don't breathe that shit in.

2008-02-06T04:54:00.000-08:00

2007-06-13T13:16:00.001-07:00

I should be studying, but nevermind that now.

Today is a day of amazing news stories. Check it out.

Woman Jailed for Testicle Attack

Plants 'Recognize' their Siblings

Matter Discovered Traveling at Near Light Speed

And on a sadder note, Mr. Wizard died yesterday.

2007-05-09T11:48:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday, Helvetica!

I always knew I liked Helvetica, and now I know why:

"When people choose Helvetica they want to fit in and look normal. They use Helvetica because they want to be a member of the efficiency club. They want to be a member of modernism. They want to be a member of no personality. It also says bland, unadventurous, unambitious."

Too bad I lost my rich text option and have to post this in Times New Roman.

Fucking serifs.

2007-05-01T11:51:00.001-07:00

So i'm a sociopath, and a liar,
and i forgot that my sister has cancer because i don't give a shit.

I'm a bad leader,
and I alienate.

I react exothermically.
And rapidly oxidize.

And my defense mechanisms only spur the offensive.
I'll have to live with it...
these lies,
that someone told me about myself expecting me to believe.

2007-04-18T13:12:00.000-07:00

I think the Christian Karaoke Kids are out to get me. So we live right across the street from a church. And the house next to us on the North side is occupied by the wayward youth and the youth minister from the church while the house across the street next to the church is occupied by the minister and has a bunch of offices in it. Needless to say, for a couple of heathens like James and I, we're in the lion's den.

A few weeks ago we came home and someone had written in chalk "creation is beautiful" on our sidewalk. It struck me as strangely deliberate since there was no other chalk writing around, but dismissed it.

We came home after racing in the Gorge last weekend to find some sort of white substance on the front steps. I wondered if maybe the cat next door had puked up tons of milk, or if the birds in the trees over the front steps suddenly got a massive simultaneous case of diarrhea.

James went out to clean it and discovered it was wax. Upon looking at it more carefully, it was very deliberately poured as it is spread in alternating strokes descending the steps. I don't know what the hell that means, but i'm starting to get paranoid. I'll post a picture when i get my camera back.

Come to think of it, a few weeks before the chalk thing, we came home from a regatta and the front door was open. Maybe that was related too.

I'm gonna keep my knife on me and be on the lookout for brimstone.

2007-03-15T19:13:00.000-07:00

Despite the fact that writing finals papers is making me go crazy, once I gave up for the afternoon, I got to nerd out in front of our new Fedora Core 6 Media Server:

I watched You Can't Do That on Television and Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Hey, Dude. It was pretty amazing. Now I have to get back to Gilead.

2007-02-28T12:31:00.001-08:00

I don't really feel like writing much these days. It takes most of my energy just to maintain, let alone try to analyze why I feel this way, which has always been my main impetus to write, so here are some videos posted at the end of a run-on sentence.

Oh, and I posted some short videos from last weekend in Friday harbor to my YouTube page and updated my Flickr.

2007-01-25T20:17:00.000-08:00

Why do I love being an English major?
This is why, I can write crap like this in the middle of the night, turn it in, and get away with it.

Phenomenological reading of Ezra Pound's 'In a Station of the Metro'

Ezra Pound's 'In a Station of the Metro' offers a precise use of language to create meaning out of a compact but vague metaphor. The full text reads,

“The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.”

The poem contains more gaps than not gaps, and as such, it derives its content from the reader's interaction with those gaps.

If one begins reading with only the first line “The apparition of these faces in the crowd;” a very funny thing begins to happen. The first two words, “The apparition,” create a feeling of fuzzy perception, perhaps one of disbelief of ones own senses. The concept of an apparition is akin to the seeing of a ghost, evoking anxiety as a response to the experience of this apparition. Also, the use of apparition, barring its supernatural implications, functions simply to represent the experience of having this scene appear from nothing, or make itself apparent, as well as to create a vacancy for the reader to fill. As witnesses to an apparition, we are not part of the scene, we are physically and emotionally removed from it. The use of apparition in all of its forms creates for the reader an experience of being in the metro station, stifled with heat and steam and smoke, such that the faces in the crowd are hard to discern due to humidity gradually dispersing in the air, and the fogging of glasses.

