Songbook: Volume Eight

I consider Steve Earle to be a kindred spirit of mine. That doesn’t make much sense when you think about it. I’ve never been to prison on drug possession, been married seven times or had a picture of Reba McEntire taped to my toilet seat. Ok, maybe the last one. But it’s not as though I can say that we have lived highly similar lives.

But he’s one of those guys you admire even when you don’t agree with him. He wears his heart and his politics on his sleeve. He brings the punk rock ethos of speaking truth to power and places it into a country music context. That makes his songs all the more powerful. It also helps that the guy is just an amazing songwriter. The man knows how to write a song that is meaningful and that will stay with you for days on end.

Last week I listened to I Feel Alright again as part of the random CD project. I had forgotten just how much I like this song. I wanted to play it over and over again at full volume. The story behind this song is that this is what was truly his return from government imposed rehab, which is a nice way to describe a prison stay. He had been as low and as close to death as you could get and this was his return to the light. He was back but he had kept his snarl.

For some reason I really identified with this song. I did play this song repeatedly, yelling the line “I’ve been to hell and now I’m back again.” Maybe that is a little harsh to describe my life but it really rings true. As anyone who has read this site with any level of a critical eye knows that I just haven’t been happy with my life for a very long time. I’ve had a lot of crappy moments over the past couple of years. Some (maybe most) were my fault but in the end I was just not enjoying myself. That is never a good thing to say about your life.

But the past month or two have been different. I’m actually having fun again. Not that things are easy or all of my anxieties have gone away. I just feel like I can take on all of the challenges and smile through them all. I feel alright. My life isn’t perfect but I can appreciate the mistakes. Steve explains it better than I can.

And I still juts drink decaf...

(Yes, it is very late. A few weeks ago I wrote about losing the plot to my own life. I think I’m now in a whole other section of the library. I’m in that place where the Dewey Decimal System fears to tread.)

I’ve probably spent more time in coffee shops in the past month than I have at any time since I was an undergrad. At least as an undergrad I had a bit of an excuse as I went there to impress Heather, a girl I was sort of dating and every week we’d meet at a coffee shop to talk. It made us seem avant garde and intellectual. Well, it made her seem that way. I just looked like an engineer who was trying like mad to get an art history major to like him.

But now it is pretty common for me to set up shop with my laptop and try to write. I have to use the word try there because some days nothing happens. I don’t have a very constant muse, even for someone who does blog posts every day. At least I can make these up on the fly, my novel needs to have at least a semblance of a plot. Especially given the fact that the verb tense is inconsistent even within the same sentence. Still, for some reason I am now writing in coffee shops.

I think the reason I am doing that is just that it gets me out of the apartment. I have too many distractions here, specifically a couch that is really comfy to lie down upon and sleep through the afternoon. If I am stuck in a coffee house I might as well write because I don’t have anything else to do. I intentionally use a laptop that doesn’t have wireless internet just so I have to work.

Interestingly though no one has ever asked me what I am working on. I just show up, plug in the laptop, put on the headphones and get started. I always figured the entire reason of working in one of these places was to have people ask you why you were working there. Kind of a bummer to be alone there. That and the fact that in my neighborhood I am the only one who looks, uh, professional. I’m pretty sure they all think I’m a narc.

Why do people care?

I’m usually pretty good at comprehending vanity license plates. I’ve made a bit of a career out of it. However, I came across one today that has left me befuddled and I hated being fuddled. It read DEBRED. Now I have two possible thoughts behind what this might mean. The first is that person is looking at evolution from the other way around. There are a number of people that I wish I could debreed and improve the gene pool. So maybe the driver just wants to get rid of people whose existence essentially just wastes everyone else’s oxygen. Or, maybe the driver just really hates carbs and wants to ban bread. I’m really not sure. Any thoughts on this one?

I guess I’ll write about the big news story of the day: the Miley Cyrus picture in Vanity Fair. Apparently our world is so perfect right now that this is the most important topic for people to consider because it is the only thing that has been on the news today. Trust me, I’m unemployed and watch a lot of tv. I have seen more of Miley Cyrus’ back today than I’ve ever really wanted to see.

Let’s start with the picture itself. I’d consider it harmless and vaguely artistic. True, it is a little daring to see a 15 year old in that type of picture but it is stylish enough that without any hoopla it would probably just go unnoticed. It definitely is not like the American Apparel ads that result in my feeling like a dirty old man for just walking by their store. (I give them props for a brilliant ad campaign bringing immense attention to a store that effectively sells plain colored t-shirts. However, I can’t bring myself to shop there because it does make me feel like I might be arrested in a raid.) The reason this hit the news is because Disney is in spin control trying to protect their most valuable brand. When your target audience is a nine year old girl you really can’t afford to anger their mom. Otherwise who is going to drive them to the mall?

You could probably go into the whole issue of the sexualization of women at younger and younger ages. Because that is what most of the uproar is about, the fact that she is being viewed as a sex object. Not that she isn’t wearing short skirts and bouncing up and down on her show. That’s the strange hypocrisy of this whole picture. She has probably shown more skin on the Disney channel or on stage. It’s just presented in a way that is slightly more wholesome. That still doesn’t change the whole jailbait scene that seems to exist in modern culture. It started with Britney Spears and the Olsen twins and has just gotten completely out of control. It’s really a rather scary concept and I’m not sure what it tells about our society.

That’s the real point of this whole issue to me. Why in the world do we care so much about a 15 year old girl? How can she become the focal point of a cultural firestorm? Read any of the gossip pages and I doubt that you’ll read much about anyone older than 22. It’s all about the young ingénues, barely old enough to do anything. Certainly not old enough to be acclaimed actresses or singers. They are just there, pretty bodies with vacant heads. There isn’t any meaning behind it. That’s what bothers me so much about all of this. The celebrity culture isn’t focused on good art or even mediocre art. It just cares about clear skin and good hair. To call it a bubble gum culture doesn’t do service to bubble gum. At least that has momentary flavor and can occasionally serve a useful purpose like fixing a leaky bicycle tire. This is just pure noise. Sound and fury signifying nothing.

1,099,596 Words a Decade

4/27/98
10:09 P.M.
Journal Entry # 1
Yep, it’s that time again. Every year I try to keep a journal. Every year I think that this is going to be the year I write every day and final begin to hone this craft I’ve been working on for years. Maybe this isn’t the most positive ways to start off one of these but hey, that’s just the sort of mood I’m in right now. If anything, maybe I’ll get some use out of this new computer, break in the keyboard a little bit, and figure out if it is possible to type with a steering wheel on your desk.

Ten years ago this experiment started. That’s what I wrote when I first embarked on this serious attempt to be a writer. Maybe it wasn’t the most inspiring opening in history but it is a start. At least I’ve gotten rid of the steering wheel.

It’s tough for me to think about just how long I’ve wanted to be a writer. It really goes back to being a kid playing around with a manual typewriter. I’ve just always been fascinated by telling stories and reading stories and I thought it was the best job ever. Plus, your books got to be placed in libraries for everyone to see and I thought that was all kinds of cool.

So as a kid I loved writing assignments where I would get to be creative and funny. All of those wild daydreams I would have to make my days in the classroom go by faster finally had a place to go. In high school I started writing out these one page comedy skits that I would share with people. It was an extension of the whole Bart Shakespeare character and showed to everyone that I wasn’t just a math nerd. I think the only reason I would want to be a teenager today is that I could blog and have a bigger audience than my little one pagers had. High school would have been much easier if I had a platform where I could present myself by writing instead of by having to actually talk to people.

I’d still try to write in college, mainly short stories that I will no longer let anyone see because of how bad they were. My love for writing was dampened by the fact that a) I spent all my time looking at squiggly circuit diagrams and b) I was coming to the conclusion that I wasn’t good at it. That was tough for me to deal with because I knew I was letting a dream die. The math nerd was going to win out.

But in 1998 I decided to make one last try at writing. I started a writer’s journal or at least that is what I called it. Officially a writer’s journal is supposed to be where you collect all of your story ideas at character sketches and little pieces that you write over time. I never did that. My writer’s journal quickly became my sitting down at the computer and spending fifteen or twenty minutes writing about my life or whatever caught my attention at the time. Technically that would make it a diary but I’m a guy and guys don’t keep diaries. Hence, I always call it my writer’s journal.

Ten years later and I’m still writing in it. Over one million words and counting, a fact I swear I didn’t know until I just did the calculation. It’s morphed into the blog over the past few years resulting in some slight changes. It is less of a diary now and more of a pop culture criticism with personal stories thrown in. I’m still a little saddened by that because one of the best aspects of this project has been the fact that an entire decade of my life has been documented. I’ve been able to send people proof of what I thought about them the first time we met because I had written about it. So much of my past is collected in these files it is just incredible. I really think everyone should try to keep a journal at least once in their lives. You will learn more about yourself by just letting yourself write for no one except yourself. I became who I am through these nightly sessions at the computer.

I still don’t know if I have fulfilled my dream of being a writer. I am much closer than I was ten years ago and my writing has improved so much it is staggering. But I’m just happy that I still enjoy sitting down every night and looking at a blank screen, wondering just where I will go tonight. I get to create every day as part of my hobby. Maybe one day I will turn it into more than a hobby. But until then I’ll take pride in the past decade of work.

Best of 120 Minutes: Not sure why I’m posting this video. I just remember that it is the first time I saw Bjork. Maybe I just feel like giving props to the greatest Icelandic rock band ever. Ok, the only Icelandic rock band ever.



The five random CDs for the week:
1) Jump, Little Children “The Early Years, Volume 1”
2) The Smithereens “11”
3) The Pogues “The Ultimate Collection”
4) Josh Rouse “1972”
5) Damien Rice “Live from Union Chapel”

All these people questioning me...

