I passed my UA! That's pretty amazing to me, not that I'd smoked pot all that recently before the test, but considering I've been living in Oregon for a year and a half and have had no qualms about indulging in its most precious agricultural resource multiple times per day, I seriously though my piss would be dirty until i was 35 even if i stopped now. I'm a little disappointed that it didn't come back as dilute since I'd chugged at least a gallon of water in the parking lot. I'm really glad that it didn't screw me out of a job that I really like, especially since I've already started doing all the work and I doubt the sailing school would be able to find another executive director before the season really starts and I'd hate to screw them over since I sail with most of the board of directors anyway. So sweet, I'm in the clear now, so I guess I should go buy a bag.

I got my first citation for public urination last night. Is it wrong to be really proud? It's almost a miracle that it's taken so long considering how often I relieve myself in downtown Portland. I got busted watering a tree at Pioneer Square. The Portland Patrol guy who wrote the ticket was pretty cool about the whole thing. I'm pretty sure he understood how drunk I was and that I really didn't give a shit about getting a ticket, so I made sure to be nice and not give him any trouble, though now that I think about it, I really should have been more reluctant to give my Social Security Number.

Anyway, after that a Mexican attempted to seduce me and take me to his house in Tigard for a blowjob, then the cab driver insisted he was my homeboy after we talked about living in DC on the way home, and then I spent an hour with the guy at Plaid Pantry on Division drinking the beer that I found in my pocket and fucking with customers. Man, I love that guy.

Unfortunately, the culmination of these antics meant that I didn't open my eyes until 1:30, still haven't gotten out of bed, have a pounding headache and need some food, but still have 20 pages of papers to write, registrations to process, and an offshore delivery to prepare for. I feel like I really just need a break, but I know I'd spend it getting drunk and nullifying all benefits of taking said break.

The Nation blogger Katrina Vanden Heuvel posted a much more eloquent version of my last post that's certainly worth a gander.

In other news, drinking with a USMC sniper on leave from Iraq last night was a really good departure from my absolute reliance on all new sources that cite failure in Iraq, simply because I like to blame it on Bush. It's really important to keep a balanced view so that the things that he deserves to be blamed for (and there's surely no shortage) aren't diminished by frivolous bitching.

I bought a desk today (picture below of it hard at work) at Lounge Lizard. I'm realizing that either I'm not very good at handling high-pressure situations when caught off-guard, or the lady that works there is an absolutely amazing salesperson. That's not to say that I'm unhappy with the desk. I'm quite happy with it, it fits perfectly in my room, has lots of drawers for me to hide the crap that otherwise would be cluttering the top of my dresser or teetering on top speakers/receivers/suitcases/printers and any other somewhat stable horizontal plane in my room, and she delivered it and gave me a ride home within ten minutes of walking in there. Anyway, if anybody is looking for a sales mentor or some really cool art deco furniture head down to Lounge Lizard and I guarantee you won't be disappointed. Oh, and if anyone is interested in a shared ownership deal on a light-up oak bar with a built in turntable, let me know. We can work out some sort of arrangement where we keep it at my house and you keep it stocked. Yeah, that sounds good.Covered in sailing school registrations. Cool square knobs, huh?

Who is really responsible?

The BBC is reporting that the military's investigation of a Marine rampage in Iraq is almost concluded. The real question here is who can be to blame? The Marines involved could face murder charges in addition to the more martial charges of dereliction of duty and dishonorable actions, but why? Obviously, their actions are intolerable, but why is it that the institution that trained them to kill and conditioned their disregard for human life thinks it is justified in punishing the individuals responsible and not punishing the institution itself. The Foucaultian concept of "man as machine" should absolve them of individual responsibility for their actions, because their ethics were intentionally redefined in order allow them to commit such acts. The scapegoating of US soldiers in the interest of diplomacy does not have any utility. These acts will not be prevented by punishing individuals when they are essentially unable to distinguish right from wrong due to the muddling of morality present in war-time circumstances. I don't have an answer for this. I think the soldiers should be charged with murder and punished, but allowing the US government to try them is still an act of injustice. The US government needs to be held responsible for their actions as well. There needs to be a way to distinguish the degrees of accountability at all levels of the heierarchy, and hold each level accountable for its autonomous actions and pass off accountability due to indistinct orders and ethics to the next higher level. If we were to follow this model, the trials for torture at Abu Ghraib, intelligence leaks from Scooter Libby and this situation would all end up indicting the neoliberal regime for encouraging a criminal militant state. Current methods are inherently undemocratic and sorely inadequate.