If we add in the rest of the line in order to have “The apparition of these faces in the crowd;” an interesting thing occurs. Instead of experiencing a single apparition, we are experiencing “these faces.” The singular apparition becomes one that embodies many discrete entities within it. It is a singular experience of a plural. This inconsistency increases the reader's anxiety. It is expected that the line would read, “the apparition of the faces in the crowd,” but now, with the newfound individuality within the apparition, not only is the reader removed from the scene, but removed from his or her common understanding of what the scene would be. This use of language evokes the anxiety of the apparition itself by bringing the reader to question his or her perception.

What follows this is a semicolon. This semicolon creates the metaphor. It states that the thought that follows is related or is a reiteration of the previous. By using the semicolon, Pound avoids cluttering his poem with the word “is” or “are”, depending on whether he feels he is referring to the singular apparition or the plural faces, and allows the conflict to remain unresolved until the following line.

“Petals on a wet, black bough.” Initially, the word “Petals” can strike one as odd. “Petals” implies flowers, which implies individuality and natural beauty, an unfitting image given the marginalization of the individuals as just “faces in the crowd.” However, these petals are not flowers, they are simply petals. Petals only exist as petals when removed from the whole of the flower, having fallen to the floor or having been picked off. “[T]hese faces” are fallen from flowers and stick to the “wet, black bough.” Now again, it is one thing for a bough to be wet, but it only becomes black when the moisture has exhausted its sap and it lies dead on the forest floor, soaking through the wood. Taken as a complete image, the stifling atmosphere of the metro is described, which strengthens the image of the mist of the apparition. The people are soaked, and not getting any dryer in the humidity of the station. The image also reconciles the conflict between the singular and the plural. In the second line, the places are reversed with the singular preceding the plural, but the anxiety is eased when “these faces” are gummed together on a single “black bough” and can be unified by something more tangible than their presence in a single scene. They are all fallen to the underground, stuck together on the grimy tile of the station. Dead bits of nature stuck to more dead bits of nature.

2006-12-25T18:41:00.000-08:00

Fuckin' James Brown died.

I used to wake up every morning at military school to some kid singing 'Sex Machine' at the top of his lungs at 6:30.

As soon as i get home and have a second alone, I'm going to blast 'Bring it On' and slide around in my socks saying 'HUH!' a lot.

But still, I can't believe he made it to 73.

2006-12-24T16:24:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting in the living room with my family, listening to them talk about coupons and Rockport shoes. I'm running out of sites to visit on the internet so i can keep ignoring them. Nobody is online to talk to me, and I've already updated myspace and flickr twice today. DC is the same as always. I've been trying to spice it up. I got a call when i was outside the DMV the other day that Luke, the Running Fool, needed a ride from Richmond. I was drunk when i wrote the email offering him a ride, and didn't understand what the random person on the phone was asking me to do when she said, "Can you pick up luke in Richmond?" I didn't even bother processing the information and just said, "sure, i can do that." The next day i found myself rolling off of Michael's futon for the second night in my two nights home with a vicious hangover. We all went to Whole Foods before i ventured onto the metro and back to my car in springfield and then straight to richmond to pick up some internet hitchhiker i'd never met. It was a pretty good experience. Otherwise, i haven't done anything notable. I've been taking lots of picture lately, and I'll probably take a lot more on the trip to Florida for new years.

2006-12-04T09:22:00.000-08:00

I've been up all night. I finished reading Moby Dick, then I wrote a paper about Moby Dick, then I wrote a paper about travel writing being bad for humanity because it's fiction presented as nonfiction which then causes people to go expecting the fiction and autoethnography in the contact zone then dictates that the fiction will become reality. Then I compiled portfolios. I'm working on bullshitting 40 journal entries I was supposed to have been doing all term. I'm on 26. I gave up on coffee and rockstar around 5AM when I switched back to yesterday's box of wine. It makes me feel more normal right now. I have to give a short presentation between 12:30 and 3:00 about the Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. I hope I'm sober and awake. Well, awake at least.

