Since I can't seem to sleep...
Recommendation: Omnibus, Tarkio.
What happens if you take the Decemberists and replace all conceptual instances of "the British Empire" and replace it with "rural Montana"? You get Tarkio. It's a little more complicated, but Tarkio is Colin Meloy's band from his college years in Missoula, Montana. Omnibus is a collection of all their recorded material, and as such is a little unpolished and uneven, but the highs are so blisteringly high that it's easy to accept.

The album includes early versions of "Annabelle Leigh" and "My Mother Was a Chinese Trapeze Artist" which are fairly well realized, but there a several originals that are even better. Tarkio's flavor covers a fair amount of ground from "traditional" to "alt-country" to "high-distortion bar band". Songs in the latter category include the dark Tom Petty-ish jangle of "Carrie" and the grinding "This Rollercoaster Ride". Also entertaining is "Helena Won't Get Stoned".

Meloy says in the liner notes that wanting to be in a band with a banjo was a major factor in Tarkio's formation. Said banjo is played (by Gibson Hartwell) to great effect on the standout tracks "Weight of the World" ,"Neapolitan Bridesmaid", and "Better Half". These also feature some great writing by Meloy( "Bridesmaid" references both the Bible and Albert Camus). On the mid-tempo, indie-er side of things are "If I Had More Time" and "Following Camden Down".

"Sister Nebraska" sounds a bit like a country-tinged predecessor to "Song for Myla Goldberg". "Save Yourself" is an epic lament full of echoing pedal-steel. "Mountains of Mourne" is a nice rendition of an Irish song from the 19th century. "Tristan and Iseult" is spare and subtly gorgeous, casting mythical figures into college kids ("God I love you, but you trouble me.").

There are missteps, especially in the sometimes rough production, and a few fairly uninspiring lyrics. "Am I Not Right?" is a bit too confessional (and not all that catchy), and "Mess of Me" sounds like it was scrounged off a demo tape. One understands why Meloy and Hartwell express a bit of embarassment in the liner notes. This is the nature of compilations meant for completists (There are 27 tracks here in all, most of which actually stand up quite well).

While the impetus for its widespread release was clearly the burgeoning fame of the Decemberists, the material stands well on its own. As someone with a love of banjos, pedal steel, and bar band esthetics, I think there's some pretty fantastic material here.

Weight of the World - One of many songs which might be my very favorite ever (Right click and save).

I can hear my graphics card: not in the sense that I have a powerful fan on it etc., but rather a confluence of two conditions has arisen. Firstly, I have absurd professional quality earphones (because my mom works at Shure). Secondly, The headphone jack on my PC is not particularly shielded from the electromagnetic effects of the rest of the machine. This mean I have been able to detect audibly the transmissions along various buses in my PC, most notably (as far as I can tell), the graphics output.

Dragging windows produces a faint crackling/buzzing sound. Larger windows produce louder noises. Maximization and minimization produce more of a beep. Progress bars tend to fizzle.

I do not think there is any useful application of this phenomenon, other than to tell whether the graphics bus is in use. It fascinates me nonetheless. I used to be able to determine the speed of a dial-up connection from modem noises.

Hmm. I think the keyboard may be involved as well. holding down "shift" brings on a rapid machine-gun rattle unrelated to any action onscreen... or not, as testing it on the desktop suggests. that rattle may be the text cursor refreshing.

That aside, Merry Christmas/Xmas/Atheist Kids Get Presents Day to all. The development of Christmas as a secular holiday is a strange but perhaps unavoidable phenomenon in our culture (brought about, paradoxically, through Christianity's dominance in the culture). It intrigues me, especially as the custom of gift-giving is now ingrained in our economic system as the make-or-break event for retailers.

Our economy is dependent upon the widespread acceptance of a tradition once tied to a religious celebration, which was itself positioned to compete with older religious ceremonies. I think there's a kind of hilarious beauty to the course of history sometimes.

Side note: scroll bars sound sqeaky.

I don't mean to belittle religion or the giving of gifts: I myself am now undertaking to read all the sci-fi novels I got today. First up: Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land, is engrossing so far. Other gifts: Leather jacket, baked goods, socks, sweaters, cash.

And Naps!
Saw (possibly a rerun) Bill Clinton on the Daily Show Monday. A digression in the conversation about what's changed about Congress in recent decades. In a phrase: sleep deprivation. With the ability to commute by plane, and the need to be constantly fund-raising, very few people on Capitol Hill are getting a decent night's sleep and getting re-elected. Therefore our congresspeople are more irritable and thinking less clearly.

Makes as much sense as anything else.

