I ain't tellin' you goodBYE-YI-EE-YI-EE-YI-EE

Ralph's is a bit of a strange place sometimes. Not only is it the home of America's Worst Parking Lot, it also has a couple of strange cats that come out at night. Case in point. I went today to get myself one of them Ralph's salads I like so much for dinner. Though I was disappointed that they didn't have those really tasty high-moisture mozzerella balls like they have sometimes, I put together a decent effort. (Although I mistakenly purchased this horrendous drink thinking it was some sort of fruit tea or something. It was called "Sensa", and labelled as "Orange Mango". 'Brilliant," I thought, before I took a drink and a closer look at the label, as a result of which I became aware of two facts: what I was drinking tasted like serious ass, and I was also drinking Diet Orange Mango Sensa, and that Sensa is labelled as an "energy drink". Ugh.) I then decided just to snag one of the outdoor tables outside of Starbucks and each my dinner.

The first incident happened when I was just about to sit down. This guy comes walking down the sidewalk just, well, how to describe it - I guess the best thing to say is just to say that he was "rapping". That's right. Just rapping to himself. No beat. No voicebox. No, you know, whatever, mouth beat noises. Just rapping. He seemed to be attempting to solicit some acknowledgement from the crowd at Starbucks, as if we were going to stop and nod along to the non-beat, or somehow spontaneously burst into applause, or wave our hands in the air like we just didn't care. When that wasn't forthcoming (nor was some sort of fantasy rap-challenger, which would also probably have suited him just fine), he went on his merry way, rapping all the while. I can't remember what he was rapping about, something about "put me in the arena". Good luck to you, miscellaneous rapper.

So I'm midway through my salad now when a guy dressed in a tight-fitting dark blue exercise suit, yellow running shoes, and a skullcap sits down noisily right next to me, puts his feet on the chair next to him, pulls out a copy of "Ski" magazine, and lights up a stogie. Big, fat one, too. And he was unapologetic. Some people were looking at him, as if to say, "where do you get off lighting a gigantic cigar in a reasonably dense crowd, right outside the door of the Starbucks?" I was one of them. But he was undeterred. Gleefuly, he held that thing between his teeth as he perused the magazine. The cigar seemed out of congruous with the outfit and mag, to me, but you never know. Maybe this is his only vice. Although, by the looks of him, I can guess probably three or four more, some of which might involve underage girls.

Finally, as I'm about done, and trying to avoid the chemicals spouting from Ski-man, I notice a reasonably elderly woman double over as she's walking along. I look concerned, but then she seems to regain composure and said something, laughing, like: "Damn! I guess I haven't had enough to eat today! I better go get ... (trails off)". That was perhaps the wierdest encounter of them all, given that I felt an intense urge to help/pity, followed by an intense urge to commit to some sort of asylum. Perhaps those are not contradictory emotions.

And right above her kidney was a bird's-eye view of Sydney.

Oklahoma City.

Land of Cowboys, The Cowboys (apparently), The Flaming Lips, and endless stretches of unused land.

And my grandfather, which is why I spent the last four days there.

It was a decent-ish trip; I got to see some relatives that I haven't seen in a long time - mostly my Mom's sisters and their families. I don't see family all that much, so it was fun, generally speaking, until one of my aunt's (she's a little on the oblivious side) put in a CD of old music they used to listen to, and before you could say: "I will have the 20-ounce steak!" everybody was crying. Including my grandfather, which is a pretty sad sight, if it's the first time you've ever seen it.

The best part of the actual visit was getting to hang out with my PowerMac bearing uncle, and swapping music back and forth on peer-to-peer networks. It was great. He gave me Tom Waits' classic records ("Heart of Saturday Night" and "Mule Variations"), and "Speaking in Tongues" by the Talking Heads!! "Speaking in Tongues"!! I've been looking for that for a long time, and have just been slightly unwilling to shell out the $12.99 for it. But now I gots it fer free!! I also got another Dire Straits record, and The Best of the Blues Brothers, a record I used to listen to a lot my first year in college. Lots of cool pep band songs on that record.