Just 'cause this song is amazing
Devendra Banhart - At the Hop.mp3

the greats are done,
that's why they're great

When I penned those words, I had no idea how true they would turn out to be. It seems that this generation is one of wannabe archetypes. We don't have any sort of direction or purpose except to define ourselves in some tangible way. We want to have some sort of cohesive movement, but it seems that we are all working our asses off to become caricatures of ourselves: to become the archetype of what we feel we need to be.

Every writer I know (myself included) is just another guy wishing he could be Hunter S. Thompson. That's why all our road trips end up as some hallucinogenic fray as we try to do something notable without knowing how notable is being defined. Now it looks like the only things we can do well are being the most indie, the most media savvy, the most well-travelled, and hope that someday we look back on it and don't think others will notice that we were trying too hard.

I guess that's where the blog comes in. The blogosphere is the only thing we have going for us that nobody else had. Every song we write sounds like a combination of someone else, it's either too emo, too poppy, too bluesy, and then three or four people manage to do something new, but it's not a new style, it's just a new song that creates a new archetype, and nobody is willing to touch it for fear that they will just be posing. It's a hopeless cycle of mutually incompatible goals and abilities such that we will be forgotten as a transitory generation that never managed to nurture our new ideas to maturity and wanted nothing more than to be recognized as something, whatever that thing may be.

This is mostly for my mom, since she claims not to know what I look like anymore now that she only sees me once a year.

I stand corrected, apparently Dagwood is the authority on sandwiches. So much so that he has a sandwich named after him.

Let it be known that I hate turkey sandwiches. Don't be fooled by the fact that they are my main form of sustenance, I really hate them, and if it weren't for the Pabst tall boy that accompanied each meal, I probably wouldn't be able to stomach them. I am, however, becoming a connossieur of cheap turkey slices. Initially, I went for the 89 cent Fred Meyer turkey, which came in a loaf. As I opened it some of its congealed turkey juice dripped on my foot, and if I recall correctly, I threw up a little in my mouth. Then, reluctant to be so high class as to actually go to the deli that is thirty feet from the lunch meat aisle, I went for the Healthy Choice turkey. It was better, but not worth the extra two dollars. Then the other day I saw a variety pack for a buck thirty. I thought "holy shit! Variety! I could use some variety in my turkey sandwiches." Unfortunately, I failed to read past that and realize that Foster Farms defines variety as: "(adj.): deviations from nature in the attempt to make a previously healthy meat less so, yet compensating for the additional 50% of fat and calories by ensuring that only 25% of the meat will actually grace the digestive tract, while the rest is regurgitated, discarded, or snubbed by the cat." I currently have a ziplock full of Turkey Ham, Turkey Salami, Turkey Bologna, and Turkey Pastrami and I need ideas on how to get rid of it since the cat won't touch it. So after that unpleasant learning experience, I think I've found the solution: Dagwood brand turkey. It's got a picture of Dagwood from the Blondie comic strip on it, so it has to be good. I'm not sure what sort of formal authority Dagwood has, but I vaguely recall him spending more than a little time on the couch, and I imagine that was the result of his turkey sandwiches, so thanks, Dagwood, for making this PBR not taste like rancid bologna.

I realized that though the last post is incredibly important to me, I couldn't just leave it hanging on such a downer. That's why, for your pleasure, here is an amazing shot of our parking lot dance party to Cameltoe by Fannypack last weekend at the PSU Gorge Invite regatta in the Columbia River Gorge

As this is the first post to what hopefully won't be another one of my shit blogs that looks like it was done by a middle schooler, there is a lot riding on it. I could just go ahead and scrap all my standards and bitch about whatever happened today (Market St. Pub, you're lucky I'm straying from the ranting approach), I could play up to Portland blog snobbery by reviewing the most obscure track or collection of short stories I can find lying around, or I could post one of the more compelling intro paragraphs that I've written for my paper.

Instead I've decided to simply stick with what's been on my mind a lot the last few days: the tragedy aboard ABN AMRO 2 in the Volvo Ocean Race early Thursday morning, 1300 miles West of Land's End, England. The loss of Hans Horrevoets brought what has always been my daydream crashing back to reality. The grandeur of dying at the hand of an angry sea is dwarved when considering the reality that the world will go on without me, and that may not be for the best.

The child in that picture is Hans Horrevoets's daughter. His wife is pregnant with their second child whom he affectionately called "bump". This photo captures everything that I'm beginning to realize about the death that I thought I wanted.

Goodbye to the man whose absence has shown me the importance of presence.

Hans Horrevoets
1974-2006