Fortunately, all is not lost, as a watching of Escape from New York demonstates. Things could be worse. We still have New York. And we haven't elected any bald presidents. Now, I haven't seen Escape from LA recently, but it's hard for me to imagine how that can be the "sillier" of the two movies.

Thoughts on a recent issue of Newsweek (I am not up to date. There have been finals): That Mike Huckabee sure is charismatic; too bad he doesn't believe in science.

Rhythmic Surrealist Purgatory
I was writing a song today, and I realized I had two parallel phrases, any two words of which could be exchanged across phrases. Observe:

"Through a haze of darkest morning, in a blaze of deepest white"

Blaze/haze and deepest/darkest are completely interchangeable for the most part, meaning the phrases are completely rearrangeable except for the rhyme scheme. This is probably a sign that I should shoot for more meaningful phrases, although I think the configuration above is the most "sensible".

So yeah, this phenomenon is now to be called "Rhythmic Surrealist Purgatory."

I will probably keep the line though.

I am unexpectedly cheerful at the moment. I had my own song stuck in my head for while. It was glorious. It's also absurdly simple to play, and gives the impression that I can sing (This is much safer to say than "I can sing," which is not something I have ever really confirmed).

So maybe I'll ba able to record that. I don't actually know whether this cheap computer mic will work for vocals, though it picks up the guitar decently enough (Can't do both at once unless I learn to sing a lot louder while staying in key).

Probably finish some poems over the break, too. I should really look into getting published.

I've spent the past few days working through the collected archives of American Elf, a diary comic by rock star/cartoonist James Kochalka. It's chock full of whimsy, and kind of adorable in a way I don't normally expect to appreciate (Cute is not typically my bag). This is a good one.

And you take to wing
And you take to stranger things
[wanders off humming]

Festive or Something
21st birthdays, a sacred rite of passage. And also they make things convenient. Also a convenient reason to party for a week. This is good because what with classes being over and the population being sparse, there's not much to do but celebrate Megan's 21st. Good times.
That and write and draw a little.

This is a notebook sketch/abstract thingy I did a while back. Trying to see if I can pretty it up with some image software and the like.

-On an entirely different note, I occasionally worry that I can play odd games with my state of happiness. I suspect I'm far more interesting when I'm discontent, and this takes energy to cultivate. Being at the top of my game is tiring on several levels. I'm still hashing plenty of things out, I guess.

"Black Excited to Return to Projects"
The above is still the best/worst headline the Maroon has ever published, about a Professor (Robert Black, I believe) leaving some post and pursuing independent projects. I am not sure whether they considered the alternative reading of that headline.

Anyway, as winter sets in, with its ice storms and such, I've been trying to start my own projects, such as webmastery, telature, and birdkeeping.

-The bird is a dove by the name of Erik Emanuel the Orange (aka Erik, aka Birdman, aka "a little communist"). He is mine for break by way of my roommate Rob's girlfriend Lindsey. He is surprisingly entertaining, and today has displayed an enthusiasm for full-throated cooing. He almost sounds like an owl.

-Also in my living room is Falcon, the name given to the computer I got for free from the library in June. It is basically my Dell desktop minus a graphics card and a hard drive. Fortunately,we had a spare hard drive lying around in Lurch, the Shady Dealer's old webserver. However, Falcon seems to disagree with Lurch's hard drive, and may be expected, whenever something must be loaded from disk, to flail wildly for a second, bewildered by the existence of its own hard drive, before loading the data.

-Falcon is running Kubuntu Linux 7.04 (aka "Feisty Fawn". The latest version is "Gutsy Gibbon", with "Hardy Heron" on the way... Programmers, they're quirky. ). Goddamn this OS is secure in ways I'm not used to dealing with, such as requiring a password for commands that might bone your system. Which is reasonable and all, but mildly inconvenient. Despite this, it is now equipped with Apache (webserver), MySQL (database), and PHP (server-side scripting language). After some more effort, all these things became aware of each other and play nicely. So now Falcon is hosting my in-progress update of the Max Palevsky Scav page... but only for my local network, since letting in the internet at large is going to take more finagling.

-I am maybe also designing the Shady Dealer's new site if I have enough time.

-I've been recording random things on guitar and trying to figure out what to do with them. Chord progressions in need of lyrics, mostly. I also have a version of "Man of Constant Sorrow" that mostly works, even though I'll need to rerecord the vocals. And I did it with a chord arrangement that I haven't seen before.

-People have been telling me I need to be more aggressive and confident so here: "Dammit you motherfuckers, I'm pretty goddamn awesome!"

-End of Quarter Score for my workplace: MacLab 30, Professionalism 4. As recorded by "MacLab vs. Professionalism: The remote server program". Yes, I wrote a program to keep track of an arbitrary measure of the ridiculousness of my workplace.

