the_sky_is_a_television_signal

end transmission UPDATED SONG - another update - new song

2011-05-05T18:07:00.007-04:00

UPDATE 18 MAY 2011

new song

"She Said Goodbye/Flashback"

Artist: TSTVS

She Said Goodbye/Flashback (Final Mix) by TSTVS

This will be my final post at theskyisatelevisionsignal.blogspot.com. To regain my anonymity (among other factors), I'm going to start a new blog elsewhere; however, for the regular and semi-regular visitors (and I know there are a few), contact me for more info, and if you don't know how to do that check my profile.

The following is something I've been working on over the past 24 hours. It's called "The Things You Never Forget."

_|_

******OK, so this is the final version of the song I recorded and posted here earlier. Added some vocal samples and put the final mix on tape.

GOODBYE

The Things You Never Forget/A Goodbye Fading (Final Mix) by TSTVS

the greatest lie ever told?

2011-05-05T07:40:00.015-04:00

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/al-qaeda/8493391/Osama-bin-Laden-dead-Blackout-during-raid-on-bin-Laden-compound.html

Osama bin Laden dead: Blackout during raid on bin Laden compound

The head of the CIA admitted yesterday that there was no live video footage of the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound as further doubts emerged about the US version of events.

By Steven Swinford 10:25PM BST 04 May 2011

Leon Panetta, director of the CIA, revealed there was a 25 minute blackout during which the live feed from cameras mounted on the helmets of the US special forces was cut off.

A photograph released by the White House appeared to show the President and his aides in the situation room watching the action as it unfolded. In fact they had little knowledge of what was happening in the compound.

In an interview with PBS, Mr Panetta said: "Once those teams went into the compound I can tell you that there was a time period of almost 20 or 25 minutes where we really didn't know just exactly what was going on. And there were some very tense moments as we were waiting for information.

"We had some observation of the approach there, but we did not have direct flow of information as to the actual conduct of the operation itself as they were going through the compound."

Mr Panetta also told the network that the US Navy Seals made the final decision to kill bin Laden rather than the president.

He said: "The authority here was to kill bin Laden. And obviously, under the rules of engagement, if he had in fact thrown up his hands, surrendered and didn't appear to be representing any kind of threat, then they were to capture him. But they had full authority to kill him.

"To be frank, I don't think he had a lot of time to say anything. It was a firefight going up that compound. And by the time they got to the third floor and found bin Laden, I think it - this was all split-second action on the part of the Seals."

(Blogger's note: There was no "firefight." Only ONE non-SEAL person at the compound was armed. Click for story.)

The President only knew the mission was successful after the Navy Seals commander heard the word “Geronimo” on the radio, a code word from commandos reporting that they had killed bin Laden.

The absence of footage of the raid has led to conflicting reports about what happened in the compound. According to Pakistani authorities one of bin Laden’s daughter’s, who was present during the raid, claimed that her father was captured alive before he was killed.

There was also growing doubt about the US claims that Pakistan’s intelligence agencies involved in the raid.

Lieutenant General Asad Durrani, former head of the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence service, said it was "inconceivable" that his government was unaware of the US raid on Osama bin Laden's compound.

He claimed his country was forced to deny any knowledge of the raid to avoid a domestic backlash. The ISI's official line has been that bin Laden's compound had "slipped off our radar" after it raided the building in 2003 while hunting for another senior al-Qaeda operative.The agency claims it was unaware that bin Laden was hiding there.

Lieutenant General Durrani, however, said that the denial was a "political" maneuver by the intelligence services to avoid claims that they were working too closely with the US.

He said: "It is more likely that they did know [about the raid]. It is not conceivable that it was done without the involvement of Pakistani security forces at some stage. They were involved and they were told they were in position.

"The army chief was in his office, the cordons had been thrown around that particular place. The Pakistani helicopters were also in the air so that indicates that it was involved.

"[There are] political implications back home. If you say that you are involved there is a large, vocal faction of Pakistani society that will get very upset because we are carrying out repeatedly these operations with the Americans."

a first

2011-05-03T14:25:00.002-04:00

I can honestly say I've never seen this before: it's an ad for a Lockheed Martin air-to-ground missile.

pogo was right

2011-05-03T13:15:00.005-04:00

As the events of September 11, 2001, age in the history books, it will become further defined as a historical turning point for the United States. Indeed, that day will be viewed as David delivering a crucial blow to an aging and vulnerable Goliath. During the past ten years, US leadership has, more than ever before, embraced NOT the founding principles of the United States, but the powerfully profitable principles of the military-industrial complex. It’s this nation’s mother’s milk. Indeed, we’ve forfeited the ability to provide meaningful health care for our citizens; a federal mandate will soon require health insurance coverage for all US citizens, which will only fatten the pot for the nation’s health insurers. We’ve let the decaying infrastructure crumble before our eyes, and instead of picking up the rubble and build anew, we’ve swept the dust under the artillery cabinet. We’ve been stripped of some of our most fundamental rights, all in the name of security, and packaged it with stars and stripes – we call it the Patriot Act. And why create jobs when we can convince our middle and lower class young people that the real opportunity exists in joining the armed forces? After all, old blood won’t win the three wars we’re engaged in – gotta get some new blood in there. And, as an added bonus, they'll give you 100% tuition reimbursement. But never mind the prospective needs of the new recruit, the stars and stripes and the glorious freedoms of America must be protected from the barabaric, brown-skinned religious zeolots of Mumhammed -- we can't let the "terrorists" win, right?

The political discourse in this country has become something off late night TV and all that’s missing is the laugh track; the series features the “Kelly Bundy” of the Right, Sarah Palin, and the Left is bolstered by the likable yet inept “Michael Scott,” portrayed by Barack Obama. But once the lights fade and the studio empties, the antagonism is dropped and a good time is had by all the cast members. And under all the laughter and scripted lines, fear crawls in the shadows – you don’t always see it, but it’s always there, waiting to pounce and seize the populous by the tail. Bin Laden might be dead, but the threat of “terrorism” is still there. And it will always be there. We can't let the terrorists win, right?

So who’s winning? The good guys? The bad guys? Who’s who, anyway?

When bin Laden was killed, he was killed behind the 17-foot-tall walls of his home. He, apparently, had been living there for the past six years and was so afraid of being seen, he rarely, if ever, ventured outside -- he was a prisoner in his own home. He hoped and believed that by spending millions of dollars on weapons and security he’d be safe. But in the end, all the money in the world couldn’t protect him from his own irresponsible and deadly actions.

We have met the enemy and he is us.

_|_

america wins again!

2011-05-02T20:44:00.012-04:00

Knocked one final exam down this morning and will complete the semester with one more on Wednesday. I've got to stay focused, but it's been very difficult since the news of Osama bin Laden's death. Actually, the news itself hasn't been distracting -- it's been the egregious and disgusting response by so many Americans to his death that's been distracting and, frankly, infuriating. David Sirota wrote a great piece today in response to the death-fueled patriotism.

For decades, we have held in contempt those who actively celebrate death. When we’ve seen video footage of foreigners cheering terrorist attacks against America, we have ignored their insistence that they are celebrating merely because we have occupied their nations and killed their people. Instead, we have been rightly disgusted -- not only because they are lauding the death of our innocents, but because, more fundamentally, they are celebrating death itself. That latter part had been anathema to a nation built on the presumption that life is an "unalienable right."

Since my early teens US politics has been a passionate interest of mine, and I'm not sure how or why I was attracted, but I was. But now, that passion has turned to disgust -- and not just for the American political process and the collusion that poisons both parties, but for the general direction and attitude of the country itself. Fact: we've spent over trillion dollars in military and military-related spending since 9/11 and have murdered literally hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi and Afghan civilians. We invaded Afghanistan to destroy al-Queada and bring bin Laden to justice. Well guess what, the WMD justification for invading Iraq was a total hoax, Afghanistan is Vietnam, Pt. II, and bin Laden had been living in Pakistan for at least the last six years. (And I won't even mention the illegal war launched against Libya.) US officials have stated that the "war on terror" doesn't end with bin Laden's death; in fact, it's quite the opposite -- we must remain "vigilant." So when will the "war on terror" end? It won't. This so-called war is a fear factory, and as long as Americans remain consumed by consumerism, fear production by Uncle Sam will reach new highs. Ironic, because North Korea, the bastion of fascism and proud member of the "axis of evil," administers the same tactic.

We don't live in a democracy.

We don't live in a representative republic.

We live in a military state that uses its worthless dollars to protect its crumbling self-interests.

God bless America!

_|_

power

2011-04-21T19:06:00.002-04:00

"As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome."

Noam Chomsky (2011) from "Is the World Too Big to Fail?"

comfortably trapped?

2011-04-08T15:28:00.001-04:00

Been thinking maybe it's time to move on...

_|_

. . .

2011-01-04T21:46:00.005-05:00

http://theskyisatelevisionsignal.blogspot.com is on an indefinite hiatus.

straight from my tape deck to your internet

2010-12-26T23:18:00.006-05:00

Here it is: the first song I've produced in at least three years, maybe longer. It's called "Home?" and it's by yours truly, The Sky Is A Television Signal. (The brief glitch heard at the opening is soundcloud's doing, not mine; it is not heard in the mp3, which you can download below.)

Home? by TSTVS
Home? by TSTVS

stay tuned

2010-12-23T17:24:00.004-05:00

Off to work now, but once home I hope to put the finishing touches on the first new piece of music of produced in four, hell, maybe five years. I've been working on it over the last twenty-four hours -- and it's a banger.

xx

light and time

2010-12-21T02:12:00.001-05:00

So now that the first semester is in the books, I’ll briefly rehash some of the family-related drama that occurred over the past few months.

In mid-September I received the following letter from my incarcerated sister. Shortly after she wrote it, she was transferred to Madison Women’s Prison in southeast Indiana, just miles from the Kentucky border.

I never responded to her letter. I never visited her. My decision not to write her was not a refusal to do so, but a time issue. I was bogged down in school studies, and if I were to writer her, I wanted the letter to be a dedicated and emotional effort, not a quickly scribbled note of clichés and well wishes. In reflection, I feel incredibly bad about not responding, and I feel even worse as I post the above images. Posting them is the first time I’ve viewed her words since I received them in September.

Several weeks later, just three days prior to Thanksgiving, I received a phone call from mother – a phone call of which I wasn’t prepared. “Your sister is back in town, and I wanted to let you know that she’ll be here for Thanksgiving, and if you don’t feel like coming, I’ll understand, but I’d really like to have you here, son.” My response was shock: I hadn’t anticipated seeing her so soon; I’d been led to believe that she wouldn’t be released until sometime early 2011. Prior to the phone call, I was looking forward to a Thanksgiving afternoon without the drama and heartache that usually accompanied sister’s visits. Mother could hear the apprehensiveness in my voice. Her words began to quiver and shake. She started crying. “I’d really like you and ___ to be here because… I don’t know how much time I have.” I can’t express how those last eight words struck me. I thought mother’s health had finally stabilized, but maybe not.

____ and I made it for Thanksgiving and it was, refreshingly, uneventful. Sister and I didn’t talk much, but we exchanged hugs and shared a view laughs. The woman I saw actually resembled the sister I recall from so long ago. She could engage in conversation. Her memory was sharp. It was miraculous. Mother, on the other hand, looked unwell. She told me she’s in constant, severe pain, and although recent liver function tests have “normalized,” she’s still sick. I sometimes wonder how much time she has left, especially when she routinely hints at death’s closeness. I don’t know. Perhaps she’s struggling to come to terms with her mortality. I don’t know. I wish more was known. For example, does she have cirrhosis? No liver biopsy has ever been performed, yet apparently one doctor told her she did have it when no diagnosis can be made without it. I know better care can be sought, and I’ve encouraged her to seek it, but, in my opinion, the reason she hasn’t explored options in Indianapolis is because the care she’s received in hometown has been “good enough.” I don’t know. My theory is that she may have heart failure because the symptoms that aren’t consistent with liver disease are suggestive of HF. I’ve recommended she follow it up, but she’s so frustrated with everything that it’s not a high priority. It’s frustrating for her and me. And sad. Things were (once again) anxious last week when some abnormal spots were discovered during a routine mammogram. Thankfully the biopsy was negative.

About one week prior to the mammogram scare, my mother was broken again when she discovered that sister has hepatitis C, and there’s a good chance her four-year-old son has it too. Hep C eventually leads to severe liver impairment and increases one’s odds of getting liver cancer. It’s impossible to know when and how sister became infected, but we do know prior to her prison sentence she was using needles, which is a major risk factor for hep C because it is a blood-borne pathogen. Of course, mother must take proper precautions to avoid any potential exposure because a diagnosis would represent a swift death due to her already impaired liver (there is no vaccine for hep C). If her son does indeed have it, I don't even want to think of the health challenges he'll face.

I remember when mother called to inform me of sister’s infection. Struggling to come to terms with everything, she cried, “Time keeps getting shorter.” I’ll remember those words for the rest of my life because it was the first, frank, vocal acknowledgement of her own mortality.

I have come to acknowledge that for me, childhood was cruel in its deception. When I think about how as a child I perceived my family and life in general, I get lost. I know who the child was – who I was – but my mother, father and sister, their reflections have become distorted. Age thirteen is the water mark: parents divorced. I’m aware that I’ve mentioned their separation numerous times throughout this blog, and I’m also aware that some may perceive my recollection of that event as a crutch, or an excuse to employ in protecting myself, or excusing myself from whatever. And maybe that interpretation is at least somewhat true, but it’s undeniable that their divorce was the first crack in the glass façade of my reality – a reality that no one could protect me from, a reality of which no one could cushion the blow.

It’s not all doom and gloom, however. The decision to return to school and my recent nursing-program accomplishments (final grades for the semester: A’s and B’s) have been immensely positive and motivating for me. It’s strange: in some ways I feel as though my progression, my evolution is separating me from mother, father, and sister. Different planes of existence all pulling in opposite directions. I’m pushing forward. I’m attempting to build something. Something that, at this point, I cannot even fully comprehend.

Regardless of the light and darkness that occupies much of my life today, one thing is certain: I never thought things would be like this.

xx

fa la la la la, la la la la

2010-12-18T00:50:00.002-05:00

all smiles

2010-12-15T14:47:00.003-05:00

It's official: first semester of nursing school is over and I passed (with plenty of points to spare)!

hmmmmmmmm

2010-12-11T01:36:00.005-05:00

First: Listen to this video. It's "Theme for Great Cities" by Simple Minds.

OK, now open your ears to the following song. This one is Radiohead (full disclosure: I'm a Radiohead fanboy) and it's called "Where I End and You Begin" (full disclosure: this is a top 7, maybe top 5 fav of mine). As you listen, anything strike you when compared to "Theme for Great Cities"?

So, intentional? Unintentional? Whatever the case, that Simple Minds song is pretty dope.

xx

(More 2010 muscial favs coming up! Just gotta survive Finals week next week and it'll be 3 1/2 weeks of holiday va-cay. One final grade already in: I landed a final 94% for my clinical course, which consisted of two, five-hour days every week for the past ten weeks at a local long-term care facility. Feeling pretty good about that, but next week is sure to be a nail biter: Pharm final Monday at 10AM [feeling pretty confident about that one] and the dreaded Med-Surg final Wednesday [not so confident -- the final regular exam of the semester this week crushed me with a failing 72%]; anything less than a mediocre performance will be a cause for concern, but I'm playing the optimist, so we'll see. Plus, much drama -- mostly of the family variety -- has occurred during the past several weeks. I'll share some of it here when I can find the time. Considering all the extracurricular shit that's accumulated on my shoulders during this semester, I'm shocked I remain afloat.)

2010 music, part two

2010-11-22T14:26:00.012-05:00

Weekend

Sports

OK, I just discovered this one, so I haven’t had much time to reflect on it, but I’m already mesmerized. The album is Sports and it’s by a San Fran band named Weekend. The first listen struck me as few albums do, which is why it’s already become a fav of 2010. It’s hard not to fall in love with an album that opens with the devastating “Coma Summer” (never mind the title -- this is a dark, winter day’s soundtrack). I love the wallowing guitar that phases in, out and over Shaun Durkan’s lyrics. It’s hypnotizing stuff. “Monday Morning” glumly shimmers like an undiscovered gem from Joy Division. And "Veil" will break your heart. Its lyrics are cloaked in reverb; a rattling bass forces circulation; and at the 3:45 mark the guitar bursts through. Just as "Veil" begins to burn, its ashes fade in a wash of hazy sound.

As I age, this time of season becomes more bitter, sweeter. Ghosts from the past seem to weave in and out of the cloud swollen sky. The sun is gone by 5. A glaze of ice catches my face in the cold breeze. It’s harsh, yet strangely comforting. Sports offers an accompanying dose of solace.

2010 music, part one

2010-11-13T11:55:00.009-05:00

Twenty-ten has been a great year for indie music. Over the next few posts I’ll be sharing some of my favorites. I’ll start with an unknown – well, unknown to me – band from Manchester, England.

