brockhon, eat your heart out

1. Opening
a. heaven quote on black
b. us slumped in chair, watching movie
2. Most people hear “heaven” the loudest…I hear “no.” Later, when I thought back to it, I found those famous lines about Iowa odd. I’ll write about Iowa, but I don’t have to be kind. I don’t have to politely compliment the place like a dinner guest does a meal.
{open to book with picture of heaven; dimly lit dinner}
3. {pan from dinner to garage; stop on garage, showing Eric walking out door, splice in party shots, hoedown music} Walking out, the faces of the people in the garage blur as I move quickly past them, until they settle into the image of one representative face, like a composite sketch, which hovers in my mind as we are assaulted by the Iowa winter air. The face looks suspiciously like Dustin or Justin, but then again I suppose that is appropriate. They all look very much like him—at least to me. I can’t really tell the difference, or rather don’t want to put in the effort. {eric walking on road, shot from ladder, lights approach}
4. {eric gets in car, car leaves; narration over car pan, then walking shots}

***
fence climbing, jump below camera, tilt down, panting (gelatinous silence); wind turbine to field of turbines; school hill; synchronized waldorf lot parking, pick up peter; lund garage; pond; soda machines, hot sheet; long main street shot; store (movies America) with closed sign
***
The best time to experience Forest City, Iowa, is after midnight. Everything has stopped by that time, everything that was ever going in the first place. We used to go on endless walks, epic walks, across the entirety of the barren city. The silence was gelatinous, like a glacier of vaseline slowly sliding over the town, smothering all life and sound and awareness out of it. Except for us. We were impervious. We were aware.
We would walk down the middle of Main Street, the street that my house was on. We would own that street, because there were no cars and no other sentient beings about to challenge our authority {empty street shots, wind sounds}
If it was summer it would be humid. Not “slightly moist humid.” We’d walk side by side—the two or three or four or five of us— as wide as we wanted, presenting the appearance of a force to be reckoned with.
***
“being a father is aard vark. Don’t overvark yourself.”
***
We would head towards “town,” which meant the courthouse and the few blocks of small shops and businesses that surrounded it. we would weave and wind our way towards the epicenter, sweat forging a bond between our clothing and our flesh, But sometimes it was winter. The smell of Iowa winter was pure, unadulterated, natural cold. The cold prickled in your nostrils like menthol, blasting open your sinuses and reddening your nose. If it was winter there was snow—that was one thing you could count on that town to provide.
Everything there used to be something else. The shops go out of business eventually, leaving an empty storefront or another business that will mark time until it too runs out of customers and money. The movie rental place used to be the Dollar Store, which used to be a store for children’s clothing. The bookstore used to be something else, and at one point there was a bakery, but I’m not sure where that went. Who can keep track?
Later, after the house had been sold, we had to reverse our route. No longer having a central location to base our travels from, we had to park my car in a random lot in the middle of town and make our way back towards my former home. This was after having all gone away to college and learned new things, become new people. We would occasionally share a single cigarette between us. None of us really smoked, but it reminded us of college friends, it comforted us, it made us feel important. We found it supremely ironic and amusing to sit and talk on my front steps, the steps where we had played as toddlers, the steps that my family no longer owned, the steps that were now owned by sleeping strangers a few feet away, the steps where we were now doing our adult things. We let the smoke we exhaled mix with the memories that already hung thick and visible in the air. {CHC song, FC map graphic wes Anderson, separate activity shots}
That place was too small,{pause on frame of person exhaling smoke, rewind footage, increasing speed and snap back to the map shot} too Iowa. You had to leave. But you had to come back. { collapse back onto person exhaling smoke, continue action where left off} You had to come back—you only realized that after you left. You had to come back, if only to go on these late-night walks with this place and the people who hadn’t left it yet. {walking off curb under streetlight, camera follows}


5. Vignettes
a. Renn Fayre — {shoot something in Oregon}
b. If I had grown up… — {badly photoshopped pictures in the different locations} leave in Greeley sentence, unexplained4
c. Interview {off camera voice questions us, split shot facing the camera, answer one at a time; digital camera interview footage; windturbines?}
Laura: “What advice would you give me about whether to attend college in Iowa or on the West Coast?”
Eric: “You should stay in Iowa if you don’t like mountains or trees or the ocean or culture.”
Peter: “I miss the wind. You’ll probably miss the wind if you leave.”