Thoughts
-Some stories I can either seize a room for 15 minutes or I can't tell at all. "Naked in the Bronx" is the best example. It gets epic. When that's done, the other 2 stories of my odyssey on the Eastern seaboard are on the table, but it's really only worth telling one at a time.

-I've been thinking lately a bit about philosophy, mostly ethical justifications. It turns out I have:

1) A list of things I won't apologize for. Currently, this amounts to "things that are funny, things that are true, and things done for the best of reasons" ... but this is not particularly well-defined or explained

2) A list of things I am helpless in the face of. This is poorly enumerated indeed, though examples surface from time to time. By "helpless in the face of" I mean things that one cannot respond to in any way but the way in which one does. Things that only have one proper response, regardless of what common-sense or utility dictate.

I wonder whether these are useful in general.The best maxim I can discern from mine so far is this:
"All's fair in love that's true."
I am significantly more skeptical of war.

-Great achievements in marketing (Concept Joe's, product and slogan Marty's): Scrote Spice, "I wanna dip my balls in it!" ... yeah, maybe you had to be there.

-Have you ever considered the obscene implications of the term "three-hole puncher"? This happens when you work around office supplies long enough.

Being a Hopeless Romantic is Exhausting
Seriously. And I'm not even a very good one. In the interest of not causing horrendous and unproductive awkwardness, I have minimized my John Cusack Index this year (the JCI measures the number of boomboxes lifted above the shoulders, number of windows shouted at in the dead of night, and other such actions). Mostly I restrict myself to the odd inscrutable comment in the midst of otherwise normal conversations. And poetry, but that's pretty inscrutable too (or at least plausibly deniable).

And after all that, it takes a certain kind of stubbornness to choose a dumb love over a smarter apathy (I am fairly sure that at some point it becomes a choice). It keeps you up at night. Of course, a lot of things can. What I really worry about is the heat death of the universe... well, occasionally. My sense of perspective has a tendency to go briefly overboard before resetting to "When's lunch?".

Semi-relevant Mountain Goats lyric: too slow to catch them all, not too far gone to care.

More relevant Dire Straits lyric ("Romeo and Juliet"):
She says, "Hey it's Romeo, ya nearly gave me a heart attack./
He's underneath the window, she's singin' "Hey la, my boyfriend's back./
You shouldn't come around here, singin' up at people like that./
Anyway, whatcha gonna do about it?"

Astute observers will observe (that is what they do) that I'd written two songs about Romeo and Juliet before I knew and loved this one.

It's a hapax legomenon prefix phenomenon!
Occasionally I stay up too late and read the blogs of interesting people (also I have homework). Today I began debating whether or not I should ascribe to these things a word more lofty than blog, which in it's etymology implies something terse and non-fictional. Web-literature = Weberature? Being myself, I am concerned that the eymology here is flawed. "Telature" from the Latin tela for "web, weaving", although this I think could could refer to something else. Web literature is still literature, after all...

I've got it. Weblog = blog --> Webliterature = blit

Next question: the plural: "I've been reading the blit." vs. "I've been reading the blits."
Follow-up: the British plural: "I've been reading the blits about maths."

PS. Cursory web searching reveals "telature" appears to be an incredibly rare word for the art of weaving. Given it's scarcity, I'm going to start using whenever I feel the art of web design need to be treated with high pretension.

PPS. Hypothesis: Web design, as an artistic field, is most similar to architecture, in that human navigation of a space must be considered.

This Needs to Be Recorded in Abbreviated Form to Confuse Posterity

Sex Workers Union --> Sex Mines --> Poon Lung

Credit goes to Alex, many moons ago, but I was reminded forcefully by my use of "poon" in a game of Scrabble (actually, Scrabulous). Actually, I originally wrote that as "game of scrapple". The rules of this hypothetical game are best left as an exercise for the reader.

I've been writing code all day. Huzzah?

Write Something Every Tenday?
Let it never be said that I did not eventually fulfill at least one thing I promised. There's a Go! Team track linked in the previous post. Download, fools.

Maybe also to recommend soon: The Shout Out Louds. I went to their show at the Logan Square Auditorium last Friday, and bought Our Ill Wills, their second album.

Also, Blogger randomly advocated this blog, which fill me with glee, especially in light of The Shady Dealer's plan to restart the once-great tradition of the University of Chicago Mustache Race. It was abondoned sometime in the 30's.

Thought for the day: In my Networks class, we need to write a reliable network communication protocol (like TCP). In order to make sure we are providing reliability properly, and because wired ethernet is reliable under any sane circumstance, our professor has provided a layer of deliberately unreliable code. "Now providing unreliability!" I'm writing a poem about it. Srsly.

