BoldUlysses.com

So far we’ve looked at about a dozen houses in W-S, some good and some not so good. On Monday we viewed a foreclosure in a good neighborhood that we could buy for about 40 grand less than it would be worth fixed up, and it doesn’t need a whole lot of work (mainly paint, appliances, carpet, etc). Apparently several others think it’s a good deal as well, and the house has already been bid on. It’s not under contract yet, though, so there’s still a chance we’ll get it.

My car’s front main seal still needs to be replaced and I’m driving it several hours up into the mountains this weekend to go camping. Don’t know when I’ll find the time to do that. The good news is that I fixed the odometer last night with a nickel and a bent paperclip.

The Spurs played their most lackluster game of the whole series last night. When they weren’t at home, after having won the first two games of the series, I could understand how they might have let up a little bit, but last night… Stephen A. Smith nailed it when he pegged Parker as a turnover waiting to happen in the fourth quarter and blasted Ginobili’s erratic play. Truly pathetic. They had better come out with both barrels blazing tomorrow night.

I’ve been flying under the radar lately, on the internets and otherwise. I’ve had to draw up a master to-do list for the next few months, separated into four categories: school, work, house, personal. The number of things to cross off in each category before August 23 is truly daunting. Prayers appreciated.

http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4124&n=1

It’s from a satirically-themed site, but the article cuts closer to reality than most others. I remeber taking a materials & processes class in college and seeing pictures of Chinese factories taken by the professor during a trip there. Whatever remnants of consumerism I still had at that point were completely eradicated… It’s a big part of the reason why I’m not in a field that aligns directly with my college degree (industrial design).

Saw Lost in Translation last night. Hadn’t seen it before. Need to buy it.

I don’t belong here. I do not belong here. It’s not that this place is foreign; it’s not, but the love that people feel for this place (if they can ever feel love for it as they know it), the contentedness that radiates from every sleepy-eyed neighborhood house as I jog past the front yard at 11:30… That’s what’s alien to me. And I envy them. I really do. Why the hell did I have to grow up overseas? Why was I mostly alone during the last two and half years, leaving nothing to distract me from absorbing the sights, the tastes, the smells…? I’m going crazy. By tiny increments. When is this going to stop? Will it stop? I don’t even know what to ask anymore.

It’s supposed to get up to 97° out there today. 97°! And humid. In June. I can’t wait until I move further toward the mountains. Granted, it’s still North Carolina so it probably won’t help a whole lot, but it’s something.

I’ve lost a lot of muscle from a year and a half ago when I was still going to the gym two or three times a week. My arms are thinner and my chest is definitely smaller than it was. I’ve been doing core workouts so my abdomen is in good shape, and of course I’m still running, but the upper body muscle mass has certainly decreased. I’ve been able to go to the gym here at UNC for a little over a year now, but I haven’t been. I tell myself that it’s because I don’t feel like fighting with myriads of college kids over the same weight bench, but that’s really just an excuse. I hope that school this fall has some type of gym facility. I can bulk up pretty quickly again.

This kills me… “You know, the one with lots of Styx and children…”

I’d really like to read this book. I’ve read some reviews of it, both positive and negative. It’s a bestseller in Europe, an occurrence likely tied at least somewhat into the popular dissatisfaction with American influence over there. Based on information gleaned from the reviews, it sounds like he bases a lot of his predictions on atypical social indicators (declining birthrates brought about the collapse of the USSR?), and it would seem a lot of his critiques have at least vaguely socialist overtones (lots of talk about class warfare, revolution as a mechanism for social progress), but it looks worth reading anyway.

What is it about women and writing longhand? I’m not sexist but I have noticed a trend here: Women seem to be much more adept at it then most men. I’ve been writing handwritten letters the past couple of days, and I can’t get through a page and a half without my hand cramping up and having to take a break. Yes, I do hold the pen correctly, and no, my writing isn’t overly baroque. Back in high school and college I remember taking English exams and such, and during the essay portion of the exam, starting at the same time, the girl next to me would be cranking out her second page while I would be on my second paragraph. Women, how do you write so quickly and with such endurance? I used to write all my English papers out by hand so it’s not like I haven’t had practice and exercise… This is the reason I don’t keep a paper journal–I just can’t write for too long before my hand gets tired, and my writing isn’t terribly fast so when it does occur it’s not like I’ve written a lot, and half my thoughts get lost in the process…

1. Watched A Love Song for Bobby Long last week. Decent film. More character-driven than your standard American fare, which was nice, and the visual details conveyed place and mood very well. John Travolta wasn’t entirely convincing as a down-and-out Auburn professor, although a lot of that might have had to do with the fact that it’s easier to see him as John Travolta than anything else. The supporting characters and subplots were the main draw of the movie for me.

