Lorrie Moore (1998)
39. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
40. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (1995-2000)
41. The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (1984)
42. LaBrava, Elmore Leonard (1983)
43. Borrowed Time, Paul Monette (1988)
44. Praying for Sheetrock, Melissa Fay Greene (1991)
45. Eva Luna, Isabel Allende (1988)
46. Sandman, Neil Gaiman (1988-1996)
47. World's Fair, E.L. Doctorow (1985)
48. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (1998)
49. Clockers, Richard Price (1992)
50. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
51. The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcom (1990)
52. Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMillan (1992)
53. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)
54. Jimmy Corrigan, Chris Ware (2000)
55. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls (2006)
56. The Night Manager, John le Carré (1993)
57. The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe (1987)
58. Drop City, TC Boyle (2003)
59. Krik? Krak! Edwidge Danticat (1995)
60. Nickel & Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich (2001)
61. Money, Martin Amis (1985)
62. Last Train To Memphis, Peter Guralnick (1994)
63. Pastoralia, George Saunders (2000)
64. Underworld, Don DeLillo (1997)
65. The Giver, Lois Lowry (1993)
66. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (1997)
67. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (2003)
68. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel (2006)
69. Secret History, Donna Tartt (1992)
70. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (2004)
71. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Ann Fadiman (1997)
72. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003)
73. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving (1989)
74. Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger (1990)
75. Cathedral, Raymond Carver (1983)
76. A Sight for Sore Eyes, Ruth Rendell (1998)
77. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)
78. Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert (2006)
79. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell (2000)
80. Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney (1984)
81. Backlash, Susan Faludi (1991)
82. Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002)
83. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields (1994)
84. Holes, Louis Sachar (1998)
85. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004)
86. And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts (1987)
87. The Ruins, Scott Smith (2006)
88. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (1995)
89. Close Range, Annie Proulx (1999)
90. Comfort Me With Apples, Ruth Reichl (2001)
91. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (2003)
92. Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow (1987)
93. A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley (1991)
94. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser (2001)
95. Kaaterskill Falls, Allegra Goodman (1998)
96. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (2003)
97. Jesus' Son, Denis Johnson (1992)
98. The Predators' Ball, Connie Bruck (1988)
99. Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman (1995)
100. America (the Book), Jon Stewart/Daily Show (2004)

Enjoy!

I've been trying to kick this cold in the butt and put everything on hold, thinking I could get rid of it. A runny nose still lingers, but I couldn't just sit around for another week trying to get it to go away. Got down into the gym today for the first time in almost a week.

This weekend was a pretty good one, except for the fact of losing to Richmond by an embarrassing 56-16. I enjoyed two nights of eating out with my parents and my BR's, especially the exciting adventure at Salerno's on Friday night.

So begins another week at the I.

Workout

Skullcrushers - 65 lb x 15, 10 vertical presses x 2 sets; 75 lb x 5, 10 vertical presses.

Lat-Pulldowns and Pushups Superset - 90 lb x 10, 20 pushups, 3 sets.

Dumbbell Side Bends - 60 lb x 15 each side x 2 sets.

Wall Throws - 20 lb medicine ball x 50 reps.

Lunges - 30 lb x 25 yards x 2 sets.

Picture of the Weekend

so, a little while ago i mentioned "the fire".  rather than trying to describe it now, three years later, i've instead dug up an old conversation i had on instant messenger at the time about the 1975 travco motorhome that we fixed up/lived in over the course of several months, getting ready to head out on the road for the first time.  it is strange reading this now, though, since it was told to a friend who has recently gone through something so much more extreme (with certain eerie parallels, but nothing even CLOSE to what he experienced).  anyway, the setting is late summer '05, northeastern washington (compañero = the friend, rube = me, compañera = mi novia):