The End
a. It doesn’t matter what the place is like. For instance, I may have no desire to return to Iowa to make my own home. Fireflies can’t obscure cornfields and stars can’t ease claustrophobia. But as soon as I discard it from my history, I sense that I will feel a faint ache in the cavernous place where it had resided. Should I banish my hometown from my brain and wipe its residue off of my skin, I will feel a chasm inside. Iowa is something to me that new places and people and experiences can only coat with a thin layer. It’s like trying to paint over thick black with watery white—a hint of the original color will always remain. {narration starts over last walking shot; then succession of photos, stills of the three of us, polaroids, camera video clips, fade to credits}

low cost self-discovery

You scored as Anarchism. <'Imunimaginative's Deviantart Page'> Anarchism 100% Green 100% Democrat 83% Socialist 83% Communism 50% Republican 0% Nazi 0% Fascism 0% What Political Party Do Your Beliefs Put You In? created with QuizFarm.com

yeah, and then get this....

Your Brain is 73.33% Female, 26.67% Male

Your brain leans female You think with your heart, not your head Sweet and considerate, you are a giver But you're tough enough not to let anyone take advantage of you!

What Gender Is Your Brain?

wow...

To All The Little Eichmanns Out There...

So, last night, by virture of the fact that I attend a college that has been categorized by a friend of mine as "The Amsterdam of the West", I had the tremendous fortune of getting to attend a hastily scheduled lecture given by the current bullseye of the liberal academic community, Ward Churchill. I've got to say that he's a fantastic fellow to watch and that he made a fairly significant impression on me. His lecture, intended originally to be a discussion of some of his new writings on Native American politics and treaties and such and then adapted to also encompass his now notorious essay discussing what he felt was the forgone nature of the September 11th attacks, was one of the most interesting, compelling and articulate syntheses of the hypocracy of U.S. policy, and its repeated and continuing violation by its own government, that I had ever encountered.

Anyway, Churchill's truly critical points that I'd like to highlight (and remember myself) were:
1) Based on precedents set at the Nuremburg Trials the common citizenry of any given country is responsible for the actions of its government, and if the government is committing crimes the citizenry is legally compelled to try to stop them "by any means necessary".
2) There will be no painless solution to these problems.

Weird, eh?

Anyway, it got me all riled up and excited about the end of global civilization, or at the very least the U.S. Empire.

Elephant replaces bird...

How am I supposed to be expected to function as a college student in the midst of a cultural buffet that I feel compelled to binge myself on? I feel a moral responsibility to myself to listen to the new Bright Eyes instead of researching for an impending paper of death. I can barely even bring myself to attend to the minutiae of every day life sometimes. Frankly, I'll be suprised if I can mobilize for long enough to drag myself into the bathroom to brush my fucking teeth with this William Shatner playing.

Tonight was a good night. Contrary to the direction in which the circumstancial evidence of the temporary tattoo of a dog on my cheek points, I was able to resist the ridiculous amounts of alcohol that accumulated about Chris and Ralph's room and remain in a substance free state for once. It was great. I wrote, I applied to go to London, I watched Ong-Bak, a movie so fantastic it would have been utterly wasted on an intoxicated version of myself. Plus drunk people are always amusing when you aren't one of them.

