Category: Writings

Ode to a Night’s Raven

Vous ne dormez pas.

RAVEN of the dark
            
         obscurity
only the deep blue rest of the sun
affords your comfort –
                    secrecy.
pinpoints of distance, heat, life –
“a canopy with holes punched in it” –
this background is your playground.

no one claims you
only the tree you call home is yours
and you belong to it,
solitary RAVEN of the slumber hours

a wastrel moon, a wasting moon
spotted like a wild creature, but muted
                                        
and hanged
like a wild beast instead
this sits as your watcher
a silent laconic guardian

you glide on wings, oh RAVEN, of purest coal
You are black, feared, hated, yet respected.
you wear a corbie suit but a human demeanor
and as You glissade en l’air to your bed
i glissade à terre to mine
and rest in ravenous dreams;
                 hungry creatures of night.

Ils sont vos enfants.

You can get the deviantART download or get it in the gallery, under “Wallpapers”.

You Are The Love Mummy

The Ultimate Aqua Teen Hunger Force Quiz brought to you by Quizilla

It’s almost been a week and I haven’t seen Spider-Man 2 again yet. Life is getting darker as we speak…

Had a family reunion. It went well, except that I hate typing that word because I always want to spell it “reuinion”. Made up a fictitious band that I will post about later. Megan had a crap weekend.

All in all, I’m the only one in the office again. You know what that means? Nude typing. Heh. Alllllllright.

You may have noticed a few changes around the site. Let me tell you what, I have been busy on this thing. If you can’t tell, the theme is “Spider-Man 2”. I am a big Spider-Man fan. The more I watch it, the more I love it. I know that there are a large number of philosphical and instinctual reasons for my inherent love of the Spidey story, but there are also cool stunts, which never hurt. Unfortunately, there is Willem Dafoe, which does hurt, a lot. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that his name was made up specifically to play villians. If you say it fast it becomes, “Well, I’m the foe.” I wonder if anyone’s picked up on that on his fan sites.

The changes I’ve made to Awayken.com, some not permanent, should be as exciting and breathtaking as Spider-Man 2, itself. I’ve read a review as printed by Newsweek magazine which raved about how good the second film is. It’s nice to see that Sam Raimi, the director, hasn’t forsaken quality, emotional movie-making for a quick blockbuster-style action flick, as the 4th of July weekend is prone to seeing (note: Independence Day and Men In Black).

One of the things you’ll notice first is the theme. Titled “Spidey”, this theme incorporates colours and graphics reminiscent of the Spider-Man franchise. Look at the top picture. I got that from the official site. I love the way Spider-Man and Mary Jane’s colours bleed into the rest of the site. In order to fully appreciate this, you need to get Mozilla, Netscape, or, my personal favorite, FireFox..

Another change is my recent fascination with PHP. PHP is a web programming language which helps make dynamic pages. It basically combines C or C++ styles programming with regular web HTML. Like my blogging software, PHP, given some of that programming, only needs one page to look different every time. As I look more into it, I may (in fact) change my entire site into a PHP site, perhaps even getting rid of the CGI-based Movable Type, but I’m not sure yet.

One of the PHP goodies on my site is some (very simple) polling code I found on a site called Fat Scripts. I’ve messed with it, skinned it, and finally come up with decent look for it. So, if you want, you can take it. You can only vote once, and it works on IP address, so if you wanted, you could vote and then move to a new computer and vote again. I hope you don’t though, because I want my first poll to be accurate. So, if you’re ready, you can:

The final change is a more permanent one. This one is Spidey-themed, PHP-based, and site-bettering all in one. It’s the new image gallery also from Fat Scripts. You can click the “gallery” link under “Awaykened Works” or just click here to access it. Gone is the old, crappy, javascript run pop-up image gallery of yesterday. This new code makes it much easier for me add in new images. I just upload the images and thumbnails and it does the rest. The code is all dynamic. It uses the folder names as the name of the gallery, so if I changed a folder name, when I refresh, the page is changed.

I’ve added some galleries to the list, also, and you might enjoy them. For one thing, the pictures from my room are there complete with descriptions as before. And now, if you look at that entry, you will not find the pictures, but a little note asking you to visit the gallery instead. It looks like the rest of the site – beautiful in design and temperment. Here is where you’ll find a gallery entitled “Spider-Man 2 Exclusive” which features exclusive scans from the Newsweek I bought and some buddy icons from the official movie site. Check it out!

Within the gallery you will also find my wallpapers. In fact, you’ll find all of them, 1600×1200, somewhat organized. No more simple links to deviantART. Here’s my plan – I keep the big wallpapers on the site for you to download, and if you want the small + big zip files, you can go to deviantART. There is also a set of new wallpapers. They should have been Spider-Man 2 wallpapers, but they’re 28 Days Later-inspired wallpapers. Every one of my wallpapers, including the “rage” set, has its deviantART descriptions included at the bottom. THAT was a lot of work. So were the thumbnails. But that’s for another day.

With so many changes to the site, what is there left to do? Watch Spider-Man 2 of course! I’m off to the movies. The deluxe DVD I got at Wal-Mart for $20 has a free Spider-Man 2 ticket included and I’ve already redeemed it. I just hope Megan finds a way in to the theatre, too.

I’m becoming a little more like my dad every day. Or maybe I’m just becoming more “Rausch”, as it were. If you don’t know, there are two sides to my family – the Rausch and the Miles, “Miles” being my mother’s maiden name. The Rausch side is German catholic and the Miles side is Irish Catholic. You can imagine how different those two sides would be. The Rausch side tends to be more laid back, quiet, and, well, German. The Miles side tends to be more outgoing, loud, and, well, Irish. As my grandma, Alyce Miles, says, “The only thing Miles about him is his name.” And I must say that she has a point, most of the time. I have my decidedly Miles moments.