rube: we were only one day out of montana
rube: wait, two
rube: the final night we were parked at our very own campground outside of kettle falls, wa, where there was a fine organic market, and the night before that we parked at the library in sandpoint idaho after letting the night grow a bit too late and remembering where that gets you.
compañero: yes
rube: prior to that it was a night in the parking lot of the mechanic in kalispell, mt, and before that was our first night away from what had previously been home, laying in the back watching the wonder years until the laptop battery wore down, unaware of the dead starter that would greet us in the morning, at the elementary school in marion, mt
rube: the drive from ex-home to marion was the high point of our life in that house
rube: so much work and anxiety built up and then released as we realized that it was going to be totally awesome in there.
rube: we drove along flathead lake, and i finally let go of the fear that it wouldn’t work for us
compañero: it’s good to know the short time was spent so well
rube: then we woke up in marion and found that the batteries weren’t to blame this time for the lack of a crank (though they should have since the alternator turned out to be bad….the first guy wrote “looked new - did not replace” on the invoice after we paid him $2700).
rube: then it all unraveled.
rube: towed back 25 miles to kalispell.  had to spend the night there, and a few hundred dollars.  headed off to idaho, woke up at nine to the unrelenting knocking of an employee who wanted the parking space, but then we found a nice little organic market there.
rube: …it was so strange during those days, we bounced from one problem over to one good thing here or there…i have yet to see the good thing to equal out with the final problem we experienced
rube: things were looking good again the next day in washington.  we passed through kettle falls and didn’t notice the organic market the first time, but compañera wanted to go back to town later after we found the campsite, so we could get online, and that’s when we found the place and got good soup.
rube: and then we returned to find the campground still completely empty, successfully ran our generator for a while - which was good since we weren’t sure if it was actually repaired correctly, then i actually managed to start some work, and compañera did her dad’s birthday gift artwork.
rube: then came the morning, which was really nice.  there was a bike trail there, and a creek, and we looked around some, but we wanted to head west and get to bellingham and then the coast as soon as we could.  i happened to do an exterior check and noticed our waste tank had broken its straps and was hanging really low…
rube: (the straps were like cheap aluminum it turns out……we ASKED THE RV SHOPS to check everything underneath, and repair whatever needed it)
compañero: aye
compañero: did you fix it there?
rube: we slung a few ratchet straps all the way around the body and pulled it back up nice and tight (with a little piss trickling on to us for good measure)
compañero: swell
compañero: hah
rube: that did the trick but we didn’t want to drive around like that so we went back to kettle falls to have an rv specialist put on better metal straps
rube: he didn’t have anything on hand, so instead of waiting around for a few days for an order to arrive, we opted to head west and get the work done in bellingham
compañero: so you were back tracking?
rube: well, we had back-tracked to kettle falls a few times at that point, and were finally going to cross the threshold and go beyond our campground which was up the road from kettle, heading west on hwy 20
rube: we did, and pushed on up sherman pass.
rube: we put on Hole’s live through this, since Low’s things we lost in the fire was getting a bit too sleepy to listen to at the time
rube: the travco was having trouble making it up the grade, and with all the cars appearing from nowhere behind me, i had to turn off the music because i couldn’t focus or hear the engine
rube: it slowed down more than ever before (even when crossing the rockies when we brought it back to montana)
compañero: oh yeah, i forgot about that journey
rube: i down-shifted but it just got worse and eventually stalled in the middle of the road on the hill
rube: then i tried starting it and it had a lot of trouble until it finally caught
rube: we pulled over at the first pull-off, so that the other cars could pass (this was a very desolate stretch of highway, so they were scarce but we managed to back traffic up behind us quite well)
rube: my foot was on the brake there, as we waited for them to go by.
rube: then i noticed some smoke in the mirror and also some coming from up front
rube: we thought we fucked up and let it overheat (and for some reason that’s what we were told by a lot of the people we dealt with afterwards), but that wasn’t the cause, and shouldn’t have been a factor to begin with, since we just had the radiator re-done
rube: then i shut it off and put it in park, and took my foot off the brake
compañero: that means the fire started after you started it back up on the hill?
rube: seems to be so
rube: actually, i don’t know at what point i put it in park and turned it off, all at the same time we lifted up the engine cover (between our seats), i saw flames down there, i turned off the engine, put it in park and took my foot off the brake, but it started rolling backwards down the hill
rube: i tried the brake and it wouldn’t work, then the emergency brake, but it just kept rolling so i said “we have to get out and stop it”
rube: smoke had started to fill up the cab at that point
rube: compañera didn’t realize that i meant the brakes were gone, so as it rolled backwards i was jumping out the door to try to stop it from rolling (foolishly of course…it weighed 7 tons), and compañera reached her leg over and tried hitting the brake
compañero: what kind of terrain were you on here?
rube: this was a 4000-5000 ft mountain pass, we were on the mountain side, not the cliff side of the road
compañero: thank god
rube: yeah, so i had my feet up against the embankment, which was loose gravel, and silly me, i thought i was actually stopping the thing, but it just happened to start digging into the gravel and came to a stop
rube: the scariest part was when i was outside and compañera was still inside in the cab while it was rolling
rube: i didn’t know why she wasn’t jumping out, but she hadn’t realized the brakes were gone
rube: so it stopped there and was spilling out thick black smoke at that point
rube: but the entire time we thought we would stop the fire no problem, and have the tow back to town as our biggest problem
compañero: it just stopped without hitting the rock or anything?
rube: it stopped because it had dug itself into the gravel
rube: it was like a gravel wall
rube: in the edge of the mountain
compañero: ah okay
rube: compañera got out too then, and somehow all these cars and rvs had stopped nearby
rube: the fire was still in the engine and i reached my hand around the door and grabbed the fire extinguisher off the wall
compañero: was it dark when this was going on?
rube: it was daytime
rube: i shot the stuff at the flames up underneath the front end, and also through the radiator
rube: it didn’t work and was quickly empty
rube: i was yelling “we’re on fire” and pointed to the empty extinguisher to see if anyone else had one
rube: two others did and they emptied them as well
rube: then i ran back inside again (the insanity of shock and panic is unbelievable), and i grabbed the 6 gallon water can we had in there
rube: i pulled it back out to daylight and got the cap off
rube: then i went inside again and pulled the engine cover over and tried to pour the water down there, but didn’t have the strength or the oxygen, so i just kind of pushed it over on the area and jumped back out
rube: i think i might have started to know that it was over for us at that point, but it hadn’t hit compañera yet
rube: the people there started telling us to forget about it, and to get away from it, and that a guy there was willing to drive us into town
compañero: this story is unreal
compañero: i mean, you know that… but even still
rube: so then compañera started yelling “we can’t just let it burn”
compañero: i keep finding myself wishing i was there
compañero: to help or something
rube: and the people said “it’s up in the cab, it’s gone”
rube: and compañera wasn’t getting away from it fast enough so i had to kind of pull her away and then she crumpled there, and we were wrapped up together on the side of the road for some moments
rube: she said she wanted to get her shoes (she had kicked them off when we were climbing over the gravel to get around and away from it), and the people said no, don’t go near it
rube: but she said that they were right over there, so i ran over and got them
rube: then we got in the guy’s truck, and you could feel the heat there, across the street
rube: that’s when my lungs locked up and i really thought it was all over
rube: each breath got shorter and i thought it was going to close off completely
compañero: jesus
rube: we were speeding down the mountain back to town, and compañera was holding my hand, clutched to the door of the truck
rube: i found some minimal rhythm with my breath and just hoped i wouldn’t pass out
rube: we passed a few fire trucks that were on their way up
rube: the kid driving the truck didn’t really get that he could honk and pass anyone, he was still kind of following the rules
rube: but he was shifting faster than i’ver ever seen before
rube: we tried kettle falls first, since we just needed some oxygen or whatever was available the soonest, but couldn’t find the police station or fire department or anything, so pushed on to colville, since he said he knew where everything was there
rube: we made it, and he dropped us off at what he thought was the emergency room, but it turned out to be a closed medical center
rube: they reluctantly let us in, even though i was bent over trying to breath
rube: and walked us around the place looking for a doctor that might still be there
rube: there wasn’t one, so the guy told us to walk across the parking lot over to the hospital
rube: it was a strange, long walk
rube: they acted with the same lack of interest there, and finally hooked me up to some shit once they got my ss number and other information
rube: then the police called and talked with compañera, told her after we left there was an explosion
rube: i got x-rays and asthma treatments, talked to another cop, got a ride from him over to a motel, and that was the most they wanted to do for us
rube: i had my id + debit cards in my pocket, and the receipt from the previous nights campground fee.  compañera had her chapstick, one bracelet on her wrist, and her sun glasses that she didn’t realize were clutched in her hand until she got to the hospital and found them there
rube: that night we walked to where they said the travco would be towed, and at midnight, found a pile of ash with a steering wheel, and only going on feeling, decided that was our home.
rube: there were nearly intact boxes of envelopes, and…the travco’s manuals.
rube: that was it.
compañero: that’s incredible
rube: i found the charred keys the next morning when we picked through.
rube: compañera pulled four buttons from her cloak.
rube: that’s all we got.
rube: there was nothing else to find because there was nothing else we could even recognize
rube: then, after that day, spent trying to get to the travco before we missed our chance, while also trying to find a way out of that town, we ended up getting a ride from a medical-aid service to spokane, and, since compañera couldn’t fly because she has no id, we rented a car to drive to portland (our debit card didn’t have enough to pay for the drive to CA…i came up with portland at the very last moment and it somehow worked).
rube: we stayed at compañera’s brother’s for a few days, then took a rental car down here to southern california last week.
rube: and that’s most of it

so we basically lost everything that we (materially) cared about, but even moreso, our innocence and enthusiasm about the world and the unknown went up in flames that day.  we've pieced our lives and selves back together since then, and re-embarked.  maybe more on that healing later (something of it is in everything i write anyway).