2. Looked at five more houses this weekend. Blew through them all in about an hour and a half (they were in the same general area in Winston). We joked with the realtor that it was definitely a “guys” house-shopping trip (i.e. get a decent feel for the place and move on). Heh. Saw one that we really, really liked. Pictures tomorrow hopefully.

3. The Spurs are up 2-0 on the Pistons after mopping the floor with them tonight. This is awesome.

4. Here is one of my favorite quotes from Carson McCullers’ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, a novel which served as inspiration for the movie above. It effectively communicates the jist of the book:

The people dreamed and fought and slept as much as ever. And by habit they shortened their thoughts so that they would not wander out into the darkness beyond tomorrow.

5. This is my 1,000th post!

more pretentious tripe

Whenever I’m in a financial bind, the thought that somehow always comes to mind is that I own not one, but TWO Peter Cetera albums.

*sigh*

The Richard Marx stuff I don’t mind so much. His second album is pretty good.

Mes jambes
sont longues
et avec eux
je traverse
les mers froides
pour que
je puisse
t'attraper, toi,
aux grands yeux.

My French is so rusty. It took me far too long, with far too many trips to the online translator, to write her a long-overdue letter. Now it’s just a matter of transcribing the thing. Handwritten things will forever trump anything produced by a machine.

Days pass. They crawl towards the precipice of August while my thoughts collapse and re-form again like a teasing cloud, never coherent long enough to make any sense in the written word, although spoken bits have come to me now and again lately. There are so many things I want to write about, about ambition and vision and postmodernism, but it doesn’t come. It doesn’t come.

This is an evergreen continent compared to the deciduous realm of the old world.

1. It was great to see the lovely Elyse yesterday morning at Weaver Street market. Hope you enjoy the cds, and safe travels on the remainder of your North American Tour ’05.

2. I’ve been getting far too little sleep lately. Will someone explain why I can’t seem to get to bed before 2:30 a.m., despite my best efforts? Will my college sleep schedule always be with me? I suppose it’s just a matter of self-discipline, but geez… I think this calls for a vacation in a different time zone so I can take advantage of the time shift to knock my sleep schedule back into whack. Yes, that’s the solution.

3. I find it slightly amusing that after all the bitching last fall by the liberal establishment about the failure of the democratic process to confirm what seemed like a sure thing in popular consciousness–the election of John Kerry–a couple of events have transpired in Europe along the same lines. Tony Blair was recently reelected after essentially nuking his popular approval rating with his support of the Iraq War, and the referendum in France shot down the EU Charter, an event which caused Chirac to declare, in so many words, that there must have been something amiss with that particular referendum and that they’d vote again (and again, until his desired outcome is achieved, presumably).

4. Watched Before Sunset last week. I’ve only seen bits and pieces of the first one, so I wasn’t aware that the whole format of the film followed the convention that it does, namely, just a real-time capture of two people chatting, walking together, sharing, etc. I enjoyed it. I recognized a lot of myself in certain expressions and viewpoints and fragments of conversation, and it took me a few minutes initially to detach myself from Ethan Hawke’s character and to stop saying “I wouldn’t say it like that…” or “I wouldn’t respond like that…” The film’s ending, too, was appropriately abrupt (the only way they could have done it, really), but I couldn’t help thinking afterward that in spite of the optimistic tone they’re going to have a lot to deal with after the credits roll.

First off, let me say that the small-block Chevy is the best all-around engine ever made. Period. The performance potential, the popular tuning expertise, the power-to-weight ratio of the latest iteration: put it all together and you have the best engine ever. This position can be backed up by any number of car enthusiasts; venture to contest it and I’ll wager at least a half-dozen SBC buffs will produce numbers and stats reasserting its superiority.

This declaration may come as a mild surprise to some of you acquainted with my general import car and specific rotary engine fandom. But a clarification is in order–the arena of appreciation of a particular powerplant is big enough for more than one exclusive attribute, or in my case two: respect and interest.