2006-11-30T15:58:00.001-08:00

I keep waking up in the middle of the night saying “fuck, goddamnit.” my body is slippery with sweat and the blankets are cold and soggy. I thrash in the sheets and kick as each wrinkle in the blanket touches a nerve and joins the conspiracy. I'm usually still half-dreaming. The dreams mingle with the memory and my hope comes crashing down. Last night the dream was about Miller. For some reason, at the end, I was fighting someone and we were beating each other with books, only my blows would pass right through him and his would drop me to the ground. As I regained lucidity, my mind recalled the institutional experience that had really happened. The hopelessness grew. I started to wonder how it was that that boy in the khaki pants turned into this bearded drunk.

I'm trying to figure out where I stand. My sister, the person who formed me more than any, might be dying from cancer. Her lymph nodes are clean, which is a relief, but from reading Monkey Dancing I now know that it can easily metastasize in the bones. I try not to think about such things, but they attack me in the darkest hours and I wake trembling.
My resentments are overwhelming. My past does not seem to be mine and my present, of course, is shaped by my disengaged past. These thoughts, however, are irrelevant, since kimya dawson told me to have a 40 for breakfast and wallow, and that's what i did.

Kimya Dawson - The beer. mp3

2006-11-11T17:52:00.000-08:00

1week of art works

2006-11-01T20:00:00.000-08:00

For some reason, the Iraqi Prime Minister's order for the US to abandon their mandatory checkpoints in Baghdad isn't making headlines on BBC or The Washington Post. However, I found it buried on the NY Times website, and there are two pictures on Yahoo! News (1, 2). The lack of coverage is ridiculous! This could be huge! It might let Iraqis see an empowered government that can be relied upon to end the occupation on its own terms. Though maybe this is just Maliki appeasing the Shi'ites, which would mean that the sectarianism and Sunni resentment of the government is really really bad and a solution will be longer in coming. I hope that there are still enough moderate Iraqi's left to figure it all out once the US gets out of the way (hopefully that will be soon. REMEMBER TO VOTE!). Looking at how the residents of Sadr City are reacting to the first day of being able to travel without mandatory searches, I hope the result is the former:

MOVED!

2006-10-22T11:34:00.000-07:00

I can't believe I managed it, but I got almost completely moved in to the new house in NE yesterday. I even got 2 free couches. I'd gotten my stuff into the house and set up my turntables. I was sitting down to call it a night and started surfing craigslist for furniture. I came across an ad for free couches right down the street from me so I called the number. As I pressed send the name Tom popped up on my phone. The couches were at HPR's house! I asked Tom to hold the couches for me 'til tomorrow and then he said, "well, we've got a crew over here just drinking, we could probably talk some people into carrying them over. I walked the 3 blocks to their house and everyone was taking shots of tequila. There was a punk passed out on one of the couches and a dog sleeping on the other. There were a few jokes about how the punk and the dog came with the couches. I wouldn't have minded, the house was kinda lonely last night. Anyway, 10 minutes after I called, we were carrying couches up burnside. Now the place feels like a home, and I got HPR's old couches which aren't nearly as gross as I thought they'd be. The best part about this house: NO MORE HIPPIES!

2006-10-12T13:49:00.000-07:00

Finding housing in Portland is a nightmare. James and I have been mounting the most exhaustive apartment search known to man, going to neighborhoods and just walking down every street looking for apartment buildings and "for rent" signs. We've gotten really good at distinguishing between apartments, condos, and retirement/nursing homes from a distance. We're also getting pretty good at guessing the price. What we're not getting very good at is actually finding a place to live. Places that show up on craigslist are already taken by the time we see the post. Places that we're cold-calling aren't calling us back.

We'd been noticing around northwest that the majority of the buildings were owned by the same company with the phone number 242-4242. I'm pretty tired of the "two-fo" people as I now call them, because I know that they have no vacancies, but their buildings look so enticing until I get close enough to read the phone number and realize it's a waste of time. Today I hit a new low. I was calling a building on NW 18th and when I asked about a 2 bedroom apartment the guy just started laughing. After about 10 seconds of laughing he says,
"Do you get the joke?"
I said, "I think I'm beginning to, yes."
"There aren't many two bedrooms in northwest, but you might want to try this number. 503-242-4242."

Then I come home to look at craigslist again and when I take my computer out of my bag it's making horrible rattling sounds like the components have broken loose inside. I remembered last night running from Goose Hollow to Katie's apartment and realize that my computer is fucked. Just what I need. 300 more pages of The Pioneers to read, a final exam to write, a house to find, and my computer begins its death rattle.