Working For A Nuclear Free City
Jojo Burger Tempest

This album—No, strike that, this band has been one of my better discoveries in recent memory, and I’m shocked they remain relatively unknown. In many ways, Jojo Burger Tempest is what Radiohead would’ve sounded like if Kid A hadn’t been conceived. Working For A Nuclear Free City, like Radiohead, have the gift of carving a unique niche into practically every song they record. Just listen to “Alphaville" (below), or “Float Bridges,” or “Low.” WFANFC's songs are structured and produced for maximum effect, and their musical excursions never seem forced or contrived.

Jojo, the band's second album, is an ambitious 89-minute experience (the second disc features just one track, a 33-minute collage entitled "The Jojo Burger Tempest") relayed through a shifting, aural prism of myriad musical influences. There are hints of The Olvia Tremor Control, Blur, Broken Social Scene, The Beta Band, M83, UNKLE, Animal Collective, The Folk Implosion, Tortoise and just about any other band that “gets” songwriting. And that’s the thing about songwriting: a lot of bands are good at it, but only a few “get it,” and Working For A Nuclear Free City “gets it.” Despite the transatlantic influences, Jojo is a very English-sounding record, which might explain their relative anonymity here in the States.

If you dig Jojo, you gotta check out their previous release, Businessmen and Ghosts. (Definitely check out the band's SXSW Lounge Act session from 2008 for a taste of Businessmen.) And keep an eye on WFANFC – watching them age should be quite a treat.

only on the internets

2010-10-31T12:19:00.001-04:00

Found this via gawker.tv

Super There Will Be Blood from Tomfoolery Pictures on Vimeo.

why, hello there

2010-10-29T16:01:00.001-04:00

Much time has passed since my last stop here. I’ll attempt to summarize some of what’s happened to me over the past several weeks, but I’ll only scrape the tip of everything because I’ve been incredibly occupied with work and school.

Late last month I began the clinical portion of the nursing program. Every Tuesday and Thursday I spend approximately five hours at a local long-term care facility doing assessments and assisting the CNAs. Last Tuesday I administered my first injection (insulin); I’ll be doing more of this and also passing meds in the coming weeks. I’d never spent much time in a nursing home until this clinical – in fact, the only previous time I spent in such a facility was early in elementary school when I and my classmates field tripp’d it to a local nursing home – and what I have seen and done has impacted me profoundly. It’s a sad place, but also, paradoxically, it’s a facilitator of immense inspiration. My experiences have solidified my desire to become a registered nurse. Every day spent at the facility is a reminder of my mortality; it further stresses the basic, human pursuit to use our brief time on this planet to do good and care for those who cannot care for themselves. It truly is difficult to find the words to express the rewarding sense of fulfillment I have experienced recently.

The school work, aside from being immense in volume, has been difficult. But this is what I expected. The first few weeks were especially difficult because everything – the workload, the expectations, the unknown – hit me, shocked me, and it took some time to find my footing, but over the past 2-3 weeks my exam performance has greatly increased, and I feel as though I’m hitting my stride with, well, pretty much everything. It’s clicking now; it wasn’t before. Exam performance is obviously important, but it’s really important when at least one exam hits you literally every week. And the amount of material covered in each exam is massive (I had two exams this week – one Monday, which covered fluid and electrolyte imbalances, acid-base balance and the integumentary system and the other Wednesday, a pharm exam that comprised nine chapters).

The phrase sink or swim has never been more appropriate than in nursing school. And thus far, this fish his holding his place in the school. (Bad pun, I know.)

interesting

2010-09-26T17:53:00.002-04:00

FBI armed raid targeted Chicago socialist couple:

only on the internets

2010-09-12T02:05:00.000-04:00

salutations

2010-09-12T00:12:00.003-04:00

Well, it goes without blogging that I've very little free time to contribute much of anything here. Between course work and the j-o-b, I'm busy busy busy. Mondays and Wednesdays I'm on campus from 8AM 'til 5PM, and Tuesdays and Thursdays I'm at school from 8AM 'til noon, work 4PM-11PM. I also work Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Seriously: if I'm not in school, I'm either working or studying. It's crazy, but I'm not complaining. Just a few weeks ago I had ample amounts of downtime, and now that I have none I understand that a constant schedule contributes to greater self-worth.

I'll certainly make an effort to maintain a somewhat steady presence here, but I simply don't have the time to post 800-word rants about [fill in the blank].

A few things:

No Better Than This, the latest release from John Mellencamp (yes, that John Mellencamp), is actually quite good. After hearing his interview on Fresh Air with Terry Gross and discovering he toured last year alongside Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson, I have a greater appreciation for Mellencamp as an artist. No Better Than This was produced by T Bone Burnett using vintage equipment and recorded in such hallowed spaces like Sun Studios in Memphis and the Sheraton Gunter Hotel in San Antonio, where Robert Johnson recorded much of his material. The album is a spare, stripped down affair -- an homage to the forefathers of folk music. Think of No Better Than This as Mellencamp's Time Out of Mind, and just like that Dylan album, expect a Grammy Album of the Year nomination.

Internet gossip has it that Interpol's latest, Interpol, could be the band's final album. Let's hope so. Interpol is easily the most disappointing album I have ever heard. Daniel Kessler's guitar lines and Paul Banks' vocalizing have become caricatures unto themselves, which is unfortunate. The band's debut, Turn On the Bright Lights, is easily in my all-time top 5, maybe 3, with Antics close behind. I even thoroughly enjoyed Our Love to Admire. But Interpol is... so disappointingly bad. After hearing it, two things are clear: 1) Carlos D had good reason to depart, and 2) major label Capitol Records was wise to send the boys packing back to Matador. =(

amen!

2010-09-09T15:11:00.000-04:00

sink or swim (or something in between)

2010-08-27T13:32:00.002-04:00

My first (abbreviated) week of nursing school is complete. This week was atypical because classes began Tuesday, and Wednesday was void of any classroom time due to two clinical orientation programs. (My actual clinical experience, however, won’t begin until late September/early October.) The first five weeks (the entire semester is sixteen weeks) of classes are dedicated to fundamentals of nursing lecture and lab; week six will see the fundamentals class transform to med-surgery lecture, lab, and clinical. In addition to those courses, pharmacology is spread across all sixteen weeks. The fundamentals lecture course is all about reading, reading and more reading. This first week, for example, is dedicated to reading EIGHT chapters, and next week sees a reading assignment of five chapters. As I said: reading reading reading. Because of the chaotic nature of week one, I had no pharmacology classes, but a make-up day has been scheduled for mid September. My fundamentals instructor warned us about pharmacology, so I’m bracing myself for more mental heavy lifting.

For me, week one was like being thrown into the deep end for the first time: I initially felt overloaded by the shock of, well, everything, but I quickly gathered myself and began assessing the shocking reality of my new situation. I’m not swimming yet, but I’m staying afloat relatively easily. Indeed, the following weeks and months will be unlike anything I have ever experienced.

return

2010-08-23T15:38:00.001-04:00

It’s been a few days since my last entry, an entry that was written under the slowly rising waves of mescaline. Indeed, last Thursday I experienced the most intense psychedelic experience of my life. I also found the trip to be extremely therapeutic. I want to share some of my experiences, but attempting to piece the whole thing together is practically impossible. Relating my experiences to a sober reality will be a work in progress, and I plan on posting fragments of that Thursday over the next few entries.

First, a mescaline trip (calling the experience a “trip” seems entirely inadequate and oversimplified) burns for 12-14 staggering hours. I’ve dosed LSD several times throughout my life, and while there are some similarities between mescaline and acid, there are many more nuances during a mescaline experience than an acid one. The ascent to mescaline’s peak is much more subtle, more gradual than LSD; the window of an LSD trip is open 8-10 hours, which, in my opinion, results in a steep rise and fall of the experience, but the sheer length of a mescaline experience means nothing is rushed, neither the ascent nor the descent, meaning it won’t overwhelm the senses as acid tends to do. I have found LSD to be in incredibly frustrating chemical when attempting to initiate the creative process. The onset of LSD is like a battered shoreline as a hurricane nears; the seas of a mescaline experience, however, are much smoother, leading to an experience that is more introspective than an acid trip. I don’t believe I could have achieved such deep, resonant insights into my being if under the command of LSD. Mescaline’s stability enables its user to open the locked doors of perception, which, in my opinion, is more difficult to do under LSD.

My time is up, so I’ll end with this: nursing school begins tomorrow, and while I’m filled with anxiety about this next chapter of my life, I now find myself much more confident and less negative about its prospects. I sincerely believe that psychedelics, if used responsibly and correctly, can provide great therapeutic value to some people. I look forward to sharing some of the insights I gained during my experience last Thursday.

meskǝlin and the impossible objects

2010-08-19T17:40:00.004-04:00

Consumed about 25 grams of Trichocereus peruvianus (Peruvian Torch) powder two hours ago. Thankfully the raging nausea that commonly accompanies ingestion has subsided significantly. Early observations: my inner being is glowing in torrential tides of empathy; I'm reminded of why psychedelics offer great therapeutic value: they strip everything cosmetic and superficial about YOU and YOUR EXISTENCE and allow you to freely explore yourself and your emotions; in many ways a psychedelic experience is the final frontier of human existence -- there are no guidelines, no governing bodies (both external and internal), just you and the Penrose staircase of your existence; periphery of my vision is flooded with twinkling light right now.

More later.

falling from space

2010-08-19T00:30:00.003-04:00

Last December I posted a very cool point-of-view video here of Space Shuttle Atlantis' ascent to space. Tonight I came across another video that is equally amazing, if not more so. The video below is taken from a camera mounted on one of Space Shuttle Discovery's two solid rocket boosters. The boosters are responsible for propelling the shuttle into space during the first two minutes after launch and are then dropped from the craft. This video captures the booster's complete fall (about 146,000 feet) from space, through Earth's atmosphere and into the Atlantic Ocean. Very cool stuff.

inception in bruges

2010-08-17T00:16:00.005-04:00

I saw Inception Saturday night and was slightly underwhelmed. It’s a good movie with an original story that’s simultaneously disorientating and mystifying, but it didn’t hit me as did Christopher Nolan’s earlier masterpieces Memento and The Prestige, which are two personal favorites. Inception might be the first film I’ve ever seen in which analyzing it afterward is just as enjoyable, if not more so, than the actual viewing process. Perhaps this is the point. Thinking about that strange dream you had last night slips into a totally different skin when you’ve had time to step away and rethink it; your subconscious fills in those missing gaps, and acting like a glue, it pulls everything together and forms something… something very bizarre. The end product is a strange panorama of events that fails to make sense, and the more effort expended attempting to materialize a reason, a logic behind it, the more things fall apart. For me, Inception isn’t about piecing the pieces together (like wondering if Cobb’s wobbling top will fall or remain spinning); it’s about letting your subconscious project light into those dark areas – the pain, the regret, the sadness – those things that don’t, or won’t, make sense and rearranging the colors into something not just meaningful, but better. Four stars out of five, although I might bump it up to five – the more I discuss Inception, the better it gets.

(Interesting article to read: Everything You Wanted to Know About Inception)

I also watched In Bruges, a dark comedy that came out in 2008. This one was surprisingly good. Two hit men, Ray and Ken (Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson), are sent by their boss, Harry (Ralph Fiennes), to Bruges, Belgium, to hang out and wait for the next hit. While there, Ray and Ken confront past mistakes and decide to get out of the murdering business, but Harry has other plans. In Bruges is a very British film – razor sharp dialogue; dry, black comedy; and skilled actors. If you’re in the mood for a Brit crime drama-comedy, check it out. Four stars out of five.

back home

2010-08-14T14:32:00.004-04:00

Wow. What an incredible two days of camp 'n Phish. Day One was eh: the heat and humidity were crushing and Phish's performance was a little shakey. Day Two, however, was perfect: PB and I rescued ourselves from the elements and spent some of the afternoon in Castleton (which included a surprise viewing of Dinner for Schmucks -- yeah, don't ask, it's a long story), and Phish's performance was stellar (jams varied from Bitches Brew-era jazz fusion to space-out ambience reminiscent of Pink Floyd circa Meddle -- yeah, it was kinda epic). From 4PM until sunset on Day Two, a thick cover of clouds arrived and saved everyone from another grueling evening of heat.

This was PB's first Phish experience, and I last saw the band ten years ago. Besides having a great time, we both shared many, um, interesting experiences. (An ice-cold shower at 7AM Friday morning was the most exhilarating experience I've ever had.)

Oh, and the chemicals were glorious too.

No doubt, some who attend a Phish experience are there for the drugs and alcohol, but the true phans are there to share in the experience, which is why Phish attracts a cult following.

It's so difficult to simply exist in the moment. Most of us are weighed down by the anvils of our existence -- an unintended consequence of being productive members of society. For me, a Phish show represents an opportunity to transcend for several hours my everyday reality and exist freely within a special slice of space and time. And as with most memorable moments, you never fully appreciate those moments until you view them through a recollection, a memory. And it's those intangible glints of light that accompany those memories that make the Phish sound so (pardon the hyperbole) magical. When I'm away from the venue and listening to the band on my stereo, I hear more than the music; along with the music come those aforementioned glints, the sparks that ignite my bank of memories of past experiences -- invisible photographs transmitted audibly.

I could fill a few more paragraphs with my anecdotal evidence of why Phish hold such a unique space in my life and why the band should be more respected by those outside its fan base, but spelling out and defining the reasons would deconstruct the magic.

And why do that?

gone phishin'

2010-08-12T11:28:00.003-04:00

did kid a predict 9/11?

2010-08-11T02:40:00.003-04:00

Just caught wind of this: Chuck Klosterman speculated in his 2005 book Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story that Radiohead "accidentally predicted" the events of September 11, 2001. In the following pages (found in Google Books) he makes his case citing specific lyrics and musical cues from Kid A, which came out eleven months before 9/11. His claim and evidence are absurd, but I'm a sucker for this type of stuff. Plus, it's an interesting read.

of note

2010-08-10T03:46:00.004-04:00

I haven't blogged recently because I've found nothing of interest to write about, but here are a few things that caught my attention.

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Last night I watched 300, which was, surprisingly, quite good. After watching it, I visited the Wikipedia entry and found it laughable that some notable professors detested the film because of its historical inaccuracies. Give me a break. The film (don't know about the Frank Miller graphic novel -- haven't read it) never claims to be a historical document of the Battle of Thermopylae. Is the name "Thermopylae" even mentioned in the film? I'm sure some kids came away with a false impression of the Battle, but those who were truly intrigued would've done their own research to separate fact from fiction. Leave it to the overeducated to suck the fun out of a gritty action flick. Eggheads aside, 300 utilizes the same CGI effects that made the film adaptation of Miller's Sin City look so dazzling. Director Zack Snyder could have drowned the film with excessive effects, but he didn't. 300 strikes the perfect balance between stylized action sequences and artistic flair. Also, Gerard Butler as King Leonidas was perfect. Gave it five outta five.

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In just a couple of days PB and I will be spending three days and two nights camping for the two-day Phish extravaganza at Verizon Wireless in Noblesville. I can't wait. It's been a decade since I last saw The Phish. This time will definitely be different though; I never camped for any of the previous shows. I'm already giddy with excitement. Can't wait.

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I've been patient with Arcade Fire's critically praised The Suburbs, and it's certainly beginning to grow on me, but I can't seem to make the connection with it that I've made with other albums I love. The stunning High Violet by The National is still atop my best-of-2010 list.

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Interesting study: "Experiments by Paul Piff and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, reported this week in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, suggest ... it is the poor, not the rich, who are inclined to charity."

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Interesting book (that I wish to read soon, er, sometime): Confession of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins

Perkins writes that his economic projections cooked the books Enron-style to convince foreign governments to accept billions of dollars of loans from the World Bank and other institutions to build dams, airports, electric grids, and other infrastructure he knew they couldn't afford. The loans were given on condition that construction and engineering contracts went to U.S. companies. Often, the money would simply be transferred from one bank account in Washington, D.C., to another one in New York or San Francisco. The deals were smoothed over with bribes for foreign officials, but it was the taxpayers in the foreign countries who had to pay back the loans. When their governments couldn't do so, as was often the case, the U.S. or its henchmen at the World Bank or International Monetary Fund would step in and essentially place the country in trusteeship, dictating everything from its spending budget to security agreements and even its United Nations votes. It was, Perkins writes, a clever way for the U.S. to expand its "empire" at the expense of Third World citizens. While at times he seems a little overly focused on conspiracies, perhaps that's not surprising considering the life he's led.

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Twenty-five seconds of pure win can be found here.

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That is all.

fatalistic failure

2010-08-04T01:16:00.005-04:00

Insanity will officially begin in nineteen days. After today's shipment, I have every book (minus a pharmacology textbook, still waiting on that one) required for the approaching semester. I saved over $300 ordering these books from Amazon and, surprisingly, Walmart.com, so I'm feeling good about that. But that's about it. I immediately transform into an anxiety-ridden heap of flesh and nerves when I consider the next phase of my life. To say I have zero confidence in my abilities to succeed within the nursing program and the profession would be a glaring understatement. Never mind the physical act of achievement, I'm unable to conjure a mental image of me success stability (together). I simply don't see it and cannot comprehend it.