it's so great nowadays to break out of the roadshock that we get into from time to time, and chase each other around the scrubby junipers by a slickrock ledge (careful not to go down the Gerry road..."fuck the thing!")...or to speculate on the ever-"in-development" film adaptation of the monkey wrench gang (today i was thinking they may just beef up emile hirsch from into the wild to play hayduke, and make him the king of all "outdoor adventure" movies)...or singing along to yet another frighteningly applicable conor oberst song (this time with the mystic valley band):

there's nothing that the road cannot heal
there's nothing that the road cannot heal
when I make it to moab
i'll get my canteen filled
there's nothing that the road cannot heal
washed under the blacktop
gone beneath my wheels
there's nothing that the road cannot heal

aside from all that, there have been several pies.

freaking nailed it on the first try somehow (winged it as far as the crust/filling recipe went.)  absolute wing & nail job there.  still have a medium-sized child's body mass-worth of rewilded apples & cherry plums remaining; and just a little while ago the peculiar farmers' market in nigh-abandoned elsinore, utah outfitted us with 10 pears, as well as 5 jalapenos ("at's ot" said co-pilot after biting off half of one earlier...now working the other half into the sweet/regular-old potato curry over on the stove).  there will be many, many pies to come.  wish i could give you one.

okay, end of addendum - from the last walmart parking squat anywhere near all of fucking southeastern utah!  hahaha - commerce dies here yay!!! (might as well get one more night in and make it a full 8 on solid, subdued ground...before we embark tomorrow and suck some life back in.)

The characters provide, in and of themselves, a tale of devotion and love between a father and his son.  They protect one another and love one another.  In the end, however, I felt sad.  Good books will make you feel their sentiments long after you close the cover.  This was just such a book, but annoying as all get out just the same.  I was furious over the fact that I wanted to see how it turned out in the end, which was no end at all.

I moved on to the polar opposite.  Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos.  So far, I'm captivated.  I'm being swept off my feet by a beautiful romance that is syrupy sweet and tender.  I find myself smiling as I read and can't put it down, staying up well past my bedtime to read mind you.  And that is something that hasn't happened in a long time.  I look forward to making my way through the novel.

I don't read regular ol' novels.  I have spent many an hour/afternoon/weekend delved deep into the forensic creepiness that is a Patricia Cornwell novel.  Kay Scarpetta is easily my favorite fictitious character.  There are only a few in the Scarpetta series that I have missed, I'm sure the situation will be remedied.  I've also read her Jack the Ripper book, which was fantastic.  While I love her work immensely, I would never venture so far as to say that I feel good after reading one of her books.  I've read James Patterson.  I've even read The Lord of the Rings trilogy three times in my life.  Same thing though.  Intriguing, intense.  Not "feel good."

I love to throw myself into the novel and pretend that it is my life.  It creates a fantasy world to wrap myself up in.  I need a "feel good" now and again.  The real world affords so few of these warm moments it is for us to reach out and grab the moments we can and make them our own; take them to heart.  I'm glad that I am reading a "feel good" right now.  It gives me the opportunity to introspect on the whirlwind happy moments in my life and the people who make them possible.

this is a problem.  i have now crossed an invisible line of now and then.  the now songs' trust and currentness has been violated.  so what if a year or two ago (when most of these semi-organized tangles of tones were born) is not so much now?  they are certainly not then!  it is hard to explain this feeling of stepping out of an old, and into a new, musical time...just as it is impossible to describe how, once in a while, these seemingly structureless sound ramblings register as something like a song, rather than remaining simply that: a randomly jangled jungle of hobo harmonies, rambled through and released to the past.  i did not expect these two to stick!

i don't know... as frightened as i am by this new pair of stubborn, clung-together chords now etched deeply into fretting finger callouses and bouncing around the echoing amphitheater of my skull ALL DAY...perhaps they are the push i need to actually assemble and, eeeewwww............self-record (not that any recording is ever pleasant...oh, the perfectionism it arouses...uggghhhh) this former nest of sound that i've built and lived in for so long now (and love love love too much).  this is not how i want things to be.  i'd much rather be constantly creating, releasing, expressing, and capturing songs and words daily, rather than storing them up, keeping them in.  i mean, i don't even know what these songs SOUND like, they exist so icebergesque in my head, with only some tiny bit protruding through, belted out with whatever i can muster all by myself, alone.  it seems like i need to FULFILL them, all that they can be, with layers and layers of just the right harmony, rhythm, etc, yet...there is also something crucial in raw simplicity.  obviously, my composure is rather unsound through all of this.

whatever.  it is high time i lay down these low dirges and yowling anthems.  then we'll see if the new ones opt to nestle down and collect slowly, or if they explode and cascade, causing me to look back on these two years of slow nurturing as the tilling it took to cultivate* what i'm to become......a songwriter?  wow.  i'd always tried my hardest in the past to avoid that, to not say much of anything, or to at least only emptily write whatever the specific genre entailed...writing music only to be spoken of as a "musician", rather than being a writer who uses music to speak.

now then, we continue south, after a total of 7 consecutive parking lot-slept nights, towards the canyonlands; some areas too rough even for ranching, farming, or their evil-utionary end results - commercial & residential development.  leaving the pavement, hurrah! hurrah!

*apologies for the agricultural metaphor...no idealogical allegiance implied!

This one won't make much sense to you unless you've read Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

CLICK HERE to check out the Master Archive for any of the New World Order Family Circus cartoons you might have missed!

The Rats officially took on the duty of sentinel for guard duty today. No more cold nights sitting in New Barracks waiting for my shift to end. Another chapter in the VMI experience closed, hopefully. Corporal of the Relief from now on...and some random Cocke Hall orderly shifts.

The sounds of upperclassmen correcting Rat sentinels echos...

Workout

Still sick, but I got out on the stoops and started a push-up and pull-up routine that I'll work into my plans from now on. Am strictly following what this workout tells me to do. It definitely burns, however!

POSITION #1
Triangle push-ups (should touch thumbs to xiphoid process (lightly) when trying to touch chest to the ground).

• 5 partials.
• 5 complete.
• 7 partials.
• 7 complete.
• Rest 90 seconds.

POSITION #2
Move hands to shoulder length apart (the tips of fingers should be aligned with the tops of shoulders).

• 5 partials.
• 5 complete.
• 7 partials.
• 7 complete.
• Rest 90 seconds.