Time for another set of Infrequently Asked Questions…

Q: So how is the novel going?
A: Uh, it’s a, going. Not as well as I would have hoped but that is due to a variety of factors. I’m still getting used to the fact of just sitting down and writing for a few hours and it has been a long time since I wrote fiction. Or at least more fictional than what I write here on a daily basis. It takes a little bit of time to get into the groove. Add to that the fact that my schedule has been all screwed up the past few weeks and it makes it tough for me to hit the word totals that I was aiming for. It will turn around this week.

Oh, and there is the side bit about the fact that I am really happy right now and it is tough for me to write when I’m happy. I’m a better writer when I am bitter and depressed. But right now I would much rather be a really crappy writer.

Q: Did you actually spend part of this afternoon lying on the couch listening to a poker tournament?
A: Yes. I was really tired. Even Jennifer Tilly playing poker wasn’t enough to make me look at the screen. Though listening to other people play poker is just slightly less boring than watching other people play poker.

Q: Do you ever think about trying out for Jeopardy?
A: I was asked this last night. The thought has crossed my mind. The big thing is that if I did I would have to spend a few months studying for it. I would just spend every waking hour with almanacs memorizing things until they became second nature to me. Right now my trivia knowledge base is rather interesting. I can kill in pop culture, history and sports and I have an impressive amount of knowledge across all other subjects but there are a lot of the basics that I just don’t know. I’m bad at geography and food. I still don’t know my state capitols. I know nothing about animals except which ones are tasty when barbecued. I’d have to fix those gaps before I tried.

It would be a nice source of income, though.

Q: Since you obviously are too tired to write right now can you just close out with a music suggestion?
A: Sure here is my new favorite band, The White Rabbits. This is all kinds of awesome.

Alone in a crowd

Back when I worked in downtown Chicago I would take the train to work every day. It was actually a rather nice way to commute. Drove ten or fifteen minutes to the train station and then had around a thirty minute train ride downtown followed by a ten or fifteen minute walk to my office. It sounds like a horribly long commute and I guess from the time I left my office to the time I actually got home was probably an hour and a half. It just didn’t seem that long at the time because I wasn’t really doing anything. Or at least, nothing of importance.

I was one of those who would sit on the train and read. I can’t even think about how many books I plowed through on all of those trips. I never read anything to difficult on those trips (it just isn’t the right venue for classical literature) but I read constantly. That and listen to music on my discman. This was pre iPod and really pre ubiquitous cel phones. I wasn’t carrying one at the time so it was really just me and my thoughts. It was like having an hour of meditation time in your schedule every day; if a noisy, crowded train car was considered a perfectly valid spot for meditation.

What struck me most is how everyone was a creature of habit in their own world. You rode the train with the same people every day and we each chose our own individual train car to sit in. Leaving work I would always sit near the engine on the top level of the car. This gave me my own seat even if it was less comfortable and noisier up there. After a day in the office I just didn’t want to have to share a seat with a stranger. I still remember the woman who sat on the other side of the car from me. I don’t think we ever spoke a word to each other but we knew each other. We both just sat down in our seats after work and watched what everyone else was doing.

I don’t know if that is strange or not, knowing someone without actually knowing them. It’s probably a sad statement on the world. No matter what anyone states we are all living in our own little worlds and most of the time we don’t have our world intersect with someone else’s. When I was grocery shopping this afternoon (yes, unemployment allows me to do that on a Friday) I don’t know if I really noticed anyone else around me. I’m not talking about starting a conversation I mean really noticing and acknowledging their existence. No one did it to me either. We were all just doing our thing, trying to stay out of each others way.

There is a quote in Waking Life about not wanting to be an ant. That’s what being on the train was like. We were all ants in our little ant world waving our antenna but mainly trying our best not to get stepped on. I hope as I’ve gotten older that I’ve tried to break that habit. I don’t want to be an ant and it really bothers me that I occasionally view others like ants. The world is too interesting a place to let that happen.

Sleep, perchance to dream

Ok, I know that the Wednesday Night Music Club was yesterday but I just have to post this. I’ve been a David Ford fan for a while now. Saw him open for Gomez and even though I knew absolutely nothing about the guy I was blown away by his set including the fact that I think he ended by blowing every speaker and breaking three guitar strings and not caring a bit about it. The guy is a genius at looping. Takes what Howie Day was doing and a) improves on it artistically and b) doesn’t act like a total douche in the process. This is from his latest disc and this video is live and one take and real. Watch it and be amazed.

My extended unemployment has resulted in an unforeseen development though any intelligent person would have foreseen it. My schedule has reverted to the same as it was when I was in school. I originally assumed that I would just be running a modified work schedule. I would sleep in later because I wouldn’t have a commute and didn’t need to be dressed but I’d still be doing whatever needed to be done by nine in the morning. Probably be in bed by midnight. Oh, how wrong I was.

Now some of this is my doing and I wouldn’t change that for the world. If being slightly less productive is the price I have to pay for enjoying myself so be it. I also have succumbed to the fact that I know bartenders and they also work on Monday nights. That is a very nasty habit and while I may not break it I at least need to time it better. But the more interesting one is the fact that since everyone knows I am unemployed they also know that they can call me at any time day or night and assume I will answer. I typically will though just understand that my sleep habits will suffer in the process.

What all of this means is that it has been absolute torture trying to get out of bed in the morning and my phone is conspiring against me. Back when I had a job one of my products was this wonderful service where you would sign up for text messages to be automatically sent to your phone. Things like the weather forecast or your horoscope or pictures of chicks in bikinis (hey, I didn’t say it was a bad job). Well, I haven’t cancelled any of my subscriptions (because I really do like the product) but it does mean that every morning my phone will repeatedly beep at me while all these messages arrive. Despite the fact that I would really, really like to sleep through them and even though my phone is in the next room I still hear them.

Now when I complained about this today someone who is much wiser than I am responded with a) why don’t you just turn your phone off or b) why don’t you just cancel your subscription. To which I responded a) because I’m an idiot and b) because then I wouldn’t have anything to complain about. See, I need things to complain about, the more trivial the better. Partly it is my belief that imperfections make the world a better place. They make things interesting and the fact that my phone beeps at me at seven every morning is both annoying and kind of cool. I take it over living in a hermetically sealed bubble. The other is this strange yin yang notion of my life. I know there has to be something bad going on at all times and if I can make that bad thing the most inconsequential thing possible and focus all of my anger on this completely frivolous, easily solved problem then the rest of my life will be easy to deal with. Yes, it is a completely convoluted view of the world but it works for me.

Basically what I am saying is I am so looking forward to falling asleep in about ten minutes. I’ll try to write something more interesting tomorrow.

Reminder to self: Do not attempt new flight records

When I was out shopping today I was very surprised to find that American Apparel is not staffed by a gaggle of half dressed models. (Is gaggle the right term here? I know it is a skank of horbras (the combination horse and zebra) but gaggle of models sounds right.) I consider this to be blatant false advertising. For a company whose only product is apparently plain colored t-shirts they have certainly created an advertising campaign that grabs your attention. Sadly it is in the “Is that girl eighteen?” sort of way.

We’ve had two “that’s a strange way to die” stories hit the news this week that I’d like to discuss. As always on these matters the idea is more to show the frailty of life than make light of a dire circumstance. It is also to remind everyone to avoid situations in which your death would result in great embarrassment to your mother. You could only hope that in both instances the gentlemen were wearing clean underwear as well.

The first is the story of the bear handler who was killed by his movie star bear. As in the bear was a legitimate star having just shared the screen with Will Ferrell, which is probably enough to cause any creature with marginal sentient thoughts to kill. I mean, the bear probably went “I’m playing second fiddle to Will F’ing Ferrell? Someone is going to pay.” He probably just mistook his trainer for his agent.

What strikes me on this is that whenever I talk about my life and the fact that it is always better than I make it out to be I usually talk about my health, my family, and the fact that the odds of my dying as a result of being mauled by a bear are quite low. I really do consider that to be a plus. True, paving the planet might not be the best decision the human race has ever made but the odds of being smacked across the skull with a paw on the way to the bar are quite low. I don’t understand what would make you want to increase those odds.

The second story is out of Brazil and I am still not sure if I actually believe it. I swear on Mythbusters this was shown to be impossible. The story goes that this weekend a priest in Brazil went to set a world record of longest flight by a person being supported solely by helium party balloons. There was a point to this record attempt or at least I hope there was. Either that or church in Brazil is a hell of a lot more interesting than church in the States. Apparently he attached himself to the balloons, floated out into the ocean and hasn’t been seen since. However, you can find many interesting pictures of party balloons floating in the ocean.

Ok, first of all do you know how many regular helium balloons you would need to support an adult male? They did this on Mythbusters with a kid and it was staggering. You needed a warehouse to get a kid off the ground much less an adult four times the size. True, there was the guy who did it with his lawn chair but those were weather balloons and he still needed a bunch of them. What’s more, is this the best way of fulfilling God’s message to mankind? I’m all for silly things but typically none that would result in your death if you fail. He may have had a point but all anyone is going to wonder is if he was also wearing a clown costume at the time. Just a completely bizarre story.

Wednesday Night Music Club: Per Blog Rule # 358 (which follows Rule # 356 “All Star Wars references must involve at least one lightsaber innuendo” and Rule # 357 “All entries must be written while wearing pants”) I can’t quite explain my story from last night. I can state that I’ve spent the entire day with a smile on my face and if that isn’t reason enough to celebrate I don’t know what is. All I know is that once again listening to Josh Rouse has resulted in my life improving beyond all measure. Maybe it’s just a coincidence but I think I’ll keep him in heavy rotation for the time being.

Wisdom from a boat car

The hermit comment on last night’s post has me thinking. It hits upon, in a very roundabout way, a question that has been bothering me recently. I’ll get to the point eventually; just know that this post might meander a little before I get there.

When I was in college my mom recommended that I read Thomas Merton. She remembered reading his work in college and I reminded her of him. That we tended to view the world in the same way. Now, for those of you who aren’t familiar with Thomas Merton he was a theologian who after growing up to be well educated and a bit of an artist he decided to give it all up to enter a Trappist monastery where he spent all of his days in quiet reflection. In the “never speaking” sense of the word quiet. Yes, my mom thought I would be better suited to live my life as a monk. She still might be right.