The most interesting thing that happened is that my mom got a little sick - apparently it was a reaction to a flu shot. So she decided that, though I had a plane ticket for Saturday, she was going to leave on Friday to go to the doctor back home. Reasonable enough. But that left me with a slight conundrum: what to do after she left? The rest of the family was going home, and my flight on Saturday was early enough that I didn't want my 80-year-old grandfather to have to get up and take me. So after doing a goodly amount of cursing at the American Airlines people for not being able to switch a flight, I booked a hotel for Friday night, and checked in at around 3:15 or so Friday afternoon. The plan was to get work done, but my brain was having none of it. I was ostensibly staying at a Ramada Inn, but this was crappier than any Ramada at which I've ever stayed. My room was freezing when I went in, and, after checking the HBO lineup for the night, decided that I would have to seek alternative means of entertainment.

But, as luck would have it, there appeared to be a mall just about 200 yards from the back of the Hotel. Reasoning that malls generally speaking have some sort of bookshop, I thought I might buy myself a tawdry mystery or thriller or something like that to pass the time. Now, there's definitely a phenomenon in multi-mall towns. This was definitely the bad mall. This is Bannister Mall in Kansas City. Mountaineer Mall in Morgantown. The place where you go, well, never, really, unless there's some clear and present reason. And I think my boredom counted as clear and present. I mean, this mall, wow. There were at least two storefronts (whole stores) that were JUST to get out of debt - you know, consolidate credit cards, and that sort of thing. One was specializing in auto loans, so it had a miniture racetrack drawn on the linoleum floor.

Waldenbooks they had. And, frankly, it was a pretty decent Waldenbooks. However, they appear, at that Waldenbooks, to be Robert Jordan crazy. I mean, nutty. Robert Jordan was everywhere. You've never lived until you've heard someone with a North Texas/Oklahoma drawl tell someone else with a similar drawl: "I'm lookin' fer book 12 in the Wheel of Time series. Is it out yeat?" Ugh. It was quite an eye-opener. Anyway, I found a tawdry thriller and decided to walk back to the Hotel. As I did, however, I noticed a restaurant in the mall, a Burger joint by the looks of it that had a sign out front. But before I tell you what the sign says, I have to go on a brief digression.

BEGIN BRIEF DIGRESSION

People in Oklahoma City are fat. They're fat. I don't say that to smear them. They probably like it that way. But I saw more obese people in OKC in four days that I've seen in the past six months living out in California. I don't know what it is - the Cowboy Culture, or some other such thing, that tells them they need to chow down on steak deep fried in Chocolate Sauce every meal of their lives. Perhaps I exaggerate. But there were some serious fat people. And a lot of them. The only group of adults that I saw together that was generally slim was in the security line for the airport waiting to leave the city.

END BRIEF DIGRESSION

The sign, which might help to explain the content of the digression, said the following: "Every Day! All You Can Eat Burgers and Fries! All day long! $5.00! (With purchase of large drink)".

FIVE DOLLARS FOR UNSTOPPABLE BURGERS FOR AN ENTIRE DAY???? AND FRIES!! WOW! No wonder people in OKC are tubs. They sit in places like Wiggee's Burgers and don't stop eating until the place closes. For five stinkin' bucks. With, of course, the purchase of a large drink. Because after having eaten an entire side of beef, one has to have something to wash it down with.

Well, that was my weekend. Family and lard. I tried to have soup most of the time, but I do confess to failing at least once.

I don't believe in Peter Pan, Frankenstein, or Superman.

It's been something of a few days, what what? A decent couple of days at that. On Thursday I left school at around 7-ish, had an extremely pleasing Chipotle dinner (although, I have to say, the meat was quite watery - the tacos lost their pleasant crisp and the inherent danger of breakage - a little bit of living on the edge, if you catch my meaning), and spent a while at Tower Records. I had recently gotten in the mail a "Get $10 off a purchase of $50 or more" coupon, and decided to make use of it. Basically everything they wanted was on sale, so I got a bunch of CDs and the new special edition version of "Depeche Mode 101" on DVD for fifty bucks all told. Pretty sweet. Did anyone know Sting does all the backing vocals on "Money for Nothing" by Dire Straits?

I couldn't get to sleep that night, quite a rare problem for me, so I ended up staying up until, like 4am. Quite a harrowing experience, especially since I had to get up at seven the next day for some meetings on campus. And then, after I expected to be extremely tired, I couldn't get to sleep again, so I ended up going to the Live Wire with a bunch of the regulars. I happened to run into a particularly controversial ex-barista who used to work at the pub on campus. Hated by some, but she was always nice to me. One of the members of our party wanted to fight her. I think I helped keep the peace. After last call, I still wasn't tired, so ended up staying up WAY LATE again. This can't become a habit, or I'm going to ruin my education.