POSITION #3
Move hands out until, during mid-rep, your upper arms will be perpendicular to forearms. Hands should remain in the same position relative to the shoulders.

• 5 partials.
• 5 complete.
• 7 partials.
• 7 complete.

Armstrong Pull-Up Program

5 max sets.

• 5
• 8
• 5
• 5
• 6

Compare to this day in July. Have not been working on them; really need to.

Picture of the Day

So i am a pretty massive Kurt Vonnegut fan, to begin with.  The first book i read of his was called Slaughter House Five or The Children's Crusade, and it is the only book to date that i literally read twice in a row.  I mean it.  I finished the last page sitting in the Detroit airport a few years ago, sat there for about five minutes with a feeling that i had just witnessed pure genius, and started over at page one. 

So if you read the entry before this, you'll know that i went to Austin this weekend to play some drums and hang with some amazing folk.  To get there on such a short notice, i used some free flight stuff i had through Southwest Airlines, which meant that the trip to Austin took a bit longer than expected with a stop in Tulsa, and Dallas.  (the things i do for effing music..)   Knowing how long the trip would take, i decided to just grab any old book that was lying around.  The one i grabbed this time was called Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut. 

The story is written as an autobiography of a second generation Armenian man named Rabo Karabekian. It is classic Vonnegut with the satire, anti-war, narrative voice that i loved in Slaughter House Five.  Rabo is an old man remembering his life as a founding member of the Abstract Impressionist art movement. The kicker is, everything that he painted in his career was painted with a certain kind of paint that came unstuck to the canvass, making him the laughing stock of the late 20th century artists.  It's a great premise, and a book that anyone should read. It's an easy read, i kicked it out in only a couple of days. (one of those days being a five hour travel day, but either way, its easy)

if you read it. let me know.  

I should start a book club.  Oprah did it. 

Cheers!

The Road by Cormac McCarthy was published in 2006, and won the much coveted Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2007. This is a difficult review to write because this is one serious and profound book, and yet I am compelled to find something shallow and humorous to say in what is a completely humorless book.

I was recently browsing the list of Pulitzer prize books to find something that would stimulate my inner literary genius, when I cam across The Road. 'Man and son traveling cross country in a Post-apocalyptic world'. Sounded fascinating and exciting and so we set out to 1/2 Price Books to immediately get started on what was sure to be an adventurous story. Afterall, Cormac also authored No Country For Old Men, All The Pretty Horses, and Blood Meridian which all became or are becoming motion pictures, as well as a slew of other popular books that I have never read.

Before I even cracked the book open, images of Kevin Costner in Waterworld and The Postman were already swirling in my head. These were awful movies, of course,but entertaining just the same and I was certain that The Road would be the God Father of all Apocalyptic stories. I was salivating to start reading and as soon as I read the very first page ...'Oh My God' I thought to myself. I quickly thumbed through the rest of the book...'NO, OH NO NO NO NO!' There were no chapters, there were no quote marks...just page after page of what appeared to be small lyrical paragraphs that were going to be just like the first page. I panicked, and asked my wife to listen as I read the first page aloud to her. "Did any of that make sense to you?" I asked her. Of course it didn't, and my worst fear was becoming evident. I was about to embark on a journey of some 270 plus pages of nonsensical poetry. UGH!

I resisted the strong urge to put the book down, and pressed on determined to finish the book whether it made sense to me or not. I'm truly glad that I did, because I really enjoyed the book and managed to finish it in just a couple of days. For me, the book was very profound, yet very simple, and deeply moving. How is that, you ask? Well, it just was and it is hard to describe.

The two main characters are known simply as the Man and the Boy. There are no names, and the region itself is relatively anonymous other than it is in the US. Some kind of undescribed catastrophic event has taken place in the past ten years, and the world is now a desolate gray place, unable to sustain life of any kind. There are very few survivors left, and in the midst of all the nothingness, it is quite evident that Good and Evil have both managed to survive and Evil seems to be running up the score.

There is no sun, no moon, and no stars due to the ever present ash obscuring the sky. The days are gray, and the nights are black...pitch black. There are no animals, no birds, no bees, no bugs, not even any roaches. The trees are all dead, the rivers are black, and the rain, snow and ocean are all gray. The world itself seems to be completely cold, silent, and dead. The man and his son are traveling the road south to find warmer climates, while trying to avoid the occasional marauding gangs of cannibal survivors. The boy was born into this world and has no preconceived notion of any other kind of world that existed. The mother...well, she is no longer around simply because she did not have the will to go on.

I'm cold

I know

I'm hungry

I know, I am too

I'm scared

It'll be alright

OK

The verbal exchanges are brief and to the point. This novel is graphic and disturbing in some of its literary images, and silent and completely depressing in others. It paints a grand picture of complete hopelessness and how some manage to eke out survival despite it all. So here is where I break down what it meant to me, and is not to be interpreted as the true meaning of this book at all.

For me, this book is about life and even more about death. It is about good and even more about Evil. It is about hope, but more about hopelessness. It is basic primordial human nature and how we struggle against the fear of death and evil within ourselves. The Road for me signifies Time, and how it continues on with or without us; How we are trapped by it, with no real choice but to follow it with only the slim hope that around the next curve or over the next hill something better is going to be waiting for us. Sometimes there is and mostly there is not, and either way, it is always fleeting and temporary. The only thing that the Road guarantees is that you will die here and it will continue on. The man seemed to represent that basic humanity as he struggles to remain human in the face of hopelessness and the imminent end. The boy, well, for me he seemed to represent the future; A future with no knowledge of the past, and the tiny glimmer of hope that good could prevail while Evil would eventually devour itself. The world that McCarthy paints in this book is our world and there is nothing in it that does not already exist today. However, he has done a magnificent job of simply stripping out everything, and I mean everything, so that the reader has to focus on the cold hard reality. Imagine humanity as we know it stripped of all distractions...no color, no noise, no movement...no love. Pure nothingness. The only emotion is basically fear and the will to survive. Where each day is basically the same as the one before, and everything hinges on evading the inevitable embrace of death one day at a time.

If that all sounds real deep and depressing, that is because it freakin' is. When I finished this book, I checked on my kids in their beds, kissed them, went to my kitchen and opened the pantry door and stared at all of the food and canned goods and thanked God for all of it. I don't even like black-eyed peas, and yet I am still so glad I have a can in my cupboard. I resisted the urge to start opening cans and begin eating like it might be my last supper.

Granted, The Road is not at all what I expected it to be when I read that first page. In fact, it turned out to be something entirely different, but better. It is one of those rare books that you read, and when you are done, you truly take something away from it; something that affects you, makes you think...and it is something different for everybody I would imagine. It is no doubt a lit teacher's wet-dream, chock full of all kinds of symbolism, irony, and other literary stuff, but I am not for one second going to try and tell anyone what old man McCarthy was trying to convey when he wrote this book.