For example, consider my recent experience with the new job (pizza delivery guy). Essentially, my two responsibilities are delivering food and dish washing. Simple, right? Well, I felt quite overwhelmed after my first few days. The act of integrating oneself into a preconfigured system is challenging. The mechanical aspects of the job didn't pose a problem; it was the order, the systemization of the tasks that proved difficult to grasp and remember.

I'm constantly battling myself. On one hand, I feel as though I have shorted myself in spending my twenties accomplishing very little. I'm a smart, competent person who should dedicate myself to something meaningful and important, I've told myself countless times. Contrarily, I've destroyed myself emotionally with unrealistic expectations and destructive conclusions about who I am and my capabilities, both proven and potential. When I write of unrealistic expectations, I'm speaking about the initial challenges of my new job. I now realize that an unrealistic and absurd belief that I, somehow, should have known the order and systemization of my duties while simultaneously knowing nothing about said systemization and duties led to those feelings of ineptitude. Ridiculous, I know, but when the typical anxieties of a new job are coupled with the realization of working among high school kids and young twentysomethings, well, things can get overwhelming very quickly, especially when you're a socially awkward person like myself.

The paradox of creating, usually unconsciously, unrealistic expectations is that they aren't based on a genuine understanding of the situation, which renders achievement of those expectations practically impossible. I now realize I possess a fatalistic view of failure and success, which is why I have difficulty envisioning my success in school and nursing (and virtually everything else, for that matter). Fatalism eliminates the independent variable from the circumstance or challenge, leaving previous successes moot. I cling to flawed logic: even though I initially thought my eventual successes would be failures, I "know" I'll fail this time because that's my default position and not every attempt is successful (essentially it is this: there's never been a better time to fail than this time).

See, the fucked up thing about all this is that I realize on every level my logic is unreasonable, even irrational. Yet its skeleton remains, pulverizing my confidence into oblivion, leaving me a self-rejected, zero self-esteem mess.

no title required

2010-08-03T18:46:00.001-04:00

fives and fours

2010-07-30T02:40:00.003-04:00

Here are all the films I've rated through NetFlix as either a five- or four-star flick. The most recent five-star addition is Martin Scorsese's epic The Departed, which I watched earlier tonight. Wow. Scorsese has a patent on the crime-drama genre, and, in my opinion, he fails only when he attempts to venture away from that brand. Bringing Out the Dead and The Aviator are dreadful, but The Departed is a damn near perfect film. Jack Nicholson epitomizes evil; Leonardo DiCaprio is the underdog everyone wants to cheer; and Matt Damon is a scumbag. Regardless of their roles, their executed perfectly in a masterfully told story. I can't say enough about this one. Five stars all the way.

today phrom phed ex

2010-07-26T17:08:00.001-04:00

meh

2010-07-25T23:25:00.002-04:00

Can someone please tell me why The Deer Hunter is regarded as one of the great films of American cinema? It's #79 on AFI's 100, but I found it to be incredibly mediocre.

rant: mediators of information and the music industry

2010-07-24T00:54:00.001-04:00

Many blog posts ago I cited and expounded upon Thom Yorke’s thoughts about the current and possible future state of the recording industry. I was reminded of that post earlier today when I saw that Arcade Fire’s highly anticipated album The Suburbs – an album that the BBC said betters Radiohead’s OK Computer – had leaked on to the Interwebs, eleven days before its official release. It’s no coincidence the leak coincides with the exact day publications and “official” music blogs got their advance copies, which leads me to my point: If record labels, be them indie or corporate, wish to curtail illegal downloading they should begin by terminating the tradition of giving publications and “respectable” blogs promotional copies of releases. (Further protection can be made by releasing new albums digitally one week or more before its physical release; this would counter leaks from the labels’ printing plants, which usually occur 5-7 days before the official date and are the most common source of leakage.) This is an obvious point, of course, but I don’t support it with obvious logic. The clear logic says that early leaks will likely cease if all copies of all albums, the digital and promotional versions, are released simultaneously. My point, however, is the tradition of generating buzz through rock-critic accolades isn’t just moot in the Internet age, it’s offensive. It implies that only specific outlets can be trusted with informing the public about upcoming titles.

Newspapers and traditional media outlets are dying because the Web is filled with millions of John Q. Citizens who are there, literally in the midst of breaking news. They have phones equipped with cameras and wireless access to the Internet; within minutes, raw pictures and succinct descriptions emerge from those moments. Blogs report and the media verify… sometimes. (As the recent Shirley Sherrod story proves, traditional media sometime fail to do this.) Regardless of the presence of traditional media, the news will find the people. This same logic applies to music: if it’s worthy, it’ll find ears. Many labels operate on the notion that the mediators of information, i.e. publications, respected blogs, must be part of the distribution equation. Why must we, the consumers, be spoon fed the latest reviews when the music is just a click away? I firmly believe that it’s this egotistical sentiment that drives and even encourages some to illegally download music. Again, if the music is good, it will reach the listeners. Music fans are constantly connected to the Web. We read: blogs, text messages, Facebook updates, Twitter. All these streams of information pour into our brains – unmediated. Much of what we encounter on the Web, for better or worse, is unfiltered. Never mind music fans, consumers in general have unprecedented power. Before we purchase that 32” HDTV, several sites give us detailed information, including reviews from real consumers. We, the consumers, now more than any other point in the history of consumerism, have access to incalculable knowledge, which is priceless power. We have harnessed this force through the vast networks that comprise the Internet. No longer do the borders of geography restrict our ability to connect and communicate. President Barack Obama’s campaign was successful largely because it tapped into those connections, those vast networks. The rise of the Tea Party and the recent massive gathering in Toronto of G20 protesters are further examples, however disparate, of the Internet’s potential to gather people and access power.

I believe record labels can survive in this new era, but for them to do so, they must accept that many revenue streams have permanently dried. For the indie labels, adaptation has been a way of life, and it’s much easier to conform to changing markets when your product is quality bands and the balance sheet is small. For the larger labels though, the story is different and the losses are greater. Regardless of strategy, the Internet has forever altered the music business, and I’m amazed by the number of industry people who remain willfully ignorant about the Internet and its implications. Practically every label has embraced iTunes, but this isn’t the case for the smaller, more indie-oriented eMusic. Every label should actively seek to make its music available on every mp3 site. Apparently some music business people don’t realize that music is an innate expression of the human condition, and it doesn’t need a business model to be produced. It’s simple: evolve or die.

In the end, many businesses remain amazingly ignorant about the Internet’s impact on, well, nearly everything. It seems as though some record labels are going to ride their camels until they die; sustenance is the status quo, apparently. For musicians, however, the floodgates are wide open. Sites like Bandcamp.com are built for the DIY artist. (The Holy Grail of indie music, Pitchfork.com, recently launched AlteredZones.com, which further legitimizes the whole DIY music scene [oxymoronic, I know].)

History may look back at this period of the Web as something of a Wild West, in which anarchy breaks some and reinforces others, only to give way to crude, loosely formed power structures. Whatever the case, John Q. Citizen has more power now than any other point in his lifetime. Are the mediators of information still needed? Or can Mr. Citizen utilize the knowledge bank and discern the good from the bad?

short: ride

2010-07-16T00:06:00.004-04:00

“Is it supposed to rain today?” the thin man asked as he boarded the bus. Pluming clouds of grey loomed overhead.

“Flip a coin,” the driver answered. “The man on the radio said there’s a 50% chance of thunderstorms today.”

“Maybe it will, maybe it won’t,” said the thin man, his words trailing off.

“You know, bein’ a weatherman is the only profession in which you can have a 50% success rate and still keep your job! If I had that kinda rate takin’ you folks from point A to point B, I woulda been outta job a long time ago!” Jackie the driver responded.

Jackie had been driving me from point A to point B for three years, and I don’t think I ever saw him without a smile on his face. He was a good man. You felt it whenever he greeted you boarding the bus. Three years, five days a week he was my morning commute, yet I knew practically nothing about him. My imagination filled in all the vacant spaces: he was a happily married man, married his high school sweetheart twenty-five years ago, had two kids, a dog – a postcard sent from the American Dream.

But I had no idea if those things were true.

I’ve never been one to strike up a conversation. I can’t do small talk. I’m lucky if a single coherent sentence stumbles from my lips. Maybe two. Then it’s silence.

When I do speak to Jackie or respond to a fellow passenger, it’s always the mundane and brainless. Like the weather, current events, or “the game last night.” Bullshitting has never been my forte. And I always avoid personal topics. The morning following my dear mother’s death – the very next day, a Thursday – I, as usual, was at the bus stop, at 9:15 sharp. I stood there inside the fiberglass shelter. Waiting for Jackie. Inside of me was a million pieces of broken glass, but I’m a man who revolves around the burning sphere of routine, habit. So, I was there, dressed in my freshly pressed suit, polished shoes and overstuffed briefcase, and at 9:18 Jackie pulled up.

“How ‘bout them Cubbies last night? Is there any hitter in the bigs who can hit Ricky Delgado right now? Guy is on fire!” he said.

“He sure is, he sure is. Cubs could ride him all the way to the playoffs!” I, feigning enthusiasm, responded as I took my usual seat next to the third window. I sat there, silently. Watching people board. Watching people exit. Watching and listening to Jackie, I just sat there, waiting for my bus stop at the Crown’s King Hotel, which was exactly one block from my employer, Thompson and Associates. I was a file clerk there. Eight hours a day I filed manila folders according to last name, department, claim type, resolved cases, whatever the code indicated, I placed it in its respective vault. I suppose the job fitted my personality. Other people answered phones. Others met clients. I was in the background of it all, thumbing through stacks. Silent. Dust. Back there somewhere. “You’re going to be screwed when your company goes digital with its records system,” some guy once cracked. I couldn’t formulate a response, so I just chuckled and smiled real big. Small talk has never been my thing.

Anyway, Thompson and Associates did go digital, and three weeks thereafter I was out of a job. Just like that. The following Monday, however, I, like some loyal lapdog, took my place inside that fiberglass shelter. Pressed suit, the shoes, the briefcase, all of it – I was there as if nothing had happened. I’ve always been a man of routine, and I don’t know if it was fear, an unwillingness to accept my circumstance, or some internal breakdown – hell, it was probably all those things – but I just couldn’t not be there that Monday morning and every morning after.

I got off at the Crown’s King Hotel and walked. During those weeks I walked down every downtown corridor. I’d kill a few hours at some coffeeshop, burn a few more at the newsstand, and sometimes, I’d take a taxi and just ride.

But this morning – exactly seven weeks after Thompson and Associates canned me – I took a cab to the airport. The airport was like a monastery of Americanism. Clean. Efficient. Towering over everything. The only people inside its soaring glass walls were those conducting business. Everyone inside had a purpose, a reason. Except me. I suppose I came there to find a role, a function. And if I couldn’t find that, at least I came dressed for the part. When you’re a professional-looking businessman, no one stands in your way, because you’re above them, all of them. Your tailored suit. Your cufflinks. The gold watch. Even your skin is an extension of those material products. The flesh on your face looks like a perfect slab of tenderized meat, and you’re ready for the heat – you’re waiting for the heat – because you’re a motherfucking businessman. I wasn’t one of them, but I worked under them, and I saw how people looked so small in their shadows. But out here, or killing time at the newsstand, or exchanging words with a sexy intern at a Starbucks, no one knows who crawls under that slab of meat. No one knows I’m an unemployed file clerk whose denial won’t allow him to accept his reality. I look important. And that’s all that matters.

Like a drunk throwing darts, I randomly picked an airline, then picked a city. “When’s the next flight for Boston?” The ticket agent smiled, produced clicks on a keyboard and told me, “Actually, it appears we’ve got one leaving in fifteen minutes. Would you like that plane, sir?” I paid for the ticket and immediately began running for the appropriate concourse. Through the terminal I ran, and I know the onlookers must have marveled at me, the running businessman, struggling against time to make a plane that would make a connection that would produce signatures that would
make
money.

I made my flight, and now I’m here. In some hotel. Hell, I can’t even remember the name of this place. In the sprawling metropolis, all the hotels look different from the outside, but once inside, everything’s the same. The fake art on the walls change, but everything else is the same. You open the door and the same wall of air-conditioned cold wraps around your body. You separate the curtains and see the same indistinguishable skyscrapers. You find the mint carefully placed on your starched pillowcase.

I’m near the Logan International Airport, it’s one of the busiest airports in the country, and the constant sound of 767s arriving and departing is like an invisible medicine; I think about all the faces on those giant jets, all those people with some place to go, to be – destinations waiting to be grasped. A loved one waiting to be hugged. A hand waiting to be shaked. Personal exchanges of mutual significance. When the jets are whirring and the walls of my room struggle to remain intact, I close my eyes and lose myself in the sound, and sometimes, I convince myself I’m an important person
I’m an important person
I’m an important person
with a destination waiting to be greeted.

Behind that heavy hotel door and under the glow of flashing television advertisements, I’m here. Under the soaring jets and behind the hotel drapes, I’m here. I’m closing my eyes and trying to believe that this isn’t me. And this isn’t happening. I want to believe that the veneer I’m living under is just the collapsible scales a snake has shed. The real me is inside that fiberglass bus shelter, waiting for Jackie. But I can’t convince myself that’s reality. See, bullshitting has never been my thing.

I think I’ll leave this room. Tighten my tie. Spit shine my wingtips. Take a cab. The cabbie will ask me “Where to?” And I’ll respond, “I want you to take me to the edge.

“Take me to the edge of all this,” I’ll say, looking through the oily fingerprints of my backseat window. “Take me to the edge of the flashing lights, the people, the destinations. Take me to the edge of it all, and I’ll get out. I’ll go over it. Jackie’s waiting for me.”

xx

cuts

2010-07-15T01:01:00.004-04:00

Today I finally landed a job. I got a pizza-delivery gig at a pizzeria about five minutes from home. It is NOT the fantasy role-playing game shop/pizza place where I interviewed a few days ago. In fact, on Monday I was offered a delivery position there but turned it down. I declined it for many of the reasons I stated previously, and aside from the manager being a tight ass, the atmosphere there seemed foul and somber, so I, taking a chance, declined the job. Luckily, this morning’s job interview/job offer happened. Before that occurred though, I had an interview at a temp agency. Ugh. Over the past few weeks I’ve learned one thing about the lower end of the job market: avoid spending any time at a location where the unemployed gather. It’s depressing. While waiting for my interview, I saw a haggard-looking man in his fifties ask for work. “What are you looking for, sir?” asked the attractive young woman behind the desk. “Meat cutter. I’m a meat cutter,” he replied, his voice stained by a million cigarettes. The woman tapped her keyboard and searched a job database, I assume. Finding nothing she offered the man an application and said, “If anything comes up we’ll give you a call.” “Nothing’s gonna come up,” he said with a dry chuckle. “I’ve been looking for work for eight months. I’m a meat cutter. That’s what I do. Nothing’s gonna come up.” He left, and soon a woman who appeared to be approaching sixty years replaced him. The agency didn’t have anything for her either. Then she left, and I wondered what happens to those people. The people who, like me, live paycheck to paycheck, but, unlike me, these people are fifty, fifty-five, even sixty years of age – how long have they been struggling? And how long will that struggle continue? What about their children? Their grandchildren? How will America color their struggles?

I’m sitting here drinking a Triple Sec Sunrise. I feel like shit. And I shouldn’t. Today was a good day. But I’m tired of the struggle. I feel as though I’ve struggled my entire life. I feel as though this labor will only continue. It won’t – at least it shouldn’t, because in seventeen months my name will be suffixed with “RN.” But fuck, those seventeen months seem a light year away, and, knowing my life, a setback will deal me a crushing blow, and then I’ll devise the grand exit I’ve morbidly fantasized about for years. Hell, why wait? Let’s do it now! Chop-chop! Bang-bang! But no, that’s just the goddamn melodramatics typing! But why? Why does this struggle feel like a permanent fixture around my neck? I lack confidence. I feel so goddamn incapable of accomplishing practically anything. As a child, I don’t recall receiving much encouragement from my parents. I’m not condemning them; I’m simply making an observation. I don’t recall getting the you-can-do-anything-if-you-just-set-your-mind-to-it speech. Shouldn’t parents encourage their children to—Fuck it. I’m not going down that path. Again, I’m not blaming my parents for anything, I’m my own man and yada yada, but I really wish I had more confidence in, well, everything. And this lack of confidence is going to be a huge hurdle to clear when I begin my course work in five weeks. I have absolutely no faith in my abilities to become a successful nurse. I don’t. I’ve heard “you’re going to make a great nurse” from a number of people – some friends, some acquaintances, others strangers. Does an ounce of integrity reside behind those wishes? I don’t know. I feel as though there is an immense rift between the face I present to literally everyone and the person I really am. I feel as if that gap will eventually eat itself and the inevitable collapse of me will reign in its aftermath.

That’s all I’ve got for tonight.

from safety to where...?

2010-07-13T14:15:00.009-04:00

A man is awakened in the middle of the night by screams and the approaching heat of an infernal wall of flames. “We got to find a way out! Everybody, come on!” a man outside yells. And then a woman’s agonizing scream is heard. “Where are you!” she screams. We can’t see the flames. We can’t see the people scurrying for safety. All we see is Viggo Mortensen’s character, whose character is simply named the Man, preparing a bath for his family’s survival.