"Those bitches is paid to fuck, I can't enjoy that kind of pussy. I'd rather beg for it." - Danger Mouse and Jemini

This weekend also featured my participation in PLU 360, our own version of the illustrious Dance 360 which was born when I introduced ASPLU Senator Jon Bongard (a.k.a. Kel Mitchell, a.k.a. Mayonaize) to the show and he became physically addicted. Jesus. And the premiere of Necrophobia, a zombie movie made by my friends Dan and Aaron for $35, and quite possibly the best attended event in the history of PLU. For good cause - excessive amounts of fake blood, gratuitous nudity, very well done editing, and immaculate soundtracking. You haven't lived until you've seen the undead romp across your campus to a mixture of Better Living Through Chemistry and staticy distress calls.

I'm going to bed now to dream about hearting Huckabees. You rock rock.

oh how i love the little people

spring break is great.... for a week i splattered my brains out and tested the bounds of true academic masochism... and then suddenly, right around 8 o'clock, POOF! and then i found myself in a magical land free of cares and concerns, ready to do whatever my heart desired... and do it i have... ... now i find myself in the living room, watching willow... i have managed to become the giant glacier of vaseline, flowing freely through a landscape without any topograpical obstacles that might slow its progress... Summer Cometh!!!!

The Triad Goes Adventuring

I wasn't going to post this because it's ridiculously long, but I decided it is too applicable to the whole theme and purpose of this thing, so here it is. Thanks to Professor Kaufman for allowing me to write about whatever the hell I want.

The best time to experience Forest City, Iowa is after midnight. Everything has stopped by that time, everything that was ever going in the first place. We used to go on endless walks, epic walks across the entirety of the barren city. The silence was gelatinous, like a glacier of vaseline slowly sliding over the town, smothering all life and sound and awareness out of it. Except for us. We were impervious. We were aware.

We would walk down the middle of main street, the street that my house was on. It was a cobblestone remnant of the past before they dug it all up and redid it a few years ago. We would own that street, because there were no cars, and no sentient beings about to challenge our authority.

We’d start at my house, a large gray/blue one. Some argued gray, some blue. We never really knew what color it was until we later painted it white and sold it, and by then who really gave a shit what color it was? It was their color, not ours. It was the color of the past.

It was on a hill though. That whole block was on a hill, like a fortress. It was this huge lump in the middle of main street with access to the driveway through an alley on either side. In the winter you had to stomp on the pedal, close your eyes, and launch your car up the snow and ice covered gravel, praying that you didn’t slide into one of the neighbor’s huge oak trees, or backwards into the road and another vehicle.

We had a raspberry bush in the big backyard where I would always go to trap bumblebees in mason jars as a kid. Then there was the climbing tree. A senior citizen, it was gnarled and rotting. It housed thorns and mushrooms and disease all under one roof. I used to climb it with a seat cushion and read in a crook of its delicate branches. Eventually we had to have one of the larger limbs cut down for fear it would one day come barging uninvited through the bathroom window.

A wall of small trees and hedges formed a kind of border between the end of the yard and the gravel alley. It was a poor man’s forest, my sanctuary. There was a kind of natural opening, a thinning of the vivid foliage, and a hollowed out compartment inside. I would sit on a folding chair there and think about everything there was to think about. It was paradise, marred only by the rusting, gray electric meter towards the back.

In the front yard was the cherry tree, seemingly mounted purposely on a miniature hill like a prop for a model train set. The tree was on the left side of the yard, the smaller side, which was separated from the rest by the serpentine sidewalk that snaked from our front door to the steps that led to the street. On the other side was the buckeye tree. We would collect its beautiful nuts and put them in bowls around the house as decoration. The tree’s branches covered that whole section of yard, and us when we were in it, like a protective father with a thousand arms, guarding his children from the sun and the elements and the world and life.

That’s where we would usually begin the walk from, the buckeye tree. After the town settled in for the night we would venture out of my pea-green carpeted, musty basement which served as our refuge. Out the front door, a pause under the buckeye tree, down the sidewalk, and into the deserted streets.