So I ripped the motherfucker apart and fixed the damn thing.

Nothing feels quite as good as voiding your warranty.

2006-09-28T19:49:00.000-07:00

I took this picture today and it reminded me that despite how much management sucks, being a sailing instructor is still the best job in the entire world.
I also took this cool one of the Sellwood Bridge and Portland when I was taking the whaler a couple miles south on the Willamette to take pictures of the boats for sale from Reed:

2006-09-22T12:10:00.000-07:00

School starts Monday.

It's time to get down.

Party for Jeff at my house, tell lots of people, we kinda slacked on promoting it.

2006-09-12T03:06:00.000-07:00

sean took some sweet pictures in seattle last weekend. I think we finished top 10 in the northwest, but the official results haven't been posted so i'm not sure where we stand precisely. I think we should end up about 8th out of the 30 that competed.

2006-09-04T03:21:00.000-07:00

steve irw in's dead.

2006-08-26T17:10:00.000-07:00

OK Go - Here It Goes Again

I agree with Urban Honking. This is the best music video ever.

2006-08-26T05:10:00.000-07:00

the show with zefrank

2006-08-24T21:32:00.000-07:00

Check this entry I just found on wikipedia. I've been seeing flags at half staff today and I was wondering why. None of the news noted any unexpected tragedies in the world. I'm guessing it was to mark the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Anyway, i found the flag flying rules:

"United States

In the United States, the President or Governor of a state or territory can issue an Executive Order for the flag of the United States to be flown at half-staff upon the death of principal figures of the United States government, and others, as a mark of respect to their memory. When such an order is issued, government buildings, offices, and military bases are to fly their flags at half-staff. Since it is a generally accepted practice to fly the US flag higher than all other flags private organizations and individuals usually also fly their flags at half-staff at these times, but are not required by law to do so. Governors, by law and custom of their particular state, are able to direct by Executive Order their respective state flags be flown at half-staff.

Upon the order of the President, the flag is to be flown at half-staff in following circumstances:

For thirty days after the death of a current or former President.
For ten days after the death of a current or former Vice-President, Chief Justice, or Speaker of the House of Representatives.
From the day of death until interment of an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, a Secretary of an executive or military department, a former Vice President, or the Governor of a State, territory, or possession
On the day of death and the following day for a Member of Congress
On Memorial Day until noon
Annually by presidential proclamation, (as requested by U.S. Congress) on September 11 (Patriot Day), and December 7, National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, (see US Code: Title 36, Chapter 1)
Upon presidential proclamation, which have included: the remembrance of the 9/11 attacks, the death of Pope John Paul II, the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003, the victims of Hurricane Katrina, and the Indian Ocean tsunami, death of Coretta Scott King

US federal law requires the flag be flown at half-mast on Peace Officers Memorial Day (May 15), unless that day is also Armed Forces Day. Yearly presidential proclamations also mandate that the flag be flown at half-staff on Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day (December 7) and National Korean War Veterans Armistice Day (July 27)."

(my emphasis).

These rules have been nearly unchanged for over 200 years.
Just saying...

2006-08-23T15:58:00.000-07:00

This space has gotten a bit boring, and I'm sorry. So much has been going on that I won't even try to recount it. Now I'm plunging head-on into house hunting since sailing school is coming to a close. This means lots of time surfing craigslist and making phone calls. It also means I get to give up in frustration from time to time and find strange news articles like this one and watch funny videos like this one. Perhaps I'll start using my camera again soon so you can have fun stuff to look at.

2006-08-09T08:38:00.000-07:00

Four sacked over 'sex romp' claim
some people have way too much fun at work.