The Road is a staggering film about love and survival and the themes that connect those concepts. The film thrives on the stark reality the Man and his son, the Boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee), face in a post-apocalyptic world in which most life has been destroyed. Those who survived The End wander ashen landscapes searching for food while dodging roving packs of cannibals. The sun is obscured, and the Man and the Boy are on the move, headed to the States’ southern coast, where they hope it’ll be warmer. There is little dialogue in the film – the story unfolds through the bleak but beautiful visual desolation and is told through a series of emotional flashbacks. The flashbacks are shot in brilliant color, which contrasts the colorless pallor of the new world.

The Road is so arresting because it balances on the power and pain of memory. The Boy is too young to remember life before The End, he knows nothing else (when stumbling upon a stash of canned goods, he doesn’t recognize them for what they are), but the Man, despite the years that have passed since The End, struggles to reconcile his present life with the choices he and others, particularly his wife, made long ago. The film’s realness also struck me; obviously, no one knows what the world will look like if it is consumed by massive destruction, but The Road paints a disturbingly vivid picture of how things could be. (In fact, many of the panoramic views of destruction are actual images from the aftermaths of Hurricane Katrina and the Mount St. Helens eruption.) That picture is made even more real with great performances by Mortensen and Smit-McPhee (who was twelve years old during filming). And despite his brief camera time, Robert Duvall is captivating as the Old Man.

The Road is a perfect, albeit bleak, film. Movies that revolve around such age-old topics like love and survival often collapse in clichés and syrupy dialogue. The Road avoids these traps because it uses the emotional gravity of its characters’ dilemmas to tell the story, eliminating the need for excessive speech. The pictures speak infinite, and the backstory propels the tale. I highly recommend The Road and give it 5 out of 5. Definitely check it out.

[The Road was released in late 2009; it’s directed by John Hillcoat and written by Joe Penhall and based on the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name.]

(Big ups to A² for the recommendation – you were dead on with this one.)

are you serious?

2010-07-12T01:00:00.003-04:00

Last year a local city park sought donations from the community to help construct a pedestrian bridge. Wal-Mart, whose 2009 net income was $14.3 billion, donated a hefty $50 to the effort. Home-improvement giant Menards, who, in 2008, was ranked the 43rd largest private company by Forbes magazine (Menards doesn't disclose sale figures), made a whopping $5 donation to the cause.

Thank you, capitalism!

choking

2010-07-11T17:17:00.009-04:00

Yesterday was a busy Saturday. The four-hour CPR certification class was a success and very informative. I learned CPR for adults, children and infants; adult and child bag-mask technique and rescue breathing; two-rescuer CPR for adults and children; operation of the AED (automated external defibrillator); and how to relieve choking in adults and infants. The class was probably my first experience in which the gravity and importance of being a health-care provider resonated with me on a deep, personal level. At the core, health care is about sustaining life, and saving life is as real and raw as health care gets.

A few hours after CPR class I had the aforementioned job interview. I feel confident that I’ll be offered a delivery-driver position, but I can’t say. I feel like I connected with the interviewer and, in my opinion, showed a desire for the job. The manager seemed nice enough, but I was a little turned off by some of the regulations and rules of the job. First, he stressed that when you’re not out on a delivery or answering phones, you “clean, clean, clean.” Cool, because I’m not a guy who wants free time while I’m on the clock – if you keep yourself busy, the work day shuffles along. He stressed the stay-busy aspect of the position two, maybe three times, and every time I was like, Yeah, I get it, I’m down with it. What I didn’t dig, however, was the clean-shaven rule. “You’ll have to shave your beard if you want to work here. Is that OK?” I said it wasn’t a problem, but what I didn’t say was, “What the fuck, man? You call the ¼” stubble on my face a beard?” I shave my head every 2-3 days and keep the fashionable stubble on my face neatly groomed and trimmed. What gives? I’ve never walked into a business and immediately left the establishment because the unsightly scene of stubble marred the face of the clerk/waiter/whatever. This isn’t a five-star restaurant – we’re talking about a pizza joint that, besides pizza, sells Magic: The Gathering and Warcraft games, for Christ’s sake. Another thing: delivery drivers aren’t paid minimum wage, they’re paid $5.20 an hour. Some employers choose to exempt tipped employees from the federal minimum wage; after all, less for the bottom feeders means more for the pigs on top! Finally, all new employees undergo to a 90-day probationary period in which you can’t call in sick, be late, or, I assume, do anything that makes yourself unworthy in the eyes of the management. He actually said this to me: “If you’re sick, come in anyway, and if you’re too sick, we’ll find someone to come in and then you can go home.” So, this place objects to the ¼” stubble on my face but doesn’t object to sick employees preparing and delivering food?

My recent job-hunting experience has pushed my loathing of capitalism to the brink (I plan on expanding this point in a future post). Over the past couple of weeks, I have had to answer countless humiliating questions; most of these questions have come online and in the form of employee questionnaires. The naked motive of these questions is simple: To what depths are you willing to exploit yourself for the benefit of the company? It’s disgusting. Obviously, some minimum-wage applicants are high school and college students who are simply looking for some extra cash, but many of those applicants are adults, many with families, who have expenses that far exceed those of school students. It is the working poor who are the most ripe for exploitation; never mind the stresses associated with living a life in poverty, they are routinely picked and employed for wages that would be laughable if they weren’t so disgustingly obscene.

Somebody help me, I’m choking.

miles

2010-07-09T00:57:00.001-04:00

After nearly two weeks of depression-fueled pessimism, today gave me a refreshing breath of optimism. The source of that optimism might be laughable to some, but when you’ve been unemployed for two weeks, you take what you can get. I’ve got an interview scheduled for Saturday afternoon at a locally owned pizza joint – and this isn’t your typical pizza place. Besides pizza, the place also sells fantasy role-playing games like Magic and Dungeons and Dragons. Never mind the hit points, I’m going there to be interviewed for a pizza-delivery position. If that falls through, things are looking good at another pizza spot (spoke with a manager earlier today and, once my driving record is checked, I should get a call next week).

Tuesday night: Spent a few hours drinking with some old comrades. We sat around, listened to music and shot the shit. Good times. Before those hours of gregariousness, I spent some time with dad and mom and stepdad. Dad recently had is knee replaced, so I wanted to check up on him. He’s approaching 80, and having such a significant surgery at that age poses a different set of challenges, but he’s getting along OK. After spending some time with him, I visited mom and stepdad, who, in light of sister’s imprisonment, are practically raising my nephew, Austin. They don’t really have much choice in the matter because his father is, well, a shitty dad. I won’t detail that opinion other than to say he has slowly backed away from many of his promised commitments. I can’t say that his fatherly failures are surprising, though.

Austin has been asking mom when his mother, sister, will visit him. Sister has spoken with her son many times since her imprisonment, and she tells him that she’s at school, which is why she isn’t around. I’ve yet to speak to sister since her day of judgment, and I’m not sure how to feel about that. Mom says she “sounds like the old [sister].” Sobriety has a way of bringing the old self back to the surface, and I obviously hope she maintains that path, but only time will prove if sobriety is what my sister has chosen. I had to push away the tears when I was at mom’s. In the corner of a window near Austin’s play space was a photograph of sister kissing her son’s cheek -- it was placed there so Austin could have a visual reminder of "mommy." Just recalling that photo is bringing tears to my eyes as I type this. The whole situation is so unfair, and the fact that a small child – a child who cannot even comprehend what has happened to his mother – is involved makes things even more difficult, vicious.

It was strange, though, driving to Hometown. The two-hour trek is never something I enjoy because the destination hangs over my head like a cloud of shit and cancer. But this time was different. As each mile ticked off the odometer, the cloud didn’t get closer. It stayed away. And I didn’t dread my destination. Exit 26’s offramp snaked me into Hometown, and those familiar ghosts didn’t greet me. The gloom remained (the city has destroyed its abandoned factories, but the dust and desperation linger); however, this time, the territory of my imagination was restricted – it couldn’t venture through the frightening possibilities of where sister was or what she was doing.

Tuesday night was a good night. So was Thursday. I hope this trend continues.

wavvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvves

2010-07-08T23:53:00.003-04:00

A couple of reasons why you should be listening to Wavves latest album, King of the Beach. (RIYL the self-loathing lyrcis of Kurt Cobain and the fuzzy melodies of early Nirvana.)

it's too much! i don't know what it means! it's so intense!

2010-07-04T19:37:00.004-04:00

Hey kids, celebrate the zero-ten 4th with a--OH MY GOD WOW IT'S STARTIN' TO LOOK LIKE A TRIPLE RAINBOW OH MY GOD IT'S FULL ON DOUBLE RAINBOW ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE SKY OH MY GOD!

all's well that ends well

2010-07-04T14:48:00.004-04:00

It’s been awhile since I visited this space. Much has changed; some for the better, some for the worse. I am out and away from the place I called home for the past seven years. The townhouse and Bloomington are now memories. I can only speak for myself, but I believe that things between roommate and I ended rather amicably. After one final walk-through of the apartment, we handed over the keys, shook hands and went our separate ways. I remember patting him on the back and saying something like, “Hey, no hard feelings, OK?” Indeed, all’s well that ends well.

I’m no longer a citizen of Bloomington; ____ is where I will call home for the next 16-24 months. I have no illusions about this city – it’s definitely a step down from Bloomington, and, in some ways, reminds me of dreaded Hometown, but the concept temporariness is never far from my mind, and its closeness offers consolation, a reminder that I’m in the process of moving on to bigger and better things. What will I miss about Bloomington? The small, college town aesthetic; the progressive (liberal) politics; the high level of social tolerance many (but far from all) Bloomingtonians practice; and the city offers a relative safe haven from the ignorant, right-wing approach to everything that engulfs much of Indiana. A few things I won’t miss about Bloomington: the artificial wealth that swells throughout certain parts of the city – there’s nothing like being cut off in traffic by a 19-year-old IU student in a $70,000 sports car or SUV (don’t choke on your silver spoon, pig); the liberal elites – these hypocrites pay lip service to traditional liberal causes (specifically, social programs for the poor), yet detest being in the presence of the very people they claim to defend; and, finally, despite the fact that Bloomington is a liberal stronghold, the occasional reminder of your geographic location (southern Indiana, ya’ll) takes the form of a Confederate flag bumper sticker, or the screaming pipes of a pickup truck.

I’ve been in ____ for a week now and have yet to land a job, which is a little frightening. Two weeks ago I applied to a few pizza places with the hopes of landing a delivery job, but nobody is hiring. I’ve since applied to several other businesses (retail stores, hospitals). The entire application process is ~~humbling~~ humiliating, especially as a 32-year-old whose most recent job experience is seven years driving a bus. The fear of being misclassified as a 30something with no skills (“if you had any skills, why would you be applying for a lowly, entry-level position?”) is apparent every time I ask for and return the job application. I feel as though I should preface every application with this simple statement: I’M NOT AN INCOMPETENT DOLT.

Me being me, of course, this uncertainty (along with nursing courses beginning in late August) adds an unhealthy dose of anxiety to the smog of depression that’s been hovering above for the past few weeks. I just want to find a place of relative stability. Right now, I don’t have that, and it feels as though the unknown is greater than the known.

only on the internets

2010-06-27T20:38:00.001-04:00

I found the following video after I discovered the 8-bit version of "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea."

Don't ask questions, just listen. Those in the know will know.

wow

2010-06-27T15:32:00.004-04:00

Last night Phish for the first time played a Neutral Milk Hotel tune, the beautiful "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea." It's not a perfect cover, but this is easily the best attempt I've heard. Can't wait to see the guys in August.

This might be the greatest cover. Points for originality.

i've been waiting for this moment/for all my life

2010-06-25T12:06:00.002-04:00

Today is officially my last day as an employee of and driver for Bloomington's public transit outfit. I've been waiting for this day for years -- literally. The forces of the cosmos have found it appropriate to fuck me over for the last couple of weeks, and today is no different. I've been given an eleven-hour shift today -- the last day I will ever work for this goddamn company and it's an eleven-hour shift.

fml (again)

2010-06-23T19:55:00.003-04:00

So, this evening I was scheduled to take a four-hour CPR certification class in Greencastle, which is a 70-minute drive from my place (I'm still in Bloomington for a few more days). I make the drive only to find that no one is there -- literally, no one this there, including the "instructor." On the door is a sign that states "if door is locked 30 minutes before scheduled class time, please call 866-611-6745 x100." It's 5:55PM and the class is supposed to begin in five minutes, so I call the number, dial the extension and receive not a live person, but a prerecorded voice-mail message. I leave a message. I wait ten minutes; receiving no phone call from the instructor, I dial again, this time leaving no message. It's now 6:25, getting no call back, I call again and leave a, um, polite message describing my situation. I leave and make the 70-minute drive back to Bloomington. At 6:40 I receive an e-mail stating that my $42 had been refunded, but I didn't receive an explanation about the no-show instructor. Why does this kind of shit always happen to me?

See, as part of a pre-entry requirement to the nusring program, I must receive American Heart Association CPR certification by July 6, so after tonight's fuck-me fest, I'm unsure of my next move.

Oh, and this morning I spent FIVE MOTHERFUCKING HOURS at Meineke getting an oil change and two new tires. Besides costing me 300 minutes of my life, my credit card received a hefty charge of $250.

F My motherfucking Life.

great interview with mr. ed o'brien (yes, THAT ed o'brien)

2010-06-20T16:07:00.004-04:00

Ed20-6-2010 by a952424

(Found via Consequence of Sound.)

The bullet points from the interview:

- Radiohead right now is "in the heart of the record."

- "The finishing line" for the new album is "in touching distance" and could be completed in a "matter of weeks."

- "I feel like this is the best record... we've ever made. It's genuinely exciting. It's very different from what we did last time."

- "It'd be great if [the new album] came out sometime this year. It's got to."

Bullet points aside, this is an interview all Radiohead fans will find fascinating. Ed discusses the current state of the band and retraces its history all the way back to Pablo Honey. Definitely check it out.

nice end

2010-06-18T18:59:00.003-04:00

At least this shitty week ends on a nice note: today I got my acceptance letter to ______'s RN program!

a great piece of american journalism

2010-06-17T23:13:00.004-04:00

I recently watched the classic "All the President's Men," a film that centers around journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein -- the two men who uncovered the scandal that would bring down the presidency of Richard Milhous Nixon. Reading the following piece, by Dan Barry of the New York Times, reminded me that even in this day and age of fast-read summaries and millisecond sound bites, good journalism still has a place in the lexicon on American news.