Yesterday, however, I regained control. Went in to work, and I think I came up with a reasonably good argument (or set of arguments) for one of the central points in my thesis. Before it was (roughly): Isn't this obvious - and - John Stuart Mill said this! Now it's: Screw John Stuart Mill - and - Isn't this obvious? Which, I think, is much better. Don't you? Saturday night brought me, once again, to the bowling alley for some karaoke. This time it was a special occasion. Money Changes Everything's birthday happened to fall yesterday, and I had agreed, on my birthday, to let her pick out some tune for me to perform. Well, knowing, as I did, that the bowling alley got pretty crowded on a Saturday, I knew I was going to have to get my songs in quick to have a chance of doing them before the night ran out. Nevertheless, MCE and the crew were running late. What to do, what to do. Eventually I remembered her preferences (I thought), and wrote them down. All worked out (I think). I rattled off "Killer Queen" and "Kiss" - though my voice wasn't in any kind of shape for either one of them. I remember I tried to actually do some dancing during the extended dance section of "Kiss", only to wear myself out completely for the finale. Live and learn, I suppose.

Today the momentous actually happened - I finally beat Mega Man. The last bit was really hard, where you have to battle four of the master robots before finally meeting Dr. Wily - without any powerups. Whew! Took me awhile, but I eventually got the pattern for Fireman down, which helped quite a bit. Dr. Wily was actually reasonably easy, I thought.

Early bed tonight. Sleeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

I don't believe Winston Churchill would have eaten at Der Wienerschnitzel!

This sounds a little disrespectful; but maybe it's just me.

I was talkin' to Peachy Peach about Kissy Kiss.

I can't keep the secret anymore. I've tried to hide it now for months. I tried to tell, you know, certain people about it, but everytime I never really had the guts to come right out and say it. I don't know if it's really been a secret or not. I guess it has. Or maybe not, I never know what people say. Anyway, here it is.

I think my apartment is a drug addict.

All the signs have been there. All the signals. The hacking cough in the middle of the night. The money lent, never paid back. The strung-out looks. But I put this off to all the rich food and vitamins, until yesterday. I was doing a pretty big birthday-dinner related load of dishes, with the rather large accompanying load of disposal detritus. Now, my garbage disposal has never been the most reliable of things. I always sort of felt like, when that thing was going, it was quite possible that some sharp metal blade was going to fly up and plug itself into my brain. It felt, well, a little unstable. Anyway, I turned on the thing, and it took care of business, for the most part, so I figured, why make waves?

So it comes time to do this particular load when it all of a sudden freezes up. Stops short. Hums.

I try to turn it on. No go. Turn it off, on again. No go. I even bend down on my hands and knees, open the cupboard and push the "reset" button. No go. Finally, I call my landlord, and he sends over the maintenance guy. A couple of hours later, said guy comes over and tries a couple of things. No go. Said guy, who is more intrepid and much braver than I, reaches down into the disposal, and roots around a bit. And what does he pull out?

A spoon.

A slightly bent, metal spoon.

A slightly bent, blackened, metal spoon.

A slightly bent, blackened, metal drug spoon.

Said guy says: "Looks like a drug spoon."

What am I to conclude? Looks like there was a drug spoon shoved into my garbage disposal this whole time. I never noticed. Oh, like I say, I should have known. The signs were there. But the only choice I have is to believe that my apartment is, in fact, a secret heroin addict, stealing my used diabetic syringes and using this hidden spoon as it's burner. Why, apartment, why? Was I a bad tenant? Did you learn it by watching me? (Well, not me per se, but you know, me in the sense of tenants generally?)

In other news, my doctor's appointment went fine. I am, apparently, in tip-top shape for a diabetic. According to my doctor, I look "lean". All is well, except that she discovered a heretofore unknown to me congenital birth defect. More on that never.

The book is not readable because of the overuse of adverbs.

This is a funny post. People's comments on Amazon that rated the 100 best books 1 star. The above quoted review I strongly sympathize with, actually.