I am very happy to see that Viggo Mortensen will play the man in the movie to release in November. Charlize Theron as the wife?? Don't get that since there is barely half a page dedicated to the wife in the whole book, but I won't argue about seeing Charlize in anything. Add Robert Duvall and Guy Pearce and you have a pretty star studded feature film based on a book that really has very little interaction or characters other than the man and the boy.

On a side note, one thing unique or irritating about the book is Mccarthy's writing style. He has no use of quotation marks or other important grammatical points, and therefore it is sometimes difficult to tell who is speaking or if they are speaking at all. The book is indeed written in a lyrical prose kind of style and I have the distinct impression that he makes up words from time to time, or just uses really obscure words to make the prose sound more intelligent, poetic, or whatever. At any rate, many will undoubtedly consider his style genius, but to me, it sucks when obscure words are used that I don't know or have never heard of. It makes me want to reach for a dictionary which then just distracts from the flow of the story. I personally find it pretentious and unnecessary, but what do I know? I am just your every day dummy who likes to read, and old Cormac is quite possibly the Hemingway of his generation.

Loved the book, and would recommend it to just about anyone, But you really have to be an open-minded reader with a taste for a bit of necessary gore and a hard dose of death and hopelessness.

This is really just my incredibly intelligent opinion, and I am sticking with it...until the end of the world and someone tries to eat me.

I feel sick. Barracks Plague or something, but it doesn't make much sense since my congestion is clear. All signs point to allergies, but I've never known myself to have this much of a reaction to anything. I guess we'll see if it'll clear up in a couple of days. I feel tired a lot, so I'm gonna try to get some more naps in this week so I can kick this thing in the butt before it gets worse.

Workout

Air Force PTT, more circuits and running up hills at the rifle range. Was overall a very tiring workout towards the end. Sore throat  and cotton mouth at the same time didn't help, I suppose.

Went down to the gym, but was just not feeling it, so hiked it back up.

Close Grip Bench - 45 lb x 5, 95 lb x 5, 95 lb x 5, 115 lb x 5, 115 lb x 5, 125 lb x 3.

Picture of the Day

From now on, I'll only count days that I actually update. I'll try to make it everyday, but it doesn't make sense to count another day when I do hardly anything worth writing about to progress towards the ultimate goal this blog records.

Guard duty again this weekend. Was supernumerary this time, so I was on for more than usual, about eight hours. Since most everyone was gone, I sat in the guard room and stared at the wall for most of the time.

This weekend was really, really boring.

Workout

Got off guard early and went down to the gym for some ab work today again. Did some circuits with the medicine ball and flutter kicks with the medicine ball held in air, as well. Getting there, and my stomach area feels great.

Kettlebell / Dumbbell Side Bends - 60 lb x 10 reps, each side; 60 lb x 10 reps, each side; 60 lb x 15 reps, each side. Will easily be up to 80 lbs soon enough.

Picture of the Day

so i never made it to sleep last night due to the asthma attacks that are still ailing me while making my way back out of the humid east (years spent away from here out west have acclimated my lungs beautifully, though exclusively, to dryness).  i tried to wait out the attack, then went for my new (and thus far effective) caffeine treatment (in lieu of the inhaler) far too late in the going.  the sun was rising over the patch of left-behind little woods/wetlands thing next to the walmart where our trailer’s parked for the night on the way through minnesota.  i decided to walk out across the field to check it out, barefoot (which i never do – but thoroughly enjoyed, oh my goddess!), and try to sooth myself through some of the solitary tuvan throat singing i’ve been learning from a recording by paul pena (SEE THE FILM GENGHIS BLUES!).  not enough breath to get an undertone or overtone out, let alone two or three simultaneously, but it was nice to be out there with the bugs, birds, and bunnies of the morning.

i eventually returned and opted to go into the walmart to wash my legs and feet (extreme poison ivy allergy-sufferer in here with me), since the trailer’s fresh water tank ran dry earlier in the evening.  i donned my sandals for that, and was washing my arms waiting for folks to clear out so i could less conspicuously (who cares?  i know!!) do the feet, and one fellow lingered.  heavily.  so i just started washing feet & shoes, then he asked me my name, right off.  these creepy, coercive pitches always seem to unravel in a sort of reverse conversation, and i should have seen it coming (though there would have been nothing i could do about it anyway, with one foot in a sink).

long, pointless “preach n’ awe display” short: he said he used to be a drug pusher and inmate, found jesus in prison, and now tries to talk about it to users, prisoners, and people “down on life”.  wow...how presumptuous! [no disrespect here to users, pushers, prisoners, or down-on-lifers...or ALL christians for that matter – i am one specific person commenting on one specific violation (though, by no means an isolated experience) that i felt i received from one overbearing, offensive specific guy in a walmart bathroom].  i would have just walked away if i’d had the fully-washed feet with which to do so, as i’ve long since tired of debating or playing games of frustration in these encounters (that was only appealing back when christianity/organized-religion-in-general seemed like the only obstacle to my life of freely listening to grind/death metal ten years ago (as if christianity wasn’t a beacon of inverted inspiration for so much of that stuff... seriously, Deicide minus god???  Nadacide??)  i just told him the way he came at me with his fake-friendly-conversation-shrouding-an-agenda, felt creepy and dominating...i said, blah blah, what if i did the same thing to him about atheism (i’m washing my feet, still struggling to breath here)...he, of course, would LOVE to TALK about THAT with me....

alright, to wrap it up and get to my point: i kind of turned away from him and pursued my bathing, while he continued telling me stuff.  then i was done and just stood there as he pushed some more of his new medicine (well, that’s what it was for me anyway, because my lightheaded oxygen shortage trance in there soon gave way to easier breathing and the ability to stand up and walk out – miraculous!).  when we eventually parted (“safe travels...god is real, man.”), i started thinking about how, if i had fully informed him, in detail, of my anti-civilization beliefs and intents for the future (he liked the word “eternity”...whichever), depending upon his devotion to god and all that the great builder has “constructed through humanity” (he really liked development metaphors, puke)...i might have been found dead with clean hands and feet on that bathroom floor.

seriously, i’ve been reading online discussions of living a double life publicly, and thought i was pretty out-in-the-open about this stuff, but have there been situations where people realized they might actually be dismantled for talk of dismantlement?  (not a reason to cease dismantling, of course...but that’s something that usually stays quiet anyway).  now, in writing this it seems obvious that this threat is there, and it’s almost hard to describe my epiphany, but i guess i realized this isn’t just about refraining from getting specific on the subject when in the presence of obviously unsound audiences, where violence looms heavy...but rather keeping in mind the unpredictable, violent defense of grocery store & tap water that might preemptively erupt from any random person who gets spooked, or super-hero-ified (“destroy evil truth speaker who also intends to {{{GASP}}} do something about it!”)

oh no, i’m scared!