The reason for this was in part the fact that I am extremely comfortable being by myself and being alone with my thoughts. I’m not sure why this is the case. I grew up in a big family so it is not as if I spent much time alone as a kid mainly because there was no place to be alone. I always assume it is because I really was much smarter than my classmates so I would go off into my own dreamworld because I related to that better than the people around me. Being content with being alone is a wonderful thing.

However, the fact that being alone doesn’t bother me has resulted in one horrible side effect, which is that I am very unwilling to open myself up to anyone. This is more of what I thought of when I read the comment. There are two ways to be in this world (at least according to my binary mind). You can be open to life and its experiences or you can close yourself off to the world and become a hermit. Being a hermit allows you to control your existence and minimize the lows. Nothing too awful can happen to you because the only person who can hurt you is yourself. On the other hand, you never get those moments of euphoria, that brief glimpse of infinity when your heart just spins out of control. You have to open yourself up for that. True, this makes you vulnerable and people will hurt you in the worst ways imaginable but you will also feel alive. To me that seems to be worth the tradeoff.

Now I’ll sadly admit that I tend to keep myself closed off from the world. Maybe it is a fear of being hurt or discovering that people don’t like who I am or just not having the confidence to stand up and say this is me. I know that if I keep a low profile that no one will bother me and I can lead a calm, if not very exciting existence. And on the surface it is a very successful one. What is most interesting though is right now I am breaking out of my shell and opening up myself once more (in much the same way as I did exactly five years ago) and I have to ask myself why is this the case.

I think it is because the fact that I might be moving gives me the freedom to show myself. Somewhere in the back of my mind I know that if I meet someone here and they don’t like me I can go “Oh well, screw them. It’s not like I’ll ever see them again.” It’s like being on vacation. I’m just here temporarily until I find my next gig so I can be me. Maybe that’s why I’m more open in the blog as well. I’m not me here, I’m EC. I’m an entirely different person and it doesn’t bother me if someone hates EC.

What I’m hoping for is that I can keep this mindset of just being myself and seeing what happens going wherever I end up next in life. That I can stop caring what each individual person might think about me and apologizing for every mistake and perceived fault that I might have. To just go out and live life for once. And do you know the interesting thing? I’m not even sure if I am leaving. There’s nothing that doesn’t say that I can just find peace with myself in this physical spot. It actually might be an option. I would have never thought that months ago but that is what happens when you start being yourself.

There is a quote from the movie Waking Life that I love: “The idea is to remain in a state of constant departure while always arriving.”Maybe that needs to be my motto from here on out. Keep thinking as if I will never see these people again (if it goes wrong) while knowing that a great future awaits (if it goes right). If I could do that on a daily basis I think my life would be much better off.

The words get caught along the way

Well, I was almost, but not entirely, productive today. To be honest I probably would have been better off watching every Star Wars film. True, that would have meant a brain dead day but I would have spent the entire day writing about and hence have a rather witty blog post right about now. Instead, I kind of just bummed around today, wrote about four paragraphs of my novel and subsequently trashed three of them. That is one of the challenges for me as a writer. It’s tough for me to write when my muse isn’t there and today Calliope was not visiting me in any way, shape or form.

I did have a good run on the treadmill though. Yes, even though it was beautiful outside I still work out in a stuffy, ill-equipped apartment gym. My knees just can’t take running on concrete anymore. I’m old and battered, which is a really sad predicament to find oneself in. However, I would like to recommend listening to The New Pornographers “Challengers” for your next workout. It is a great 50 minute disc with just enough energy to get you through til the end. It sounds great on my Zune because the coolness of the band just counteracts the incredible awkwardness of actually owning a Zune.

Getting back to my original thought, while I was sitting in the coffee shop just completely stumped as to where my novel should actually start (in the office or in the bar parking lot) it dawned on me how odd it is for me to be at a loss for words. It’s happened occasionally and usually at the times when I least expect it. It seldom happens when I write at least not in blog form. Most of these posts are really just me sitting down at the laptop and then fifteen or twenty minutes later I have an entry. There is no real planning involved. I might have a vague idea and then six hundred misspelled words later I have a post. Usually the quality of the post is dependent on how tired / drunk / hungover I am at the moment (those are not linear relationships, either.)

In the real world, away from the protection and anonymity of my computer screen, you probably wouldn’t call me a talkative soul (again, discounting the effect of any libations I may have encountered that evening.) That is not to indicate that I have nothing to say. It’s more of an indication that I sometimes feel that by entering a conversation all that will result is the other person annoying me so I am better off remaining quiet. (Yes, I am as someone recently put it an arrogant pratt.) With the right person though I can talk all night, which makes some people wonder where I hide that part of my personality during the day.

The interesting thing is that when things get emotional my ability to speak or even to form coherent thoughts seems to disappear. I’m not someone who is able to recite poetry to a woman. I’ve written poetry and if you let me stand in front of you with the paper trembling in my hand I might even be able to read it to you but made to improvise I would probably stammer, “Uh…uh…you’re purty.” It’s tough to present yourself as this educated, artistic guy when your brain turns you into a nine year old whenever you’re around someone you like. I’ve had relationships crumble around me while my brain searched for the right word, hell any word, to say.

I’m pretty sure what I just described is being human. Unlike the movies we don’t have scriptwriters working in the background carefully crafting our lines. As much as I like to consider myself witty a lot of it does not come off the cuff. A line might appear in my head days before I actually try to use it. So while I would like to be Cary Grant at every moment without a script or a director or a key grip it is rather difficult to pull of the illusion. I just go out there and try the best I can. Hopefully the right words will come across my lips. If not, you can always ask for a reshoot.

The five random CDs for the week (forgot about this last night. Unemployment makes Sundays unrecognizable from other days of the week):
1) Garrison Starr “Fans Greatest Hits”
2) Rilo Kiley “Under the Blacklight”
3) Kasey Chambers “Wayward Angel”
4) Steve Earle “I Feel Alright”
5) White Rabbits “Fort Nightly”

Dude, pass the Funyuns...

(Cough cough. No, I haven’t been celebrating anything today. Why do you ask? But I mean, have you ever just looked at the sky and gone “Wow man, it’s so effing huge! Play that Dead album again!”)

When I got my apartment one of my big selling points was my deck. It seemed so cool that I would have this little patio all my own. It made it seem a little less like a completely cookie cutter existence. I even had a view, how awesome is that? I just imagined myself sitting out there on summer nights, reading away.

Well, things didn’t work out quite as well as planned. My patio overlooks a parking lot and my city view consists of a couple of stoplights and skyline dominated by radio towers. Per Missouri state law it is illegal for me to have a barbecue grill, which was good planning on the legislature’s part because it would prove to be dangerous to my health. I also completely misjudged the Kansas City weather as my dreams of coming home from work on a summer night and reading to relax were dashed by the fact that summer nights here are 95 and humid, which along with the exhaust fumes from the road really ruin the moment. But there are a few weeks in spring (with today being a prime example) where I get to sit outside and just relax in some fresher air than what I have in the apartment. Except that I am no longer alone out there.

A few years ago a couple of pigeons decided to roost on my patio. Now I don’t really have a problem with this even though pigeons are nothing more than flying rats. However, they are living creatures and everything has a right to try to make its way in this world and as long as they don’t bother me I won’t bother them. They’re peaceful enough, don’t make noise and due to their nature are really kindred souls to me. Let me explain.

These pigeons have decided to roost on a support plank for the patio above my apartment that is maybe five inches wide. This is not exactly the right size for a nest so they have created some rather intricate engineering work to just keep this thing stable. In addition, my neighborhood lacks trees so I believe that part of their nest is constructed out of Sonic take out cups. While they had the sense to make sure that they are out of the rain they have never learned to anticipate the wind patterns that come with storms and blow down their nest. For years I have watched these birds build a nest, set up shop, have a windstorm knock everything around, and then rebuild the nest. They continually do the exact same thing with the hope that things will work out better next time.

Let’s be honest, I live my life the exact same way. If something fails I just blame luck and go back and try again. At some point it will have to work out. I joked with someone recently that I consider my luck with relationships to be the same as flipping a coin fifty times in a row and getting tails every single time. Sure, from a probabilistic point of view there is nothing wrong with that result but at some point you have to start questioning the coin. I never question the coin, just assume that I am right and move on. That’s not precisely the best attitude to have in life. Eventually I will have to admit that possibly, as unbelievably unlikely as that may be, that I could theoretically be wrong. Of course I’m never wrong so I’ll continue rebuilding my broken nest with my pigeon friends.

Best of 120 Minutes: In honor of 4/20 I was originally going to post the Spin Doctors “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” as a public service message warning children about what music they will end up liking if they do drugs. However, in their infinite wisdom Sony has decided that embedding Spin Doctors videos is a bad thing so I can’t do that. (Apparently there is a huge piracy ring surrounding fifteen year old Spin Doctors songs. Who knew?) Instead I’ll post a cool Sugar era Bob Mould song. At least this way I raised the level of musical discourse for the day.

Sometimes I'm not me

Ok, I know that I am supposed to write something creative here. I made this big thing about writing every day now and how this is being used as the Messy Room, which would be great if my life was anywhere near normal except that it isn’t. Last night resulted in my falling asleep at what would technically be considered this morning so my brain is not functioning at full capacity at the moment. I’m amazed that I can type to be honest with you.

But since I did promise new material here it goes. Actually, it is very old material but I don’t believe that anyone who reads this knew me in high school. It is how I somehow obtained the nickname of Bart two years ahead of the creation of Bart Simpson.

It was freshman year and I was in my awkward and gawky phase. I had a hell of a time coming out of my shell and figuring out where I fit in the world. I really felt like a kid amidst adults. It wasn’t a question of holding my own academically; it just seemed like everyone else was so much mature and together than I was. So I just kind of kept to myself.