If it was summer it would be humid. Not “slightly moist humid.” It was “forging through a curtain of weightless, floating gobs of warm, sticky sap with your face humid.” We’d walk side by side, the two or three or four or five of us, as wide as we wanted, presenting the appearance of a force to be reckoned with.

We had a flexible route. We would head towards “town,” which meant the courthouse and the few blocks of small shops and businesses that resided there. In summer we would cut back and forth through alleyways, avoiding the ever-present mosquito spray truck. It stayed a step ahead of us always...our nemesis. It coated the air with chemical, which combined with the humidity to form carcinogenic moisture. That was the smell of summer in that tiny Iowa town - the sickly-sweet yet medicinal odor of the mosquito poison. Mosquito poison with a dash of fresh gorgeous oxygen, claustrophobia with a hint of home.

So we would weave and wind our way towards the epicenter, sweat forging a bond between our clothing and our flesh if it was summer. But sometimes it was winter. If it was winter there was snow, that was one thing you could count on that town to provide. We’d cross country ski over the patches of ice in our shoes. We’d throw clumps of snow or slush or ice at each other as we journeyed. We’d stop by the Lutheran Church to play King of the Hill on the deposit of dirty snow left in the corner of the parking lot by the mammoth snow zambonis that replaced the mosquito trucks when the temperature dropped.

The smell of Iowa winter was pure, unadulterated, natural cold. The cold prickled in your nostrils like menthol, blasting open your sinuses and reddening your nose. It smelled like Christmas and skiing and icicles and boots and frozen ponds and slush-soaked socks.

But regardless of season, regardless of weather, regardless of it all, we would always walk that path towards downtown. We would walk past the tank, a large green war memorial that was fun to climb on because it was a tank, and because the signs said not to. Then past the Victorian Tea House, which used to be the Pizza Ranch. Everything here used to be something else. The shops go out of business eventually, leaving an empty storefront or another business that will mark time until it too runs out of customers and money and life. The movie rental place used to be the Dollar Store, which used to be a store for children’s clothing. The bookstore used to be something else, and at one point there was a bakery, but I’m not sure where that went. Who can keep track?



Later, after the house had been sold, we had to reverse our route. No longer having a central location to base our travels from, we had to park my car in a random lot in the middle of town and make our way back towards my former home. This was after having all gone away to college and learned new things, become new people. We would occasionally share a cigarette between us. None of us really smoked, but it reminded us of college friends, it comforted us, it made us feel important. We found it supremely ironic and amusing to sit on my front steps, the steps where we had played as toddlers, the steps that my family no longer owned, the steps that were now owned by sleeping strangers a few feet away, the steps where we were now doing our adult things. We let the smoke we exhaled mix with the memories that already hung thick and visible in the air.



I had a dream recently about going back there. I was driving into town, through one of the two intersections equipped with a stoplight. I dropped a faceless, nameless person off at the outskirts of town, rolled down the windows, and crawled into the business district as if in slow motion, eager to explore the area and to revel in, roll around in, rub my face in its cozy familiarity. As I turned a corner I saw neon and new. There were twenty new buildings crammed into the same stretch of street, some of them long and large, and yet they still all fit. One was some kind of convention center with a brash marquee on the front. There was the flashing of lights and chaos. All the buildings were at least twice as tall as they had been, blocking out the sky. The initial emotion was excitement at the novelty. Excitement decayed leaving confusion, and after the confusion wore off all that was there was a damp disappointment. I had never had a sharp realization in a dream before. Usually my dreams are vague, slippery creatures that wiggle away from me as I leave unconsciousness. But this was vivid and real. I saw that the town had to be what it was. It had to be small. It had to be lacking in culture and entertainment. It had to be boring. It had to be these ways or it would be other ways, and those other ways wouldn’t be what I remembered and grew up with. If it wasn’t these ways it would be like other places, not like this place. A simple, almost stupid observation, but it wasn’t. It was somehow profound when it came to me.