Oh, and another thing.

For some stupid reason, when I came home drunk from the bar on Thursday, I decided to change my profile photo to a pretty sweet picture of Lou Rawls. I don't know why I did this. But I'm liking it more and more now.

I remember you, you drive like a PTA mother.

Post Birthday de-briefing.

Nothing major happened. In the sense that nothing tragic happened - yet, at least. I forgot to include in my last post the really awful thing about my 26th birthday, namely that my car was stolen. Right out of the parking lot. That set in motion a long line of events that included a drive by myself from Kansas City to San Diego with a relatively new Honda Accord. But that's a story for another time.

There was a goodly crowd at Lancer's. I remember, vaguely, that I couldn't play any pool to save my life. There was a particularly tragic incident where I was shooting at the 8-ball behind an opponent's 9-ball, and the only shot I could concievably pull off to avoid a scratch was incredibly difficult. I scratched. But I played some Dinosaur Jr. on the jukebox (I forgot how cool that band was), and some Louis Prima, as usual. People kept feeding me bourbon and Amstel Light, and I got a little tipsy, but not too drunk. I decided toward the end of the night that in order not to feel like the weight of the world was on my shoulders the following morning, I should start protesting people buying me drinks, which always brings a frown to my face, but it had to be done.

Dale-time was also nice. I bought a nice copy of R. M. Hare's "Moral Thinking" at a used book shoppe in La Jolla. There were a couple of other nice volumes there, but they charge market price, so I could only afford the Hare. (Brief aside: why are books in philosophy so expensive? I mean, those things are expensive. When I see a trade paperback for less than $20, I'm thinking: "wow! Why is this so cheap?" I think philosophers and philosophy graduate students in particular ought to boycott or something, until the books are brought down in price by the academic publishers. It won't work, but here's to fruitless efforts.) I then sauntered over to Tower Records and bought a couple of DVDs (Dr. Strangelove and the new Criterion edition of Wages of Fear), and Surfer Rosa by the Pixies. The latter really confused me the first time I listened to it, but then I started to realize what they were up to. There's nothing quite so rockin' as "Debaser" or anything else on Doolittle, for that matter, but that's ok. I was also desperately trying to find a copy of "Cracker" by Cracker, but my efforts were without reward, except that my travels brought me to Borders, where I found that Cambridge University Press is now also trying to cash in on the "On Bullshit" phenomenon - they're marketing copies of Harry Frankfurt's "The Importance of What We Care About", which contains the original essay, with the big marketing logo: "Contains the Best-Selling Essay 'On Bullshit'" on the cover. And they're also charging $20 less than the original (the original was $32.99 at Borders, the new one was $12.99). That seals it. If CUP can charge $20 less for a philosophy book, why can't they do that for all of them? I mean, I suppose they expect this to sell (do they really?) but that big a discount signals that they can afford to charge less for their academic works.

Yesterday was also nice. I went antique shopping in the mid-morning, and bought a nice old postcard of Westminster Abbey done in oil. Then it was off to the grocery store to get the ingredients for a fantastic Veteran's Day dinner. I bought a bunch of potatoes, a bottle of wine, misc. peppers and herbs, and four lamb shanks. I ended up making Herb-Crusted Lamb Shanks with Potatoes Lyonnaise and Haricot Vert with sliced almonds and red pepper. Pretty sweet. It took about two hours to cook, but it was worth it. Way too much food for me, but it'll serve nicely for the rest of the week. I also watched Dr. Strangelove and The Limey. Good stuff.

Back to grading today. The fun never stops. Except for now.

I'm feelin' thankful for the small things today.

It's that time of year again.

I look forward to it with gleeful anticipation, only to be defeated in every expectation year after year. But like a defender of democracy standing up to Ivan Drago, I keep on tickin' baby. It never deters me from excitement the next year. It's my birthday, and I love it.

Of course, I'm turning one year older than I turned last year. But I still haven't yet reached that all-special milestone. The one that signals the change from "wow, he's still a young kid" to "why isn't he married and why doesn't he have children?" But I'm closing in on the milestone. One year at a time.

My last really really fun birthday was my 19th. Friends at college threw me a suprise kinda' thing. And, remarkably, it was a genuine surprise. We listened to a little bit of Bootsy Collins' New Rubber Band's "Blasters of the Universe", and a good time was had by all. That was freshman year. The remaining years were pretty much nondescript. My birthday fell on odd days. Insofar as I remember them.