Now one of the first people to really understand me was my English teacher. He saw that I was this witty, sharp guy who just wasn’t letting anyone see it. So he took it upon himself to make sure that the rest of the world was going to understand just what a type a guy I was. It was his goal to break me out of my shell. One of the ways he did this was give me a nickname that not only stuck for the rest of high school but is still mentioned whenever I meet an old classmate.

We were doing the annual freshman ritual of studying Romeo and Juliet. While studying Shakespeare’s history he decided to test how many of the students were sleeping through the lecture by inventing the story of Bart Shakespeare, Bill’s younger brother who wrote all the plays and got all of the credit. Some of the girls (cheerleaders to be exact) really did start wondering who the hell Bart Shakespeare was. Somehow I became Bart Shakespeare, which I never did understand but I appreciated the attention.

Soon not only was he calling me Bart in classes but other students and other teachers started referring to me as Bart. I think some people knew me better as Bart than as Chris. It worked wonders for me because it gave me a persona to play with. I wasn’t comfortable in my own skin so I could use this character of Bart to escape into where I was popular and confident. Bart was the writer and the jokester while Chris was trying to figure out who he was. Sure, I would have been better off having confidence some other way but it really helped me out. I became somebody because of that nickname.

Bart’s been retired for year now. The persona has served its purpose. When someone asked me about him once I said that he had made his way to New Orleans where he writes novels and dates strippers. I think he’d appreciate that fate.

It's not you, it's me...

At happy hour last night my friend Celia asked me for my opinions on how women break up with guys. Since this is a topic that I am very familiar with and as it plays a vital role in my novel I figured that I will use the Messy Room to dig a little deeper into this quandary of human emotions.

Now as I often mention in this space I have been the recipient of an email that stated quite plainly that the sender never wanted to talk to me again. A lot of people would consider this to be a rather harsh and impersonal way to break up with somebody. It is but I will state that it has the benefit of being incredibly concrete. You might replay phone conversations in your mind and go “Oh, she really doesn’t mean that” but with email every time you open it the result doesn’t change. Trust me, I tried. Kept on reopening it and continually saw that she didn’t want to speak to me again along with a full list of bullet points explaining why that was the case and a pie chart emphasizing just what parts of my personality that she found to be so horribly flawed that I wasn’t even worth knowing. Give a guy something in writing and he’ll believe it. The male species does not view the world in shades of gray so while email is impersonal it does get the point across.

(For the record, I should state that two weeks after getting the email (and my responding in such a way that I am too embarrassed to even put it in my novel) she did call me. We’ve been very good friends ever since. This just goes to show a) the world is an irrational place and b) I have such a magnetic personality that no woman could stay away from me for long.)

While I haven’t encountered this, a buddy of mine had the misfortune of dealing with a technological advance and being dumped via a text message. Without a doubt this trumps email in terms of cruelty. I mean if you already have the phone in your hand the least you could do is call. Being broken up with is bad enough; you really don’t want to be told that you are not even worth the use of daytime minutes. But what is worse is that it means that she is going to condense all of her feelings down to 160 characters and maybe put a frowny face emoticon at the end. That is the sharpest cut of all; having everything you feel about a person being summed up in a freaking emoticon.

But even texting is an improvement over what has become the most common and most cruel method that women have used to break up with me: simply not returning my phone calls. You wouldn’t believe how much I hate this. The story goes like this. I meet someone and we start dating and we are a month or two into the relationship. We’re having a ton of fun together, going out, buying her dinner, all of those wonderful early relationship moments. One night when we are both blissfully happy as we kiss goodnight I promise to call her. A day or two later I call and get her voicemail. Leave a message and when I don’t hear back from her for a few days I call her again. When she still doesn’t answer I leave a message and just figure that she is really busy. This continues for several weeks until I finally come to the conclusion of “Hmmm, maybe she doesn’t like me anymore.” Knowing that if I keep up the calls the phrase restraining order will be in my future I make one last call typically ending with, “Call me back if you want otherwise I’ll see you around”, which is a very polite way of me saying “This is your last chance otherwise I’ll see you in hell.”

Now I know why women break up with me this way. I am an incredibly nice guy. That is just my very nature. I don’t provide them with some brilliant reason to just scream at me, toss a drink in my face, yell “You slept with my sister!” and storm out of the bar. Instead they would have to explain to me why it isn’t working out knowing that I will ask what I did wrong when there is nothing that either of us did wrong. Some things are just not meant to be. That is an incredibly difficult conversation to have with someone so it is just easier to not have it and know that eventually the point will be made. What kills me about that is the fact that it makes me a complete non-entity. I get treated as if I don’t even exist and that sucks. I’ll spend a month or two wondering what is going on, realize that I have been dumped without being told, and then spend weeks moping about listening to The Smiths all day. Just acknowledge my existence that is all I ask.

So this leads us to actually having a real conversation to break up with someone. These are also fraught with peril and I have one that I still list amongst the worst moments of my life. Back in college I kind of dated this girl Lori. I say kind of dated because she was a military brat who still officially had a boyfriend in Germany but would spend all of her time with me as I played the role of boyfriend substitute who was waiting for her to finally break up with her boyfriend so we could become an official couple. When she did finally do that she decided to move right pass me and on to a guy who was, for lack of a better term, a complete douche (not that I’m still bitter or anything). As I made one last ditch call to see if I could change her mind she basically thanked me for my time as a boyfriend substitute and said “for the past year I haven’t felt alive but now I do.” Given that for the past year I had been the only one going out with her I had the unnerving feeling that I had just been compared to a chair. Really nice to have around but you have no regrets sending it off to Goodwill once it gets a little scuffed.

(Her roommate Heather told me that she almost strangled Lori that night because of the way she treated me. She couldn’t believe that an amazing guy like me would be turfed like that. I ended up dating Heather for a while. Guess it all worked out in the end.)

This leads us to the final question: How should you break up with me? Talk to me. Look me in the eye and talk to me. Tell me that this isn’t working out; a fact that I already know but haven’t had the courage to believe just yet. Don’t give me a speech about how any woman in the world would want a guy like me because that is obviously not true. If it was you wouldn’t be giving me this speech right now. There is nothing wrong with telling me that I am an amazing, nice guy but that the situation just isn’t right. Not everyone in the world is perfect for each other and while it sucks royally to care about someone and then be told that the wonderful fantasy world that you invented inside your head will never be it is infinitely more palatable than being misled or ignored. A woman who tells me the truth, lets me know that it is over, has my undying respect. I’ll hug her, wish her all the best in the world, and probably give her one last kiss for the road. In a few weeks when emotions have died down I’ll try to be friends once again. I’ll celebrate when she finds the right guy for her even if it isn’t me. You should never fault the happiness of someone you care about.

But treat me like a human being. Acknowledge that I exist and that for one moment you really did, and possibly still do, care about me. Let me know that you hate having this moment as well. Do that and I promise you; you will never have to fear having my write nasty things about you in my blog ever.

Break out the lightsabers

I need to start off tonight by offering a heartfelt congratulations to my blog partner in crime / self-professed stalker who is going to be starting her new job on Monday. On one hand I am incredibly happy for her as I’ve been pulling for her to get this job for a while now. On the other, extremely selfish, hand I am now faced with the realization that I have lost a weekday writing partner as well as a fellow unemployed layabout. Now people are going to be expecting me to get a job. Seriously, what’s up with that?

But I will say that this can only mean one thing. Unless someone can come up with something better this means that Monday will be Star Wars-a-Palooza! With no distractions, or at least no one who will force me to leave my apartment, I will partake of my epic quest to watch all six Star Wars films in one seating. Imagine the spectacle, imagine the drama, imagine just how much junk food I am going to consume over the approximately 14 hours it is going to take for me to do this. It will be a feat for the ages.

(Like I’ve said before, I am under no false impression that whatever I write here is going to improve anyone’s opinion of me. I’m just who I am and I’m happy with that.)

For those who are thinking that I am just a lazy bastard right now, well, you are probably correct but I did start writing my novel today. Got through 1,300 words and two chapters both of which will need to be rewritten. I know that I am supposed to silence my inner editor, which is a challenge given that I’ve been trying to do that oh, I don’t know, my entire life but I still am playing around with verb tense and perspective. It’s first person writing about the past but there are a lot of reflections about the present so I don’t know if I’ll just convert it to present tense and have a prologue and epilogue in the future. These are the things that you think about as a writer. That and wondering if you are impressing anyone at the coffee shop.

Oh, and I guess that I should write my follow up to last night, which was probably not the most exciting post that I had ever written but did have myself simultaneously comparing myself to a phone and to Robert Redford and that has to count for something. Overnight my phone miraculously healed itself. I’m not making this up. When I woke up this morning all the disastrous issues that were plaguing my phone had gone away and it was working just as it was supposed to.

This does raise the question of whether or not my phone has become sentient. There is a strong possibility that my phone read my blog, realized that if it didn’t repair itself that it would be sent off to silicon heaven, and then quickly corrected all of its flaws in order to maintain its status as one of my closest companions. I don’t think I can throw it out now because there is a slight but measurable possibility that it will attempt to kill me on the way to the store. I wouldn’t put it past it. It’s already called up old girlfriends late at night without my knowledge. It even mimicked my voice in a way that made me sound drunk and remorseful. Technology is fascinating.

(And of course there is a silicon heaven. If not, where would all the dead calculators go?)

One last programming note before I call it a night. I am going to continue with the request that was made last week regarding changing from a five day a week writing schedule to a seven day a week schedule. Given that the reason I wasn’t writing every day is no longer valid (that after spending all week sitting in an office staring at a computer screen I couldn’t justify spending the weekend doing the same) I really feel that I should make an effort to turn this into an everyday venture. But Fridays and Saturdays are going to be a little different here. Let’s call it the messy room.