Stuff and Nonsense.
Hi everybody, remember me? It's been a wacky two months. Some thoughts:

-So I'm giving You Could Have It So Much Better a better listen than I usually do, and it strikes me as an odd mixture. Byrds meet Doors meet eurotrash. And some other more recent influences. I'm very sketchy on those.

-The CTA is scheduled to get worse in less than a month, which is especially disconcerting due to my needing 2.5 hours to reach the Double Door on Saturday, only some of which was my fault.

-I feel strongly that should our society collapse in the foreseeable future, marketing will be heavily involved. Approaching, for example, politics from a perspective of selling product results in an orchestrated effort to deny useful information to the electorate. Which is perhaps problematic. Maybe I'll expand on this sometime.

-Speaking of the Double Door on Saturday, the Go! Team put on a characteristically fantastic performance. They are still best described as "the soundtrack to the happiest day of your life." Lots of new songs, which were all excellent. We saw Ninja coming out of the bathroom. For the 99% of UChicago that hasn't heard of this band: [We Just Won't Be Defeated]

-Sometime I'll write up my September trip to New York and Washington, especially the now infamous "naked in the Bronx" incident. And the only slightly less colorful "escape from Long Island" episode. And the reason I owe the Virginia State Police a favor

-There's also some poems I should put up / finish writing. I'm toying with the idea of a book of "Science Fiction Poetry" as an approach. I think it's an untapped genre. Artificial intelligence stuff like "Branch Prediction" would fit in. Also I keep trying to write songs about post-apocalyptic wastelands.

-Taking Computer Science classes here is somewhat akin to taking a Spanish class where all the lectures are about linguistics, but which still requires weekly papers in Spanish. Which is to say the programming side of things is not very often taught to us, per se, so much as the theory we're expected to implement. Or, as roommate Rob says, "Do you know C?" *Tosses C manual at you* "You now know C."

-Thanks to the requirements of my Computational Linguistics class, I now know Perl. It is casually psychotic, in a functional way.

I'd just like to point out to everyone how brilliant I am.

Way back on April 1st, I wrote on this very blog that the Cubs would win 86 games this season.

As it turns, out they only won 85, but since they made it to the playoffs, I'll count my prediction as a success.

Hurray for October baseball!

Iggy Pop: Hideous troglodyte, Man of the People.

Casey: "I touched Iggy Pop and both Ashetons!" [actually an Asheton and a Watt].

More on Lolla soon.

Sri Lanka.

If nothing else, the ads are going to bea source of constant amusement for me, as I have lately seen one advertising rental cars in Sri Lanka. No doubt this is Alex's fault, but I am only worsening the problem by mentioning Sri Lanka again. Sri Lanka! Sri Lanka!

Er, anyway... I forgot to mention Steven Malkmus in my Pitchfork recap, which was foolish, becuase I really enjoyed his set. Dude can play the guitar, and puts that to good use. I may have to look into getting some Pavement and such.

And as I mentioned, there was a free Decemberists concert in Millenium Park. I went with some UChicago folks and, not surprisingly, ran into more of them during and after the show, including Casey, who ventured up from FermiLab. They played with the Grant Park Orchestra, which put an interesting twist on some of the songs, though they seemed to have a little trouble staying completely in sync at times. Stuff like "The Infanta" gets a nice kick from having an orchestra behind it though. They played a decent mix, mostly stuff from Picaresque and The Crane Wife though.

During the main show, there was an unfortunately high contingent of family picnickers in the lawn area where we were sitting/standing. They were moderately distracting, as the show was a little on the quiet side, but I wasn't about to try shushing a thousand people. They left for the encore, and the more enthusiatic part of the crowd surged forward appropriately, including several breaks through the temporary fence separating the lawn from the seating area.

Colin Meloy opened the encore by singing the first verse of The Smiths' "Ask" a capella (up to "Ask me I won't say no. How could I?"); I was geeked, but not as much as if they had proceeded to cover the song fully. But it was still a solid encore, concluding with the ever entertaining prodcution of "A Mariner's Revenge Song". We were all swallowed by a whale again.

And then it rained. A lot. About five minutes after the concert. Fortunately, conglomerated set of 8 or so people we were by then managed to take shelter in a Chipotle (where most people got food) and a Subway (where I got food, and everyone else had to sit because there was no room in the Chipotle). We managed to get fairly soaked just traveling the 40 feet between the two nonetheless. Good times.