2006-08-08T03:19:00.000-07:00

Sean got a couple of shots of Lola. The consistently disappointing thing is that while we're on the water we get to watch him take pictures, and the 20% of them that make it to being uploaded rarely include the ones we thought were the most badass. We had one windward mark rounding on Sunday where we were hauling ass and leading the fleet by less than a foot. Sean was sitting about ten feet away and snapped an awesome shot of me with my body completely off the side of the boat... hanging by my armpit. I was really stoked to get a copy of that one, but i guess it won't be so. Anyway, we finished 7th out of 9 which is pretty horrible, though not so bad considering we had our rig tuned for 17-20kts for the first two races when it only ended up blowing 5-7kts and ended up DFL for both of them. We still consistently beat the couple of Portland boats with whom we're generally in contention and if it hadn't been for those extra points we accumulated by completely screwing the first two races we probably would have gotten at least 4th or 5th. Placement hardly matters to me, though. I learned a lot this weekend and i think i'm starting to really understand tactics. This is a good thing since i've been claiming to be a tactics instructor for the last 4 years and have yet to prove that my conception of them actually works on a racecourse. As for the pictures, we (Stephen, Ken, James, Kevin and I)sail the bright red boat called "Run LOLA, Run." In the top picture, that's me with my leg hanging off the side, and in the bottom one, i assume i was buried and pawing desperately at the spinnaker as it was snapped. I thought that mark rounding was sketchy, but James swears it was textbook... I was just wrapped in the sail and couldnt see anything or move during the procedure so i guess i assumed the worst.

2006-08-05T22:36:00.000-07:00

1st day of the CGOD regatta is done. We started it with 2 finishes in dead fucking last and i though Ken was going to explode. We didn't end up much better by the end but at least we were beating most of the portland boats, so we weren't sucking too terribly bad. Hopefully Sean got some sweet pictures that I can post later.

I'm really just checking in to share this:

Kittenwar!

my new subaru theory

2006-07-28T00:12:00.000-07:00

i traded cars with jeff today. i got to drive his early 90's subary legacy wagon. i needed to haul out a powerboat and my car doesn't have the balls to pull it up the ramp. i nearly burned his clutch out, but i did it. anyway, i noticed how the shifter always just floats back to the middle and there's no way to tell if it's in gear by looking at it. When you shift, it feels like you're really just poking about randomly, but nevertheless, it's in gear and it's totally cool. I didn't miss a shift, but i felt like i was just jiggling the stick. considering that all the people i know that have driven with subaru stick shifts for a while, have attitudes and personalities akin to that stick shift. They just poke around randomly completely confident that they're in the right gear, and rarely have reason to believe otherwise. It's strange what sorts of thoughts you have after sitting in traffic for hours.

Fuck Dickler

2006-07-26T11:16:00.000-07:00

2006-07-26T09:44:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it haunts me. It certainly wasn't my only institutional experience, nor was it, by most tangible measures, the worst.

I dreamed about my roommates again last night. I dreamed about the three other people who stood beside me. We dug our ditches together, we washed dishes together, we sat up late at night having silent parties. Putting on headphones and dancing silently in the dark. We would sneak behind the science building for a cigarette in the middle of the night. We would turn all the shower heads on hot and sit in the middle in lawn chairs, reading aloud to each other and revelling in a dip of Kodiak. We always had our eyes and ears focused on a glimpse of the Sergeant Major. We relayed our intelligence flawlessly. We always knew where he was, and he appreciated that. One by one we were eliminated from the student population. I was the first to go, and then the third. Seneca was the first to leave without an ambulance, followed by my break-in to the office to retrieve my car keys and speed away forever. Richard ended up back in Bermuda after a run-in with the girls' dorm RA. Nick ended up in the Army. They were my only allies on antagonist hill. We watched each other lose our last grips of sanity. We watched each other's self-will engorge and lash out. We resisted. And once we finally escaped, never fucking looked back.

Now I get to choose when to take a shit. I take my cigarette breaks at my leisure. I don't tuck in my shirt either, but I'm always looking over my shoulder for a Sergeant Major.

2006-07-19T16:30:00.000-07:00

I have a splinter in my foot. It's a tiny pissant splinter, but it hurts like a bastard.

(That seriously just took me half an hour to figure out how to make circles, lines, and resize text in GIMP. You'd think open source would make software more intuitive.)

At first I thought it was glass because it was bloody and I couldn't see it. Then I soaked it and Katie said she didn't think anything was in there. So the next morning I wake up and I''m getting shooting pains from my foot when I stand up. I go to the bathroom and see that it's a tiny splinter. I went after it with some tweezers, but the damn thing broke when I finally got ahold of it and I only managed to get the half that was closest to the surface. It doesn't hurt every time my foot hits the ground now, but when it hits just right... it hurts... and it hurts deep. (p. s. michael, thoses ellipses are for you.) I can't get to the rest of it and Katie couldn't find a sewing needle to dig it out with. Maybe tonight we'll get drunk and find a needle, that way it won't hurt so badly.