June 17, 2010
Looking for Answers, Finding One
By DAN BARRY
WASHINGTON — On the 58th day, an outraged nation summoned the man it holds responsible for one of the worst environmental disasters in American history. He walked through the oversize wooden doors, shed the protective cocoon of his dark-suited entourage and took his place at a long table.
Sitting there, alone, with a microphone pointed at his face like a long finger of accusation, the oil titan looked so small — diminished, it seemed, by the immensity of the environmental, economic and social damage done.
“I am deeply sorry,” he said.
“Devastated,” he said.
“I’m not a cement engineer, I’m afraid,” he said.
“I was not part of that decision-making process,” he said.
This was Tony Hayward, the British chief executive for BP, called by Congress to answer for the explosion of a rig on April 20th that killed 11 workers and unleashed an as-yet-unstoppable sea of oil. The disaster has fundamentally altered many parts of American life.
And on Thursday, Mr. Hayward had to play his part in an American ritual that often follows catastrophe: a Congressional hearing, in which blustering politicians demand, stammering witnesses dodge, and the people living beyond those large wooden doors are given the sense that someone is being held accountable — even publicly shamed.
In that respect, Mr. Hayward performed his role well.
For much of the morning, the Capitol Hill dock awaited its guest. Then, shortly before 10, an unnerving hush announced Mr. Hayward’s arrival, a hush interrupted only by waves of repetitive camera clicks. All for a man of 53 who seems almost boyish, with his tousled dark hair, rosy cheeks and eyebrows forever arched, conveying a look somewhere between earnestness and amusement.
Mr. Hayward walked over to the one chair, reserved for him, then realized that he would have to wait. He turned his back on the shuttering cameras and stood with several aides in awkward silence, waiting. One aide whispered to another, “I told him not to come in so early.”
Here, then, was a moment to study the man. He has dedicated more than half his life to BP, working his way up as a geologist, exploration manager, and inner-circle executive. Though an American ear might hear aristocracy in his voice, his accent “reveals modest roots,” according to The Independent, a British newspaper. He is married, with children.
Yet when we see an oil-drenched gull, a docked shrimp boat, or the live-camera feed of oil spilling from the ocean floor, we think of Tony Hayward. Who wants his life back. Who thought this spill a drop in a vast ocean. Who is so tone deaf at times that it seems the oil-rig explosion affected his hearing.
The devastating spill, his spill, has sent clumps of oil washing onto shores from Louisiana to Capitol Hill. This week alone, several oil company chairmen stood in the Congressional dock; President Obama dedicated his first speech from the Oval Office to the disaster; and BP announced that it would create a $20 billion fund to cover claims arising from the spill, following a private meeting at the White House between a frustrated Mr. Obama and several BP officials, including Mr. Hayward.
Now Mr. Hayward was back, this time in a wide, red-carpeted room offering nowhere to hide. He took his seat, and, for several hours, sidestepped direct answers to pointed questions with a politeness that bordered on being impolite.
Representative Henry A. Waxman, the Democrat from California who is chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, set the mood. He first thanked Mr. Hayward for his appearance, then scored him for being an oblivious chief executive officer.
Mr. Waxman cited a subcommittee investigation that concluded that BP took shortcuts in constructing the fatal well “to save a million dollars here and a few hours or days there,” and added there was no evidence that Mr. Hayward “paid even the slightest attention to the dangers at this well.”
In other words, Mr. Hayward: Welcome. And there is a pitcher of ice water in front of you, should your throat feel dry.
For the next hour, a Greek chorus of Democrats and Republican used their opening statements to express the anger of a nation. The elected officials recalled that BP has a troubled safety record, responsible for other disasters: a deadly refinery explosion in 2005; an oil spill in Alaska in 2006. One representative questioned the depth of Mr. Hayward’s sorrow. Another told him he had violated the public trust. Yet another wondered whether it was time for him to resign.
After being sworn in, Mr. Hayward began to read a written statement, only to be interrupted by a woman — a shrimper, it was said — who raised her oil-stained hands and shouted, “You need to be charged with a crime!” As officers wrestled her out, she repeated her assessment of the witness.
Mr. Hayward, who did not turn to watch the eruption, continued with his apology, advised that “it was simply too early to say what caused the incident” — and spent the next five hours saying little beyond that.
No matter how hard Mr. Waxman pushed him, or how sharply the subcommittee chairman, Representative Bart Stupak, the Michigan Democrat, spoke to him, or how many documents were cited to suggest that BP put profit before safety at the Deepwater Horizon rig, Mr. Hayward essentially provided one answer:
“I was not part of that decision-making process.”
Throughout, Mr. Hayward maintained that look of amused earnestness. He moved his cup of water an inch. He jotted an occasional note. Sometimes his gaze seemed not directed at the speaker but somewhere in the wood-paneled distance — as though the repeated suggestions that he resign might not be such a bad idea.
Well after 5 p.m., the gavel came down with an angry: enough! Mr. Hayward’s dark-suited entourage ushered their small, boyish boss to an awaiting S.U.V. In the seven hours since the hearing began, as many as 735,000 gallons of oil leaked into the gulf.
And Friday is the 59th day.

reflection

2010-06-15T23:59:00.001-04:00

I have had over twenty-four hours to contemplate sister’s future for the following 9-18 months, and I remain convinced that the prison sentence is the best possible thing that could have happened. On this blog I have written literally hundreds, probably thousands, of words regarding my sister’s battle with addiction. I haven’t written so much about my actual sister as I have about her addiction, because when a person transmutes into an addict, she loses her identity, her personality – she becomes a ghost surrounded by the living. It is a terrifying experience to watch a loved one, especially a younger sibling, lose herself to the hell of addiction. And keep in mind that my experience has been somewhat muted due to the physical distance between me and my sister. Regardless of the degree of exposure, the experience is indeed horrifying, and I mean that literally: I was physically afraid of seeing my sister, sharing a room with her, even a phone conversation was an anxiety-ridden ordeal. It’s troubling because this person, this young woman who I can faintly recall as a newborn, is no longer recognizable. Her speech, her appearance, her actions—it’s no longer her. It’s a stranger, a disturbed stranger, and, to a certain degree, a real-life monster.

But I feel an unending pity for my sister. I want to love her again. I want her to come home. I want to hug you and know that it is you I am hugging and not some demented spirit.

But I’m angry at my sister. She was given the opportunity of drug court (an opportunity that not every drug offender is given, which is unfortunate and, in my opinion, immoral, but the “war on drugs” must continue, right?), and not three months later, destroyed her progress by leaving the scene of an accident. But my sister is a victim – a victim of her own circumstance, no doubt, but a victim nonetheless. Despite the haze that envelops an addict, they, occasionally, do experience moments of clarity, and during those brief breaths they recognize and detest what they have become. No one, regardless of his or her background, willingly becomes an addict. The addiction chooses them.

Tonight, my sister, and mother of a 3 ½ year-old boy, sits in jail, waiting, presumably, to be transported to a state prison. She’s surrounded by other criminals, but she sits in jail alone. And I know that as she sits there, the cold reality of her situation is becoming increasingly evident. “How did it get like this?” she must surely ask herself. Did she seek the chemical comfort of drugs because, as she once claimed, she was sexually molested by a childhood neighbor? Did that really happen? Who would fabricate such a horrible event? But sister, how do I, how can I separate fact from the avalanche of lies you have designed?

In the weeks leading up to her sentencing yesterday, my sister discovered and began regularly using crack. Yes, crack. Will prison be the “rock-bottom moment” she needs to shake herself clean? Or is she gone, forever? Is the damage irreversible?

I want my old sister to come back home. I want to hug her again. I want all of this to end. I want a new beginning.

xx

72

2010-06-14T21:56:00.003-04:00

The past 72 hours have been strange and strangled with anxiety.

Friday: I gave my two weeks notice to my employer. I’ve been a bus driver for Bloomington’s public transit system for nearly seven years, and although submitting my resignation was a glorious act, it was also slightly difficult. Leaving any place or person after seven years is difficult – not because you necessarily love that thing or person, but because that object (even if we’re discussing a person, after seven years that person becomes an object, an object of psychological dependence) becomes routine, and because we are all creatures of habit, its absence is felt, often in strange ways. Make no mistake: I'm happy to be moving on, I just don't know where I'm going, which is a rich source of anxiety for me.

I’m disappointed that I’ve spent the past seven years behind the wheel of a bus, or, more accurately, I hate the fact that I have wasted the past seven years doing practically nothing and, in the process, gone nowhere. I’ve met some interesting people and seen some unforgettable things, but it’s time for me to move on – my intelligence can be better spent in other roles; moreover, I desire a job that allows me to make an important and lasting impact on people’s lives, which is why I’m drawn to nursing, especially hospice nursing.

When I informed my supervisor that I would be leaving in two weeks, I also informed him of my near-future plans, which includes a career in hospice care. My supervisor, unbeknownst to me, has had three experiences with hospice care, most recently last fall, when he lost his brother to cancer. He was so touched by his experience that he literally couldn’t speak about it – he didn’t want to fall apart. So, instead, he wrote me a touching letter, a letter that reaffirmed my passion to pursue a career in hospice.

Sunday: PB and I braved a virtual monsoon of rain and ventured to The Bishop in Bloomington to see Damien Jurado perform. And what a performance it was. With full band he performed his latest album, the morose masterpiece Saint Bartlett, in its entirety. He then, solo, played “The Killer” and “Ohio.” It was possibly the most personal performance I’ve ever witnessed – he played every song with a passion and intensity that’s rarely seen on stage. I’d never seen him live before, but now that I have, listening to his music is a different experience than before: I feel like someone who has discovered an unlocked diary – you have some reservations about reading its contents, but inside those handwritten words a story is told, and it’s a tale full of dark spaces, places where people who attempt to love others are cut for their efforts, places where the loser is celebrated. You know it’s wrong to pry into such personal places, especially of a stranger’s, but you justify the invasion because those experiences make you feel less alone. His songs are medicine for the walking wounded. Jurado is a rare talent and shouldn’t be missed; check out Saint Bartlett and his tour schedule. (Also, don’t miss the opener, Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground. Definitely recommended for Elephant 6 fans, especially those who loved Beulah’s When Your Heartstrings Break. Sousaphone, French horn, trombone and more, Kay Kay rocked it Sunday night.)

Monday: Earlier today, sister was sentenced 9-18 months in prison for a DUI charge from a year ago. The judge, who, apparently, was expected to give her a mere probation sentence, called her a "menace to society" (yes, a direct quote). Sad to say, but at this point in sister’s story, a stay in prison is the best possible thing that could have happened. I guess. I don’t know…

when you're finished raping his corpse, let me know

2010-06-12T21:17:00.002-04:00

TMZ has and never will be synonymous with dignity, but this is just sad. Very sad.

you know you're old when...

2010-06-12T18:41:00.004-04:00

You know you're old and out of the loop when you just discovered kick-ass Pandora.com -- via a Time magazine article!

phish in the stove

2010-06-11T00:05:00.000-04:00

To chase away the shadows, I compulsively cleaned a stove – a stove I’ll no longer be using in two weeks because I’ll be away from this place(!) – and listened to Phish’s December four-night run in Miami from ’09. I can’t wait to see the guys for two nights in August at Verizon in Indy. I haven’t been to a Phish show in close to a decade, but listening to their ’09 live sets brings it all back home. Some people get Phish. Most don’t. And that’s OK. But for those who do, experiencing a Phish event is always remarkable. Temporarily inhabiting a small town of 20,000 while five guys soak the atmosphere with improvisational jams is a rare occurrence. When you’re absorbed by a jam (I know I’m sounding like a complete stoner here, but fuck you, it’s great), you reach an ultimate point of realization: you look around and find 20,000 people entranced by one thing, music, and it’s a communal, almost religious experience. Can’t wait to get back.

yorke speaks the obvious

2010-06-10T20:30:00.003-04:00

The following article appeared on Spinner.com, which is owned by AOL (yes, that AOL), which was once owned by media giant Time Warner, so I don't mind copping the text and sharing it here.

Thom Yorke Warns the Music Business ‘Will Fold in Months’

In a rare interview, Radiohead frontman
Thom Yorke has warned young musicians
not to tie themselves to the “sinking ship”
of the music industry, suggesting it will
soon collapse. The singer said it is “only a
matter of time — months rather than years
— before the music business establishment
completely folds,” he said in an interview
for a school textbook.

He advises musicians to self-release music
rather than yearn for a major label contract,
suggesting the loss of the mainstream
music industry will be “no great loss to the
world.”

His group, who were previously signed to
EMI, shook the industry after offering a
‘pay what you want’ system for the digital
release of ‘In Rainbows’ in 2007. The model
has since become a common option for
groups selling their music online with
stores such as BandCamp.com.

Although the concept of the whole music
establishment folding may seem implausible,
it could be agreed that the annual deluge
of music graduates often find they have
few full-time prospects. The RIAA report
that music piracy is now costing 71,060 US
jobs and $2.7 billion (£1.86 billion) in
workers’ earnings every year. However,
hard times have encouraged some of the
most prolific music movements in history.
The modern affordability of recording
equipment and global distribution could be
the factors that prove Thom Yorke right.

The interview was for a new school textbook,
The Rax Active Citizen Toolkit, which
aims to engage young people with political
issues, and also features interviews with Ms
Dynamite and newsreader Jon Snow.

Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon knocked Radiohead for its pay-what-you-want download of In Rainbows, saying that Radiohead's decision will ultimately hurt smaller, poorer bands. Ironic, because in the new Internet-music age, those smaller bands have distinct advantages over label-signed bands, because those poor bands' decisions aren't guided by contracts or licensing agreements. Regardless of what Ms. Gordon or the industry heads say, the pay-what-you-want format is the future of music. Case in point: a couple of months ago ZAZA tweeted about Kordan's (at the time, an unknown band to me) fantastic darkwave debut The Longing, which I highly recommend (don't know why I haven't blogged about it; it's great for late nights soaked in rain). Intrigued, I Googled Kordan, found the band's site and discovered their EP, which I could stream in its entirety. I liked what I heard, and through the aforementioned bandcamp.com (stitched into the Kordan site), downloaded the EP. I paid $5.

It was all so very 21st century: a band I like tweets about an unkown band; I Google the band; I find the band's site, where I can stream its music and pay what I want for it. The entire process was seamless and convenient -- it's also, I believe, the only process the music "industry" can employ to sustain itself.

In this day and age, thieves will steal music regardless of the laws, or, here's a refreshing reminder, the ethical/moral consequences, prohibiting it. If the band or record label offers its music directly via the Net AND allows the consumer to set the price, what are they losing? Everyday example: Joe Blow loves the Crystal Castles and wants to pick up the band's latest offering. He can A) go to iTunes or eMusic and pay the industry-set price (the album's probably already been leaked, I might add), B) go to his local indie record store (if it's still open, of course), C), which currently isn't an option for CC's fans, go directly to its site, stream it, download it, and pay what they want, or D) go to thepiratebay.com and get it within seconds and pay nothing. If a band's "fans" are going to steal its music regardless, why not let them steal it from the source? It's less morally troubling to steal money from a monster-mega bank, but it isn't so easy stealing dough from your parents.

Love it or hate it, In Rainbows was the first example of a band taking a pro-active dive into the choppy waters of the new music "industry," which, soon, won't be an industry at all, but a vast network of opportunistic bands.

you knew this would happen

2010-06-10T00:09:00.001-04:00

(Click to see full size 1600x1100)

numbers

2010-06-10T00:01:00.001-04:00

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right

2010-06-09T23:37:00.002-04:00

good news bad news

2010-06-08T22:54:00.004-04:00

I turned thirty-two on Sunday. Wasn’t much of a celebration. Panda Bear got me David Cross's latest album, a gift certificate for the Phish Dry Goods store, and then treated me to a French toast dinner at IHOP (I’m obviously not a hard man to please). For a parting gift, I, with assistance from P.B., pocketed an IHOP logo-emblazoned coffee cup. We then enjoyed the cool evening in the spacious backyard of our apartment by tossing the Frisbee. Simple pleasures are the most satisfying.

I don’t think it’s related to my birthday, but the last several days have been emotionally turbulent. Just an unexplained sadness. Sometimes this sadness transforms into a blind loathing for everyone, everything. Days like these, suicide is a fascinating option. Sometimes it feels like the inevitable conclusion of everything that I am.

I did receive some good news, however. Yesterday I received notice from the ____ campus that I have been accepted into its Registered Nursing Program. When I submitted my application many weeks ago, I felt very confident about making it in, but I had no idea just how competitive the field was. My application score was 212 out of 223 (95%); the cutoff was a remarkably high 208. The Nursing Coordinator at _____ said she was surprised by the number of high scores (last year the cutoff score was 202).

All this is good news, of course. But it isn’t great. I’m moving to ____ in a couple weeks, and the ____ _____ letters have yet to be sent. I have until June 18 to inform the Bloomington campus of my intent, so I’m hoping to receive word from ____ soon. ____ is about an 80-minute drive from Bloomington, and that isn’t a drive I want to make several days a week, but I will if I have to. I’m assuming (and hoping) that if my 212 was good enough for Bloomington, it’s good enough for ____. From what I have gathered, the Bloomington scores were among the highest in the state, so I’m still optimistic, but I’m not as confident as I once was.

I just want to move on from all this shit.

gotta love southern indiana, ya'll

2010-06-06T17:16:00.001-04:00

From Bloomington's Herald-Times Twitter feed:

theheraldtimes

The Herald-Times

details

2010-06-06T09:43:00.000-04:00

another one

2010-06-05T00:19:00.007-04:00

[POST DELETED]

busy

2010-06-04T21:29:00.000-04:00

maybe-but-probably-not goodbye, readers

2010-06-03T21:41:00.008-04:00

I really don't think this will happen, but if it does, I want to leave this:

I didn't mean for this to happen, so if I die in my sleep, it was an accident (honestly). And I'm sorry. I had a few drinks and took some pills so that I could sleep (being the joyful citizen of a capitalist theocracy, I must awake at 5AM tomorrow for work -- and I rarely see that time of morning).

If I do pass, however, I'll be at peace. This country-- more accurately its citizens (well, most of them) and government -- is so fucked at this point that we've reached the D.N.R. phase. Do Not Resuscitate because we are beyond the point of saving, and there is little-- no, there is nothing that I or an army of me could do to jolt this nation's citizenry from its collective slumber of apathy.

Most of you don't care about the atrocities -- US government-supported atrocities (Obama still supports off-shore drilling) -- occurring in the Gulf RIGHT NOW.

Most of you don't care about the human rights violations occurring right now in Gaza. Again, violations that receive the full backing (funds and military machinery) by the US government, including the killing of nine aid workers, one of them being an American who was shot point-blank four times in the head and one in the chest.

THESE ARE NOT CONSPIRACIES, BY THE WAY. STOP GOOGLING FOR FUNNY KITTEN VIDEOS AND PORN AND RESEARCH THE STORIES REPORTED ONLY BY THE UNDERGROUND MEDIA. You should follow @ggreenwald --Salon writer Glenn Greenwald-- on Twitter, who writes and retweets reputable stories you won't find in the cesspool of mainstream media.