So then I got bored and signed up for Google AdSense. There's one way down at the bottom of the sidebar. So far it seems to think we talk about writing and baseball a lot... Touche, Google, touche. I'm also throwing them onto the ScavHunt website I'm working on, as that has a more legitimate fund-raising purpose. Of course, that page isn't visible from outside my apartment right now, so it's not going to garner a lot of views aside from me reloading every time I change the code.

Making my computer behave like a webserver was itself somewhat tedious, as it required three programs to be installed, working, and sufficiently aware of each other. Nonetheless, I am now WAMPed up (Windows-Apache-MySQL-PHP). I got an old computer free from the library a while back that I intend to use as a real server... once it has a hard drive.

You know what's more interesting than that: PITCHFORK. The fest, not the website, but they're alright too, what with the sponsoring and all. There were bands aplenty, and it was damn good to see people again, even if I couldn't go to Marty's 21st (lousy bars, with their rules and restrictions). I managed to make all three days after scoring a cheap ticket to Friday on E-Bay. Some highlights:

Friday:
-Sonic Youth: I was basically unfamiliar with all of Friday's acts except by reputation. Now I need to get Daydream Nation. Such wonderful, glorious use and misuse of guitars. On that note:

-"Hey bud, chill out, Youth is playing!" - the dude next to me misidentifying a short-haired girl sitting in a chair next to the sound booth (a volunteer, I think), while everyone else was standing. Lead up: "Hey, what's wring with that guy? Doesn't he know Youth is coming up?" ... Follow through: "Hey, that guy you called 'bud' is actually a really hot chick!" He offered to let me punch him in the face if he was being too much of a jackass.

Saturday:
-Came in during Califone, who sounded pretty good from mostly afar.

-Did the side stage thing for Fujiya & Miyagi and Professor Murder, which turned out well. Professor Murder especially. Energetic as all hell, if hell were a dance party.

-Yoko Ono turns out to be not my thing. But at least I got a ton of keychain lights. i ii iii, as they say. She has very good stage presence, so I think I was more entertained by the between-songs... and that wacky intro video about spreading love. "Don't Worry Kyoko" was kind of catchy actually, but in the end I just couldn't take the wailing and left early. This would not stop me from using the phrase "Oh, Yoko" repeatedly.

Sunday (Sunday Sunday):
-Deerhunter: Strange. Noisy. Lots of fun. Have an absurdly gangly front man who wore a glove with tiny figurines attached to it on strings. They mostly didn't do lyrics, at least, not intelligibly, but a lot of heavily processed looping of sighs and moans and things. Nonetheless compelling.

-The "sit on the grass near the poster show" strategy saved everyone a lot of sunstroke, and was surprisingly good for hearing things. We did this through the Ponys ("garage rocking their way into our hearts"), Menomena (Menomen-meh. maybe if I were paying attention), and The Sea and Cake (sounded pretty good).

-Jamie Lidell had one song I really liked and gets points for wearing a strange hat made of foil streamers.

-Of Montreal may have outdone the Flaming Lips for the strangest things I have seen at a concert. I wasn't blown away by the songs they chose, but they have a hell of a stage act. Marinara, fed to a five-headed golden blob monster. Balloons full of glitter held on a 20-foot pole, popped by another 20 foot pole. Darth Vader. I'm really not sure what it all meant.

-The New Pornographers were my headliner. Though a bit understaffed, they were loud and played a bunch of songs I like well, and that's really all I ask. Also, I find their keyboardist/Neko's backup strangely attractive. But mostly it was just everything I needed to hear at the end of a festival. They rocked. Also, the interview in this article gets really funny.

-I stuck around for De La Soul and farewells. De La Soul were good, but mostly not my genre.

All in all, though, another excellent summer fest thingy. And then there was a free Decemberists concert, just like that.

RIP

The first closer I remember following.

It looks like there's going to be a band forming on the fencing team next year, including me (rhythm guitar, assuming we can find a lead guitarist). Judging from participants, it will veer wildly between hardcore metal and folk-rock. Proposed name: "The Sex Popes".

And also, there's more of that poetry business going on at the appropriate site. I recommend "Branch Prediction", because it's sort of about computer science, and they say write what you know, right? It actually turned out well, if the reaction of my poetry class is to be believed.

Recent events have transpired, boy howdy.

-A couple weeks ago, Zach conceived of going to a White Sox game. After a series of semi-productive calls to people at the U of C, I realized that other people were back, and called Alex, who had about 5 minutes to get to the train after I called him, but it worked. In the end, we acquired a group of 6 baseball enthusiasts to watch White Sox v. Devil Rays. Despite my earnest cries of “Go D-Rays!” and calling out every White Sox batting average under .240 (I believe there were seven of them), the Sox won 5-4. But at least I got a free hat, and Alex and I had a discussion of who the tooliest player in baseball is (A.J. Pierzynski).

