I've been thinking in chunks lately--moving ideas towards nebulous, distant conclusions one tiny, discrete bit at a time--so I suppose I might as well write that way too. Some thoughts that I would invite discussion on:

~

o I'm prepared to accept with grace certain awkward encounters in public bathrooms: the unconscious boozer, the gay couple making out, the mounds of anonymous vomit, and so forth. Even so, walking in on a college student eating a gyro just now was new and completely unexpected. How does one react? How should one react?

o Confusing email title: "Informal Hour with the Chair"

o My design-student roommate and I were talking the other day about an article he read about a new shade of black paint had been created. This was news because it took the honor of being the darkest shade of black ever created. We thought about this for a while, then wondered what paint that absorbed all light would look and feel like--blackbody paint. Would it be porous? Smooth? Would steam start billowing out of the bucket as soon as you opened it and exposed it to light? How hot would a blackbody wall be on a hot day?

o Dan Quayle?

~

I guess they're pretty random chunks.

Bands I caught bits of over the weekend:

FRANKENIXON
Damn, they are awesome. Imagine a Charlie Brown special by Steve Albini or something. I don't know.

OLD TIME RELIJUN
The only four good words are "Indie-rock dance orgy."

NATURAL HISTORY
One of those bands that sounds exactly like their recordings. They even played the songs in the same order. I used to think that had to be a bad thing.

THE ANNIVERSARY
I would call them pompous assholes, but the lead singer liked my Hackensaw Boys shirt. Besides, they probably just played all those covers because they respected us and felt like experimenting that night. Right?

Randomness: strange coincidences.

You're right, actually. I am pretty- I'm, I'm pretty troubled and I'm, I'm pretty confused. But I. . .and I'm afraid. Really, really afraid. Really afraid. But I... I . . . I think you're the fucking Antichrist.

That movie was pretty great.
So, the world.

I went to a couple of student engineering club meetings tonight. At the first we divided up and were tasked with a fun science game: configure a sheet of paper such that it can hold as many books as possible. The group with the tallest stack of books wins. There weren't any bookshelves in the room, so we all had to chip in our massive engineering textbooks for the competition. And other books as well. My copy of The World on Fire toppled two great towers of books (including mine). Papa Toasty says ideas are the mightiest weapons. Amy Chua makes battering rams that bring the mightiest walls low.

At a different club meeting I managed to not say anything to a certain person. That was probably best the best course of action, because the person happened to be the sister of one of the club organizers, who will by some cruel twist of fate read the long, embarrassing, unproofed rant I wrote on my crappy internet blog about her sibling's speech and promptly decide to kick me off her project group.

Oh well. Here I go anyway.

Continue reading "Sierra Leone (or, A Bad Idea)"

Oh, right. So the show Thursday was okay. The Plus Ones? Decent. Ozma? Less rocking, probably because they don't want to be forever known as "Weezer Lite." Nada Surf? I only stayed for three songs, but those three were bouncing around in my head all day Friday.

Tuesday is coming. Did you bring your coat?

Yesterday as I was waiting for the bus to come, I looked out at the traffic going by, peeking into all the different vehicles zooming by. After a while, I realized that it seemed like an awful lot of people were driving around in these huge metal contraptions alone; $26,000 of modern technology and gallons of refined petroleum to move one person from place to place. Not trusting my biases, I whipped out my notebook and started counting. Then I made some observations.

1. Of the 135 cars I counted going by, 101 bore no passengers. 25 carried one passenger, and nine carried more.


2. Lots of drivers were talking on cell phones, but only one did so while someone else was in her vehicle.


3. Some of the young men without passengers in their vehicles leaned out of the window to stare at young ladies jogging by. Or walking by. Or standing at a stoplight.


4. That reminded me of a letter someone wrote to the student paper in June, remarking how she had just started jogging outside after a long break, but was extremely disturbed by certain unsavory male behaviors. I guess it's more of a problem than I realized, me being a geekish young male and all.


5. Bethany Ryan: on behalf of all the men of Ames, I humbly apologize. We suck.


6. For the purposes of this survey, dogs counted as people, because people usually treat them as such. Children were often not so fortunate.


7. "American Gothic" is still alive and well in the heartland, as old people in pickup trucks can attest.