After college things took a turn for the worse. In Boston, my 23rd - Kyra declares that she doesn't want to stay together after I've completed my Master's. My 24th - a broke friend from high school comes into town and goes to the bathroom during the check for dinner - over a hundred bucks. My 25th - Kyra abandons my plans to go out to dinner to go drink cheap beer without me at, I'm not shitting you, the local VFW post. My 26th - my parents complete their divorce. My 27th - after an extremely cheap dinner of Indian food, Kyra informs me that she's thinking seriously about divorcing.

That's pretty much the roundup. My 28th was pleasant, but nothing special. Squash soup and the West Wing.

Dammit, this year's gonna be cool. I'm skipping class, going used book and record shopping, and then having a few drinks with friends down at Lancer's. I'm going to have a nice lunch and have some Dale time. Would that Karaoke was involved, but alas, that's the problem with having a Birthday on a Thursday.

The beauty part is, of course, that Friday is a university holiday. Sleepin' in. And steppin' out.

A list of achievements.

I think that once I finish this dissertation, that will be an accomplishment. I feel like I've accomplished one or two things in my life. I had a few papers published. I won a couple of trombone-playing awards. I was third in the state of West Virginia at the parallel bars when I was in second grade.

So why do I feel like my greatest achievements are beating video games?

The first day I beat Castlevania II, I felt like I just scaled Mt. Everest. Or K2. Or whichever one they talk about being the hardest one to climb. I called everybody I knew. Some of them long distance. Most of the conversations went like this:

D
I just won Castlevania II!!

Friend
Oh. That's cool...I did that, like, three months ago.

Ugh. It was a little disheartening. As I don't win video games all that often, it's a big thing to me. Which is why, I think, I've been neglecting work quite a bit these days in favor of playing MegaMan I on my Nestopia emulator. So far, I've beaten Cutman, Fireman (or Burnman, I can't remember his name), Elecman, and Bombman. The tough ones are Iceman and Gutsman, and I have no clue how to do either. Both of them involve some serious precision jumping, at which I've never been all that good. But stay tuned, people. If I beat this thing, it's making headlines.

It fills me with the hope to wish impossible things.

Q: How does one get completely shitfaced on two beers?

That was me last night. To quote Harry Carey, holy freakin' cow.

It started off with, of all personages, David Lynch. You know, the Blue Velvet guy. The Twin Peaks guy. He was giving a lecture at UCSD, so I decided to attend. Little did I know, however, that this lecture was little more than a way to shill for his new, ahem, philanthropic foundation: The David Lynch Center for Global Consciousness Education and World Peace. No shit. I am not making this up. The dude apparently is so far into transcendental meditation, that he has set up some kind of society for it, doling out cash to poor schools in order to get kids to meditate a couple of times a day. He had a couple of "scientists" along for the ride, apparently claiming that this meditation stuff wasn't just a bunch of hocum (which it obviously was, more on that later). Anyway, there were two faculty members, one from cognitive neuroscience, the other from physics, of the Maharshi University of Management. I am not making this up either. I don't know where the Maharshi University of Management is, or what it is, but, lemme tell ya', I'm pretty sure it ain't Johns Hopkins. In addition to which, the physicist also had listed on his little mini-bio that he was the, and I'm not kidding about this either, "Minister of Science and Technology for the Global Country of World Peace."

Let me say that again.

The Minister of Science and Technology for the Global Country of World Peace.

That's right. A country. A Global country. A Global Country of World Peace.

Talk about a bullshit, pretentious title. Here's what's going on my CV from now on: "Prime Minister and Defender of the Faith for the Global Country of Rock and Roll Will Never Die."

As long as I'm at it, I'm going to add this website to the Crackpot List.