____________________

nobody gave a reply about their experiences/thoughts on this type of threat when i first posted this story on a discussion forum.  i am still curious to hear from anyone who wishes to comment!

The Lazarus package is a small wonder. There are Nick's doodles of the words DIG!!! LAZARUS, DIG!!! that were the beginning point for the electric lightbulb sculpture by Tim Noble and Sue Webster. The transcript of a charming dialogue between Nick and the artists, the song's lyrics reprinted from Nick's notebook, a couple of photographs of Harry Houdini, doodles by Tim Noble and photographs of the circuitry for the light sculpture being bolted onto the backing board by Sue Webster. And in a coincidence that demonstrates our age's passion for magic, Nick's initial notes were scribbled on an envelope that is franked with a postmark that advertises the imminent release of Harry Potter stamps.

Nick's musical works have quietly been helping to create the new ecological niche - the book / record hybrid - that I‘m working within. I think his first one was a book of tour photographs by Peter Milne packaged with the first Bad Seeds Live album about fourteen years ago. The European edition of the Murder Ballads album was something I played around with in Los Angeles in 1996, the year I started the bibliostructures business. The booklet had illustrations from a German children's book, something like the Grimms Tales, and I blew the lyric booklet up to children's picture book size, hand-coloured the illustrations and covered the book in a midnight blue cloth and embroidered the title on the spine. At the time it was just a doodle. I only ever made two copies, one for Nick and one for me. And mine got pulled apart to re-work some of its structural deficiencies.

I'm having to make up for lost ground, now, as I followed electronic paper onto a maddeningly slow evolutionary path. Last week at the library I browsed through the two volumes of Don Martin's collected works for MAD Magazine. If he'd drawn the history of my bibliostructures business I would have been the caveman with his back turned to the road, slaving over a book with electrified parts that didn't gather momentum because I'd designed square wheels for it, who, in the last frame, is drenched with mud and turns around to see an iphone racing along the muddy road on round wheels, while reading a book.

The earliest scrapbooks I made were very literal interpretations of the comb-bound documents that I used to have made up at Kinkos. I was mesmerised by Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers's conversations (in the television series, The Power of Myth) and carried around a pocket paperback book of transcripts. It remains a vade mecun for me. I discovered the term a few days ago in the introduction that the paleontologist Niles Eldgridge wrote for the musings about the future paths human evolution might take, in the book Future Evolution by the geological scientist Peter Ward and the painter Alexis Rockman. It's latin for "go with me" and refers to a guidebook or manual designed to be carried around and constantly referred to. The Everyman Library publishes poetry as vade mecun's: the motto inside the compendiums of poetry is "Everyman, I will go with thee and be thy guide." I followed up references and wrote quotes from books into the scrapbooks, and pasted in New Yorker cartoons, and then suddenly realised one day, hearing Nick's Let Love In album on public radio in Los Angeles, that his songs were populated with the same symbols Moyers and Campbell were talking about. He was making reference to mythology in the same way that they were, not to define a meaning for life but to enrich the experience of life. The value of mythology is in the nourishment these old stories continue to provide for us.

One of our most powerful new symbolic works is Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road. Nick and Warren Ellis have been writing the music for John Hillcoat's movie adaptation of the novel. It takes place in a world whose environment and most animal species and humans have been destroyed by what seems to have been a series of nuclear blasts. But it's also consistent with the description of the effects of the asteroid impact that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs that Peter Ward writes about in Future Evolution. In the introduction Niles Eldridge writes: "I wonder if past cultural extinctions, where technologically advanced and complexly organized societies have disappeared even while their descendants have persisted, living simpler lives, might not also be a source of predicting the future. The current wave of human planetary disruption might cause, not our physical extinction so much as a loss of the "high culture," - our knowledge - if we do overrun our Malthusian limits. Loss of topsoil, lack of access to fresh water, loss of fisheries, spread of famine, warfare and disease - all the usual apocalyptic visions, all duly acknowledged in these pages - may not drive our bodies extinct, but could very well play hob with our minds, our cultural memories, our knowledge."

In an interview in San Francisco last week Nick talked about The Road: "There's an interesting thing happening in films. There's a whole rash of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic films and with each one they seem to be less science fiction and more just a kind of numb reality. And this particular film, The Road, is incredibly moving and it's moving because it's showing what happened afterwards, it's a father and his son walking through this blasted landscape, and the man remembers life before this thing - you don't even know what it was - and you see the world the way it is now, in all its colour, and everything's just covered in ash in the film, and it's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking to know what we actually have and how we really are prepared to just fritter it away. It's a most beautiful film not only because of this relationship between the father and the son but because the power this film has to say what we're actually sacrificing, in the different things we're pursuing in this world, we're sacrificing colour."

The boy is sweet and spiritual. In the face of this bleakness he fashions toys out of detritus and creates his own stories around them and longs for a wider experience of love and a community. The beauty and touching qualities of WALL-E the robot come from the traits he has in common with the boy from The Road. There is also an absence of colour in WALL-E. The earth is covered in rusted garbage WALL-E has compacted, and when we see the earth, as WALL-E and Eve are flying away from it, the once bright blue marble is completely brown. It's a myth whose beauty doesn't come from anything visual, it's the deep inner beauty of an open heart.

But this week there was also a vote for deep, expansive music criticism with the awarding of a MacArthur Foundation 'Genius' grant to Alex Ross. The MacArthur Foundation wrote: "With a finely tuned grasp of a full spectrum of styles, he places works by a broad variety of artists - from Mozart to Schoenberg to Bob Dylan - within a continuum and sets aside categories and classifications that impede the appreciation of works on their own terms. In each article, Ross strives to demonstrate how a specific piece of music, be it centuries or months old, conveys meaning and feeling in the present."

Alex Ross is a grade school friend of the writer (and Outside.in founder) Steven Johnson, whose "long zoom" concept of moving between scales of experience from the universal down to local, microscopic detail (as when we zoom in and out with Google maps) is the conceptual tool I apply to everything now. In admiring Alex Ross's book The Rest is Noise, a sudy of the twentieth century through its music, Steven Johnson wrote on his blog:

It's the history of a certain related set of sounds -- atonal, twelve-tonal, serial, dissonant, random -- that were more or less nonexistent in Western musical culture circa 1900 that became, if not dominant, then at least ubiquitous by the end of the century -- in classical compositions, Hollywood scores, indie rock, and countless other venues. In other words, it's the story of the rise of a certain sonic appetite for noise that would have been unimaginable to the ears of the late 1800s but that is commonplace today, in both low and high culture and all the middlebrow realms between.