I got this from a Frames concert. The messy room is that place in your school or house where you can go and be completely creative and not have to worry about what happens. It’s a chance to let your creativity have free reign. So that’s what I am going to try to do on Fridays and Saturdays. It is going to consist of a lot more fiction, short essays, philosophical analysis, attempts at humor and maybe even some poetry. I’ll probably tell some life stories as well, though hopefully nothing as bad as last week because writing those tend to make me lie on the couch all day in a self-loathing stupor until I call myself an idiot and shake myself out of it. But the main idea is less “what is going on in my life and the world” and more creative, one of a kind pieces. Maybe it will work and maybe it won’t but it will be different. Let me know what you guys think.

The end of an era?

I am in a very frazzled state right now. Probably even more frazzled than I was this weekend where my posts made people wonder if I should be allowed to operate a laptop much less heavy machinery. But right now I am faced with the very serious possibility that my life is going to have to undergo a tremendous change tomorrow.

I think my cel phone might be broken.

Well, technically it is not broken broken. I can still make calls (assume I can receive them as well) and text messaging works. Those are all good things. But somehow without doing anything my internet access has crashed and I can’t send picture mail. For most people this would not be an issue but as someone who feels the need to constantly update his Facebook status and who uses his phone to capture blog ideas I really need internet access. Hell, what am I going to do when I’m bored in a social situation? Talk to people? That’s crazy. Why wouldn’t you just surf the internet?

Now admittedly there are a lot of people who I used to work with who are cheering the very possibility that I might be getting a new phone. This is because of the fact that even though I worked for a phone company, even though that I managed product lines and had access to free phones, I continually used my two year old phone for one simple reason. Customers keep their phones for two years, don’t see any reason why I should be any different. My job was to think like a customer so I needed a phone that the average customer would have.

Of course, most people would have traded in a phone that had as many scratch marks as mine. It was originally black but now large portions of the phone are gray as the paint has literally been scraped away by my keys. There are gouge marks in the keypads because I text by using my fingernails. It has nearly become a flip phone that can no longer flip. But I am incredibly nervous about trading it in and getting a new model because the darn thing works and works brilliantly. Sure it looks ugly but it is damn effective. My phone is pretty much a metaphor for me.

Ok, I’m not ugly. Let’s go with ruggedly handsome like a later era Robert Redford. Sure, other guys might have a better body or nicer hair but I have that whole “I’ve seen it all and I know how to whisper to horses” aspect about me that women adore, or at least tolerate. Yeah, that works.

(Sorry, it’s been a long night. Even I’m not quite sure where I was going with that last paragraph other than making sure everyone knows that I don’t consider myself to be ugly. More like Zach Braff with glasses.)

So here is the plan for tomorrow. I can either a) call customer service and see if they have a solution or b) walk down to the store and see if they can fix it or get me a new phone. I’ll probably settle on the latter because I really don’t have anything better to do. Yes, I could write but this does take priority over writing. Plus, my writing partner in crime has decided to get a job so that takes some of the fun out of it. Will my phone work again? Am I just going to find myself a victim of a customer service nightmare? Is this sadly going to be the most excitement I have all day? We’ll just have to wait and see.

Wednesday Night Music Club: I think I’ve featured Damien Rice before in this space but I’m in that type of mood. Basically I need an excuse to listen to Lisa Hannigan sing like an angel while looking amazing. If you want to know the type of girl who can win my heart in a second she is the prime example. Plus, Volcano is such an awesome song everyone should listen to it daily. Click play on this one, it’s a good one.

Yes, I hang out at coffee shops now. I'm so arty.

From the Oddities of Modern Life File: A few days ago I saw in a strip mall a store called Simply Amish. What other options for an Amish store would there be? Extravagently Amish? Pimp Your Ride the Amish Way? Also, does the store have electricity? That would really seem to go against the entire theme. At a minimum they should use the old carbon sheets for credit card payments as opposed to an internet connection.

Should I be ashamed at how interested I was in the final episode of The Biggest Loser tonight? Or the fact that I think that I watched every episode this season? Not every moment of every episode, given that it often broke down into watching grown men cry for five minutes at a time followed by an in show ad for Extra Sugar Free Gum (It’s like eating but it’s not!). Hell, even the finale featured a blatant plug for Subway, which was promoted as a healthy eating option for little kids because they need foot long sandwiches at their age.

As much as I was hoping for it, none of the contestants actually gained weight over the four months they were on the show. Not that I was hoping for anyone to fail miserably; I just wanted to see how the producers would try to spin that one. For the most part I was incredibly impressed by what the contestants accomplished. I think the lowest percentage weight loss was 20% and a lot of them look really good. The winners lost about 45% of their starting weight, which is insane and requires them to get to a weight that I still don’t know if it is healthy. They aren’t skinny but I’m of a belief that you need to have some weight on you. Back when I was six one and weighed 150 pounds I was officially within the normal weight range for my height. But trust me, it wasn’t healthy at all.

On my current weight loss goals on Monday I weighed in at 193.5 pounds just 3.5 pounds shy of my overall goal. See, once I get to 190 I can tell my doctors to screw off because I will no longer officially be considered overweight. True, I’ll still have all of my medical issues but at least I will not be deemed a fatty per a chart. This is down from my max of 215 (when I really did feel as if I was fat) so I’m proud of what I’ve done. Been doing runs of three and a half miles on the treadmill recently with minimal issues so I actually feel like I have some stamina once again. Nice thing about having free time; it is much easier to work out now.

(Oh, but I should remind myself to not go out drinking immediately after running three and a half miles. I did that on Friday and let’s just say that the beer hit me much quicker than I expected it to. Not particularly fun though it did get me playing Dance Dance Revolution, which is also something I should not do after running. Given my rhythm it is probably something I should never do in the first place.)

Anyway, time to explain the picture at the top of the page. As my goal of completing a massive jigsaw puzzle has been, uh, sidetracked for the time being I decided to keep my stalker happy by getting focused on the novel. (Given that the novel is #2 on my list of things to do and the puzzle is #6 I should have tackled them it that order to begin with. Learning to juggle still tops the list though.) Since yesterday taught me that working in my home office can be a bit of a challenge I decided to be the bohemian slacker that I am and go to a coffee shop.

So I have moved from a cube to this. Armed with a rather massive cup of coffee I am joined by Julie the Laptop as well as Julie the Zune. Yeah, I still have the whole Julie Delpy obsession going. For those who remember, Julie is my old laptop who spent nearly six years as my daily companion. We’ve been through everything together; moves, promotions, storms, all faced side by side. That is of course until I turfed her last year for a newer model. But like all guys I have come crawling back hoping for forgiveness.

More accurately, Julie is smaller than my current laptop and is a lot easier to carry. Plus six years of daily use means that I am just innately used to the keyboard even if the letters have actually been worn off of the keypad. It also has a great laziness protector as she predates wi-fi so I can’t even get online when I use her. It is all business when I fire her up.

That’s what today was. Four hours of working on the novel at least in terms of setup. I ended up with a two page synopsis of the entire story, an outline with about 60 preliminary chapter ideas with the first seven or eight set in stone ready to get started, and a full cast of characters. Including a brand new character that I only thought up today who might end up stealing the entire novel. She’s already worked her way into the opening chapter and I’ve had that planned for four years. Writing will start tomorrow, let’s set a 45 day goal on this, and I’ll hopefully be done by the end of May. Anyone willing to bet me on my ability to do this (with all proceeds going to autism research) please let me know. Game on.

Because I don't have enough puzzles in my life...

Reason number 287 to love The Big Bang Theory: Sheldon used my favorite phrase “curiouser and curiouser” tonight when he was struck by a social situation that he could not comprehend. I do that all the time. Why yes, I identify with fictional geniuses. Why do you ask?

Let’s see what Kelli has for my horoscope today: “It’s easy to dismiss what you don’t understand. Confusion invites learning. This could even be a growth experience. You needed one anyway.”

So apparently my astrologer wants me to grow up. It’s nice to know that one twelfth of the earth’s population is having the exact same problems that I am.

Anyway, so I promised yesterday that I was going to attack the day today. That I was going to leave no stone unturned, no challenge unmet and that I would be up at 7 in order to do it. Technically it was more like 7:45 so to my faithful commenter, oops, sorry I didn’t get your kids to school on time. Eh, in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t make a difference. I had my share of perfect attendance awards and look where it got me.

But I did get up earlier than I had been and made breakfast and drove to a coffee shop in order to pick up my morning coffee. Now given that it was only four blocks away I could have walked except that a) I’m still lazy and b) it was like 30 degrees out this morning (hear that Al Gore!) and no way I was walking in that weather. I also could have brewed my own coffee as I do have a coffee pot in my apartment. However, in the nearly five years that I have lived here it has been used exactly zero times. Not only am I not entirely sure how it works but I am relatively convinced that using it will result in a disaster of epic proportions. It exists solely as ornamentation with the coffee in my pantry just being a prop to indicate to women that I could conceivably take care of myself. There is a similar theory behind my occasionally buying a plant in order to show that I can take care of another living creature (the fact said plants tend to die notwithstanding.)

So, coffee in hand I sat down at the laptop and promised myself to do a few hours of job search followed by some writing. Logged in, went to job sites and, in a word, “Eep”.

“Eep” being shorthand for “I suddenly have a feeling that I am totally out of my league here.”

Now CareerBuilder does give me some nice suggestions. For instance, they are continually recommending that I apply for a Product Marketing Manager position at Sprint, which at least meets my federally mandated daily irony consumption requirement. But I am completely lost in their system and I just felt completely overwhelmed by the whole process. I didn’t have my head around where to look, what to look for, or what to do. So I did what any rational minded individual would do. I went shopping.