-It should be noted that I do not automatically root against the Sox. I am compelled in all cases to root for the Devil Rays, as it is always the funniest option. Somehow they manage to field an incredibly talented team on a shoestring budget, supernaturally able to smash the Yankees, only to be brought down by the fact that their bullpen is, in fact, pulled from the crowd just before the game (we had Alex warming up for the 8th inning).

-And then it was pretty much all finals all the time for a while, except for the four consecutive parties just before finals week.

-The Shady Dealer-sponsored Harold’s Chicken Formal was entertaining. Formal wear and fried chicken, and 5 different kinds of Andre. Why? Because Zach bought the liquor store out of normal Andre first, and this party needed cheap champagne. Good times, good times and questionable decisions.

-Computer Science courses here need to come with the disclaimer of “You will need to teach yourself the following languages.” In the case of Intro to Databases, I had to learn php so I could make a website to access my database (the database part of things was well-explained, fortunately). Anybody need a web-accessible database implementation? Seriously, I have acquired mad skillz.

-After several attempts, Kate, Peter, Alex and I went out to celebrate Alex’s 21st birthday. This meant Indian food and not binge drinking, but it was nonetheless entertaining. Alex claims to have reached enlightenment. He’s also gotten into freestyle rapping. There is some debate as to whether this is drug-induced, or merely the result of deep meditation.

I should maybe try keeping this up-to-date over the summer, especially as I will be working at a a computer, surrounded by computers. I'm working at the computer lab of the University library, by the way.

Speaking of updates, there's another quarter of poetry I should probably put up soon.

I'd just like to voice my opinion and tell everyone that the dude Mikey in the Heineken mini-keg commercial is the biggest jerk ever. I feel so bad for the cat with the smoked gouda sandwich, that I'm officially boycotting the beer. And I can finally say that and have it mean something now that I'm 21.

What the hell.

So I realize that the whole cicada thing is at least marginally a big deal. That is, if you're a naturalist or bug fanatic. Once every 17 years, blah, blah, etc., etc. But if I see one more news story about people eating the damn things, I'm moving to some country where they eat bugs all the time and consuming them is not a newsworthy story. Because eating bugs is not a newsworthy story. I repeat: Eating bugs is NOT a newsworthy story. Unless you're on the elementary school playground. In fact, my 12 year-old sister's classmate ate one, but he's not in the paper, and for good reason. If eating cicadas floats your boat, then more power to you; feast while the feasting is good because your next chance won't role around until I'm almost 40. I'm just saying that we shouldn't be reporting on the matter.

It all started with the SunTimes, Chicago's very own piece of garbage posing as a legitimate news publication. The day after the cicadas emerged there was a story about a columnist eating one. Fine. There's bound to be at least one story on the subject, so it might as well be covered by the city's tabloid (appearing on page 3, no less).

But the onslaught doesn't end there. The Tribune devotes a large section to ways to cook cicadas. The brilliant conclusion? A cicada will taste like whatever you cook it in. Now that's what I call need-to-know information. Now there are reports of cicada eating contests, and cicada eating parties. The local paper in my neighborhood (The Berwyn Life--I'm calling these idiots out) devotes its entire front page to eating cicadas. Aside from being unoriginal, the article is NOT newsworthy.

Oh, and that 12 year-old sister of mine has another classmate whose mother was just paid $100 to eat a cicada. $100. And it was even breaded and fried. Hell, I'd do that for $50. Anyone want to put up the money? I'll even report about it right here.

Thank the cicada gods that this madness only comes around once every 17 years.


Just in case our fair readers are so inclined...
Courtesy of NPR:

El Chirper Tacos

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons butter or peanut oil

1/2 pound newly emerged cicadas

2 serrano chilies, raw, finely chopped

1 tomato, finely chopped

1 onion, finely chopped

1/2 tsp ground pepper or to taste

1/2 tsp cumin

3 tsp taco seasoning mix

1 handful cilantro, chopped

Taco shells, to serve

Sour cream

Shredded cheddar cheese

Shredded lettuce

Directions

1. Heat the butter or oil in a frying pan and fry the cicadas for 10 minuts, or until cooked through.

2. Remove from pan and roughly chop into 1/4-inch cubes/ Place back in pan.

3. Add the chopped onions, chilies and tomato, season with salt, and fry for another 5 minutes on medium-low heat.

4. Sprinkle with ground pepper, cumin and oregano to taste.

5. Serve in taco shells and garnish with cilantro, sour cream, lettuce and cheddar cheese.

Good grief.