What I find so fascinating here is the way Alex tries to explain how those sounds came into being -- by reaching out beyond the usual biographical explanations about rogue geniuses and rivalries between them, though he has plenty of great stories along those lines as well. In reaching for that explanation, Alex does in fact pull in much of the twentieth century: political upheaval, technological developments like the tape recorder, the tragicomic Hollywood migrations of the World War II era European intellectuals. He also dives down in several arresting passages into the neuropsychology of noise and harmony, explaining how the brain translates acoustic waveforms into such emotionally charged events.

About a third into the book, Alex has a telling line where he says: "The fabric of harmony was warping, as if under the influence of an unseen force." I think of The Rest Is Noise as an attempt to bright that force to light, and in bringing it to light, explain the way in which the force is actually composed of multiple intersecting elements, many of them working on different scales of cultural experience: from neurons to individual biographies to technological innovations to World Wars. This approach is one about which Alex and I -- sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly -- have been sharing ideas over the past decade. It's the approach I used in explaining (with much less erudition) the forces behind the Sleeper Curve in Everything Bad Is Good For You. I've called it various things, including systemic criticism or "long zoom" thinking, but to really understand the model in action, your best bet is reading Alex's book.

The New York Times quoted the president of the MacArthur Foundation, Jonathan F. Fanton, characterising this year's grant winners as "people working on the very edge of discovery and people at the edge of a new synthesis."

Nick Cave is in tune with the creative spirit of his age. The vital insight that comes from Toby Creswell's examination of Nick's Murder Ballads album in his Great Australian Albums television series is how it shows Nick's process of synthesis, bringing together his scholarly perspective and value of tradition and his appetite for change and deep curiosity that's shown in the way that the Bad Seeds often includes musicians who are at the leading edge of experimenting with the ideas and theories emerging in science, altering the concept of what instruments are, and how music functions in culture. There's a section in The Rest Is Noise where Alex Ross talks about the outgoing head of the Los Angeles Symphony, Esa Pekka Salonen, being inspired by the German group, Einsturzende Neubaten, which is led by former Bad Seed Blixa Bargeld. I once saw a majestic concert by Einsturzende Neubauten in a Los Angeles club, where the band was dressed in black trousers and black turtlenecks, and played their ‘instruments' - pulled out of city junkyards - with an elegance that gave the concert the gravity of a performance by a classical orchestra. Current Bad Seed Jim Sclavunos is drawn from the experimental New York scene that included Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Sonic Youth and DNA, which Alex Ross relatesto the sonic experiments of different generations of musicians mostly in the classical world, from John Cage to Philip Glass. "When I was a young boy I worked in my father's store where he sold records," Philip Glass told the Sydney Morning Herald last week:

"I listened to a lot of music and liked nearly all of it." He was exposed to Mozart and Schubert, but also to Hindemith and Bartok. There was jazz, popular dance music and later folk and rock. "So when I started playing the flute and classical music, you could also tell that I liked popular music. I never saw it as slumming."

In a story in the New Yorker in 2004 Alex Ross prefaced a story about a conference connecting academics making popular music their area of study and writers drawn from the music press with an anecdote about Duke Ellington:

"Duke Ellington once had to field a barrage of questions from an Icelandic music student who was determined to penetrate to the heart of the genius of jazz. At one point, Ellington was asked whether he ever felt an affinity for the music of Bach, and, before answering, he made a show of unwrapping a pork chop that he had stowed in his pocket. "Bach and myself," he said, taking a bite from the chop, "both write with individual performers in mind." Richard O. Boyer captured the moment in a Profile entitled "The Hot Bach," which appeared in this magazine in 1944. You can sense in that exquisitely timed pork-chop manoeuvre Ellington's bemused response to the European notions of genius that were constantly being foisted on him. He said on another occasion, "To attempt to elevate the status of the jazz musician by forcing the level of his best work into comparisons with classical music is to deny him his rightful share of originality." Jazz was a new language, and the critic would have to respond to it with a new poetry of praise." Alex Ross's essays are setting the foundations for a new poetry of praise.

While I've drawn intellectual inspiration from Steven Johnson's writing what's almost more valuable has been the example he's shown that "a new poetry of praise" needs new publishing platforms and formats, too, that are in tune with the age. His early publishing experiments on the web anticipated the rich conversational format growing out of technological developments in taking comments on blogs and making them article streams in their own right, and now, with Outside.in, to turn the "long zoom" concept into a publishing platform guided by Google maps.

And I think my contribution to music journalism is through formats and platforms as well, creating better bibliostructures and more liquid and simpler digital additions to organic books.

I'm sitting in KCI and just had the smoothest ride through ticketing and security of all time.  There must be something to this leaving at noon on a saturday business...

I'm headed to Austin for a few days as a sort of working vacation, as it were.  I am playing with my buddy Aaron Ivey at his church on sunday, and hanging with he and the boys until Tuesday morning.  I have heard so many great things about their church, The Austin Stone, and i am really excited to see what all the hub bub is about.  

I went camping last night, which was amazing, and far too short, but i still feel like i smell like campfire. I showered, shampooed, conditioned, deodoranted, mouthwashed, lotioned, and even baby powedered.  Still, i smell like fire.  In a good way?

great times, looking forward to rocking with Jimmie and Bush this weekend too!!

Cheers!

Day 2 was a little creepy midway on account of the digs, but overall it was a big success.  The venue - The Calvin Theater - was beautiful, and the crowd was really gracious.  I felt really good about my set, and Joan and he band were amazing, again.  They're so good.  She's so good...

We checked in today at a new hotel in Ridgefield, Connecticut, and this one feels like the Ritz compared to where we slept last night.  I'm taking a few minutes to relax with Lucy and Ricky before we head out to the venue for sound-check.  My skin ain't crawling on this bed.  Maybe I'll even grab a few winks...

I read Nobel prize winner Jose Saramago's modern classic Blindness in 2005 and am happy to hear that Fernando Meirelles (who directed City of God and The Constant Gardener) has made into a movie -- just read Terrence Rafferty "Descending Into Blindness to See the Light" published September 19, 2008 in the New York Times comparing the movie to other apocalyptic science fiction movies.

I would guess that Julianne Moore is well cast as the doctor's wife, given her work in other eerie movies like The Forgotten, Freedomland, and Children of Men.

Also in this movie are Mark Ruffalo (as the ophthalmologist), Gael Garcia Bernal, Danny Glover, Sandra Oh, and other stars.

I hope that this film, shot in São Paulo, Ontario, and Uruguay, does justice to this book.