Thus I am now the proud owner of the above pictured 3,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. Now as those who read the 43 Things post know one of my goals is to complete a massive jigsaw puzzle all by myself. Technically it was supposed to be a 5,000 piece puzzle but a) I couldn’t find one anywhere in town and b) those things are apparently really expensive. At least a hobby shop had this 3,000 piece one (on sale so it was obviously an intelligent purchase). I then had to find a board for it. I could give up the use of my dining room table for a month in order to complete it but I occasionally dream of having someone visit my apartment who doesn’t read the blog and I have a feeling that using an entire room of my apartment for a jigsaw puzzle would not quite give off the best impression. (I figure that there is nothing that I can say or do that would ever change the opinion of someone who reads this blog. They’ve pretty much seen me at my best and worst so they can make of it what they will.)

My solution? I picked up one of those boards that kids use for science fair projects. Fits perfectly under the bed in my spare bedroom. The plan is for me to spend some time on this every day as a kind of meditation, mind emptying exercise. At the end of the day I’ll take a picture of my progress and when I complete it I’ll create a slideshow of the progress. I’m pretty sure that if I add in some Benny Hill music I’ll be an internet sensation.

Does this get me any closer to getting a job? Well, no. It doesn’t get me any closer to finishing the novel either. But it did take up a portion of my day. Tomorrow will be a work day. Unless I decide to get my car washed. But Wednesday I’ll certainly do some work…

It is always important to listen to your astrologer...

Since my partner in crime (in the blog world, at least) decided to post about her dream last night I feel that it is my duty to do the same. As always, reading about others’ dreams is an iffy proposition but I really think this is a good story. And it is absolutely true.

I dreamt that I was back at my parents’ house. Apparently they had cleared out the crawlspace and came across some old stuff of mine. I started digging through it and was thrilled to find this old basketball game I had as a kid. (It was kind of like Strat-O-Matic where you got to replay entire seasons with real players by using cards and I kept meticulous stats and ran tournaments and everything). But while digging through the box I came across this remnant of an old cartoon of the day desk calendar. It looked like a Dilbert collection drawn by The Far Side’s Gary Larson. It was showing December 23, and it looked like it was from the early 90’s. Here is what the top cartoon read.

Panel 1: A Dilbertish guy is sitting in this vast contraption with a lot of levers and doohickeys and a big wheel behind him. It is clearly a time machine based on the fact that there is a sign on the front of it that reads “time machine”. Dilbertish guy is just looking straight ahead with no expression on his face.

Panel 2: Just smoke and sparks and bolts of lightning with the word “POOF” in the middle. Obviously the word poof can only indicate time travel.

Panel 3: The exact same image as the first panel. Line for line, same vacant expression as before except that now above his head there is a word bubble that reads simply “I’m lonely.”

Think about it. I couldn’t think of something that amazing while awake. I’m jealous of my own subconscious.

Ok, on to what I wrote yesterday and some further explanations. I knew it would get a reaction and even my personal astrologer chimed in. Here is my horoscope that was texted to me this morning:

“You’re better than they are. You want to escape from mediocrity. Stop listening to echoes of sadder days. Take a fresh, optimistic outlook.”

(When I say she is my personal astrologer I am not kidding. I actually know Kelli. She did my chart as part of a project in my old job. Why I gave up a job where conference calls with astrologers were regular occurrences still confuses me.)

In a way, what amazes me most about what I wrote is how coherent it was. I was going on four hours sleep, maybe, and just got out of bed, walked to my office and sat down at the laptop and wrote it. The only light was from the screen and I had no notes, no outline, just what was running through my head. There are no edits in the piece. That truly was where my head was at yesterday morning.

If you noticed I didn’t post it immediately and might not have at all if someone didn’t request it. I tend not to show so clearly what I mean when I say that I was in a bad headspace or spent some time in the dark corners of my soul. For someone who has spent nearly four years exposing himself (from a writing perspective, get your minds out of the gutter) to anyone in the world who wanted to drop by I hide an awful lot. I don’t want people to know about my insecurities and the thoughts that keep me up at night. I fear that it will change their impression of me. I spend so much time cultivating an image of a guy who is always on the ball, always in control that to show that in a lot of ways I’m not is scary. Though it does show that I am a human being after all.

Do I dwell on stuff like this a lot? Not really. I’ve come to an understanding that yes, people will make fun of me to improve their own self-esteem. I’ll never have a reason why even in business school people would yell at me “Why do you have to be so smart?” as if I was doing something wrong. I never go up to someone and complain “Why are you so social?” or “Why do you always get to talk to the girl? How about letting me have a chance?” I’d be laughed at for that but apparently my main skill is ripe for abuse. But I can deal with it since no matter what anyone says I have heard worse (and most likely from myself, which is a huge issue I’ll address some other time.) But recently I have been getting more and more upset when I see others being picked on. I’ve realized that life is not easy for anyone and I can’t stand people who are intentionally making someone else’s life worse even if it is as a momentary joke. It just seems mean. We’re all struggling out here, why go out of your way to make it tougher for someone?

(Yes, I know that most of what I write is ripping on celebrities. Just remember, they are celebrities and not, you know, people.)

There are a lot of reasons why I was in that mood on Saturday but one of the big ones is this realization of the stressful position I have found myself in. Now I have talked about how much I enjoy having total freedom right now but there is a big counter to it. I do have this realization in the back of my mind that I am about to turn 35 with no wife, no kids, no job, an apartment whose lease is coming due, and no clear plan for the future. That scares the ever living shit out of me. I never planned to be in this position. I always assumed that I would have one of those things on that list by now. I know that I have a family that loves me, friends that support me, people who care about me no matter how stupid I am from time to time and enough skill to accomplish whatever I set my mind to but to be facing such a blank slate is frightening. I think that Saturday morning it hit me and I used that story to best explain that feeling of momentary helplessness. That the universe itself seems to be out to get me.

But the one nice thing about that feeling is that it goes away. It’s not fun when I go into the dark corners of my soul but I always come out stronger for it. View it like weightlifting; you have to hurt the muscle to improve. I’m feeling better about myself now than I did a few days ago. When I go to bed tonight I will know that I have a car full of gas, a fridge full of groceries, all of my clothes washed and put away, a clean apartment, and a day of wonder ahead of me. I’ll wake up at 7 tomorrow, get out of bed, take a shower, put on pants (yes, I will wear pants), make breakfast and take on the day. Because there is nothing I like more than proving to myself that I really am something after all.

Best of 120 Minutes: I’ve been trying to think of a song that I would have blared when I was in these moods in college. This will work. Withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy.



The five random CDs for the week:
1) Jeff Buckley “Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk”
2) Rhett Miller “The Believer”
3) Josh Ritter “The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter”
4) The Shins “Wincing the Night Away”
5) Various Artists “Soundtrack to the movie Garden State”

What causes a thick skin...

[Author's Note: I woke up at 6 this morning with this essay running through my brain. At 6:30 I realized that the only way I was going to sleep was by writing it and getting it off my mind. I wish my mind wouldn't go off into so many dark corners on a Saturday morning but that is just part of who I am. In a better mood now, thanks to the people who know they are responsible for it, but I'm still listening to every Josh Rouse CD I own until I lift the gray from my own eyes. And find the Josh Rouse song I sang to myself last night before I fell asleep that I have an unnerving feeling doesn't actually exist. Here we go.]



(I may have told this story in the past. If I did it was probably for a different purpose. But right now I really need to use it to explain a certain aspect of my personality that not too many people know about.)

I’ve written before about being picked on and beat up as a kid and along with everything else that falls under the 75% rule most people wonder just what part of that is true. For the record, I’ve never been in a fight in my entire life. I’ve been pretty lucky in that regard. I come from a big family so I always had numbers on my side while growing up. I also figured out early on that by being funny you can defuse most situations before someone starts throwing punches at you. Fear of getting beat up helped to form my self-deprecating brand of humor. I realized that if I called myself a geek and a nerd, played up my own awkwardness, that I could avoid confrontation. Who wants to beat up someone who is already beating up themselves? What is there to gain from it?

So while I was never given a black eye by a playground bully I have been picked on for pretty much forever. It goes with the territory. I happen to be an extremely intelligent gawky guy with glasses and slightly inadequate social skills. Those qualities tend to bring insults along with them. I’ve never quite understood why. I could never comprehend why people would fault me for wanting to learn things and viewing the classroom as my playing field. But it is apparently fine to make fun of someone for knowing the presidents over being able to throw a tight spiral. For the most part when I talk about being picked on I’m not referring to that. What I am usually referring to are moments like the following, which still ranks as the worst moment of my life.

I was probably fifteen at the time. Puberty was not kind to me. It still isn’t given the fact that I might still be going through it. Basically all of my gawkiness and awkwardness was emphasized as I tried to figure out how to deal with a six foot one frame and these weird things called emotions. I remember that I was happy when this story started. Don’t know why but I was feeling good about myself. It wasn’t a rare occurrence but it was always nice to leave the house thinking that I was doing things right for a change.

I left the house to go return a movie at the video store. It was just a couple blocks so I walked there in my usual blissful ignorance. Walking down the street I saw these two girls sitting at a bus stop and I gave them no notice. Didn’t know who they were, hadn’t seen them in my entire life. As I approached them they started yelling at me, “Hey faggot. What the fuck are you doing faggot? Where are you going faggot?”

(I remember being taken back by the insult. Last time I checked I wasn’t gay so I was really confused by it. That and the fact that having your manhood questioned at fifteen is not enjoyable in the least.)

Remember that I hadn’t spoken a word to these girls. I was just walking down the street with a few movies in my hand. The only crime that I had committed was my very existence. Yet these girls insulted me as I walked towards them and as I walked past them. I was nearly two blocks away and I could still hear them yelling at me. I got to the video store, returned the movies, looked around for a little bit and hoped that the bus system was working that day. I left and decided to cross the street early in an attempt to avoid confrontation.

Didn’t work. They were still there and still calling me a faggot and wondering why I crossed the street. I walked home silently, just listening to them rip on me in every way imaginable. I didn’t say a word the entire time. I just took the abuse. It was the worst feeling I have had in my entire life. I just wanted to crawl under a rock and die.