My Rausch moments seem to largely over-shadow my Miles moments, however. The other day, for instance, I had nothing to do so I washed my car. Now, if you know my father, you know that he’s a truck freak. He’s not a freak in the sense that he has Dale Earnhardt the III’s racing number memorized, or that he can say “I’ll need to check out your chassis” with a straight face. I mean that he’s a freak about his own truck. He keeps her washed and cleaned and working and all that jazz.

When he gets back from a trip to Nebraska or Iowa or Watertown, he always looks wore down, beaten. Then his eyes light up at the prospect of what comes next, washing his truck. He grabs his stack of tokens, rushes out to the dirty vehicle, and speeds on down the road. I once heard a legend that dad only married mom because he thought that mom’s dad was a car wash owner. Of course, Grandpa isn’t and never was a car wash owner. I bet dad was disappointed to hear that; I heard that he cried.

Now I’ve partially caught the bug. My car was really dirty. I was feeling rich enough for a $6.00 car wash, so I drove over. The machine in Madison allows you to use your credit card. So, for fun, I did that. Mistake. Apparently the machine has to run my credit card request over to the moon and back. It takes some time, and I don’t think that the moon cares at all. I made some mistakes in my first real trip to the car wash.

Mistake #1: using the automatic wash.
Mistake #2: buying the $6.00 one when the $5.00 one probably would have done a better job.
Mistake #3: not having quarters on hand and having to run over to the change machine half way through.
Mistake #4: using the automatic wash.
Mistake #5: not having a wash cloth to clean your floor mats.
Mistake #6: letting the vacuum run out because you forgot to put more quarters in.
Mistake #7: not doing it more often.

I got even more Rauschey when we went to Sioux Falls the next day. Her mom was getting a wheelchair slapped onto the back of her car so wanted to meet us in Sioux Falls to eat or hang out (or whatever). One of the clothes places we went, “Half As Good” or “You Only Live Twice” or some pun on second-hand clothing, was right next to the 26th street Rausch Brothers’ Office.

So, like my father would, I went into a monument company’s office to window shop. And, of course, I drug my girlfriend along. She had to go to her stores, her shops, her clothing outlets, and I get my granite. So, we said “Hi” to the salespeople and walked around. I did my own little granite presentation, admiring the stone, frowning at the non-granite rock there.

I told her stories from the Farm-And-Home shows that I’ve been to. I told her stories from working at Rausch Bros. Monument Co., Inc. I told her about Pam and Jurich because we actually saw their work. I told her about the interiors, the little that I knew.

I did not, however, tell the people there that I was a Rausch. I didn’t let on that I knew about granite and that I knew probably more about how they actually make the finished product that they do. I did ask a question I didn’t know the answer to: How many offices does Rausch Brothers have? The answer: 4, Sioux Falls, SD, Sheridan, IA, Big Stone,SD, & Rapid City, SD. I finally found out where Sheridan is. From Big Stone, it’s like a 9 hour drive. How Mike ever found that place or decided to build an office there, I’ll never know.

The only other dad-like thing that I did was culinary. I ate Japanese food and liked it a lot. Still in Sioux Falls, we finally convinced her mother to take us to Hibachi. Hibachi is a Japanese sushi restaurant and strip club. As we entered, the techno music was overwhelming, brutal, erotic. The front part of the sushi restaurant is the sushi bar. It was here that most of the middle-aged Japanese businessmen forgot about the pressures of their day. In a depressing, psuedo-F. Scott metaphor the west met the east with brilliant reality and fantasy.

Ok, maybe not. It was quiet and largely empty, for as many people as it could hold. There was no bar and no drunk Japanese person. In fact, I saw one Japanese person – the guy at the door. After that, the grill chefs were all Mexican. Megan’s mom, even though she knew this, tried a bit of random Japanese to ask for more green tea. He just stared at her. It was only after she held her bowl up that he figured out what she wanted and got our waiter for her.

We had several kinds of sushi. We had these pork dumplings that were really good. Then for a main dish we had chicken and shrimp. It was fantastic. I really enjoyed it. There were fried vegetables and rice and shrimp and chicken and little sauces. I used chop sticks the whole time, too. It was wonderful.

So, I can say that while parts of me are becoming more like my dad, parts of me are staring into your soul and remembering all the dark secrets you hoped to hide from the world. And I have the world at my fingertips, for all to read.

Well, the ERP summit was a success. It closed on Wednesday to smiling faces and promises of return. During the week, I really got to know the instructors who came. It was a bit like summer camp, where everyone shows up at a central location where they stay overnight, everyone bonds, makes s’mores around a roaring fire, discusses how a Human Resources roadmap must not only include query and reporting but it should be a seperate section, and then finally says “Bon Voyage” (if they are french) and gets the hell out of my state.

*content sigh* Next year I probably won’t be so stressed. Not having any idea what to expect, but having to expect any idea, was a bit nerve-wracking and I didn’t like it one bit. Next year that would be different. I will know what to expect, and I’ll be a lot more advanced with PeopleSoft software. It’s funny. Some companies spend millions of dollars on this stuff, and I just goof around with it. HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

alright
all ready?
we’ll all float on
no
don’t you worry
we’ll all float on

As it turns out, the Skipper’s guy is catholic. There was a strange twist. But I think that maybe he doesn’t get along with his wife. Or she left him. Or she’s dead. Or he never had one. Cause, maybe that’s why he’s so bitter at everyone. Plus, there was no mother, only a couple of daughters. Maybe he’s also bitter that his deceased wife never gave him any sons. That seems a little “King-of-England” to me, but it could be true. The Skipper’s name will not live on in his family. It’s up to his drunk, redneck brother and delinquent nephew to do that.

Also, my posts have gotten more random.

See, summer makes it hard for one (being me) to keep one’s (my) train of thought. I start a post and then completely change direction, often keeping the original title. Sometimes, if I look back at the title, I can remember what it was that I wanted to write about in the first place.

Megan’s birthday was also a success. I think she had a really good day despite the test she had in College Algebra and having to work. We did have a good time, though. I got her a book, a shirt, and a DVD. I also wrote her a song, but I don’t think I’m going to ever perform it for her. I get insecure about my music, so it’s probably best if I stick to bad covers. The lyrics are nice, though.