Anyway, as soon as I see all this stuff on the program, I start thinking: this sucks. It's going to be a serious bunch of crap. But I was initially heartened because basically David Lynch came out and said: "I have no prepared speech. I'll just take questions for an hour or so." And he did. But somehow he found a way to turn the answer to every question back into the search for expanded consciousness through transcendental meditation. Although he did say that he still hates Dune. I got up in line to ask a question at one point. My question was going to be something like: "They say that you get ten directors to direct the same script and you'll end up with ten completely different movies. I'm imagining, say, a director like Hitchcock doing Mulholland Drive - it would be tightly plotted, etc., still a nice work of art, but different. What leads you to do movies your way, by emphasizing abstraction and slight-of-hand?" The subtext of which was: "WHY CAN'T YOU MAKE MOVIES I CAN UNDERSTAND?" Although I had to get out of line when the guy two questions ahead of me asked: "WHY CAN'T YOU MAKE MOVIES I CAN UNDERSTAND?" Took away my slightly more politically informed thunder.

A: By not eating anything all day.

So with all this DL business, I forgot to eat dinner. Which caused me to get a little too drunk at the afterparty. I do remember playing a pretty sweet practical joke on The Turtle, though, which was basically the highlight of the evening. I remember talking loudly to strangers. And basically everything else is something of a haze. Which is bad, I suppose. I remember getting home rather late - I didn't drive, but was in a car with Math Rock, The Turtle, and Money Changes Everything. I mean, this is bad. As I sit here, I basically can't remember anything worth commenting on. Well, shit. Screw this. See you jerks later.

Sun rising, birds chirping, family strife....aah! Morning!

It's like death and taxes, really. I mean, it's not really like death, in the sense that death, ultimately, at least according to some crazy wacko Howard Hughes-types, might actually be overcomeable. I guess it's more like taxes. Unless you happen to be really wealthy with a good tax lawyer. So, I guess it's really more certain than either death or taxes. Anyway, every once in awhile, my sister gets enough juice in her system to yell and scream at my dad, usually involving something or other that my dad said that was perhaps a little insensitive, perhaps involving his recent divorce from my Mom.

This latest one was particularly bad, though. My sister actually declared that my father was no longer her father. And she went out of her way to include me in on the conversation, which made me a little pissed-off, it's really none of my damn business, and even if it was, I am just enough of a coward to attempt to extricate myself by any means necessary. In conclusion, my sister and father are both being stupid, and they're at each others' throats once again. It's like death and taxes. Or, at the very least, it's like bad TV. Inevitable.

This, of course, led me to get stinking drunk at school. Why did I do this? Why did I have that much beer in that little time? Of course, alcohol has a tendency to turn me from him into him, but still. At school? Come on. That's for after hours. And around the ladies. Anyway, off topic. The thing is, it really ruined my day. My sister included me on this rancid email she sent to my dad and his new wife, and I didn't get it until first thing yesterday morning. First stinkin' thing. Ugh. Another thing I have to deal with.

I've been feeling pretty stressed out lately about not getting much work done. It seems like I haven't really gotten anything substantive done in a while, although that's not really true. I've written a few papers, but I haven't really been reading much and I haven't done all that much work on my dissertation. Though a first draft is finished, I don't know where to start in correcting it. It would probably be a good idea to sharpen the stuff my committee hasn't seen yet, but then again, that's the stuff that I think ultimately needs the least sharpening. The other stuff is way off, and will have to be recast in a major way. Why am I talking about this? Good freakin' question, jagoffs.

Here's Dale's surprising aesthetic judgment of the day: I think Depeche Mode's Songs of Faith and Devotion is actually a very good record. Much better than most people think. I'll write a full post defending my view on this blog at some point, but I'm too tired right now. Later.

Anyway, here's lookin' at ya'. Risin' up to the challenge of my rivals.

Just a man with a will to survive.

The most politically hard-hitting story of the year, bar none.

I'm a walking nightmare, an arsenal of doom.

This sucks. That post I wrote today took me like a half-hour. It was really long, full of funny anecdotes about waiting in line at Kinko's (or better yet, FedexKinko's), and having to wait at Peet's coffee for like four hours before the thing I had to go to Kinko's for was ready. I mean, it was a really sweet post. Probably my best in weeks, that I know of. It had a collection of short, identically-heighted women dressed as elves/gnomes, and a master-salesman named Zig Ziglar. It had a sign, found in Peet's Coffee that said: "This Concession Area Closed." I made friends. I influenced people.

Dang. I'm gonna miss that post.

AAAARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!

Dashblog has failed me.

I had this really long post about my weird night last night, and it said posting was successful, but to no avail. It's not showing up anywhere. And now it's gone.

FUCK!