This story bothers me to this day. It literally was more than half a lifetime ago and I still hate thinking about it. I was a few blocks from my home, one of those places where you should always feel safe, and I felt like I was going to be attacked for nothing more than just existing. Like my very presence made people just out and out hate me. Hate is really the right word for this. That is what I encountered that day.

As a result of this (and other instances like kids throwing rocks at me when I walked home from school when I was seven) I am really, really sensitive to being picked on. I simply can’t stand it. Seeing it brings up all of these emotions in me and I go to a very bad place mentally. Now that I’m an adult I realized that if people start insulting me I can just get up and leave. I’ve done it on occasion with people thinking I can’t take a joke. They don’t realize that insulting what I’ve accomplished in my life is an unforgivable sin in my eyes. But I also feel the same way when I see other people being made fun of. It kills me to see people I like treated badly. It makes me just want to tell everyone to go to hell if they don’t want to be a compassionate human being for once in their existence.

Of course I don’t actually say that. The politeness gene in me is too strong for that. Instead I just stew there silently, hating myself for not being brave enough to speak what is on my mind. For all of my visions of being the gallant white knight in this world, fighting for honor and integrity and chivalry, I sure do a sucky job of it.

I wish I wasn’t like this. I wish I could take good natured jokes for what they are instead of viewing everything as a personal affront. I wish I could just relax around people, take down the masks and the walls and not worry what people think. To live life without being afraid of getting hurt. It’s caused me to cocoon myself much more than I would like. It’s easier for me to hide behind a façade, to live life from behind a computer screen because that way people can’t get to me as easily. It is not the person that I feel that I am and certainly not the person that I want to be.

So when I say that I was picked on as a kid this is what I am referring to. It’s having people who never accomplished anything close to what you have done hate you for simply existing. And it’s why sometimes it seems like I can’t take a joke. Because for as long as I live I will never let anyone make me feel that way again.

An airport terminal and a blank ticket

About five years ago, the last time when I embarked on a momentary vagabond lifestyle, a friend called me in the middle of the night and we had the following conversation.

Friend: “So how is Kansas City?”
EC (still trying to wake up): “I’m not in Kansas City.”
Friend: “So where are you?”
EC (looking blankly around the room): “Good question. Where the hell am I?”

I really meant it. I had spent the past several weeks bouncing around the country and was never in the same city for more than two days. In my stupor I woke up without being able to name what state I was in and it took a while to realize that I was crashing at my parents’ house for the time being. I was that far out of it. Even though I know where I am physically right now, hanging out in the home office in front of a Snoopy calendar, I’ve been thinking about the question recently in the metaphorical sense. Once again, I find myself with no idea where the hell I am.

For some reason I’ve recently started to refer to myself as being 35 even though I still have five months to go before I hit that milestone. It just sounds better. It shows that I am in my mid-thirties and that a mid-life crisis is perfectly reasonable especially given the way that I live. But while I don’t consider myself to be in a mid-life crisis just yet (haven’t bought the sports car, dyed my hair blonde or paid the 22 year old to be my girlfriend) I am a bit adrift in my life right now. So I’m hoping that writing about it will help.

I’ve been not working for two weeks now, the longest period of time I have had off since finishing grad school and prior to that only a few trips to Europe kept me out of the office for that long. Strangely, and I have to admit frighteningly, over the past two weeks I have done absolutely nothing in an attempt to find a new job. Now I am still being paid so it’s not like I’m running the risk of being homeless soon but I have simply had no desire to send out resumes. My brain just wants to rest and I kind of want to enjoy the moments that I am currently having.

I didn’t really expect this. I always assumed that I would immediately be going through job hunt checklists and filling out spreadsheets worth of data in order to obtain the perfect job. Except that I have realized that I don’t know what the perfect job for me is any more. Though most people didn’t understand it I didn’t attend business school (and I certainly didn’t leave it) with the intention of being the high flying corporate hot shot. There was something about that lifestyle that always left me cold. It’s too political, too smarmy, too unconnected with the actual business to appeal to me. I went to school to change careers and to find some fun new adventures for me. They would pay well and my photographic memory and ability to add quickly would insure my success but I didn’t have many aspirations beyond that.

That leaves me where I am right now, which is wondering what my next goal is. I don’t know if I want to make one last charge up the corporate ladder. If I don’t like 60 hour weeks now I doubt they will become more fulfilling as I get older. My ability to handle idiots has not improved as much as I would have liked. But more than anything I don’t want to work in a job where I feel like I need to take a shower when I leave any more. I want to do something that actually has meaning. Maybe it is working for a clean energy startup or finally breaking down and working for a non-profit like I had always promised. I just want those 8 to 10 hours of my day to have the meaning that they have been missing in recent years. I’m just wondering how to find it.

The other big realization that has been hitting me is that it is rather silly to hope to have your job provide you with all of your fulfillment. It’s important or otherwise I’ve just wasted everyone’s time for a few paragraphs and I apologize for that but it’s not the entire story. Since I’ve had some time away from the pressure of the office and the drab cubicles and what was a rather oppressive atmosphere I keep on finding parts of myself that I actually enjoy again. I’m having a blast getting to sit down and write for a change. I’m amazed that people want to read this much less tell me that I have actually talent. Writing has always been one of my secret passions; one that I kind of doubted most people would ever notice. Now I’m wondering if I can really have a go at this.

Being away from the office has let me be myself for once and I’ve forgotten how nice a feeling that can be. I no longer have to wear a mask in order to protect myself from some far off performance review. I can just be me and since I am floating out here with minimal attachments I have reached that wonderful point of not caring. I can hang out with friends and not worry about what might happen next. Whatever happens will happen and I’ll make the best of it. I’m no longer freaking over every word, every inflection, every action that might change someone’s opinion of me. I’m just stepping out there as myself, warts and all. (Ok, no warts. How about glasses, slight beer belly and all? That’s more accurate.) And you know what? I’m meeting people and having a lot more fun now than I have had in years. Makes me wonder what would have happened if I said screw it years ago.

I still have no idea where I am in life or where I am going. I think every part of my life from job to profession to location to the big overhanging question of my life is up for grabs right now. For the moment I’ve decided to see where the current takes me. I’ve battled it for long enough; I could use a little rest.

What's on My Bookshelf? Besides, uh, you know...

Today has been one of those days that I have feared ever since I left my job. Slept in, putzed around for a bit, watched my tape of Top Chef, grabbed some fast food for lunch, fell asleep on the couch while watching A History of Britain, and just accomplishing nothing all day. If it wasn’t for some text messages I a) would still be on the couch and b) would have had zero fun today. Still, in an effort to try to kick start the rest of my day and stop feeling so lazy I’m going to write early tonight and fulfill the request of listing my ten favorite books of all time.

Again, these are my favorite books and not necessarily the best books I’ve ever read. So I won’t list James Joyce because it did take me ten years to finish Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It’s genius and painful at the same time. Also, I’m not going to try to rank order these because it would be like choosing your favorite Star Wars action figure. How can you choose between the awesomeness of Boba Fett and a Darth Vader complete with lightsaber? Here is the list.

“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams: I was probably nine when I first read this book. I still pick it up regularly. Of everything that I have read this book has had more influence on me in terms of writing style and sense of humor than anything else. So much of the cadence of my writing, the use of footnotes and parentheticals and combining philosophy with humor are all based on the hours I spent with this book and its subsequent sequels. This along with Monty Python is the basis of my sense of humor. The plot is threadbare, the characters don’t have incredible depth, but how can you question a book that features the following exchange…

“It’s at times like this I wish I had listened to what my mother always told me.”
“Why? What did she say?”
“I don’t know! I never listened!”

“The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald: Well, duh. Look at the URL, the name of the blog, the last line of my profile and you can tell that I have a thing for Fitzgerald. Simply put this is the great American novel. Nothing can touch it in terms of symbolism and meaning. The green light on the dock, voices being full of money, the fading eyes of God, catching time in your hands, I could go on forever about the brilliance of this book. One day, when I really become Gatsby, I’ll get to recreate the scene of tossing expensive shirts in the air to show that I have arrived. I’ll probably then be shot by a jealous husband but such is life.

“Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut: One of those books that I enjoy on numerous levels. It turned the entire idea of a novel on its head for me in terms of structure and the mixing of fact and fiction and breaking the fourth wall. A war chronicle that expresses the sheer pointlessness of war without ever turning preachy. Strange in that the book comes out and tells you what it is and how it is going to end and yet you follow Billy Pilgrim on the path hoping for a change. For as much as I love the book I think I failed every essay I wrote about it. As someone who has a hard time keeping verb tense straight normally books about time travel are really difficult to write about.

“A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters” by Julian Barnes: It begins with the story of stowaways on Noah’s Ark. It ends with a vision of heaven. In between it takes side trips into art and history, love and war, and all of the issues that make us human (good and bad both). I’m still not sure what caused me to pick up the book, I had heard about Julian Barnes and there is a photo on the cover that I like, but it has quickly become my favorite book that no one else knows of. Find a copy, you won’t be disappointed.

“The Sandman” by Neil Gaiman: It’s not a comic book! It’s a graphic novel! More accurately, I’m considering the entire series of 75 issues along with the two follow up books and the Death limited editions. For those who don’t spend time in comic book stores, it is the story of Morpheus: Dream of the Endless. Brother of Death and Destiny, Desire and Despair, and Delirium who was born Delight. Dream is literally that, he is the embodiment of dreams. Not a god because he is older than gods. The series itself deals with Dream’s escape from captivity and dealing with the question of how does one change and accept responsibility at the same time. Neil created the greatest mythology I have ever seen in doing this story. Every part makes sense and is unique and fascinating. Even when Shakespeare makes his appearance it makes perfect sense. If you’ve wondered what people mean when they talk about graphic novels this is where you should start.