I like Modest Mouse. Their new album is really good. I know that everyone is getting into them now that MTV is on the boat, but I could care less what MTV has to say. They are also paying the new Franz Ferdinand song to death, and people are going to get sick of it, and Franz is going to have to pull a miracle to get out of that death dive.

Megan received, among other things, a book on learning Japanese. She also got a tape set to teach Japanese. This present has me excited. I don’t know anything about Japanese. I really want to learn though. First cool thing: bread is the same in Japanese as it is in Spanish: pan.

Well, I think that’s all for now. Spider-Man 2 on June 30th! I’m so excited I have to change my pants everytime I think of it.

So, I’m sitting in the same room I used to have my Data Structures and Org & Arch in. There are three other people here. Sitting in front of me is a PeopleSoft instructor. Her name is either pronounced Michael Lynn or Mishulinn but it is spelt neither way. In the same row, on the left side, is a Texan instructor whose name is Willie but it actually a black woman. At the front of the class is a Canadian man named Peter Morgan who, I’ve noticed, makes all his ‘o’s long.

This is the Human Resources track for the CRESH ERP Summit 2004. I work at CRESH, Center for Resource Enterprise Systems Hosting, here at DSU, Dakota State University. ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning. A Summit is the top of the hill. 2004 is a number slightly larger than 2003 and slightly smaller than 2005.

This is the 2nd annual attempt at this summit. See, CRESH is a PeopleSoft hoster. We have PeopleSoft software on some computers here, and we let other Colleges use it for a price. Oh, and then we make everything work all the time. The summit serves as a way for professors to talk about techniques they use, ways they teach, and tips/tricks/hints with the help of these certified PeopleSoft instructors.

I wish I was just watching. No, instead, I am helping run this thing. Key word is “flexible”. When I first was told about this, I heard that there would be an Intro to PeopleSoft/CRESH/Everything track. Mike says, “Put together a PowerPoint.” So, I started to work on the PowerPoint. A couple of days later Mike says, “You’re going to teach the track.”

Time passes.

Mike says, “It’s going to be four hours on Sunday and Wednesday, and it’s going to be 8 hours on Monday and Tuesday.” Panick passes. To tell you the truth, folks, at CRESH I am the weakest link, so to speak. When it comes to technical, that is, I am the weakest link. So, I’ve tried to be important in other areas, read: PR papers, but suddenly I had to teach this stuff to other people. I work and work and work on it, in between making name tags and drinking tickets and phone calls.

Then, Mike says, “Turns out it’s 4 hours everyday.” So, I rethink, realign, become flexible. So, some of the days get crammed, but it’s okay. Everything is working well; I’m happy. I have the PowerPoint done, but now it’s only for one day, the Portal and CRESH intro. Then I have these things called EUTs, End User Training, and I figure I’ll do these and have people watch me. It’s just a matter of cutting them down.

Now, Mike says, “There might not be any intro track.” Is this relief? Actually, it kinda is. I was so nervous. I don’t really feel confident in my PeopleSoft skills. I feel confident in my b.s., make it up skills, but these people might know something whereas the people in my Org & Arch class knew nothing about my watch, so I could lie all I wanted.

It may still be on, but for now I sit. And take notes. And wait.

This almost became another post title with one of these, !, in it, but I held back my excitement. Then I decided to change my post title altogether, to sound less junior highish. I actually started to comment on my own site, right under his comment. See, I was checking to see if anyone had anything to say about my new room. And for a long time, no one did. Then I noticed on lone comment. I eagerly click the link and wait for the popup window to load, admiring the beauty that is my new stylesheet.

Up pops a rather long comment, considering what I normally get. I was shocked and began reading. It said:

Well hello there,

I’m glad you like my songs.

I’ve been keeping my eye on this site since I found you in Allens’ Fanlist on Garageband. I’ve been working in isolation for so long I’m finding strange and exciting to see my songs taking on a life of their own in the outside world.

I’ve been grappling with this one all week: My mother told me she took my CD to her AquaAerobics class. There is now a group of 50-something women in a small town in the mid-north of South Australia doing AquaAerobics to my music. I bet Thom Yorke can’t say that.

I’m working on four new songs at the moment. When I’m finished, I’ll post them on my website and begin reviewing the 120 songs I need to post on Garageband.

Thanks again,

Jason Allen.

Holy Crap! Jason Allen posted on my website! And, unfortunately, I posted about one line about him. I never thought he’d actually come to the site, let alone several times, let alone comment, let alone comment incorrectly, allowing his name to appear twice which I then fixed to make it look nice and then had to fix again so the link would pop in a new window!

I think that I can safely say Radiohead music is not for aqueous recreation. If anything, most of the songs would depress the Aerobickers, and possibly cause some to attempt to drown themselves. This would be fine if the class was competition, and you were Jason’s mom, but it is not good for the overall morale of the class. In fact, I think Thom, himself, is a very poor swimmer and has almost drowned on several occasions, including MTV’s Spring Break. That, ladies and gents, is not a joke: it’s a fact.

You’re probably thinking, why didn’t the rest of the band comment on your side? What I failed to mention about the band, Allen, is that it has only one member: Jason. If you went to his GarageBand site, you probably read this:

I started playing guitar at age 8 and started writing and recording music at age 15. I completed a Bachelors Degree of Music at Adelaide University, South Australia, majoring in composition, in 1995. At university I wrote experimental music based on the works of John Cage. In 1999 I completed a Graduate Diploma in Contemporary Music Technology at Latrobe University, Melbourne, Victoria and began working as a professional Sound Engineer. In 2002, my wife and I moved temporarily to Bern, Switzerland, where I have locked myself in a small room with my equipment and have been writing and recording ever since. I am currently preparing to play live in Bern and possibly other venues in Switzerland. My live act consists of stripped-down rock arrangements of my studio work performed on electric guitar and vocals, with some songs including backing tracks on CD. If any kind souls would like to help me organise some gigs in London, that would be fantastic.