And earlier this evening on Marketplace from American Public Media (jump to 3:39), David Lienhard discussed the flawed ability of people to make proper cost-benefit analyses, by "underestimating the odds of something unlikely, but that brings huge costs, like an oil rig blowing up, or the collapse of the housing industry; yet, paradoxically, we overestimate the odds of something rarely happening, like plane crashes. We believe they are more common than they really are, yet we react more to them then to car crashes, which occur much more frequently and are much more deadly to plane crashes." What he failed to mention was how this human and very flawed logic occurs when faced with the "horrific" and "large" group al-Queada terrorists and like-minded groups seething to kill innocent Americans. You're more likely to die on the motorway than dying from an Islamist's suicide belt. The terrorist threat was used as a fear tool by the GW Bush White House, which led to the passage of The Patriot Act. That same Act and similar tactics are being used by the Obama White House, unfortunately.

You need to watch all three of these BBC documentaries (for free, I might add): Power of Nighmares. The films will open your eyes to DOCUMENTED lies and embellishments that furthered American-Capitalist dominance over its country's people and millions throughout the world. It's a must watch and covers decades of shady tactics used by our government

I have now come to realize that Orwell's 1984 is the most terrifying book I've ever read, because, as I age, I see more and more, especially with the implementation of the Internet, which wasn't a device in 1984, of that fictional novel tearing into the real-life world of nonfiction, the purest form of nonfiction: no pages needed -- this is your actual REALITY. And it is being intruded upon through streams of data.

In a recent Nylon magazine interview, M.I.A. (tweeted by The Decemberists' Colin Meloy as the "Glenn Beck of the Left"), offered an intriguing theory: Facebook and Google were CIA projects. Far reaching, I know; but just how close are we to Orwell's 1984? If we are closer than we believe, M.I.A.'s theories don't seem so extreme. Just saying.

But seriously, watch The Power of Nightmares. Intriguing. And terrifying.

I hope a breath from my sleeping lips will not be the last. If so, in the immortal words of Hunter S. Thompson, "Don't take any guff from these fucking swine."

(I love you, Panda Bear.)

take 10 seconds and do this

2010-06-03T20:49:00.001-04:00

pics bp doesn't want you to see

2010-06-03T18:53:00.001-04:00

The pics BP doesn't want you to see.

breaking: obama presidency isn't a total failure, but it's close

2010-06-03T15:02:00.006-04:00

The President who wants to break our country's addiction to foreign oil STILL supports off-shore drilling, despite BP creating the worst environmental disaster this country has ever suffered. The oil industry has virtually forced this country's hand into adopting a new and progressive energy policy, yet it won't happen. Just wait, the media and Administration will eventually focus their attention elsewhere, and when they do, our President will follow the moniker of "drill, baby, drill." I sincerely wish our President were a democratic socialist, that would be real, positive and encouraging change to believe in.

Oh, and the President still supports the aggressive, brutal, Zionist regime in Israel, despite the defenseless killing of nine civilians, including one American, who was shot four times in the head and once in the chest, on a Turkish aid ship bound for Gaza. The United States has decided to stand with Israel and against the wishes of the United Nations in rejecting calls for an international investigation of the incident.

short: pinned to you

2010-06-03T00:01:00.005-04:00

My first crush happened when I was twelve years old. Her name was Julie Richards, and as with most crushes, it was less about love and more about infatuation. I remember the first time her colors splashed across my eyes: it was the first day of 7th grade physical education class, and we were all dressed in heather grey PHYS ED DEPT shirts and those dreadfully short red polyester shorts. Mr. Burris was calling attendance, and when I heard him announce “Richards, Julie,” my head inexplicably turned in her direction.

And it was her shoulder-length strawberry blonde hair, free of curls and free of flaws, straight as the trail of a million raindrops.

And it was her green eyes, open and swallowing the gymnasium’s freshly waxed floor.

And it was her small budding breasts, waiting for the season of teenage menstruation to bust then burst from her bosom.

And it was her naked legs, those bare legs falling from those red shorts. The fluorescence from the rafters gave her pale thighs the glow of an Old Testament virgin.

But her right thigh was marred perfectly by a birthmark, which resembled a rosebud more than a spot of pigmented skin. I marveled at that mark. It became a strange emblem, a secret mark that, because of its placement on her thigh, showed itself only in gym class, only in those polyester red shorts. Whenever her eyes were away, at the free-throw line or pulling her body heavenward at the curl-up bar, I would gaze at it – the contrast of concentrated color against pale flesh, an island pinned to forever, surrounded by a sea of pale milk.

My crush, that infatuation, was not hatched out of a wicked desire; despite the hormones that were beginning to course through my capillaries, I didn’t want to fracture her shell of virginity. I sought only simple pleasures seeded by pure motives.
I wanted fingertips like feathers
to skim the placid surface
of that pale ocean.
Touching: an exchange of electrical impulses

foreign flesh to foreign flesh

and blood rushes

to the surface

and neurons burn as stars eclipsing death.

Breaking my impossible vision was the squealing of sneakers from the gym floor. Freshly waxed, it glimmered like a vast sliver of quivering water, but the gleam would eventually diminish under the soles of children,
children running
children dodging
children jumping
bodies moving,
eventually erasing the sheen.

Last week Julie Richards, now 29, accepted my Facebook request, but I don’t know why. I don’t even know why I bothered sending the request. I suppose I had the irrational idea of catching up and confessing the foolish feelings that occupied my life that one summer. But as that confession took form, as I plotted its points and outlined its shape, it became more absurd, idiotic. Throughout our school years we never spoke, we maybe exchanged glances in a crowded hall a few times. Our only bond was “class of ’97,” which, perhaps, was also her sole reason for accepting my request.

I didn’t write on her wall, nor did I send her a message. I didn’t want to trespass into her life, even if that intrusion took the form of a disposable electronic message. But I did look through her photo albums. I saw her romantically embracing a tanned, handsome man. A few pages later I saw her wedding photos, the groom being the same tanned man. I also saw sunny vacation photos. And babies who had become children. I saw all the moments she wanted to capture forever. And then I found a picture of Julie, alone, just her face, center frame. The hair, the eyes, the lips – it was Julie, but it’s strange how time impacts the face. The essence remains unchanged, but it’s those subtle nuances that remind you the end is getting closer; it’s taking form in your bones and on your flesh. It’s the eyes and the flesh around them. Something changes. It’s that star eclipsing death.

Lost in the pages of my sophomore yearbook there is a collage of photos. Pictures of cluttered hallways. Pictures of high school dances. There’s a photograph, taken during lunchtime, in which Julie’s face is colored bashful. She appears to be avoiding the camera, but her eyes are staring into it, those giant green eyes swallowing the life on the other side of the lens. And I’m there too. I’m in the back, several tables away, and I’m looking in Julie’s direction, but the camera was too far. My face is a blur, out of focus, barely recognizable. But I’m there.

On the first day of phys ed class the freshly waxed gymnasium floor shined so brilliantly I could nearly see a perfect reflection of my face. But children passed through, people passed over that surface and the shine dulled, the luster lessened, and at the end of the semester I saw nothing of my face when I stared into the floor. It was a blur. Unrecognizable.

The passage of time changes everything, and it fulfills its purpose in doing so. I wanted to write Julie, but not to confess a childhood delusion, but to paint a picture of my perceptions, share that image with her, and determine if the shadows created by my existence – our existence, however disparate – are unique, or shared through some strange chord that resonates under everything.

The forces of age have changed your body, Julie. The spoils of children have displaced the love for your husband, who now works to support a dream that is no longer his own. He crunches numbers and disconnects from conference calls while you toil in fields of daffodils and dandelions. When the moon is high and the children are sleeping, your husband’s putting away his last call, but where are you? What are you?

I remember that rosebud pinned in pigment to your thigh, that strange emblem from nervous youth. Our bodies have changed. Our faces, aged. But we’re still strangers, treading floors that fail to reflect.

xx

live feed

2010-06-02T13:30:00.001-04:00

push back

2010-06-01T21:29:00.004-04:00

Boycott the following BP brands and join the Boycott BP Facebook group.

june begins with some totally rad news

2010-06-01T13:20:00.004-04:00

You know how earlier I gushed about 2010 album-of-the-year candidate High Violet? Well, the band behind that somber masterpiece, The National, just added Indianapolis to its concert calendar, Saturday October 2 at the Egyptian Room, to be precise. MOKB presale happens this Thursday; public sale begins Saturday.

!!!

xx

why the fuck are people still going to bp stations?

2010-05-31T21:09:00.003-04:00

If I hadn't read this myself, I wouldn't have believed it. BP has hired the very people put out of business (fishermen and shrimpers) by its mess to clean up its mess -- and the protective clothing they've received doesn't include respirators.

(I'm still hopeful that President Obama will do the proper, but politically unpopular, thing and permanently ban future construction of offshore drilling platforms.)

Environmentalists and fishing groups in Louisiana say prolonged exposure to the oil, in the form of tiny airborne particles as well as dispersants, could be wreaking devastating damage on public health.

They also accuse BP of threatening to sack workers who try to turn up for clean-up duty wearing protective respirators, and the Obama administration of refusing to release results of air and water quality tests that would show the impact of crude oil and dispersants on the environment.

Wilma Subra, a chemist who has served as a consultant to the Environmental Protection Agency, said there was growing anecdotal evidence that locals were falling ill after exposure to tiny airborne particles of crude. Air quality data released earlier by the EPA suggested the presence of chemicals that – while still within legal limits – could be dangerous. But Subra complained that the EPA was not releasing all data it had gathered from BP.

"Every time the wind blows from the south-east to the shore, people are being made sick," she said. "It causes severe headaches, nausea, respiratory problems, burning eyes and sore throats." Long-term health effects include neurological disorders and cancer.

Subra said there was even greater concern for those recruited to lay booms and skim crude off the water, since they were in closer proximity to the oil and the chemical dispersants.

Clint Guidry, of the Louisiana Shrimp Association, has accused BP of threatening to sack workers who turn up wearing respirators. The oil firm said it was not aware of any workers being turned away, but noted that it was the responsibility of the Obama administration to decide whether such protective gear was warranted.

Hugh Kaufman, chief investigator for the EPA's ombudsman, said he encountered similar worker safety policies after 9/11. "If people are wearing respirators, it scares people because they realise how toxic it is," he said "The administration is down-playing the problem because it saves them money down the line. It was the same at Ground Zero."

EPA tests indicate that the combined effect of dispersants and crude oil are even more toxic than individually. "There are dispersants being applied by aeroplane and by boat, and these people on the water are being sprayed over and over again," Subra said.

Five offshore rigs have been shut down since the spill after workers fell ill. Seven workers on a boat trying to scrub the oil from Breton Sound were taken to hospital on Wednesday, complaining of burning eyes, headaches, nausea, dizziness and chest pains. Five were treated and released.

Administration officials suggested in a conference call with reporters that the workers could be suffering from sunstroke in the hot Louisiana temperatures.

They also said the workers recruited for the clean-up – fishermen and shrimpers put out of work because of the spill – had received training and wore protective gear. However, the protective clothing does not include respirators, which environmental activists say violates safety regulations for workers exposed to dangerous chemicals.

None of the workers pictured raking up oil from the beaches of Grand Isle Louisiana in photographs released by the Deepwater command centre today was wearing a mask or respirator.

And there's more...

BP has challenged widespread scientific claims that vast plumes of oil are spreading underwater from its blown-out rig in the Gulf of Mexico. The denial comes as the oil giant prepares for a new operation to put an end to the worst oil spill in US history – which could see the leak get worse before it gets better.

The company's challenge to several scientific studies is likely to put it further at odds with an increasingly angry Obama administration, which has accused it of playing down the size of the leak in an effort to limit possible fines.

BP's chief executive, Tony Hayward, said it had no evidence of underwater oil clouds. "The oil is on the surface," he said. "Oil has a specific gravity that's about half that of water. It wants to get to the surface because of the difference in specific gravity."

Hayward's assertion flies in the face of studies by scientists at universities in Florida, Georgia and Mississippi, among other institutions, who say they have detected huge underwater plumes of oil, including one 120 metres (400ft) deep about 50 miles from the destroyed rig.

. . . .

The Politico website reported that the Obama team was incensed that the company failed to inform it for a day and a half after suspending the failed "top kill" operation to plug the spill using rubber tyres and mud.

The dispute comes as the company readies its latest effort to contain the flow of oil in to the sea, following the failure of top kill. The new plan involves an intricate operation to cut the top off the damaged riser that brought oil to the surface of the destroyed rig. The intention is to create a flat surface to which to attach a valve that would divert the oil into a pipe and on to a ship.

But slicing the top off the damaged pipe may result in oil flowing into the sea at a faster rate until the new valve is fitted. Even if successful, the operation would only limit, not entirely stop, oil from flowing into the sea. If this measure failed, BP's best hope of halting the oil would remain the drilling of a relief well that would ease the pressure on the damaged one. But the US government has warned that the spill could continue into August.

The attempts to stop the oil flow have been given added urgency by the start of the hurricane season tomorrow.

Forecasters are predicting an unusually high number of storms over the next six months. If the oil is still spread across the sea, a hurricane is likely to disperse it over a much wider area and push it deeper into marshlands and other inland areas, making the environmental disaster even worse.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting between eight and 14 hurricanes this season, with perhaps a similar number of smaller storms.

The US military has ruled out taking charge of the operation to stem the flow of oil from the blown-out BP rig. The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, today said that military chiefs had looked at the available equipment and concluded that "the best technology in the world, with respect to that, exists in the oil industry".

A day earlier, the former US secretary of state, Colin Powell, said the military should step in because the crisis was now "beyond the capacity" of BP to stop.

must read

2010-05-30T09:13:00.004-04:00

From today's New York Times:

Documents Show Early Worries About Safety of Rig
By IAN URBINA
Published: May 29, 2010

WASHINGTON — Internal documents from BP show that there were serious problems and safety concerns with the Deepwater Horizon rig far earlier than those the company described to Congress last week.

The problems involved the well casing and the blowout preventer, which are considered critical pieces in the chain of events that led to the disaster on the rig.

The documents show that in March, after several weeks of problems on the rig, BP was struggling with a loss of “well control.” And as far back as 11 months ago, it was concerned about the well casing and the blowout preventer.

On June 22, for example, BP engineers expressed concerns that the metal casing the company wanted to use might collapse under high pressure.

“This would certainly be a worst-case scenario,” Mark E. Hafle, a senior drilling engineer at BP, warned in an internal report. “However, I have seen it happen so know it can occur.”

The company went ahead with the casing, but only after getting special permission from BP colleagues because it violated the company’s safety policies and design standards. The internal reports do not explain why the company allowed for an exception. BP documents released last week to The Times revealed that company officials knew the casing was the riskier of two options.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

classic cross

2010-05-28T15:28:00.002-04:00

I put this up on my Facebook, but nobody commented or cared, so I thought I would post it here, where no one will care or comment. It's still funny, though. It's off David's latest album, Bigger and Blackerer.

another gem

2010-05-26T13:51:00.012-04:00

My High Violet love-fest was interrupted Tuesday morning when, in a Klonopin-induced haze, I discovered on eMusic Damien Jurado’s latest (released on May 25), the somber Saint Bartlett. It’s a beautiful album, comprised of twelve mainly acoustic guitar-driven songs (tag: folk rock). Surrounding his guitar are sublime string arrangements ("Cloudy Shoes," "Throwing Your Voice," and the sorrowful "The Falling Snow") and sparse drum and percussion rhythms (although "Arkansas" bumps from the speakers like a long lost Phil Spector tune from the early '60s). Pearly pianos and dependable bass lines don't accompany the songs so much as they console the lost souls wandering throughout Saint Bartlett. Not that these musical elements are unimportant, but they all revolve around Jurado's egg-shell voice. An avalanche of sadness slowly builds in "The Falling Snow," and you expect his voice to crack from the weight, especially when he pleads "Come down from your mountain/You've been gone too long/If you will then you should say so/Don't leave me hanging on/Out from my open window/We could hear you breathing/Hold on but it does not hold on/Every mountain falls" Whether he's channeling Neil Young ("Wallingford") or nakedly confronting mortality and its aftermath in "Kalama" ("Mother is it easy/Knowing that I will die soon/Will you keep me as ashes/placed on the mantel or thrown out?"), Jurado's voice strikes your heart in its subtlety and honesty, which you would expect from a folk-rock musician, but few artists convey their vision as beautifully as Jurado.

If I had to compare this record to another, it would be Cat Power’s You Are Free. Like You Are Free, Saint Bartlett struggles to soar just over our heads, skimming the treetops and street lights. As you watch its beautiful but troubled flight, you’re concerned that its wings won’t be strong enough to reach its destination, but its struggle is a beautiful endeavor, beautiful because the will to survive is glorioius in its incomprehensibility. Some survive. Others die. And some struggle to maintain the balance between those two animations. Jurado, like Cat Power, gives those unfortunate souls a name, a face. And the faces are always dimly lit -- we don’t need to see the color of their eyes or the contours of their cheeks. Why? Because we know these people; we’ve worked with them; we’ve held their hands; we’ve kissed their crusted lips. Saint Bartlett gently forces us to confront those dimly lit faces and illuminate them. Those faces are our own.

-+-WVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVWV-+-

Damien Jurado begins his tour this Saturday in Seattle. He visits The Bishop in Bloomington on June 13.