The beerfest was surprisingly fun. I was pouring the Saint Louis Lambic Frambozen. It's a weird belgian raspberry beer that is way too sweet and not alcoholic enough. A group of middle aged southern women showed up around 12:30 and started pounding them. I kept them until 6:45 at which point they were hammered and tipping me with beer tickets. It turnedserving into a pretty good party despite the 4oz glasses of beer.

2006-07-14T15:09:00.000-07:00

Fiona Apple is the hardcore Avril Lavigne. That was my major revelation last night. Pretty sad.

Well, maybe I'm just pretty sad. I've been sleeping in 'til 3 in the afternoon, not eating 'til 10, and trying to ignore the 50 or so voicemails that I haven't returned as well as the asshole who emailed the entire board that I had put his son in the wrong class and he was going to take legal action to shut down the sailing club, then is all nice on the phone and now he's offering suggestions to the board about how better to manage the club. I hope they realize he's an asshole, too.

I can't believe how much I hate myself right now. Last night when I was walking home I really wanted to jump off the Hawthorne Bridge where it goes over the industrial district. I didn't want to kill myself or anything, and I doubt that fall would kill me unless I landed on my head. It just seemed like it would be great to break both of my legs and feel some tangible pain that I deserved so I can get out of this emotional limbo. Fuck posting to blogs. I can't believe I still get myself in trouble with this shit.

2006-07-11T08:41:00.000-07:00

We went sailing on the fastest boat I've ever sailed. The 29er is without a doubt my new favorite toy, or rather, my new favorite one of James's toys.
We took it up to Yale lake in Cougar, WA and got the shit beat out of us for a couple of days on the water, with me 6 feet out on the trapeze wire and James on the helm (not the smartest combination, but that's the way we want it to be so we may as well train that way). After two full nights of rest my body has finally stopped aching which is good because we're about to load up the boat and head up to the Gorge to sail it with Jeff today and hopefully get some pointers from the world class sailors that should be training out there in preparation for the championship this weekend.

Otherwise, it's same ol' same ol'. The sailing school is in a shambles and everyone is in denial which is fine with me because once they acknowledge what a mess it is they'll be asking me for answers. I still haven't registered for classes or decided what I'm going to take or if I'm even going to be able to go school full time and sail competitively now that I have to teach sailing classes for Reed 3 days a week, but that's cool, I get to put on my resume that I was an adjunct professor of sailing at Reed College. That's pretty much the most haughty job title I could possibly get for showing a bunch of burnouts how to rig an outdated boat and how to drift around the Willamette while reading magazines on a powerboat.
Hell yeah.

2006-07-02T21:34:00.000-07:00

i'm still cringing.

Kentucky Mocha

2006-06-21T11:44:00.000-07:00

Better than Irish Coffee! I have now developed the greatest morning pick-me-up in the world. (1)Go to the coffee shop (for those of us not fortunate enough to have our own espresso machines), order a small mocha in a medium cup, (3) walk one block home, (4) add Wild Turkey 101, (5) enjoy.

It's really that easy. James was making them on his new espresso machine and said they're the best if you mix equal parts steamed milk and bourbon. I also think it's a good idea at the coffee shop to ask for an extra shot of chocolate (unless you're at starbucks because that chocolate is overpowering, but then again, I doubt they'd accomodate the cups anyway).

School's out, time to party... or work harder than ever

2006-06-16T17:59:00.000-07:00

But mostly party.

We'll be throwing one at my house, which apparently is currently dubbed Casa de Todji. It will be strange. It will be full of crazy artists, hippies, and wannabe bohemians who will talk about the healing powers of crystals and how to make candy out of birdseed. There will be lots of namedropping and ego stroking and some music. We are using the helium tank and the bullhorn from the sailing school to read loud, shrill poetry and to really get that bitch-rock sound. I encourage anyone who comes to get sloppy drunk and start ideological debates with the hippies. There's nothing like a counter-hegemonic lush to get the party going. Anyway, I'll be pre-gaming and the party starts at 10.
SE 39th Ave between Harrison and Stephens, 3 blocks south of Hawthorne. There's a hula hoop peace sign strung with christmas lights on the front porch. Also, you can check Todd's Tribe.net event post.