That said, do I respect the SBC and its virtues? Absolutely. Does it interest me? Not in the least.

Put two vehicles side-by-side, say a Corvette Z06 with the factory performance catalog added and a Miata with a homebrew turbo system scavenged from various cars and run with a owner-programmed EMS, and I’ll invariably be drawn to the latter. The Corvette may blow away the Miata in every way, but how many times have the standard parts (cam, headers, etc) been added to an SBC in the pursuit of power? Yawn. Yes, it may spin the tires through third and run 10s all day every day, and I have nothing but respect for that. It’s power and that’s always a draw. But let’s do something different. That’s where the interest lies.

Respect is about those qualities I admire in a car: power, handling and the like. Interest is about those qualities I’m drawn to in a scope wider than just the automotive realm: innovation, creativity, new solutions to old problems that may at first be inferior to their elders but could potentially, with enough development, eclipse the traditional “best way” to do something.

I have a hunch more enthusiasts than just me view their automotive passion this way. If nothing else, maybe it will explain why a lot of car buffs persist in focusing on forms of internal combustion that are seemingly inferior in so many ways to the tried-and-true-and-effective. It’s a matter of interest.

Originally posted here.

Interesting review of the new Coldplay album:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/arts/music/05pare.html?8hpib

I’ve not heard it (obviously), but substitute a few names and song lyrics and most of the things in the article said about Coldplay could just as easily have been said about U2’s latest, at least in terms of the songwriting. Bands nowadays are so earnest, so linear… There are few lyrical ambiguities, no complex backstory for songs seemingly built of fragments and pieces that become more than the sum of their parts, no more secrets to feel cool for being in on… Among other things. It’s profoundly depressing.

Well that movie rocked all kinds of nonsense. Especially the last 45 minutes. Very entertaining stuff.

For me it was the first movie of the three prequels to create a plausible film universe, where the story existed on a deeper level than just the flat surface of the movie screen. I felt close to the same way I did when watching the Cloud City scenes in Episode V, where I felt a true sense of escapism, like for a moment I existed in the world created there on the screen, its logic was my own, enveloping my mind.

The screenplay is still horrendous. The real actors in the movie elevated themselves above their peers by simply doing something, anything, with their lines and giving them a modicum of inflection and authenticity. Fortunately the other tools at the filmmaker’s disposal filled in quite well–the score, for one, is magnificent, and tomes have already been written about the sure-footed spectacle of the CGI.

I’d see it again. The cringe-inducing moments wage a war (a Star War, even–ha) of attrition against their light-side counterparts, but in the end it’s the latter that carry the day and redeem the film.

1. It’s a sleepy day outside, rainy and muted. I’ll venture out in search of caffeine in a few minutes.

2. David, check this out. It covers some of the electron resonance theory I’ve been talking about for years as a means to artificial levitation, although in the article the main application seems to be data storage and communication.

3. Here is your Hem song for the day. It’s called “Betting on Trains.” Lyrics here.

4. Finished the redesign for the Carolina Covenant website. It’s not very flashy, but tasteful and functional, which I think is what they’re going for.

5. Some photos of the most likely house possibility at this point are here. They’re taken from the listing website; I didn’t shoot them. And the furnishings are (obviously) all still present. Ugh. Must think in terms of “potential…”

I am totally, inexorably, categorically, indubitably, unabashedly wiped out. Not quite as tired as I was on moving day last month, but…holy cow. And it’s only the middle of the day. A nap is in the cards in a few minutes time.

The second annual Car Care Saturday was held this morning in the church parking lot. A group of guys I meet with on a weekly basis and myself get together to provide free oil changes for folks in the church and hopefully the greater area. I had sign-up tables in the church lobby the past two weeks so folks could tell me what kind of car they had (so I could buy the proper filter) and what, if any, additional service they would like. We listened for noises, gave recommendations, and tracked down little niggling problems too. Jer and one of his friends spearheaded the carwash operation on the other side of the parking lot, and most of the cars we worked on headed over there afterward.

We changed the oil in about 10 cars, I’d say. The help we had was invaluable–guys who knew what they were doing and who I’d trust to change the oil in my own car (wouldn’t say that about all the car guys I know). And it was a lot of fun, just like last year…but yeah. I’m going to sleep well tonight.