On one of these walks we came across a squirrel, dead and frozen, its back half dangling loosely from its little tree-hole home. At the time a friend suggested that it was an apt visual symbol for our town - we’re so messed up that even our squirrels are backwards. I found the situation to be more of a microcosm of life in that place - it was as if the creature had been ensnared in the middle of a hasty, frantic attempt to back out of his too-small abode. The squirrel had the same fears, the same restless nature that we had. That place was too small, too Iowa. You had to leave. But you had to come back. You had to come back - you only realized that after you left. You had to come back, if only to go on these late-night walks with this place and the people who hadn’t left it yet.

Slew they the goats, yay!

Rule of thumb: Girls who have their parents find you an old school Nintendo, buy it for you, and have it shipped from Alaska totally kick ass. Dudes, there will be hunting of ducks this summer, and it will not be done in camoflage. I'm not sure if this is quite as exciting a prospect for you as it is para mi, but it should be damnit.

In other news, The Meaning of Life still kicks ass. In sports, my roommate is now on crutches because of a brutal volleyball injury. This has several implications: he can no longer participate in the one hour of activity he was obligated to perform per day (though he still goes to bed before midnight to be fully rested for intensive sitting on his ass), I have to help him to and from the shower, and he's fun to trip. In weather, it looks like The Hound of the Baskervilles here every night; the fog has replaced the rain with a vengeance since dear Petros departed. And I shall be leaving in two days for the land of California where I will sing a lot, be housed by old and senile people, go to the Price is Right and Disneyland, and encounter my parents. Sounds like a recipe for a beautiful disaster.

All this breathin' in, never breathin' out

This entry in the tomes that mobs will one day hoist aloft and procaim as their sacred texts is dedicated to an album that feels absolutely perfect tonight.

I started humming Brick on the walk back from the library and before I knew it was yanked ever so overwhelmingly into the past. Now I'm sitting here reading Marx and having to stop myself every so often from jumping up and down on my imaginary brown trampoline and swinging a putter nanometers from a cloudy old fluorescent.

Fuck, I'm back in school now and I know it.

On a lighter note, David and I have come up with a great concept for radio show personalities, should this whole college bit fall through. "Mornings with Peter and BIZ-BAZ". This concept basically revolves around the idea that David will provide nearly incoherent shit, to which I will add cheesy radio-man voice. Provided that the double-perk lives to see our mutual academic demises, we'll have the finest chemistry on radio. If anyone else is interested in becoming a part of the Peter and BIZ-BAZ regular lineup, they should feel free to petition via comments.

BRAIN TAMPON: MARX, WHATEV AND EV AMEN, COMBINATORICS...
AMONG US COUNTDOWN: 5 months or so, I really don't have a calendar.

The lemon of pink

I think that my favorite thing about college is the centrality and fluidity of it all. I live within a certain reasonable radius of all of my friends, and so can create numerous different and diverse combinations of people at will. I also live nearby thousands of complete strangers than I can meet or interact with. Especially when intoxicated. The thing about being back home is that you usually have to make a conscious decision, to some degree, of who you want to spend your time with. We have to deliberate on who we should invite or who she should call, not to mention who has to call them. That's not to say that unpredictable things don't happen, and that random and bizarre but enjoyable groups aren't assembled, but it isn't as easy and natural and common as it is here. When I first got here I tried to use the same strategy that was applicable back home: I would make plans and try to figure out how I was going to spend my Friday night. Of course I still sometimes make plans with people, but I've learned that it's fairly rewarding to leave your night almost completely up to chance. I never seem to have an idea of what I'm doing or where I'm going anymore, and somehow the time just disappears. I find myself in this room and that room and this building and that building, and with people I dont' know. And it's fantastic. It's like a commune of people who just don't give a shit. And if you do, well you'll be useful for amusing the rest of us. It helps to have no responsibilities whatsoever after a certain point in the day. J-term, I want to children your fathers.