In honor of this unexpected comment I am declaring today “Allen Day”, and I will only listen to his music my entirety of being at work. Not only that, but I’m going to burn a CD of his stuff to give to Megan to listen to. Not only that, but I already did it.

Please, go to his site; download his tunes; enjoy his music. And try to figure out if he has an Australian accent or a Swiss accent. Food for thought.

Megan and I found this great Chinese restaurant on 12th street, in Sioux Falls. The restaurant is called “Golden Harvest”. It’s a sit down place. As you look around the place, you spy dozens of seemingly authentic Japanese/Chinese prints. Some have landscapes, others depict a gathering of people, and two feature very cute pictures of baby animals, like the Panda and Tiger.

We arrived a bit late. They were to close at 9:30, and we arrived somewhere around 9:00. They were bare, speaking for customers, but friendly, speaking for staff. The lady ushered us in, was very nice. Our waitress took our order quickly, and kindly, and we began to get excited about our meal. We had ordered two rolls, one spring, one egg, to serve as appetizers. The appeared home made, and they were delicious.

When they brought our meals, sesame chicken for me and shrimp for Megan, they couldn’t smell better. We enjoyed our meals immensely, tasting a bit of each others, making great note of the location for further visitation. It tasted so good that neither of us could finish our meal in that sitting. We did, however, take our time enjoying the quiet, the calm. The hostess even walked over to us and told us to take our time, there was no rush. Soft oriental music glistened like raindrops around us. It was the perfect scene.

See, it’s necessary to understand the tranquility, the calm of this scene. The oriental people, except maybe Thailand, are peaceful and delicate people. They communicate as much as possible without talking. They sit in silence, finding excessive TV, radio, and internet to be dulling. They are as beautiful as the lands they come from. The reason it is necessary to understand this is the same reason you have to understand light to understand shadow.

That said, my mom’s side of the family is very unChinese. If you have ever met the Miles family, then you can understand “chaos in harmony”. When Megan and I arrived at my cousin Britt’s graduation party, at my aunt’s house in Sioux Falls, the scene we spied was the opposite of that which I described above. People everywhere, noise, shouting, drinking, a little food, TV going, and of course, laughter. If you want a visual description of Irish, come to a Miles family reunion. And, for those keeping track, a reuinion for the Miles family is whenever one or more are gathered together.

This was all that I had started of my first 66 & 77 post. See, I call it that because of this song, Sixes & Sevens by a band called Allen. It’s a good song, and I like the rest of the stuff he has. Check out his page and down some of them hits.

That’s when you get the idea. That’s when you understand that it’s the anti-cliche. – greenplastic.com on The National Anthem.

Karma Police is just a joke. It’s the only funny song on the album. A sentence like “Karma Police, arrest this man” actually belongs in a textballoon for a comic strip. – Thom Yorke.

Ok, enough with the random – on to the fandom! After sitting downstairs for ages, Megan came down. “I’m done,” she smiled. “Now, stay here while I shower.” Girls can really take their time when they want to.

Finally it was the reveal! I nicked Jeff’s digicam and we headed upstairs.

After the reveal, we traveled to Sioux Falls to see the new Harry Potter And the Prisoner of Azkaban. Megan has recently become a fan of the series, though not the books yet. When the movie was over she asked when the next one was coming out. Isn’t she cute? 2005, I said, and quite whining.

On a serious note, however, there was this creepy guy at the movie place. We were in line, standing next to him, and he would talk to us every once in a while. He mentioned how he used to have long hair and a Henna tatoo that stretched all the up his arm. It was tribal art. And he’s been waiting 30 years for the AVP, Alien Versus Predator, movie. I can only forsee the movie being terrible, and so did he, but I didn’t think the comic book would have been very good either.

Then Megan went up to get some snacks. While she walked away, I felt decidedly uncomfortable with the man. Then he snickers and says, “Good job.” I realized that he was referring to my girlfriend. “No, really. That’s nice,” and he gave me a thumbs up. Oh my God. I didn’t know what to do or say, so I just laughed it off and began praying for the line to get going. I mean, what kind of middle-aged guy stands alone in a line for the new Harry Potter? Ok, I probably would. But who kind of middle-aged guy is scoping out 18 year old girls? The creepy kind that’s who.

We should have suspected something. The Carmike theatre, where we saw it, is the ghetto, white-trash version of the Century. It’s only a dollar cheaper. West Mall 7 is much cheaper and a lot cleaner, open, and friendly. The Carmike Theatre is a shady place, folks; don’t go there. As Megan put it, “No offense, but geeks work here.” No offense, indeed.

Rap music is a beautiful thing. It seems to be the only kind of music that one can get away with not being musical at all. It’s the combination of crass, cheap poetry and that one drum beat over and over and over and over.

The best kind of posts are those that just flow, those that write themselves. That’s what was happening to Sixes and Sevens, the original. It was basically about the two graduations I went to. Last weekend was my cousin Dirk’s and the weekend before was my cousin Britt’s. They were both touching graduations. Britt’s had a mass before it to make it interesting, and Dirk’s had a student-made going away video to make it interesting. Both had really good parts and both were long. The post, however, wasn’t interesting at all, and I had written quite a bit. This post won’t take me any time at all to write, and will be three quarters more interesting than the first could ever been.

It’s getting sunny. I’m moving. Oh, much better. I’m sitting in the lawn in front of Beadle Hall on campus here. I took work off today because I value sleep more than money. Plus, I’m going to put in 8h this weekend sometime. That’s not why I’m here, though. I got kicked out of my house. No, not by my housemate or landlord or God or Buddah or my drug habbit. I got kicked out by Megan. See, this week I’ve been sorting through my books a bit. That means that Megan gets to enjoy the squalor that I live in. Inspired by shows on TLC like “While You Were Out” and the Bravo masterpiece “Queer Eye For The Straight Guy”, Megan has decided to make over my room, complete with $40 budget. And, while in WYWO the person has no idea this is going to happen and in QEFTSG the person has some say in what happens, I, instead, get to sit out on the lawn as my tablet battery slowly dies.