Which reminds me....I wonder when the movie version of The Road comes out.

no, i guess i was just dealing with an identity outage or two.  so much shit dragging behind me all the time, like i'm transforming our mobile casita into some huge sea creature pulling with it a net large enough to entangle the remaining 10% of fish alive in the world's oceans.  and my little finned friend in here with me has to get caught in the wake too (the worst part!)  luckily, we've had our annual rebirth event that never fails (last year's resulted in two songs i'm still impatiently/lazily sitting on, but that burning-need-to-make-this-music-versus-my-inability-to-put-effort-into-anything is a whole other post...)  this year's new skin resolution wasn't as colossal as the last, but i have realized that i need to shed whatever i'm dragging from one situation to another, and basically just scrap everything that i am because it is all constructed of this fragile, stubborn, depressive wreckage that resulted from the fire; these patterns i've fallen into since then; the fucked preparation i was given while being propelled into this life/adulthood/whatever; aaaaaaaaaaand the general dysfunction of existence in this modern culture of death 'n suffering (now with methane bubbles!).

all that aside, the actual birthday event of last week went pretty well.  we got up in the morning the day before and, looking out the window, i reported "the horses are coming."

"birthday horses?"

"yes, i bought you five horses.  they are going to pull the trailer.  we won't have to buy anymore diesel!"

the horses have been coming for ten days now, as we are currently camped at a sportsman's (sic) elk-killing ground/equine servitude trail, depending on the season.  such servitude has been a topic we've been discussing a lot lately...that strange differentiation folks seem to make, where the factory farming of livestock (sic) is considered unpalatable by the veg-prefixed, while often the lifelong slavery inherent in the milked, egged, shorn, ridden and plough-strapped is considered part of the normal scheme of things.  i guess the domestication situation is a whole other post too (needless to say, i didn't buy the lives of any horses).

so, later on that birthday eve i stuck 26 waxy worms of a stretched-out calcium fruit chew (representing candles of course) into a square of mexican spiced browniecake with batter smeared atop (we didn't have cocoa so i used mex-spiced hot chocolate mix), and added a lit match to get this aging going strong.  then we rushed out in search of the great salt lake (oh yeah, plans changed - we're in northern utah, where the overall salinity sure stacks up to the pacific northwest, just with a bit less coastline).  it was dark, the roads were winding with occassional forays into gravel, and gates were closed, as it neared midnight.  but there was nothing ahead but lake!  regardless, we never hit water, and were quickly routed away from the shores by a cop car with an escaped cow in its spotlight, hightailing away from the pen!  so that was slightly liberating.  then on the way back towards camp we encountered all of this foggy smokiness drifting from the northbound interstate lane.  everyone was pulling over on our side too, and we eventually saw an upside-down car over there, with people scrambling around.  it was a surreal conclusion to our failed mormonesque exodus to the desert sea.

the next day-the real day, we headed over to a motel, and after nearly ripping the trailer's bumper off on these INSANE HIGH CLEARANCE ENTRANCES to parking lots along utah roadways, we dropped the house and went thrift store shopping.  i made a quick escape rather than waiting to see fitting room results, and ran nextdoor to the dollar store to buy the gift-list topping birthday mop (yes, we are your typical, traditional, domestic couple....as you'd easily understand from the pictures of me skinny-cooking last week, if only they were made public).  i smuggled the gift into the back of the truck, then under the motel bed we were laying on, then switched places with it when she went to the bathroom.  the surprise went over well!  such a perfect gift (it even had little hearts down by the spongy end).  had it not been for the huge group of people driving mini bikes, then remote control cars, then skateboards in the parking lot all night, things would have been perfect...but at least we washed some of our clothes for the first time in a few months.  yay.

now we are saddling up after days spent picking feral cherry plums and apples over by the irrigation ditch across from our camp, and combining them with boiled-out prickly pear fruit juice to make spreads, water ice, sauces, and prickly apple juice.  i think this time we'll make the lake successfully, and then we'll be heading southward or at least down elevation to where it is warmer (though these nights under a million blankets together on the pull-out couch thing with painful metal frame and upholstery buttons grinding into flesh have been so cuddly good!)

more soon for real.

This is day one of the tour, and it's going to be a busy one. I'll meet a bunch of new people today, and do a lot of singing. Tonight, after all my hello-howyadoin's, I've got a last-minute gig at Southern Comfort, the BBQ restaurant. It's gunna be an all day thing. I have to try and remember to eat.

We made it through the death trap, thank God. Now let's see if the three land bumper-to-bumper will be forgiving.

Looking forward to the soon to be released movie "The Road" and in the mood for a little nuclear age apocalyptic horror?

Forget "The Day After," the scariest movie about nuclear war I’ve ever seen is a British film called “Threads.” It’s a brutal, unflinching look at life before, during and after a nuclear war. I saw it as a kid and it absolutely terrified me. I watched it again as an adult – and guess what? – It’s scarier now.You can watch it as a streaming video OR download and burn it to disc for later.

An eventless Monday on a Tuesday. Math is starting to get a little crazy considering we're attempting to do worksheets on problems that we did not get refreshed on, and are not explained within our textbook. I guess I'll wade through it, though. I'll truly be done with math after this semester.

Going out to the observatory tonight for Astronomy class. I'd rather be staying on Post tonight due to certain circumstances, but it looks like the skies will be clear and we're already set to go out.

Today has just been one of those downer days. Not terribly bad, but bad enough to feel the pressure from life. Negative things just continue to pile up. Hopefully Wednesday will bounce me back into the game.

Workout

Didn't have my workout partner today, so I went down to the gym for some quick ab work. Practiced on doing flutter kicks with my arms behind my head some more. Getting there, but they are a lot harder than having your hands under your rear.

Picture of the Day

Nothing really to speak of today. Tuesdays and Thursdays are glorious with my whole one class, then nap time after PTT.

Workout

Air Force PTT, worked on form for the PFT. Kind of a waste of an hour, but did a little bit of running, probably two miles or so.

Chin-ups - 5, 5, 6. Was really not feeling it last night, tired and sluggish.

Straight Arm Pulldowns  and Face Pulls Superset - 70 lb x 12, 90 lb x 12; 80 lb x 12, 100 lb x 12; 90 lb x 12, 110 lb x 12; 100 lb x 12, 120 lb x 12.

Dumbbell Lat Raises - 15 lb x 12 x 3 sets; 20 lb x 10.

Barbell Shrugs and Barbell Curls Superset - 135 lb x 10, 65 lb x 10 - 3 sets.

Picture of the Day

Astronomy class has been taking over for the past couple of days. Every night after SRC around 1930, we meet up at the lab and go out to the observatory to do some sky watching. It's feels good to get out of Barracks for a couple of hours and just hang out with the people in my class.

Workout

Off day since I literally had zero time to get down to Cocke Hall.

Picture of the Day