P.S. If anybody gets UPN, I insist that you watch Dance 360. Every single weekday at 12:30 A.M. my time. It will change your life. I'll tape a few to ensure that they are seen. Kel (of Kenan and Kel) hosts, and tonight a 45 year old white guy named White Chocolate went head to head with a young black frotastic dude named...fuck I was drunk I can't remember his name, but it was funny...anyway, White Chocolate got the first 10 rating I've ever seen. The prize is $360 and an Xbox, and most of these people are playing to pay their rent. Please watch it. I'm not kidding.

SOMEBODY FUCKING TOUCH ME!

Okay, so tonight, on the eve of my surgical procedures, i decided to make use of this delightful projector in yet another way, and to rediscover my true love relationship with tony hawk's pro skater 2. Needless to say, this has been a most fruitful experience, and i was able to complete 100% of the game in right around 2 hours. I am a golden god. How did it ever take us so long the first time? Anyway, I decided that it would be a fairly sizeable travesty to not pay homage to my dear friend Steve Caballero and his infinite Madonna powers.

Tomorrow, barring intense pain, i will contact Tyler and invite him over for some humangous Deus Ex and maybe some movie viewing.

Here's to sucking down milk shakes and doing nothing for at least few days!

I want to sleep in your lungs and breathe your blood

Well, well, well. It appears I suddenly have infinite amounts of time to kill for the first time in forever. This will be nice for a day or so, and then I will escape to Iowa before the boredom sets in. Every time I get on an airplane I feel like it's a movie or short film or something. I find myself wanting to know everybody's backstories. Perhaps listening to mournful music is partly to blame for these daydreams. I certainly don't want to talk to them to find out about them, I just want to already know about them, or maybe read it somewhere. Most of the time a good portion of them do not appear to be people I want to associate with. Especially the ones next to me, like tonight's specimen. A nervous wreck of a young girl, desperate looking. Prissy and panicky and might have been almost attractive if she didn't look so sad and stupid. My large headphones didn't completely protect me because she employed the strategy of poking me in the arm from time to time, which signaled that I was supposed to listen to her. Badly dyed hair, ridiculous shoes whose designers seemed to have forgotten about those pesky things called toes, fur-hooded coat. Do other people notice people like this? Do I exist in somebody's blog somewhere, my every quality deconstructed, and rash assumptions attributed? I hope so.

For some reason, I am reminded of a snippet of poetry from that book that Peter brought to band years ago:

Groin, grin, carnal sin, pretty city, grandma's titty...

I don't even want one copy of Timecop

I have a feeling these posts, if they come, are going to get more frantic, bizarre, and desperate this week until the school is done and the Triad has converged. Does anybody besides me realize that "Girls Singing" by Mates of State is THE most infectious piece of music ever written? Jesus. I'm going to have to listen to some good ol' Celine Dion so that I can write in distractionless peace. It's blood, it's a flood. Anyone for tennis? Did I have a purpose when I began this post other than to not do what I'm supposed to? I can't remember. Hey, I like Maya Rudolph. She suggests that you respect the vagina in a recent issue of Esquire. How true. So here's my favorite moment of the week. We have just crossed the threshhold of PLU's illustrious Diversity Center when a member of our group says: "Hey did you guys see how ghetto that Santa Claus was? He was fucking Filipino or something!"

On the list of things I should be doing, # 4 bazillion

I post this in memory of me...back to writing about prostitutes.

http://www.brainbank.org/HtmNew/Memories/EricJamesThompson.html

A General Announcement

So, do you guys remember in High School when we talked about writing letters to the editor anonymously to better express ourselves to the general Forest City populus? Barely? I think it was probably something we talked about during track/xc to fill that void left by not running, so maybe eric was never in on it.

Anyway, it seems that if we so desire we have something of an inverse opportunity. Because of our numerous remaining FCHS connections we've been cleared to offer perspectives from "anonymous college students" in the Warwhoop. The format that Laura and I discussed briefly would be something like question & response.