Slowly… I have 0:48 hours left. I want to post this before the battery goes, so if it doesn’t have an ending, be forewarned.

I’m a bit scared. I have no idea what she’s been doing up there. I’ve been downstairs all day since she woke me up at 8. I need to start locking the front door at all times. So, I slept on the couch downstairs until 12:45. We ate, went to class, and now I’m here reading online comics to the ants and bunnies gathered on the grass. I mean, getting eaten by ants while bunnies mock me as I try to read online comics. Of course, when my battery dies, I won’t be doing anything. Megan took the book I was reading because it was part of her ‘design’.

I’ve been trying to get all sorts of info out of here. Trying to get her to let something out. “Oh, I forgot about all those papers behind my dresser – did you find them?” I’ll look for them when I go back up there. “You know, my bed would look great against that other wall.” I’ll keep that in mind. “Do you want me to move my DVDs upstairs, since we can watch DVDs on my computer?” If I need them, I’ll get them. “You’re putting a lot of work into this, but you’re forgetting one thing: what the hell is that??” Nice try. Get out.

My musical tastes are varied. I have ALL my songs on my playlist, and random, and I just got David Bowie, Radiohead, StainD, Nas, Wu-Tang, Kenna, Alkaline Trio, Blur, Brand New, Justin Timberlake, the Beatles, Styx, Led Zepplin, Korn, The Dust Brothers, The*Ataris, Wagner, and Jeff Gabhart. This makes me wonder about the music of today. Can any radio station do my tastes justice? Obviously not. In fact, most people have tastes like these. Each artist/song/album fills a certain nich� for a particular person. This doesn’t mean that radio stations shouldn’t at least try a little bit.

Pop Radio sucks. It even pains me a bit to know that Pop radio was a vehicle that the Beatles and, later, the Wonders/Oneders used to get popular. Now, popular artists don’t have to try to be musical. I like Justin, but most of his music is party music. People write tunes that other people can dance to. It’s no longer about applying the musical ideas and templates from people like Mozart onto modern instruments and lyrics. It’s not longer about discovering how music works and what makes it beautiful. Like everything else in America, music sold out.

If you go to vtext.com the number one ring tone is : All Falls Down by Kayne West. Besides being unable to pronounce his name, I can’t figure out what this guy is about. His hit before this was “Through The Wire”. This was an awful song. Here’s the very overplayed story. Kayne West was a producer. He produces hip-hop/r & b records. Then he was in a “near-fatal” car accident that left his jaw wired shut. As soon as he got better, he released a record capitalizing on his “tragedy”. A quote from this new star: I would just like to stress that Prince produced his own music.

God – I’ll listen to Prince before I listen to you. Right now I’m getting the Led out through the Immigrant Song. Up next? Dashboard, Coldplay, and Bush. Kayne West is through all right.

Hello, folks. I am currently working on my next post, about my last weekend, entitled Sixes and Sevens.

For now, however, check out the new theme. I like this one so much that every page is like this now.

I love it. Let me know how you feel.

What’s this?, you think. He’s posting again after the book he wrote last time? I pretended to read it three times already – I still need a week get through it – how can he post again?

Well, as you can see, this post isn’t very long. That’s because all I have to say is:

While the LG site doesn’t have my exact phone, you can look at the VX3100 and then pretend that it’s about 100 better. I love my little VX3200 flip phone. It has color, animations, sounds, and tons more. Megan’s a bit sick of how I keep talking about my beautiful phone. My precioussss….

That, ladies and gentlemen, is an example of a bad pun. Not only does it employ a very forced word-syllable replacement but it also contains no commonly known phrase or term in substitution therein. This means that I really didn’t even try to be funny in the title. Does this mean you should worry? Is this an indicator of how the post is going to go? Is the post going to be forced? Will it read much like an earlier post with some words changed around? Will it not even make sense? I guess you’ll have to read on…

This weekend I went to MitcHell. I know, I know… but I had to. Megan’s cousin, Sean Joseph Flynn, Jr., was graduating from MHS this weekend. Megan is not very close to her family, but we had to make the journey anyway. I had never met but two extended members of her family, and this was a golden opportunity to see how I could use them in my plan to hit the casino in Granite Falls.

We were supposed to leave at noon, but things kept getting pushed back. We had to wait for her mom to call us. So, at 3, and after several fitful catnaps, we departed. I was crabby, but I made the most of it. See, Megan and I have decided that she’ll learn drums and we’ll form a two person band, like the White Stripes, except that I’ll be Jack and she’ll be Meg and we’ll rock even harder.

So, to make the hour-long trip to MitcHell better, we decided to pick a band name. Our first method involved picking bands we knew and replacing a word in their name. Red Hot Silly Peppers, Radioshed, Push, and even Black Stripes were all contenders. Then we decided that that wasn’t the way to go.

We could pick lyrics from songs we liked, which is partly how Radiohead did theirs. “Radio head” was a Loverboy lyric, or something. So we considered our options but our band name got longer and longer. We wouldn’t just take one or two words, we took a verse or a refrain. We didn’t think people would get into an introduction like, “Everyone put your hands together for ‘Don’t let the days go by could have been easier on you I couldn’t change though I wanted to should have been easier by three our old friend fear and you and me glycerine’!” You could take a nap in the time it takes to say that.

Then we tried using a dictionary. We each flipped open to a page and picked a random word. It was my thinking that we’d just take our two words, arrange them as we thought made the best sense, and use that as our band name. The list turned out to be:

casuarina
soft pedal
honey locust
compos mentis

That has got to be the sorriest list of band names ever. For one thing, the two words I picked were actually two words, so I picked four words. And the first word Megan picked was actually a tree from Australia and the second word was actually Latin for “of sound mind.” But the Latin intrigued me.