Free mp3s courtesy of Jurado's label, the magnificently terrific (and Bloomington's own) Secretly Canadian:
"Arkansas" and "Cloudy Shoes"

short: the wheel

2010-05-23T19:57:00.004-04:00

Strange dreams lately. Last night I awoke at 2AM with the taste of county fair cotton candy on my lips. The taste of sugary cobwebs lit a memory, a moment when I was eight years old.

My father and I were at the county fair. Swallowing my hand was my father’s hand, a hand I remember well: it was worn and weathered, like an old baseball mitt, and the dried calluses that canvassed his flesh felt old and alien. Corn dogs and elephant ears saturated the dirty air, and greasy pedophiles and hair spray-stained beauty queens wandered aimlessly. The flashing lights and spinning machines dazzled my eyes. I wanted to escape the rusting anchor of my father’s hand, but his hold was strong; his stride, however, was weighted, slowed by the cancer digesting his brain.

Three months before that night at the fair I realized something was wrong with my father. He was tending our overgrown garden, and I was out there, with him, fascinated by the massive lapping leaves of a cabbage, when I heard him yelp – a sound I had never heard from my father – and collapse. Invisible forces were jolting his body, and I yelled, “Mommy!”

I yelled, “Mommy!”

And I yelled, “Something’s wrong with daddy!”

I ran from the wild overgrowth.

I ran from my father’s convulsing body.

I ran for help because something was wrong.

After the ambulance driver removed my father’s body from the garden, my mother told me, “Daddy’s sick.” The white-washed walls and sterilized smell of hospital corridors would become very familiar after that day in the garden.

Away from the garden and hospitals, my father and I roamed the fairgrounds. We approached a balloon-and-dart game, and my father, pointing to the prize board, asked me which one I wanted. “I want the giant penguin!” I responded excitedly. My father would have to pop eight balloons with ten darts to claim the prize. He exchanged four tickets for ten darts, of which only two would strike their target. A plastic dinosaur was his consolation prize.

Whenever I think about that balloon-and-dart game I become angry. Angry because I feel as though the game was rigged, fixed to take advantage of my dying father. Other times that anger turns to my father, because, aware of the advanced stage of his disease, I don’t know why he chose a game dependent on hand-eye coordination. I’ll never know how badly he wanted to win that penguin for me, but I know his failed attempt haunted him. For him, that giant penguin represented something greater than a token from the county fair – it was a closing verdict on his fatherhood. He failed to come through for his son = he failed as a father.

We turned our backs on the penguin and walked toward the looming Ferris wheel. All day my father had promised me a ride on the giant machine. He spoke of it as if it were some miraculous apparatus built by the gods of the universe. In those passenger cars were his ghosts, memories of his childhood, memories of his father, memories of a life that was slowly crawling away from his weakening grasp.

Six tickets bought us a ride, and inside that rickety carriage we sat, the rotating wheel making circles, endless circles. Each time we climbed to the top my breath would shorten, my pupils would dilate, and I would try to swallow as much of the panorama as possible. I saw street lamps burning in foreign towns. Glowing billboards selling the promise of American dreams. I saw stars and distant galaxies. I saw everything from that carriage.

The spinning wheel began to slow. The passenger cars began to empty. And I looked to my father. Tiny beads of tears rested in the crevices of his eye sockets. “What’s wrong, Daddy?” I asked.

No answer.

Again, “What’s wrong, Daddy.”

One of those weathered mitts patted my lap. He couldn’t look at me. Couldn’t speak. If he had tried, he would’ve fallen apart. I saw his chin tremble. I looked away. I tried to find a distant billboard that promised to cure my father’s sickness. I couldn’t see one.

“It’s slowing because the ride is over,” he managed to mutter.

Two weeks later, away from the garden, away from the hospitals and away from the giant wheel, my father lay in a bed inside a room that I cannot remember. I was bedside, watching him as though I were waiting for some miracle to wash over his flesh and erase all the bad things from the past few months. Through the cracks of his eyelids, a flame struggled to remain lit. I wanted to believe that behind those eyelids was the flickering picture of a Ferris wheel, decorated with a million multi-colored light bulbs, all blinking, flashing. All this as his heart fluttered. All this as there were circles. Endless circles. And in those circles we sat, overlooking the creeps and queens, the wild weeds of overgrown gardens, the seeds of our failings, the roots of our glories, all the ghosts and colors of our existence.

The cracks of his eyelids narrowed. The rise and fall of my father’s chest slowed. It’s slowing because the ride is over.

Strange dreams lately.

xx

delicate details of violet

2010-05-19T00:42:00.002-04:00

High Violet by The National was officially released last Tuesday. If "official" release dates are still relevant, of course. Thanks to illegal leaks and pre-release streams (The New York Times streamed High Violet two weeks prior to its release), an album's street date is as useless as dial-up internet access. And that's unfortunate. Generation X'ers, remember those Monday night midnight sales? It was a special time: not only could you be one of the first to hear the newest record by your favorite band, but, while waiting in line outside the record store, you could engage in face-to-face interactions with other fans and discuss your favorite song, your favorite album and your favorite concert. The last midnight sale I recall attending was way back in June 2001, and the band was Radiohead, the album, Amnesiac. Now, new releases slowly bleed onto the Internet, making the pomp and circumstance of a new release a rare event.

Awaiting High Violet's arrival conjured many memories of a music scene long beyond the point of resuscitation. (Which is strange, because it took me nearly two years to fully appreciate The National's previous album, Boxer. I now cherish that record. Boxer is certainly a favored album from the previous decade – and yes, it rivals and, depending my mood, surpasses another fav from that decade, Kid A.) How did High Violet stir such antique memories? The National's songs remind me of those old wooden boxes you sometimes see on Antique Road Show. Like those valuable relics, each song etched into High Violet's mantel is intricately shaped – it's an old-world craftsmanship, a world in which songwriting was a cherished talent, a time when a band like Sleigh Bells and an album like Treats would be justly treated as a throwaway trinket from a 25¢ vending machine. The National's sound is subtle yet deliberate; each sound you hear (from Matt Berninger's sigh in the closing seconds of "Lemonworld" to the sneaking strings of "Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks") is purposely carved into its surrounding environment, and it's this detail that sets the band apart from the current flavor-of-the-month band spewed forth by the Internet Hype Machine. Also, how about High Violet's running time? In 2010, who releases an album that clocks in at nearly forty-eight minutes? Indeed, with their latest effort, The National present everything that's good about indie-rock music, which, unfortunately, or perhaps justly, clashes with everything that is popular about indie rock right now.

In typical dour fashion, the band opens High Violet with "Terrible Love" and follows with "Sorrow," in which Berninger pleads "Don't leave my hyper heart alone on the water," then admits "'Cos I don't wanna get over you." "Anyone's Ghost" follows, and with the chorus "Didn't want to be anyone's ghost/But I don't want anyone else," High Violet's sentiment is secured. It's the inability to release the memory of everything lost to the tides of time that stains the album so beautifully. Berninger, whose rusty baritone could console the most piteous souls among us, sings/speaks with the confident drawl of a drunken professor and reminds us, simply through the sound of his voice, that we all struggle with the necessity of release.

In a 2007 interview with The Onion's A.V. Club, Berninger spoke about the significance of keeping the meanings of his lyrics a "little bit blurry," which is fitting because since Boxer, The National's sound has drifted in the hazy mass of a fog. Or maybe it's a ghost. High Violet quivers on the edge of your mind, haunting the periphery, but just when you attempt to reach out and consider its density, it all becomes "blurry," lost in the beauty of subtlety. It's in that vast expanse that High Violet is allowed to flutter and breathe, defying absolute definition.

Unlike many "it" bands, acts who feel the need to expose every crevice of their aural bodies in every second of their songs, The National make restraint an art form. So much of our culture is based on "turning it up to 11." This idiom guides popular music, radio and television programs and advertisements; High Violet counteracts this senseless noise by hiding itself inside skillfully written songs. Are talented artists still appreciated in 2010? No. Everything's gone to hell. Wars, government uprisings, global warming, capitalism's clowns, oil in the Gulf. "There's no saving anything/Now we're swallowing the shine of the summer" Berninger speaks, more breath than words, in "Runaway." But the ghosts of High Violet will console us: "I won't be no runaway/Cause I won't run."

angry

2010-05-18T00:17:00.001-04:00

I'll be visiting hometown tomorrow. It's a trip I'm not anticipating. I should be eager to see mom, considering the last time I saw her was in a fifth floor hospital room, but I'm not. Am I angry? Not exactly. Am I disappointed? Yes. That disappointment tends to express itself in mild strains of anger. These sour feelings are shared with dad. Why? A few weeks ago, sister, her husband and her daughter were forced to move from their home. Actually, they weren't forced to move – they couldn't afford to make rent. See, the previous six months were rent free because the home they moved into needed a lot of work – it was trashed, basically. Sister and husband cleaned up the place. One would assume that, while occupying the home rent free, they would save some dough and have little trouble making the first month's rent payment. But no. Sister's husband works in some dusty factory, and he works plenty of overtime. So, where is all that money going? Drugs, probably. Anyway, dad, for some fucked up reason, allowed the three of them to move into his house. Guess what happens? Dad discovers a week ago that $200 – money he had stashed, locked in the trunk of his car, apparently – is missing. He issues some ultimatum, her husband moves out, and earlier this evening, sister was assessed at some drug-treatment facility. But not accepted. Sister is still living with dad, and dad told her that if she steals again, he'll call the cops and she'll no longer call his small two-bedroom house home, it'll be a jail cell. So why am I disappointed/angry with dad? Because he has never been a man to stand his position. He's known for years that sister stole from mom – hell, she stole from him long before the $200 incident. I understand that she is his daughter, and within that bond is a love that I don't understand, but when dealing with a liar there is little confusion – a liar practices deceit, yet preaches promises and good faith. I'm pissed at dad for being weak. I'm pissed at mom for not taking care of herself. I want to cut ties with everyone. I'm so disgusted with all of them. I don't expect them to be flawless characters; that, obviously, would be a ridiculous expectation, but what I do expect is behavior, a philosophy of life, that is guided by logic, a habit of existence that doesn't hinge on the suspension of life's rudimentary concepts, among those being the active pursuit of finding the cause of a recurring sickness (which mom failed to do) and appropriate skepticism when dealing with those who have proven themselves to be devious (which dad is unable to do).

Do I love my parents? Yes, of course. But as I age, I see them more as adults, people stained by age and time, then as relational beings. I'm sure other 31-year-olds share this experience, and I'm sure some find it disconcerting. But I don't. It's life. In an earlier post I wrote that our friends and families are associations by accident only. When those associates do wrong, we shouldn't absolve them of their errors, especially egregious mistakes, simply because the bond of blood or experience is common with our own. We should aid them, attempt to pull them from their ills (which, I feel, I have tried to do with mom, dad and sister). But what if our words or will isn't strong enough? Do we provide aid and comfort for their foibles? Or do we deny the ugly parts and act as if on some distant stage of temporary disbelief? What do we do?

last night at rachel's

2010-05-16T11:09:00.004-04:00

As blogged previously, electro-rock duo Phantogram came to Bloomington last night and rocked it. DJ duo Remnant opened the night up, kicking out some classic, old school-hip hop jams, which properly infused the atmosphere for Phantogram's "street beat, psyche pop."

Great show. Great band (on and off the stage). Check 'em out if you get the chance. (And be sure to pick up a dope Phantogram tee from their merch table. I did. Sexy modeling pics coming soon.)

my experience with at&t

2010-05-15T18:13:00.003-04:00

For thirty-eight hours I had no Internet access; hence, fuck AT&T. In 1974, the US Department of Justice broke up the multi conglomerate based on the company's monopolization of the telecomm industry. The time has come again.

Wednesday evening at 7PM I spoke to an AT&T customer specialist (clearly working inside one of those megaplex call centers in India). After 15 minutes of unsuccessfully attempting several troubleshooting techniques, I was told, "Oh, I see there is an outage in your area." I was told to call back in four hours, which, foolishly, I did.

At 11PM and I call and, for 15 minutes, hear more of the same: restart the modem, check your cables and connections. "Nothing's changed?" he asked. "Um, no," I replied. "OK, let me run a few tests." Said tests took about five minutes to complete. The tests came back negative, apparently. His response - seriously, this was his response: "There appears to be an outage in your area. If you don't receive an Internet signal by 7PM THE FOLLOWING EVENING, please call us back." If a supposed "outage" was the culprit, why did he spend 15 minutes feeding me diagnostic info and troubleshitting techniques (info that's easily found on AT&T's site) and then, after those useless tips and fuck-off test, tell me an "outage" may be impacting my area?

I was up Thursday morning at 9AM. Still no 'Net. This is bullshit, I thought. Why did others throughout my complex still have Internet if some crippling outage had occurred? I called again –angry – and flat out demanded a service tech ASAP. This asshole made me run through the same troubleshooting techniques as I had done the previous night. "I've done them. I'm not going to do them again." "Well, sir, if I can't run these troubleshooting techniques, I can't help you." "OK," I responded (as I contemplated a mass-shooting spree) "let's do it!" (sarcastic enthusiasm). We did it. He then ran a test. The test determined that the most likely cause of the problem was based on a line – OUTSIDE MY HOME. A service tech was then scheduled to visit my home between 8AM and 12noon – the following day.

Two hours after that phone call I received a prerecorded message from AT&T stating that the issue had been resolved – it hadn't. I was then transferred to a live customer service rep who claimed that the order to send a service tech to my home may not have been processed. (Can you fucking believe this!) He made a few clicks, "Oh, it's OK. He will be there. He's scheduled to be at your address between 8AM and 12noon Friday. I may be able to get someone to your area tonight? Like me to check?" he offered. "Sure, that'd be great!" (real enthusiasm). "Oh, I'm sorry. Nothing is available for tonight. Guess it will have to be tomorrow morning at 8AM."

"Yeah, thanks Mr. Stephen Hawking, you fuck."

The following morning a service tech visited my apartment and guess what? The problem wasn't a line outside my home – it was my modem. It was a problem that should have been identified by that "fuck-off test" performed Wednesday night. According to my roommate, who was home during the tech's visit, the tech was "surprised" she was able to get the new replacement modem working. Unbelievable. AT&T will probably charge me $60 for the service visit. That's $60 AT&T will never see. I'll take those thickheaded fucks to Judge Judy if I have to.

Fuck AT&T. Disband AT&T. (We have a "socialist" president, right?)

If you've had a pleasurable experience with AT&T (the pleasure of hanging up on them doesn't count), please let me know. Also, please include the mind-altering substances you consumed during your pleasurable conversation.

prediction: the new christopher nolan film will melt your face

2010-05-10T20:13:00.002-04:00

Will Inception be the love child of The Matrix and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?

soundtrack at dusk

2010-05-09T21:36:00.004-04:00

Remember that Nick Drake-Volkswagen commercial from a few years back? Yeah, well, a couple Thursday evenings ago I experienced the real thing, only I wasn't driving a Cabrio and "Pink Moon" wasn't playing on my car stereo. Instead, I was driving an xB and listening to The Wild Hunt by The Tallest Man on Earth. (Twenty-seven year-old Swede Kristian Matsson is The Tallest Man on Earth, and The Wild Hunt is his second album.) Don't get me wrong, it's a little early in Matsson's career to make such a lofty comparison, but like Drake, his voice and guitar strike the purest of pitches, which is not a sound, but an emotion, a feeling that reminds us of life's common yet strange experience.

And this is music that will bind experience to memory. Somewhere, a young couple will fall in love, and this album, years later, will be their document of that summer romance. For me, I will forever remember my first experience with The Wild Hunt on that aforementioned Thursday. Countless stars were beginning to shine through the embers of a dusk-lit sky. Under the panorama, I was driving by swatches of farm land, driving to be by the side of the lady I love. With the malty taste of a Taddy Porter on my tongue, I heard a man, accompanied only by his acoustic guitar, sing about sighing senoritas, a blind man who'll drink his water when it rains, and the hope that someplace exists where troubles will be gone. The sounds coming out of my stereo seemed to wrap my surroundings in an aural glow that was, well, perfect.

It's easy to pin The Wild Hunt on the music map: his Dylan-esque howl makes him a folk singer straight out of central casting, but dismissing The Tallest Man as "just another folk revivalist" would be a mistake. The Wild Hunt proves that a modern troubadour doesn't have to pen stabbing songs about war and lost love to be memorable; sometimes it isn't about conveying a message – it's about transmitting a feeling. "There's a palace a fallin'/There's a smoke in the sky/There's a boy running downhill to the lowlands tonight/And he's catching the train to where he's heard you have been/He's a fool now among us, a dreamer within" he sings in the delicate "A Lion's Heart." The wild imagery of Matsson's songs evokes a fairy-tale land based not in fantasy but in plausibility, because unlike a fairy tale, the hero is flawed, haunted by things we cannot see. "The dark in what I've always been, it will never go/No it will not ever go" he sings in "Thousand Ways." Like a storm cloud ripped open, Matsson's words burst from within. To say he "sings" wouldn't be accurate; instead, he delivers his words with a raw immediacy that seemingly acknowledges the impermanence of the moment (listen to "Love is All" and note how Matsson delivers the line "Here come the tears"). A camera is limited by what it can capture, and a songwriter is limited by what he can record – Matsson utilizes every second of The Wild Hunt to leave his raw, unrefined mark.