Death In Baseball

At least he was living his dream. That is perhaps the only positive one can take away from Josh Hancock’s passing. He had just received his 2006 World Series ring—something that the large majority of players will never have, and he had found a home in St. Louis, succeeding there after being bounced from team to team during the early stages of his career. But 29 is awfully early to be checking out.

There is the old baseball adage: “Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes it rains.” Sometimes you die, too, but I suppose cliché writers try not to be overly morbid. Death, in this case, postponed the game between the Cubs and the Cardinals, melting any and all animosity between the division rivals—just as it did in 2002 when Cardinals pitcher Darryl Kile died. Who can forget how Cubs catcher and overall baseball spokesman Joe Girardi tearfully announced to the crowd at the Friendly Confines that the late-June match-up would not be played? The postponement of the game is the sport’s true moment of silence. But the rest of the baseball world must carry on, and the games are always rescheduled, never cancelled.

Why? Because baseball is perfect. It’s a notion that’s been purported since the game’s early years, and even ESPN has recently picked up on the idea for a new advertising campaign. The perfection of baseball goes beyond the seldom-seen, yet infinitely-legendary occurrence of a “perfect game” thrown by a pitcher. In fact, maybe it would be better if those rare gems were called “super-perfect” games, simply because every single game of baseball is perfect. There is never a time limit. There is never a tie. The game is played till someone wins. Rain can delay it. Death can postpone it. But nothing can stop it.

The tributes and memorials for a fallen player are always important. In fact, they seem essential. The Cardinals will wear Hancock’s number for the remainder of the season, just as they did with Kile’s. There will be countless articles written and memorial services held, and there will be no joy in Milwaukee tomorrow, when the Cardinals travel to face another division rival and prove that life and baseball go on, even in tragedy and sadness. But one may wonder why all this solemn remembrance is so essential. Certainly any tragic and sudden death deserves a memorial, but when there are thousands of these deaths every day, why do only our fallen batsmen seem to receive such special tributes, and only the active ones at that? When a retired player dies, there may be a long obituary written. If he was especially famous, a tribute film may be played before a game. But for those not enshrined in Cooperstown—for the bench players turned car salesmen—death only signals the final slip into obscurity. Active players, however, are still connected to the perfection of baseball, which is why their passing always seems so unreasonable.

When an active player dies, especially during the season, the grief is overwhelming. Josh Hancock and countless other before him made it to The Show. Perfection. Play one game and you are immortal, forever recorded in the record books. And in the fans’ collective mind, immortal means untouchable. As Josh Hancock stood on that dirt mound—surrounded by verdant fields and thousands of his best friends and worst enemies—as he gripped the ball with recently rosined hands, running his fingers over the seams and leaning in to read the sign, he was as close to divinity as humanly possible. And gods don’t die. Except when they do. In which case, it only seems right to take the day off.

Time to get April off on the right foot. I have three things to say:

"The Lives of Others" is a terrific movie.

"300" is a terrible movie.

The Chicago Cubs will win 86 games this season.

Remember, folks, you heard it here first. No foolin'.

March sure went by quick.
-Spring Break!
-Robocop!
-Unemployment!
-?!

Yeah. New quarter starting and whatnot. 3 computer science courses and a poetry workshop for me, thanks. Databases! Complexity Theory! Computer Architecture! Topics in Poetics! Which one of these is not like the other?

My life needed more roadtrips, so I'm going to a Swing dancing thingamajigger at Purdue with Kate this weekend. And March needed a blog entry before I left.

Speaking of trips, there's going to be a camping expedition up to Western Michigan over Memorial Day weekend with at least one carload of people from U of C. Anybody else interested? I am also looking at you, people who will already be out of school by then. There will be merriment, tents, a small lake, a great lake, dunes, fishing, fires, and who knows what else. So yeah.

According to some preliminary research, the going rate for being published in a poetry magazine is $6.00 a line... assuming they like it. Poetry does not a living make. However, I find this prose-poem about candy hearts highly entertaining.

My other money-making scheme is to become competent with a graphics program and make t-shirts for Threadless.com. I have a couple of good ideas that are waiting on the competence problem. Meanwhile, "You can't spell Progress without Ogres" is doing surprisingly well as a slogan possibility.

Big poetry site update. Feedback welcome. More on the way soon, I expect.

Also, I may or may not have blacked out for a period on Saturday, which is just a bit disturbing. I blame this on wearing the gold shirt. Seriously, no good has ever come of that thing, vastly entertaining though it may be. Also there may have been alcohol involved, and a profoundly weird emotional state. However, on the whole a fun evening, especially the part that I remember.