Last time it got pretty weird:

2006-06-14T20:40:00.000-07:00

"However, the paths by which the two Americas were formed and have evolved represents this conflict as an assertion of the indigenous over the assimilated."

I think this sentence sounds drunk.

2006-06-14T11:10:00.000-07:00

The seeds of resistance require a precarious balance of factors in order to mature into social change. Democratic environments seek to reinforce the status quo and are specifically designed to minimize the effects of social resistance, even to the point of preventing them. Given factors of cultural cohesion and aversion to democratic stagnancy in Latin America, its literary market has risen to the occasion allowing poetry to be an active force in mass mobilization. This contrasts with the United States where mass mobilization seldom occurs and the literary market disregards its responsibility to be effective in favor of autonomous satisfaction; a perspective that parallels the democratic capitalist culture out of which it emerges. This tendency renders the literary market unable to develop unified ideologies and therefore unable to unseat large scale hegemonies.

Gil Scott-Heron - Brother.mp3

Gil Scott-Heron - The Revolution will not be Televised.mp3

2006-06-13T12:22:00.000-07:00

2006-06-11T15:35:00.000-07:00

I just realized something: there are no Giant grocery stores outside of DC, Virginia and Maryland. I was reading Chocolate Cola and contemplating the name. My grandparents used to have chocolate soda when I was little and it rocked and Giant was the only store that carried it. Does anyone know where to find it in Portland?

School is finally winding down so now I can focus on getting Portland Parks and Rec to let the sailing school run at Willamette Park while our sailing club is floated across the river and lashed to a piling behind Ross Island and the giant mudflat created by silt collected by the backeddy from the powerboat dock they built at Willamette Park is being dredged. I hope they don't make this a big hassle.

Alright, back to work, here are a couple of shots from J/24 racing last week on the Columbia.

2006-06-06T21:33:00.000-07:00

Conversation overheard at Tom's Restaurant on 39th and Division between two old men, the naive waitress and the Mexican cook.
Old Man 1: You know, Cisco is a Mexican cowboy.
Old Man 2: What?
Old Man 1: Yeah, that's what it means.
Naive Waitress: Hm?
Old Man 1: Yep, Cisco... Mexican cowboy.
Naive Waitress to Mexican cook, very slowly: Que es Cisco?
Mexican Cook: Is a company.

MmmmmmmcMenamins (NOT!)

2006-06-06T00:33:00.000-07:00

Another night wasted at Market St. Pub. Sometimes I hate myself for it. Tonight is a first, though. I seriously wasted five hours sitting here, using the free wifi to pretend to do homework and instead read Overheard in New York and watch old Dead Milkmen videos. I am pretty lame, but at least I passed off my camera so other people could take pictures since I'm a horrible photographer.

2006-06-01T23:49:00.000-07:00

It's finally time to sleep. I can't believe what sort of jam I've gotten myself into: 2 ten page papers to finish by Monday, an exam on Monday, a regatta Friday and Saturday, new registrations and payroll to finish tomorrow, and it looks like I'm not going to have anyone to teach the full classes this weekend so I'll be backing out of the Saturday races to teach sailing from 9-6 on Saturday and Sunday, only to come home and get back into answering emails and trying to finish my homework. I seriously don't think that there are enough hours between now and when everything needs to be finished for this to happen. Since I haven't slept for any substantial amount of time for the last couple of days, it's time to pass out and hope for a bit of mental clarity in the morning to start some serious time management. I'd hoped this blog wouldn't become a vent for inarticulate bitch-fests, but tonight, being one of those nights when I contract Turrets and grumble obscenities under my breath uncontrollably, it seems this may be the only appropriate outlet. Wish me luck.

Peaches - I Don't Give A ....wma

2006-05-31T13:55:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-05-29T14:53:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-05-28T21:22:00.000-07:00

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?

2006-05-27T16:57:00.002-07:00

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.

2006-05-24T21:50:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-23T21:25:00.001-07:00

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.

2006-05-23T17:57:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-05-23T17:10:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-23T16:49:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-05-22T23:53:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-22T23:32:00.000-07:00

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