We had the ceremonial oil jar with us again this year. It’s a glass jar about two feet tall and 10 inches in diameter, narrowing towards the top with an old rusty lid. It showed up mysteriously last year for the first Car Care Saturday, and Paul Bonner took it home with him. It holds a heck of a lot of oil, so I was glad to have it.

I took all the old oil afterward to an auto parts store to dispose of it. They referred me just down the street to a gas station with a two-bay (read: small) service center. I drove up, hopped out, and walked in to the customer service area to ask where their oil tank was. They asked me how much oil I had and were initially surprised when I told them about ten gallons…until I explained the situation. They referred me around back and one of the guys said he’d show me where the oil tank was. I drove around back and got the oil jar out of the back of the car. Walking up to the oil tank, the exchange went something like this:

Him: *thick Southern drawl* “What is that? Is that like an old milk jar? I could keep my pennies in there! How much you want for it?”
Me: “Uhh… I didn’t really buy it, so I don’t have any attachment to it. How much will you give me for it?”
Him: “How much you want?”
Me: “I dunno. How about $15?”
Him: “I’ll give you $10 for it.”
Me: “Sounds good.”
Him: “Awright! I’ll have someplace to keep my pennies!”

So that solved the problem of disposing of both the old oil and the nasty old jar.

* * * * * *

Went looking at houses in Winston-Salem yesterday. We looked at three: two around the area of the college I’ll be attending, and one further north, nearer to Wake Forest. Great houses–the realtor picked some good ones–and the prices on them really are a fraction of what they’d be here in Chapel Hill, Cary or Raleigh. My dad was looking at houses for David for school about a year ago, and for roughly equal square footage in Raleigh, the prices were about twice as high for houses in worse condition than the ones we viewed in W-S.

1st house: This house appealed to the artsy side of me. Built in 1910 but in really good shape inside, it had a kitchen annex recently added on to the back side of the house, which just happens to be the part of the house in the best shape–the floors are a little rough elsewhere (hardwood). But the ceilings are high, the front porch is large and it definitely has an old Southern feel to it. One of the rooms appears for all the world to be a parlor. That’s the only thing I’d call it at least. Big front porch and extensive back yard. Unfortunately, as mentioned the floors are in need of a little reconditioning. That’s no big deal, but the bathroom upstairs that services two rooms has only a free-standing bathtub, and no stand-up showerhead. That would be a deterrent to potential roommates, I think. But all in all a charmer.

2nd house: The most likely possibility at this point. Ranch-style in a very quiet little neighborhood that looks to be full of older retired couples. Case in point–the house’s previous occupants are an older couple who moved back down to South Carolina to be closer to their family. The husband actually went to PBC (the college I’ll be attending), was a pastor for a number of years, and still has strong ties to many in the administration back there. Evidently he’d be very happy to sell the house to someone who would be going to school there, and could possibly facilitate the process of looking for roommates too. The house definitely smells like old people and the kitchen would need a little work (ancient appliances and cupboard handles) but the location is perfect and it’s got enough room.

3rd house: Gorgeous yard, but the location isn’t too great. The lot is almost half an acre, with a semi-circular driveway and a dogwood grove in the front yard. The back yard slopes down away from the house and consists of a grassy field surrounded by willows. Quite idyllic, but most likely a lot of work to maintain… The house itself is in great condition, if a little smaller than the other two houses, and it’s nearer to Wake Forest, which is all fine and good for roommates, but I’ll be commuting 45 minutes down I40 to Mocksville most every day to the aviation compound, and the house is already a good distance from the highway.

you look like a giant in
my hand-me-downs
taller than anythin’
riding a horsey through the town

One of the things I remember noticing about getting older was that the act of falling down changed completely. When I was 10, 11, even 12 years old, provided I had a reasonably compliant surface, I could fall down all day every day, in most any orientation. My brothers and I would confirm this almost daily through our constant wrestling matches (amazing how they occurred with uncanny frequency whenever my mom would answer the phone). I suppose it’s just the laws of physics, really–once I got taller and my more vital bits (head, etc) got further from the ground, the added potential energy decreased the margin of safety should a tumble occur. I just remember a conscious, rational thought process during my early teen years, deciding that falling down probably wasn’t such a good idea in this or that circumstance. There was a safety check where there previously hadn’t been anything. I’m sure it’s like that for a lot of the physical activities we used to participate in, and hopefully still do, but most likely without quite the same abandon–running flat-out, climbing, skipping, jumping, etc… We have controlled settings for those sorts of things now, called sports. But do you remember what it was like to run in the backyard or down the street, just to run? Or playing freeze tag? I miss those things. Anybody up for a mass game of red rover or duck-duck-goose this weekend?