For our trip to MitcHell, then, I brought every Latin book I had, and we spent a majority of the time reading through Latin phrases or words, and asking Megan what she thought. Maybe we shouldn’t force it. Maybe the band name will just happen. At least now we have a lot of ideas for album titles.

So, after plenty of Latin phrases and pop music, we were there. It was a little confusing getting there. Megan was a bit stressed, only having been to her uncle’s place a few times. It’s a good thing that when Megan gets stressed she doesn’t get hot tempered and bitchy. Good thing.

I was nervous. I wanted to make a good impression on Megan’s family. As it turned out, the only aunt/uncle pair that was there were Sean’s parents. Megan, however, kept forgetting that I didn’t know these people. That person would come over and start talking to us and then, in a lull of the conversation, I would say, “Hi, I’m Miles.”

For instance, we were talking to her cousin, Sean Jr. They started talking about his mom, Deb, and I leaned over, in the lull, and asked Megan which person was Deb.

Megan says, “Oh, you haven’t met Deb?”

I say, “I haven’t met Sean, yet. Hi, I’m Miles. Congratulations.”

This kind of thing happened again and again. Thankfully, there weren’t many relatives there to repeat this lame Marx Bros. routine. Instead there were things to look at. Row upon row of awards, congratulatory certificates, and offers from foreign countries to take office. Quite impressive. What was more impressive was the food. It was a Make-Your-Own-Mexican-Shaped-Meal bar. See it wasn’t just making tacos, because you could make nachos, tacos, burritos, and even enchiladas (if you like beef over chicken). I had a burrito the first time, but I made it too fat (like a fat fat blunt), and it didn’t wrap right. The next time it became just a nacho.

Then we went to mass. Nothing much eventful happened there. This boy was asleep 10 minutes into it. He just sat there with his mouth gaping open. Then he’d wake for a short bit, then back asleep. I don’t remember if he receive communion or not.

Back to the Flynn’s for a short bit, then to the hotel. Holy crap. The handicapped rooms at the Hamilton in MitcHell are spectacular. They’re the size of a small gymnasium. The bathroom itself was about the size of the pool, but the shower had a seat to sit on and a bed to bed on. There was a microwave and a refrigerator (cause handicapped people need their eats), a TV, and more pillows than any Queen of England could ever have.

We got settled in, hit Walmart, came back, and then Meg and I went swimming. This was a horrifying and embarrassing situation. See, I haven’t gone “swimming” in an era because I’ve never gotten comfortable with my body. Then this last year hit me, and all I did for meals was eat out. So, now I’m fat, and I am DEFINATELY not comfortable with my body. In swimming, however, you have to take off your shirt. It took her about 30 minutes, but I finally relented and got into the pool.

This, we later found, was a terrible idea. If only I had held on to my insecurities, then I would have been able to save my baby. See, it happened like this. We were having contests, like we always do. I think Megan wanted to prove she was a better swimmer. So, we did a race: go down and back, short width of the pool. After about 10 mis-starts, we gave up. She wanted to swim the length of the pool. We got ready, and took off. I won! But she was complaining about the way she swims. See, I’m a top swimmer, but she’s a underwater swimmer.

“See, watch.” She dove under the water. When she came back up, she was holding her face. When she dove, she overestimated the depth of the pool, and she scraped her face on the bottom of the pool. What made is worse was the chlorine in the pool, which got into the wounds, and made it burn like nuts. We decided no more challenging and no more pool – on to the hot tub.

The next day was graduation. But first, the Spartans! Spartans rule. Did you know they had 2 kings? They did that as a system of checks and balances. They devoted their lives to order, discipline, and war. They did this because the helots, the working class of farmers, were actually a country they took over. And, actually, they outnumbered the Spartans by about 15 times. And they had an old person council of everyone 50 or older. These guys had power – real power, like the king. They were like a senate. Why did everyone over 50 get to join? Because if you lived to be 50 in Sparta, you must be tough as nails and smart to boot.

With the program still going, we had to leave. We packed the cars and headed for the Corn Palace. Pardon, The World’s Only Corn Palace. They seem to be quite proud of that name. You know what? It’s corn! But they do redo it every year. This year’s theme is “Lewis & Clark”. The structure, covered in corn husks and decorated with mosque-like towers reminiscent of the Holy Land, looked very South Dakotan in the rain.

Before the graduation, we had some times to look around. On the walls, on the inside, they have a picture “Hall Of Fame” for every Corn Palace configuration they’ve ever had. They even had one that sported a swastika. There were two warnings next to the image, explicitly explaining the symbol as a Native American “good luck” insignia. One was on the picture and another was directly below the picture, about 2 inches. This, and the fact that the picture was taken well before WWII even started, leads one to believe that, had they known, the decorators would never have used the symbol.

The pictures get fishier, though. They have a picture of the first Corn Palace with its true colours. Considering the picture was taken circa 1892 and colour film wasn’t developed until 1935-ish, I highly doubt those are the original colours. You can tell, without much squinting, that they coloured in gigantic photograph. You can tell really easily by looking at the flags – flags are really hard to colour in, realistically. It looks like they took a permanent marker and just went to town. They did this to all of the Corn Palace photos up till their cheap asses got colour film. In the brochure, however, that same picture is printed in its original black-white-sepia shade. You don’t fool me, cheesy marker colouring job!

When you go to MitcHell, and you want to see what there is to offer here, do NOT pic up the Official Visitors Guide. It should be relabeled “Really Big Book of Ads”. Besides having pictures of the latest Corn Palace design, the same design that you had to walk past to get the booklet, the Visitors Guide contains what amount to 6 pages out of 79 with “content” and the rest being adverts. Don’t get me wrong, finding the “$.50 off Any Blizzard” coupon was sweet, but it doesn’t make up for the “10 Fun Things To Do In Mitchell” segment. They did pretty much what they set out to do, listed 10 things that one can, indeed, do in the Home of the Kernels. The problem is the bolded text. See, I guess there was a writing contest at the local Tech school to come up with as many corn puns as possible to put in their brochure, and this was the winning entry. 8 of the 10 had a horrible corn-related pun in them. The 2 that didn’t were both related to Native Americans. Hmm…

That’s why you have to pick up the two brochures. See, there are two because one is the “serious” one and one is the “crazy” one. This is the same principle that family portrait photographers use. If you have to have a serious picture, they people involved are really dying to do a crazy picture, to show how they really are to the camera. This is particularly why I have not even opened the “crazy” one, as I don’t much care for carefreeness. I want seriousness.