I sound gloomy, but really, who am I to talk? Just now, I drove to Friley--alone--to do my laundry and some typing. What can I say? It's a car culture. Besides, my survey had flaws--counting heads in moving vehicles, the dubiousness of how representative the sample was, etc. I wouldn't try to write a op-ed from it, just a reflective weblog post.

Going to see Ozma and Nada Surf tonight, then lots of homework and clean clothes. And now, the money-without-food experiment.

Speaking of the theremin, I should mention my secret source for flat-person goodness: one Drew, Viceroy of Ohio. He draws things, and sings other things, and sells yet other things. Everything he do--DO NOT QUESTION-everything he does is right.

And now, the food-without-money experiment.

I slept sixteen hours last... Thursday night, on into Friday morning. I think my body just stopped working. But I eventually woke up, so I went to Omaha for a few hours. A show:

VICTORY AT SEA
I think that's what they were called. They were a post-rock group who still need to come up with a message. Three drunken assholes walked up halfway through the set and started yelling bigot-Spanish at the guitarist/violinist, because he looked Hispanic and they were drunken assholes. (To wit: the violinist's last name is Hatanaka.) Fortunately, he was a very nice guy who spoke no Spanish at all, so he didn't seem to mind the heckling.

I AM THE WORLD TRADE CENTER
What can I say? Even better than the other two times I saw them. (video?) Amy charged into the middle of the crowd at the start of the song and completely bowled me over, because I am dense. Then she started dancing in the back of the room, and there was much freaking going out in the indie fashion of the day. Dan traded the MIDI-theremin for a MIDI-xylophone gadget on this tour, which disappointed me. More bands need the theremin.

MATES OF STATE
Just fun. There wasn't much in the way of instrument stands, and I noticed that their characteristic electric organ was covered with duct tape. I wonder how many more recording sessions it will survive.
Topics of discussion: Warren Buffett, Kori/the sound guy/somebody's birthday, some drunk girl molesting a guy I rode with, and why the hell Sokol Underground (the venue) closes at 1 am.

For the record, this is the first time I ever went to show on a guest list. Also for the record, the person who scored my spot on the guest list was not himself on the guest list for some reason unknown to us. The guest list is a strange beast, beyond my puny human comprehension.

Final record note: between the show, gas, food and the vinyl copy of Einstein on the Beach I found at some record store Servo knew about, I have exactly fifty cents in my name until Monday. It's the happy kind of broke.

Like Joan, I accidentally slept in today and missed class. Twice. Except I didn't really miss class. I screwed up my courage and went to one late. I'll go to the other one on Thursday. Why this happened puzzles me. We turned the heat on for the first time Sunday night, and since then we've all been sleeping a whole lot more than usual. (This morning at ten o'clock, one of my roommates woke up and decided to skip his nine o'clock class.) Of course, it's 3:30 in the morning right now, and I'm awake reading Microserfs, so maybe the problem is something else.

Microserfs is involved somehow, I'm pretty sure. A "copy" "fell into my lap" this evening thanks to a wonderful fellow who is known simply as "Mister Klaw," and I haven't been able to get away from the comp... book since. At the very least, Mr. Coupland's work is a nice relief from the other book I've been reading.

Now, Ms. Chua's opus is fantastic--get some other, better-read people tell you about it--but it is as grim as it is accurate and thorough. The author has goods on pretty much every nation except Canada, Ireland and Mongolia, and that's only if you don't count the introduction:

.... For over two decades now, the American government, along with American consultants, business interests, and foundations, has been vigorously promoting free market democracy throughout the developing and post-socialist worlds. At times our efforts have bordered on the absurd. There is, for example, the sad tale of a delegation of American free market advisers in Mongolia. Just before they leave the country, the Americans are thrilled when a Mongolian official asks them to send more copies of the voluminous U.S. securities laws, photocopied on one side of the page. Alas, it turned out that the Mongolian was interested in the documents not for their content, but for the blank side of each page, which would help alleviate the government's chronic paper shortage.

That part was kind of fun. Other parts, like the descriptions of the Serbian and Rwandan genocides, were not so fun. Very informative, but not exactly after-dinner reading, you know? I read those most gruesome sections on the way home from school Monday, then spent the evening curled in the fetal position, rocking back and forth in the corner of my room.

Still, I need to know this stuff if I'm ever going to make any sense out of the world. So I keep reading. I guess it's like Dr. McReynolds said once; we are just damned lucky. Most people around the world are not.