In Chronicles, Volume One, Bob Dylan wrote that "most other [folk] performers tried to put themselves across, rather than the song, but I didn't care about doing that. With me, it was about putting the song across." For The Tallest Man on Earth, it's about putting the ineffable peculiarity of the human experience across – and it's a wild hunt worth experiencing, even if the hero doesn't always win. After all, the best heroes are the ones with whom we can share our imperfect experience, raw and unrefined.

The Tallest Man On Earth will play The Dome House in Bloomington on May 26. (Don't ask me about The Dome House because I've no idea where it is!)

mangum plays five-song set

2010-05-07T10:19:00.004-04:00

Last night Jeff Mangum played the Chris Knox benefit at Le Poisson Rouge, NYC 05/06/10

Setlist:
“Oh Comely”
“A Baby for Pree”
“Two Headed Boy Pt. 2″
“In the Aeroplane over the Sea”
—
“Engine”

Videos, pics and witness accounts:

Stereogum --- Consequence of Sound --- The Village Voice --- Radio Exile

Via the terrific Radio Exile review, I found a fascinating 2002 interview Mangum did with Marci Fierman at Pitchfork. I don't know how it slipped by me, but I'm glad I found it. Definitely recommended reading.

sun. eve.

2010-05-02T21:24:00.003-04:00

I'm relieved that this weekend is coming to a close. Most of Friday and Saturday were spent moving PB's stuff into the new apartment. Last night and today have been spent battling an anxiety-triggered delirium, which has been made worse due to a crippling cold/flu-like sickness. (Good news came yesterday: mom is back home and out of hospital.) In about six weeks I'll be joining PB, and that near-future reality has certainly made me anxious. The last seven years have expired in the same town; transplanting my roots to a foreign town is a jarring experience because I know practically nothing of this place. The street names, the faces, the atmosphere – it's all unsettling because it's all unknown. However, it's not as if I fully integrated myself into the fabric of Bloomington, so, theoretically, leaving it and landing elsewhere shouldn't been too difficult. But it's more than simply learning locations and names. There's a paranoia, a fear that this new place will refuse me, reject me like a transplanted skin graft. Whether it is a party or a new town, I always try to assimilate myself into it – the new and the unknown – but after a few brief moments I realize that it's a useless effort because I'll never achieve the degree of acceptance that I anticipate, that I need. It's strange, because when I do confront someone who won't reject me, who might even accept me, my tendency is to push him or her away. A few times this weekend I have wondered, Just who is this woman I'll be living with in six weeks? Have I made a mistake?

Pardon me, but that skin of unreality is tightening itself around my bones. Sitting in this living room I feel as if I myself am not typing these words. I am witnessing someone else type; I'm a bystander watching a stranger's life unfurl. Unknown motives pulsate him through the strange circus of life. Remember the pale blue dot photo? What the fuck are we doing here? We construct a system of beliefs and, influenced by those strange motives, fabricate an existence. I say fabricate an existence because this, this is not who we are – we are a product of (attempted) assimilation. We've become a system of creatures whose goal seems to be the accumulation of things: artificial moments of cohesion disguised as "real experiences" and wealth (objects, money).

(I ignorantly etched a mark of anger. That anger arises from a deeply rooted frustration that is so old, so primal that I will never be able to uncover and inspect its fossil. It is the same frustration that brought babbling anger to my father's lips. And I don't want to be him, not because I am ashamed of him, which I am not, but because I don't want to consider the terrifying possibility that this life, this sole experience – my experience – is unremarkable. I cannot understand this agonizing paradox: a man who wants to do good, to be good is constantly crippled by his anger and anxiety. "But I'm a good person!" the man, on his knees, pleads as those around him desert him.)

Have I lost you?

no surprises

2010-04-28T22:24:00.001-04:00

Another week, another trip to the hospital for mom. She was readmitted after vomiting blood (the result of esophageal varices), which has been the sole culprit of her recent hospital stays. An ultrasound was performed on her abdomen, revealing a pocket of fluid in her stomach. Ascites, the medical term for her condition, can be caused by a number of medical problems, but the most common causes are cirrhosis and severe liver disease. Mom told me several tests will be performed on the fluid, which should pinpoint a cause for its presence. The common link between esophageal varices and ascites is impaired liver function, so, in my view, the only question is, How bad is the damage? I'm trying to remain optimistic, but it's difficult. Countless scenarios – some of them morbid, all of them dark – have passed through my mind during the past few weeks. I try to avoid silence, especially at night, in bed, because my mind tends to wander into those darker channels, and once the thoughts begin to reverberate, it's near impossible to suppress them.

rollin’ in an escalade

2010-04-26T16:02:00.001-04:00

The 2010 Cadillac Escalade ESV is an $80,000 automobile. Eighty-thousand dollars. For a transportation vehicle. I am told that, as Americans, we have the "right" to purchase such obscene automobiles. Just as we have the "right" to purchase trash food like McDonald's Big Mac or KFC's Double Down. Yet as Americans, we do not have the right to quality, affordable health care. (Although I believe the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which was signed into law earlier this year, is a step in the right direction, I believe true reform begins with a government option; the health-insurance industry should not be a for-profit industry.) And as Americans, we do not have the right to food and shelter. According to a recent Harvard study, nearly 45,000 Americans die annually because they lack health insurance. A 2009 study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that 49 million Americans, including nearly 17 million children were food insecure. (Food insecurity is defined as the availability of nutritious food and one's access to it.) And a 2007 study by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty found that approximately 3.5 million people, 1.35 million of them children, are likely to experience homelessness in a given year. The world's wealthiest nation allows its own citizens to suffer and die because they lack access to the fundamental services of survival. Yet Americans have the right to an $80,000 machine whose sole purpose is transportation? A society that allows such egregious expressions of wealth is corrupt to the core; such societies care not for those who suffer without, but cater to those whose cash serves as an accessory to their gluttonous lifestyle.

The higher class view those without not as victims of capitalism's vicious dog-eat-dog mentality, which they are, but as victims of their own circumstances. The poor are poor because they lack the initiative, the desire to better themselves, the higher class will claim. This theory certainly holds true for a minority of the lower class, but to claim that every being living in poverty is deserving of such status is absurd, especially in 2010 America, in which millions are struggling with the harsh realities of unemployment and millions more are underemployed. Further millions have been raised in poverty – before they were of the age to differentiate a spade from a diamond they faced a stacked deck. Again, the privileged see the gulf between classes in very simplistic terms: those who can do for themselves have achieved their status, and those who fail to do for themselves – never mind the psychological implications of a poverty-rich childhood – have chosen their lower-class reality. It is not a coincidence that many who hold such ignorant perspectives align themselves with The Right; further, many who align themselves with The Right are Christians, who, not coincidently, view the very existence of our species through the simplistic prism of the Bible and creationism, believing that "the heavens and the earth" were created in six days by the hand of a supernatural creator. Viewing life through such a naïve lens is ridiculous: life's color extends beyond black and white, it is not separated into right and wrong, heaven and hell; a mindboggling number of variables has brought our species, our planet to this point in history, and a number of variables results in who and what we become. It is far more complicated than simply applying one's self, which is why capitalism, viewed by some as "the great equalizer," is so barbaric, because it is based on the inevitable conclusion of internal warfare: man will battle man, exploit him and, if necessary, slaughter him, to better himself. It is through this brutal oversimplification of success and failure that the values and concerns of the lower classes are sacrificed.

money tree

2010-04-24T22:22:00.001-04:00

So, Thursday night I get a call from an old friend – a friend I'll refer to as RT. I was surprised to find his missed phone call on my cell. Wow, I thought, I haven't heard from RT in a year, maybe two. I call him, and the first 15 minutes of our phone conversation is basically catching up with each other, filling in the missing spaces since we last spoke. Things were good – hearing from an old friend is always good – which is why I had no reason to suspect an ulterior motive to his convo – until he said, "The real reason I called, well, besides to catch up and whatnot, is I wondered if you'd be interested in a business proposition." One thing I need to state: RT is literally the last person I would expect to offer a business proposal; I don't know, I can't really outline the reasons why that's the case… I suppose, up until that point, I'd never considered RT to be business savvy. It simply isn't his style. This point, along with the fact that his unexpected phone call was not without motive, shocked me. He then begins to feed me vague details about the proposition, which, apparently, is some kind of network-marketing scheme. Or something. See, I had difficulty digesting what he was telling me because I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It was, in one word, bizarre. Wait, I recall thinking, this is RT, and he's proposing some sketchy marketing thing? He then invites me to a seminar at his place, which is a considerable distance from me, in which a DVD will be screened along with a PowerPoint presentation. He continues to tell me vague details about the scheme, his spiel peppered with what are clearly the talking points of the operation. And I'm like, What the fuck? Never mind the fact that my broke ass is struggling to go to school and work part time – I certainly don't have anything that resembles "disposable income." Strange, the whole phone call was strange.

As I was typing this post, I recalled RT recommending that I read a book titled Rich Dad, Poor Dad. So, I just Googled the title, and the second most popular search, besides the title itself, is "rich dad poor dad scam." The Web site, richdad.com, an obvious and official extension of the Robert Kiyosaki book, is operated by CASHFlow Technologies, Inc., for Christ's sake. Now I'm just sad; sad because my initial skepticism was probably correct: RT's network-marketing scheme is a scam, which means a good friend is being conned. I know what you might be thinking: RT is an uneducated, gullible sap whose broke ass is looking for a get-rich-quick scheme. Not the case. Dude graduated from a respectable university and recently purchased a house.

I could be wrong, of course. Perhaps his network marketing proposition isn't a scam, but I like to think my street smarts are pretty sharp, especially when it comes to money-making proposals. I'm going to stay away from this "opportunity."

just made my friday

2010-04-23T08:51:00.003-04:00

I just discovered that Phantogram added some dates to their current tour, and the duo will be making a stop in Bloomington at Rachel's Cafe on May 15! Eyelid Movies, the band's debut, is, thus far, the best release of 2010. The album is a wonderful aural concoction of trip-hop, electro, and post-punk. I dare say the album is perfect, but "Mouthful of Diamonds," "When I'm Small," "Bloody Palms," and "Let Me Go" are especially great.

I know where I'll be on May 15 at 8PM. What about you?

sunday night

2010-04-18T22:56:00.002-04:00

I had a mostly pleasant weekend until a couple hours ago. I don't know… something happened. I should have known better; much of today burned with a manic glow, and whenever that is the case, the crash is inevitable.

Panda Bear and I looked at a one-bedroom apartment Friday and submitted the security deposit Saturday. We will probably make things official and sign the lease this Friday. PB will be moving in May 1; I'll be joining her when my current lease expires at the end of June. The new apartment is certainly a positive development, but I do have some anxiety about it. Things are good between me and PB, but living together is certainly a huge step forward, and it moves our relationship into a different phase. I don't know… it's strange, because sometimes I feel as though I'm not living my life, it's as if I'm watching someone else experience these things – my evolving relationship with PB, and the winding path of school, ultimately leading to a new and exciting career. Renewed concerns about sister and mom's recent health problems have added to the surreal haze. I have moments in which I don't recognize family and friends as family and friends – I see them as people who exist in an unknown plane of existence. They sometimes feel like strangers. Which they could have been had things happened differently. Strange that our mothers, fathers, siblings and friends are affiliations only by accident.

nirvana

2010-04-16T09:07:00.004-04:00

Last night in Oakland, Atoms for Peace (Thom Yorke, Flea, Nigel Godrich, Joey Waronker and Mauro Refosco) closed its show with, OMG, "Love Will Tear Us Apart." I will be scouring the Web in the coming days for a better version. In the meantime...

UPDATE: Easily the best recording on YouTube:

Here's another vid, with slightly better audio:

awesome

2010-04-14T21:11:00.003-04:00

Tonight, Bill Maher stopped by Hardball with Chris Mathews. Maher's perspective on the Tea Party-Sarah Palin-Michelle Bachmann clusterfuck was pure gold.

"[Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann] are attractive, especially to the Republican Party, which is not known as the party that does well with the opposite sex. Usually they are doughy white men, and I think they look on Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin as MILFs, and I agree -- they are Morons I’d Like to Forget."

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Also, on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu, and J. Elvis Weinstein discussed the Cinematic Titanic live tour. Cinematic Titanic is, essentially, an updated version of Mystery Science Theater 3000, minus Crow, Tom Servo, and the outer space backstory. My first reaction upon seeing J. Elvis Weinstein in this interview: "OMG, he even looks like Tom Servo!"

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

update

2010-04-13T21:59:00.003-04:00

Over the weekend I visited mom -- in the hospital. She was readmitted Sunday morning after vomiting blood; I saw her for a couple hours that evening. Apparently, one of the six bands placed in her lower esophagus (used to treat her bleeding esophageal varices) loosened due to a small ulcer, or something -- I can't recall what I was told. Anyway, the band ruptured, which led to new bleeding, which brought her to the hospital. The doctor went in, corrected the issue, and she's been in the hospital since, mainly for observational purposes. I talked to her earlier this evening, and she'll be home tomorrow afternoon -- hopefully, to stay. Thankfully, she has met a new, more competent doctor who will treat her from this point forward. Many frustrating questions remain as to how the previous doc missed her liver-esophagus issue; whatever the case, a biopsy will be done in the coming weeks to ascertain the extent of liver damage, including the possibility of cirrhosis.

In a previous post I mentioned a conversation with sister in which she, after claiming she spoke with a nurse treating mom, said mom experienced alcohol withdrawal syndrome during her first couple of days in the hospital. The following night I spoke to her again, and this time, it wasn't alcohol withdrawal syndrome we had to worry about, it was possible brain damage. Yeah, well, after speaking with mom, stepdad and my aunt, it's unknown from where or whom she got this info -- info that frightened every molecule of my existence.

I hope that some day sister can gather herself and occupy a safe, healthy place in this life; in the meantime, she's a question mark -- a sad, lonely question mark.

twenty-five words

2010-04-08T22:36:00.001-04:00

Mom is now resting at home; will visit her sometime this weekend, maybe Monday. I'm relieved and incredibly exhausted. Some quality sleep would be nice.

up

2010-04-07T21:20:00.001-04:00

Just got a phone call from mom. She sounded even better than yesterday. No slurring whatsoever, just a slight unsteadiness in some of her words. She said her memory and ability to concentrate have vastly improved from Monday and Tuesday. She may be discharged from the hospital tomorrow; if not, she'll definitely be home Friday.

Understatement of the day: I'm so relieved.

today

2010-04-06T21:11:00.001-04:00

Anxiety and a thunderous heart beat limited me to only two hours of sleep last night. I'm exhausted, but today provided a glimpse of hope. Earlier I spoke with mom, and this is what we know:

She's been upgraded and is no longer in critical care
Her speech and general demeanor on the phone were much improved from our Monday conversation; I cannot state how relieved I was to hear her recognize my voice
Aside from pain meds, she is also receiving a liver cleansing med; this med, apparently, is being blamed for her confusion and slurred speech, NOT brain damage
The extent of her liver damage is still unknown

I'm cautiously optimistic about her present situation. I have to be. I can't take much more of this, this being mom's health, sister, and my fragile mental state.

On the edge of delirium (and always prepared for the worst),

question marks

2010-04-05T22:58:00.002-04:00

This morning at 10AM I called mom's hospital room, and stepdad answered the phone. He told me she would begin a soft-food diet, and later in the day, she would be moved from critical care to a regular hospital room. He also said that she may be going home tomorrow. I then spoke to mom, and I immediately felt free of guilt for not seeing her – she sounded as if she had just woken from a 100-year sleep and shot a syringe full of methadone. She had difficulty understanding me, and I could barely piece together her slurred words. If I had visited her today, I doubt she would've been coherent enough to acknowledge my presence.

Later, sister calls me to update mom's situation. She obviously hadn't been told that I spoke to mom and stepdad 30 minutes earlier. And this is when things get really fucked up. She claims that the reason mom has been in critical care since Friday morning is because she's been suffering from severe alcohol withdrawal symptoms. She says that mom is delusional, unable to answer a simple math question asked by a doctor: what is 100 – 7? Sister claims mom insisted the answer was 97. Hallucinations have been troubling mom, sister told me. She claimed she saw her attempt to give an invisible hospital form to an invisible nurse. Sister says on Saturday she spoke to a nurse who informed her that that the odd behavior she witnessed was attributable to severe alcohol withdrawal syndrome, and her symptoms should subside in 2-3 days.

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Just got a call from sister. Now, apparently, mom's behavior is not associated with alcohol withdrawal syndrome but brain damage. I don't know what the fuck is going on right now. My conversation with sister was bizarre. She discussed preparing for an intervention for mom. She then proceeded to tell me she, she being sister, has been sober for "nearly a year." I talked to her for nearly 30 minutes, during which she repeated many things. And then her husband, of whom I don't have much of a relationship, got on the phone and told me sister has been clean, he's been watching her closely, making sure she isn't doing drugs.

I'm so lost right now.