The serious brochure is just that. Well, except for a top, inside banner declaring “Visit Mitchell’s Ear-chitecture!”, this brochure is just a colourful reminder of the glory of the world’s only Corn Palace. On the front of the brochure, there is a picture of the 1999 Palace. Then, on the inside, they have a timeline, information type list of pictures. Then they have an item pointing to two pictures the title of which is “Today’s Corn Palace.” But, the Corn Palace in both pictures is the 1998 Corn Palace. Did they make the inside first? How is the most recent Corn Palace isn’t “Today’s” Corn Palace? Unless they just couldn’t bare to photograph the 1999 Corn Palace (theme: Building a Nation) and instead opted for old photos of last years Corn Palace (theme: Youth in Action).

Well, I was pondering all this as we watched the Graduation. It was boring. I was bored. I had my brochures to keep me interested, but … well, you can tell what they’re like from the above. Instead I got to listen to SJJ’s speech. The only line I really remember, and it was a good speech (a bit stuffy, but good), was one that went, “Achieving success with perseverance will leave you intoxicated with happiness and good fortune.” Well, it went something like that, anyway. I like that he used to word “intoxicated”. I heard giggling.

Afterwards, they took some pictures. Enjoyed themselves. Then back to their house for more food and some good time. After a really arduous attempt at getting Grandma Frances up the steps in the rain, we sat down. We watched the weather, which couldn’t make its mind. It would storm really hard, then let up a bit, then storm really hard again. Sean got a cell phone for his graduation – his (and the family’s) first. It was complete with a phone call to the cell phone.

Sean answered, “Hello? I have a fairies ring.”
Then his mom said, “Can you hear her? Can she hear you?”
Megan says, “No, it’s a one-way phone.”
I say, “This must be what Alexander Graham Bell’s first phone call was like. His mother, in the room, ‘Can he hear you? But he’s way over there! How can he hear you? What are you saying to him? Are you cussing?'”

Finally, with all that done, the weather letting up, and some soda for our journey, we once again took off for Madison. Unfortunately, all the weather did was hold off until we hit the interstate, then it got terrible. We saw about 4 or 5 vehicles in the ditch as we drove on our way. But we didn’t get caught. We made it through. We totally rocked that storm, all the way home.

Radiohead
I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings EP
[Capitol; 2001]
Rating: 8.0

The bright lights flashed in unison like cheap aluminum UFOs in a starless sky. My eyes convulsed in time with the massive flashes of white, but I didn’t really mind. Somehow, Franky and I had made it to that sacred place where the lights are far too bright and the sound is far too loud. The excitement was palpable. Though the vast majority of the 10,000 or so people present was directly behind me, and well outside of my field of view, I could sense the size and excitement of the crowd around me. I turned to Franky, who stared in rapt attention at the stage, absolutely silent.

Finally, the moment arrived. These five beings graced the stage like the gods of old descending from Olympus, illuminated by the fiery rays of Helios’ chariot. The scene was as heavenly and beautiful as Jesus and Buddha playing handball on Jerry Garcia’s assflab. The crowd’s response was as loud and forceful as a tidal wave of live kittens. Yet, Franky remained silent. Finally, as the band prepared for their first song, he turned his head to me, his brown eyes shiny and round like a sheep turd soaked in glitter. Surely, he was aware that this was the single most magical moment of his life ever. Staring awestruck at the massive crowd behind my head, Franky opened his mouth slightly, prepared to speak. And the words he spoke, which seemed to flow straight from his soul like a leaky thermos of godly ambrosia, have remained with me to this day:

“Thom Yorke just got 10,000 people to pay $60 to stare at his ugly ass.”

Sure enough, the audience seemed to be positively transfixed by the image of Yorke, his lazy eye dragging two or three centimeters behind him, twitching and wailing. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to equate the show to Radiohead’s music itself– big rock laced with intrigue, fragility, and ugliness. On I Might Be Wrong, a good deal of the essence of Radiohead’s live show is distilled onto an eight-track EP. And while some moments are absolutely stellar, I Might Be Wrong is only a shadow of what a Radiohead live album could have been.

Like most Radiohead shows, I Might Be Wrong opens with “The National Anthem.” The song’s introduction, with Thom Yorke breathing in staccato over Colin Greenwood’s thunderous bassline and Jonny Greenwood’s skillful manipulation of the primitive Ondes-Martenot, is absolutely wonderful. Without a horn section, though, the song never really develops as it does on Kid A, trailing off without a satisfying conclusion.

“The National Anthem” is followed by “I Might Be Wrong,” a song that wouldn’t be even remotely interesting in its live incarnation if not for the subtle shifts in dynamics that grace the middle and end of the song. “Morning Bell,” like “The National Anthem,” builds to a meandering ending. But it meanders with enough grace to keep it interesting, with Ed O’Brien and Jonny Greenwood working their trademark magic with effects-laden guitars and synthesizers.

With “Like Spinning Plates,” I Might Be Wrong hits its stride. Recasting the song as a piano ballad with eerie synthesized strings, Radiohead turned one of Amnesiac’s most cryptically brilliant tracks into something much more emotional and accessible without being at all sappy or manipulative. With this new version, the song’s melody– complete with the eerily, vaudevillian quality that inhabits it during the chorus– takes center stage, showcasing Radiohead’s songwriting virtuosity rather than their sonic adventurousness.