I have been putting pentasyllabic slant rhymes into a series of septets. Clearly, I have made it as a poet. I am putting this here so I'm not compelled to bring it up in conversation. Does it count as bragging if one's achievement is clearly esoteric and ridiculous?

I wish I could sleep and also that there was not so much meddlesome Bio homework.

This afternoon the world impressed me with it's playlist:
"No Children" - The Mountain Goats; coming from a laptop in the Reynold's Club
"Get Me Away from Here I'm Dying" - Belle & Sebastian; playing in the 2nd-Floor Coffee Shop
"The Waiting" - Tom Petty; in the food court of Hutch.
All in the span of 15 minutes or so. I was in the right places at the right times in a very small way today.

And speaking of fate, a restless/happy/unconcerned Valentine's to all, as you wish to take it. My poetry class is going to be a lecture on "Poems of Forsaken Love." I've just realized the irony of this, and I don't think any more need be said.

"Tinuviel! Tinuviel!" For those who appreciate fragments of romanticism expressed in Tolkien references.

A Poem:

Microsoft does not recognize the term "dystopia."
It suggests that I might want to replace it with "dustpan."
How about "distopia" with an "i"?
"Isotopic"? No, thank you.

Lack of blogging is indeed a severe problem of late. I have been up to stuff. And junk. Additionally, How 'bout them Bears? There was certainly an excessive amount of hooting and hollering on my part last Sunday. There may even have been some chest-bumping. Although it took about until the last five minutes for me to believe that they might actually pull it off. I will of course be cheering next Sunday with the traditional chant of "Don't Suck! *clap* *clap*", but hey, they weren't supposed to beat the Saints either. Go Bears!

And I appear to be going to a monster truck rally next Saturday... in Peoria. This was not my idea, but I'm the only one with access to a car who's willing to humor this little excursion, and it should be entertaining. Zach conceived this plan, and has recruited three more lunatics. One of them plans to go in drag. There is some expectation this will lead to a fight, or litigation. I, with my love of wandering into large, agitated crowds and attempting to make a scene, fear we may all be killed. But probably nothing will come of it...

Also, I have become addicted to the Dark Tower series by Stephen King, as it is basically a fantasy series featuring Clint Eastwood and much crazy plot-twistiness. I had forgotten just how much I like a good novel. And by "like", I mean " am willing to rip through as though the pages were laced with cocaine". Good stuff.

Must run off and feast on delicious grease products.

I'd just like to point out that the Bears really started to bring it as soon as it began snowing. Maybe Bears Weather isn't a myth after all.

I'm back at school now, which is a strange adjustment. Before I left I saw "Beauty and the Beast" at the Music Box. The old French flick was being shown as part of the Janus film series there. It's certainly a quality piece of cinema, but I started thinking as I was watching it: Sure, it's supposed to be a classic love story that shows the importance of finding the inner goodness in people, but couldn't it also be one of the first documented cases of Stockholm Syndrom? Think about it.

In conclusion, why don't they make books like this anymore?

The blog is languishing. Time to give it some pep.

It snowed today, which is a good thing because I was beginning to wonder whether global warming had driven away the white stuff for good.

And while it snowed, I was hard at work. The past couple days I have been cleaning out the rooms in my old Catholic grade school. The institution closed about two years ago--shut down most unjustly by the archdiocese--though some would say it was only a shell of its former self and that it was time for it to close. Debatable.

Either way, large school building and all its contents were left undisturbed this entire time. Now the parish has found someone to lease the building--a good thing, to be sure. The new leasers will be doing a whole heap of remodeling, which means it's finally time to haul out 60+ years of school-themed junk.

It's strange to haul out bags and bags of either your childhood mementos or someone else's. It's strange to walk the deserted halls you spent 9 years in, where everything still smells the same. On one hand, I would say I'm not the right person for this job, but then again, it's almost like the death of a relative. Who better to clean out the old building than myself? It's almost like a responsibility.

One rarely thinks too hard about dead schools, at least not about their innards. Of course, there are some things you expect to find, like hundreds of small desks:


great old vinyl-covered furniture:


or the remnants of a chess club:


Then there are the more odd items. Things locked away in cabinets for a couple decades. Things such as old educational film-strips with accompanying record:


abandoned girl-scout craft projects:


an old cigar box filled with monopoly money:


or an entire cabinet filled with glass laterns made from ashtrays:


All in all, a lot of memories come back to you, embedded in the hallways and classrooms. There was something eerie about walking into the old boys locker room and instantly remembering where everyone used to stand as we dressed for gym class.


There are melancholy images:


and cheerful ones:


In the end, however, everything has to go to the same place:


May it rest in peace.


Happy 2007, everyone.