Laura and others would come up with a topic or a question that was being discussed, and we would write an opinion piece (serious or otherwise) to address this from a post-graduate perspective. I think the idea has a fair amount of potential, and wondered what you fellas thought of it.

Anyway, we'll discuss it face to face soon enough...

gradually unraveling and sluffing off...

today i feel something akin to the state of my dorm room... dishevelled, unmaintained, in need of clarity and a good scrub...
maybe it's closer to a sock that's been worn too many days in a row... in either case, the solution remains the same.

It seems that the cyclical nature of time has again caught up with me, and I've come full circle toward not just wanting, but wholly needing christmas break, and all of its trappings. It's like that place, those people, those rituals contain essential vitamins and minerals, without which i begin to develop scurvy, gangrene and any number of other diseases. And not even an event as reassuring as the first true overt academic fellatio you've received since High School, can recreate the status quo, equilibrium.

The cold air, the slowing of time, the lack of choice, the decadent conversations which bend on through the dark and down countless side alleys. Is this always going to be the case? Because if so, I think I can deal with it... I'd just like to know.

Sooner and sooner...

Holding down the 253

Lately when I've found myself in groups of people I have been looking around me and thinking, "Who are they and where did they come from?" I've spent so much of my life knowing the same damn people. Until last year I could guarantee that in any group I would check my surroundings and have an extensive history with most of the characters. Now if I stop paying attention for too long I have new friends whose names I forget and who are humping my leg or making otherwise unwanted advances on me (P.S. Where are you with the wanted advances?). At most I've known these people for about a year and a half, at least I met them several hours ago. At most they are incredibly awesome people, at least they make me want to run my dick through a paper shredder. Sometimes these are the same people. But it's fantastic. I like realizing over UC fish and chips that I didn't even know these ones until a few months ago. I like having Thanksgiving with crazy sons a bitches, none of whom are related to me, most of whom I didn't know existed a week ago, none of whom asked me what I was thankful for, one of whom made a trifle containing Shrek twinkies. It's kind of empowering too. I could move to Abilene, Texas and become a homeless cowboy with a posse of midget ballernias by next week if I wanted to. In high school I never could have imagined my completely alternate life. I still have my old friends, but this is a brand new reality. Like a reset button that you only push part of the way or like the dude in charge of your reincarnation was new to the business and did a half-assed job. And this will just keep happening until I'm an old man on a park bench. This Triad business is a good idea, though...keeps me sane, reminds me I know people that I really know, makes me nostalgic. Is it almost Christmas? I'm ready for old fashioned creative Midwest entertainment, some serious catching up, and some damn grilled cheese and snow.

Djarum Blacks and perception asunder...

So...got trashed for Heather and Jeannette's birthdays on Friday. Basically, Paul got naked, Ashlea made fun of us all, Jeannette couldn't stop giggling, Brett Bunns showed up with half a dozen drunk dudes, and Heather had really noisy sex on the kitchen floor with some dude that Paul met at NIACC named Nate. It was surreal. It was repulsive. It was enlightening. It'll be a while before I drink again...

fear and loathing in katy's mom's apartment

So you thought Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was really fucked up didn't you? But you hadn't had innumerable jello shots, gin and tonics, raspberry vodka, and hypnotique. You should. Don't even get me started on To Wong Foo or A Clockwork Orange. I'm scared of my dreams tonight. I just got my ass kicked at Egyptian Rat Screw...I could have sworn my hand was moving way faster than the slapping of the cards indicated that it was. Well, I need to go chase the transexual cats with the airzooka some more. Peace out.

-Gary Busey

The Greenest Day of them all...

There is nothing finer than the realization of a musical goal. In fact, because they're really the only kinds of goals I like to set, that's about as good as it gets. Needless to say Green Day was a passive goal a long time due, and they did not disappoint. Any band who is willing to incite havoc just to fill an undersold pit to its proper level is worth my time. This is all I can really say right now... I'm still just bathing in it.

Goodnight all.

P.S. We're going again... together.