“Like Spinning Plates” is followed by “Idioteque” and “Everything in its Right Place,” possibly the two finest tracks from Kid A, and certainly one of the better sections of this EP. The former succeeds in capturing the energy Yorke channels during live interpretations of the song, whereas the latter takes the aural experimentation of the album version one step further, with sublime digital manipulations building electronic tapestries of sound.

After the schizophrenic meltdown of “Idioteque” and the catharsis of “Everything in Its Right Place,” an entirely unexceptional version of “Dollars and Cents” is more than a little bit of a letdown, as it lacks both momentum and innovation. But “Dollars and Cents” is followed by I Might Be Wrong’s main attraction, the previously unreleased “True Love Waits.” An acoustic outtake from the OK Computer era, “True Love Waits” is absolutely gorgeous. With signature unexpected chord changes and a melody that both aches and soothes, “True Love Waits” can hold its own against any song on OK Computer, and makes a very welcome ending to I Might Be Wrong.

But while tracks like “Like Spinning Plates” and “True Love Waits” certainly justify the existence of I Might Be Wrong, the EP seems purposely limited in a way that’s immensely frustrating. At only eight songs, the disc is being sold and marketed (and priced) as a full-length album. Given the fact that so many shows were recorded in preparation for this EP, there’s absolutely no reason that I Might Be Wrong should have been limited to eight tracks. Similarly frustrating is the fact that every single track here, aside from “True Love Waits,” is taken from either Kid A or Amnesiac. The inclusion of a live version of “Fake Plastic Trees,” “Karma Police,” or “Just” would have rounded off the record nicely. Sadly, one can’t shake the feeling that this disc exists largely as a promotional item for Radiohead’s last two albums.

The quality of the recordings and performances on I Might Be Wrong is certainly top-notch. But Internet bootlegs– most notably a soundboard recording from Nijmegen, a small city in Holland– present a better, more complete picture of the Radiohead live experience. Still, even with better live documents available for free, it’s hard to resist an officially sanctioned live EP with a few absolutely stellar tracks. And although I Might Be Wrong is obnoxiously incomplete, the fact remains that Thom Yorke just got 100,000 people to spend $17.99 for eight songs. Good for him.

-Matt LeMay, December 18th, 2001

This is a tribute to the nice guys. The nice guys that finish last, that never become more than friends, that endure hours of whining and bitching about what assholes guys are, while disproving the very point. This is dedicated to those guys who always provide a shoulder to lean on but restrain themselves to tentative hugs, those guys who hold open doors and give reassuring pats on the back and sit patiently outside the changing room at department stores. This is in honor of the guys that obligingly reiterate how cute/beautiful/smart/funny/sexy their female friends are at the appropriate moment, because they know most girls need that litany of support. This is in honor of the guys with open minds, with laid-back attitudes, with honest concern. This is in honor of the guys who respect a girl�s every facet, from her privacy to her theology to her clothing style.

This is for the guys who escort their drunk, bewildered female friends back from parties and never take advantage once they�re at her door, for the guys who accompany girls to bars as buffers against the rest of the creepy male population, for the guys who know a girl is fishing for compliments but give them out anyway, for the guys who always play by the rules in a game where the rules favor cheaters, for the guys who are accredited as boyfriend material but somehow don�t end up being boyfriends, for all the nice guys who are overlooked, underestimated, and unappreciated, for all the nice guys who are manipulated, misled, and unjustly abandoned, this is for you.

This is for that time she left 40 urgent messages on your cell phone, and when you called her back, she spent three hours painstakingly dissecting two sentences her boyfriend said to her over dinner. And even though you thought her boyfriend was a chump and a jerk, you assured her that it was all ok and she shouldn�t worry about it. This is for that time she interrupted the best killing spree you�d ever orchestrated in GTA3 to rant about a rumor that romantically linked her and the guy she thinks is the most repulsive person in the world. And even though you thought it was immature and you had nothing against the guy, you paused the game for two hours and helped her concoct a counter-rumor to spread around the floor. This is also for that time she didn�t have a date, so after numerous vows that there was nothing �serious� between the two of you, she dragged you to a party where you knew nobody, the beer was awful, and she flirted shamelessly with you, justifying each fit of reckless teasing by announcing to everyone: �oh, but we�re just friends!� And even though you were invited purely as a symbolic warm body for her ego, you went anyways. Because you�re nice like that.

The nice guys don�t often get credit where credit is due. And perhaps more disturbing, the nice guys don�t seem to get laid as often as they should. And I wish I could logically explain this trend, but I can�t. From what I have observed on campus and what I have learned from talking to friends at other schools and in the workplace, the only conclusion I can form is that many girls are just illogical, manipulative bitches. Many of them claim they just want to date a nice guy, but when presented with such a specimen, they say irrational, confusing things such as �oh, he�s too nice to date� or �he would be a good boyfriend but he�s not for me� or �he already puts up with so much from me, I couldn�t possibly ask him out!� or the most frustrating of all: �no, it would ruin our friendship.� Yet, they continue to lament the lack of datable men in the world, and they expect their too-nice-to-date male friends to sympathize and apologize for the men that are jerks. Sorry, guys, girls like that are beyond my ability to fathom. I can�t figure out why the connection breaks down between what they say (I want a nice guy!) and what they do (I�m going to sleep with this complete ass now!). But one thing I can do, is say that the nice-guy-finishes-last phenomenon doesn�t last forever. There are definitely many girls who grow out of that train of thought and realize they should be dating the nice guys, not taking them for granted. The tricky part is finding those girls, and even trickier, finding the ones that are single.

So, until those girls are found, I propose a toast to all the nice guys. You know who you are, and I know you�re sick of hearing yourself described as ubiquitously nice. But the truth of the matter is, the world needs your patience in the department store, your holding open of doors, your party escorting services, your propensity to be a sucker for a pretty smile. For all the crazy, inane, absurd things you tolerate, for all the situations where you are the faceless, nameless hero, my accolades, my acknowledgement, and my gratitude go out to you. You do have credibility in this society, and your well deserved vindication is coming.