“Life After God” by Douglas Coupland: This is my guilty pleasure selection. It is not a good book. Critics hate it with its pithy sayings and drawings and just meandering stuff. Heck, I probably enjoyed reading “jPod” and “Microserfs” more and would recommend those over this. But I just love this book. I like the idea that the only things that separate us from animals are smoking, body building and writing. Of a fortune teller with a sign that reads “I’m not going to tell you that you are going to die.” For some reason this book holds a lot of meaning for me. Not sure why but it just does.

“White Apples” by Jonathan Carroll: It is insanely difficult for me to pick a favorite Jonathan Carroll book. If I have a top ten list he has to make the list but I have to struggle over which one to pick. “Bones of the Moon” has a character lost in her own dreams, “Sleeping in Flame” makes you rethink fairy tales and “After Silence” still has the best opening two thirds of a novel that I have ever read. If you are interested in speculative fiction, stories that take place in this world but explain what happens beneath the shadows, this is someone you must read. He is horribly out of print but is so worth the effort to find. Why did I choose “White Apples”? Because a few years back while reading it I dreamt that I was the male lead and someone in my life, who shall remain nameless, was the female lead. In the dream we acted out the first fifty pages of the novel, scene for scene, word for word. Find another book that will make you do that.

“My Legendary Girlfriend” by Mike Gayle: When I get my novel going (and the fact that it isn’t is a reason why I am currently bemoaning my laziness) it will probably resemble Mike Gayle’s work. He writes what can only be described as a male version of Bridget Jones with the added bonus of being British. When I found myself in England last year I was scouring bookstores trying to find his latest work that hasn’t even been published in the states. It’s not high brow literature but he does a great job of explaining what it is like to be a guy in his late twenties / early thirties. This book addresses what it is like to be completely unable to get over an old girlfriend. Years after she had broken up with you, even though she has moved on with her life, she still has power over you. Great book even if my life went to hell after reading it (and in this instance it very well could have been the book’s fault.)

“Assassination Vacation” by Sarah Vowell: I wanted to make sure that I included one non-fiction / memoir type book on here and I like Sarah Vowell’s work more than Chuck Klosterman’s or David Sedaris. She just has a wonderful voice (both as one of The Incredibles and as a writer) that is a pleasure to read. The book is about her traveling to the sites of presidential assassinations and learning the history behind the people and events. It sounds sick and macabre but it makes for a fascinating read. You actually learn something at the end of the day as well, which is rare.

“Much Ado About Nothing” by William Shakespeare: Look, I can’t make a favorite list without including Shakespeare in there somewhere. His work is only pure genius after all. While I can (and one day will) write doctoral essays about the characters in “Hamlet” it is a bit of a downer of a play. Everyone dies including Ophelia (whose tragic flaw was that she loved Hamlet) and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (whose tragic flaw was, well, they were there.) For just pure enjoyment though I will go with Beatrice and Benedict sparring in Much Ado. Those pages and scenes just show how wonderful words can be when they are used properly.

Have a great weekend everyone. Per a request I may be stopping in and making a post or two over the weekend. Hey, I have to keep my fan(s) happy. Especially when I am apparently good at it. Go Irish.

What's on America's Bookshelf? Besides porn, of course...

So the Harris group just ran a poll to determine what America’s favorite book is. Now let’s remember a few things before we dig into the poll here. We are talking favorite as opposed to best. This means that there might be a Schindler’s List effect here in that Schindler’s List might be the best movie you have ever seen I doubt that too many people would consider it their favorite. It’s just not a film that you pop in on a rainy Saturday because you are bored. So a book like Ulysses probably won’t make the cut. Also, this is a survey of Americans and sadly we are not a very high brow nation. The fact that a collection of Jeff Foxworthy redneck jokes did not make the cut is rather surprising. We are a nation that felt that sticking a Garfield doll to our car window was some sort of fashion statement. With this in mind, let’s go through the top ten and see just how bad it is this year.

#10: “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger: A surprisingly good choice to start off the top ten. It’s the classic book of teen rebellion that parents in Johnson County wanted to ban because it involves swearing and prostitutes. It also has poetry written on a baseball glove, which is one of my favorite literary images of all time. I’ve read it and enjoyed it but I don’t know if I would consider it one of my favorites. Maybe by the time that I had read it the book had collapsed under the weight of its own genius. It’s tough to read a book with an open mind when you know going into it that the story inspired someone to murder John Lennon. Still, absolutely no issues with this being on the list.

#9: “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand: Every time they do one of these polls for best books or favorite books Ayn Rand always makes the list. It’s amazing just how long her popularity has last especially given the fact that she is one of the worst authors I have ever read. I’m not questioning her philosophy, which is quite good in parts and definitely something that everyone should examine at a minimum. But my God this woman has less understanding of plot and character than I do. Now I haven’t read this one but I did read “The Fountainhead” and outside of some great discussions around architecture I found it to be one of the most depressing books I have ever read. Every character hated themselves and when one character is introduced halfway through the novel in a suicidal state my reaction as a reader was “Go ahead and kill yourself or at least run off to Florida. Trust me, it is a better fate than being stuck in a novel with all these depressing characters.” Sadly, the guy chose three hundred pages of torments over a vacation.

#8: “Angels and Demons” by Dan Brown: Sigh. Ok, I have read this book. I spend a lot of time in airports so I am required by law to read Dan Brown novels. Let’s be honest, they could just call this book “Scooby Doo Goes to the Vatican” and it would be just as accurate. Yes, it is a great page turner and it hits upon just enough of the mysterious goings on behind closed doors to catch your attention. So did Leonard Nimoy on In Search Of but that doesn’t make it one of the best books ever. It’s a beach read with a love story that seems to have been stapled on in an attempt to make the future movie and easy sell. Oh and apparently to become pope you also have to be trained as a fighter pilot. I missed that one in school.

#7: “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I was completely let down by the lack of hunting scenes in this book. I also am embarrassed to say that until last year I had never read this book. For someone who considers themselves to be as well read as I do that seems like an awfully big gap. I don’t think anyone can question this choice. Maybe its popularity is driven by the fact that it is required reading in many schools (though not mine apparently) but it is simply a twentieth century American classic. A story about race and society and standing up for your beliefs that never turns too preachy. Score one for the American reading public.

#6: “The DaVinci Code” by Dan Brown: Yeah, we might want to take that point away. I’ll admit it. I own this book in hardcover. I picked it up before the craze hit and actually recommended it to people based on how it uses the Mary symbolism and the role of the feminine in the church. But once again it is a Scooby Doo story. A wonderful page turning one that will keep you up late at night to see what happens next but it is not literature. It is not even very good theology. And once again we find a woman falling madly in love for the hero despite the fact that her father had been brutally murdered less than twenty four hours ago. Funny how that always happens. Yes, I can understand how this makes the favorite list but it doesn’t mean that I have to be happy about it.

#5: “The Stand” by Stephen King: Of all the Stephen King books one could list I am happy that this is the one to make the cut. I think from a story and symbolism perspective it is the best he has ever written and it has retained its power over the years. Interestingly though when I reread parts of it a few years back (it’s the type of book you can read in bits and pieces when you are bored) I wasn’t really that impressed by how it was written. Just something about the language and the fact that there seemed to be so much superfluous stuff going on. Maybe it was just because I was reading the expanded version but it does seem to be stuck in that horrible point of having too many brilliant ideas. That said, the section discussing those last few days when society collapses are some of my favorites. Oh and Molly Ringwald was in the mini-series. It’s my favorite book for that alone.

#4: “Harry Potter” by J.K. Rowling: I’m kind of stunned that this only ranks fourth. I would think that with all of the hoopla over the past few years that this would definitely be one of the top two. I’ve written about Harry Potter before so I’ll just try to sum up here. As a children’s story it is a wonderful series and I get to talk with my niece about the books (she’s up to the fourth one and wonders why I continually say that Neville is my favorite character). As literature it leaves something to be desired. Some of the later books could use some editing, some of the earlier books could use some expanding (or at least a rewrite) but at the end of the day she did create a mythology out of whole cloth. I’m not too ashamed that I’ve read these books as an adult. I’m more ashamed about the DaVinci Code.

#3: “The Lord of the Rings” by J.R.R. Tolkien: I am going to state something here that absolutely no one will believe. I have never read these books. I have never seen the films, either. I know I know, I am someone who owns several twenty sided dice. I have answered to the title of Dungeon Master. I once bought a t-shirt that read “I’m not Chaotic Good, I’m Chaotic Great!” But for some reason when I tried to read the Hobbit as a kid it bored me to tears and I put it down after a hundred pages. Same thing happened with The Fellowship of the Ring. I don’t get it. I will now hand in my geek badge as I am apparently not worth my salt in this regard.

#2: “Gone with the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell: I’m pretty sure most people here are referencing the movie and not the book. As opposed to every other one on the list I really doubt that a ton of people have read this one. I’m not sure if I have ever witnessed anyone actually reading it. Maybe I’m just a part of the wrong book clubs or something. Did Oprah feature it? That could explain it. Another case where I haven’t read the book or seen the movie. I think I can live a full life without reading the book. I should see the movie if just to shore up my cinema bona fides. This is the one book on the entire list that actually surprises me. I just don’t see it as being popular.

#1: The Bible by Various Authors: It is the book that has everything. Sex! Violence! Redemption! Discussion of what types of locusts are edible! Long lists of genealogical history that seem to hold no real purpose! This is where the cynical and spiritual side of me really clash. The cynic asks how many people really read the bible and of those who do how many really understand it at a theological or artistic level. On the other hand, I can’t fault anyone who would list this as their favorite book. If it gives them meaning in life, if it helps them get through the day to day struggle that is existence, then who can blame them? So no complaints as long as people read and think. You do have to do both.

Wednesday Night Music Club: I want to be sure to end this on an upbeat note. I was trying to think of what music always makes me smile and The Ditty Bops are at the top of the list. Here they are as they started their cross country musical bicycle tour. Still the coolest thing I’ve ever gotten to see.