I wonder how many of us would readily confess that we were receiving financial help from our parents. Real financial independence and stability is a big goal for a lot of people our age…and I’ll say, for one, that it’s not exactly easy to volunteer that my parents helped a lot in setting up my IRA before the middle of last month. And it’s doubly hard to for me to accept, let alone disclose, that they’re helping me quite a bit with the financial side of my upcoming school plans this fall. They paid for the majority of my undergrad at NCSU, and on a certain level they really bought me the job I have now through the finance of the education that bolstered the skills necessary to get hired. So in that sense a part of me feels like this next step should be an entirely self-propelled career move, where I establish myself more on my own terms than I did last time around. But as soon as I start to think along those lines, I’m always hit with a couple of realizations. First, I’m going into a profession that relies on external financial support for most of its operation, so accepting financial support shouldn’t strike a nerve. I should instead strive to be responsible and faithful with what I’m given. And second, that whole mindset just reeks of selfishness. This whole endeavor really is God’s; He’ll be the Author, Sustainer and Finisher of it, and He’ll set up the circumstances and meetings resources to carry out His will and my ultimate good. That doesn’t excuse sloth in the least, but breeds hope, an especially valuable attribute when discouragement looms around every decision and encounter. The next few months are going to be a blur.

…towards country music. New band discovery: Hem. Perfectly arranged folk/pop with an Appalachian, quasi-American feel (in the Aaron Copland/symphonic sense, at least). Listen to “Half Acre.” Uniformly beautiful stuff, and they sound less affected and more natural than Over the Rhine, no mean feat. It’s the kind of music that makes you want to drive more slowly than the speed limit on the way home. I have a feeling this will be an integral part of my soundtrack over the next few months.

It’s the kind of day outside where moving through the air is just effortless… Temperature perfect, sun mild, the hint of a breeze. Opening the office door and stepping outside seems like the most natural thing in the world–it doesn’t always, especially when one is assaulted by a sizable temperature difference when crossing the threshold.

Some days I feel like I have ADD. Sometimes I can’t concentrate on anything for any length of time and my mind wanders all over the place. I feel like I’ve had it for years, since I have a slightly forgetful and disorganized streak, when I was younger I’d daydream all the time and wouldn’t always listen to my parents (not disobedient, just inattentive). On the other hand, depending on the activity I can focus for hours on end, and when I’m interested in the subject matter I can absorb information and detail very effectively. I’m starting to wonder whether it’s a time of day thing, or a dietary thing–whether there are outside circumstances that influence my state of mind in this manner. It’s vexing in that my scatterbrained state sometimes even seems to override my best efforts to focus. Does this happen to any of you? Or am I the only one?

When I’m in the process of falling asleep at night, I am very often aware of the onset of sleep paralysis. I’d say on average at least one night a week I am. It’s been like this ever since I can remember. Even when I was four, five, six years old I’d have dreams, nightmares, and hallucinations at all hours of the night, as well as the awareness of sleep paralysis. It wasn’t traumatic–many of them were good or harmless dreams, those nightmares that I had would come and go and my experiences with sleep paralysis, while intense, were brief. I was known to talk in my sleep quite a bit too, and even sleepwalk on occasion (my parents can tell stories…). I still dream a lot and for the most part am not overly affected by it, but the sleep paralysis issue has always stuck with me. I don’t know if any of you have experienced it, but for the uninitiated, it’s like being pulled against your will towards sleep and having no say about the matter, being partially or totally conscious of the situation, sending signals to your limbs, commanding them to move but getting no response. Now being pulled towards sleep normally wouldn’t be such a bad thing (I’m a big fan of sleep in general), but every time this occurs, if I just let myself go and allow sleep to close in, it never does. It’s hard to explain, but it’s almost like my mind becomes trapped in a kind of limbo state where I’m half-aware and half-unconscious, and paralyzed throughout. Needless to say it’s a very distressing set of circumstances, so whenever I’m conscious of the onset of sleep paralysis I shift my body to another attitude (usually by rolling over). Sometimes it sets in too quickly for me to catch it, however, and I have to try as hard as I can to send signals for my limbs to move so I can pull out, the alternative being pulled into the sleep/waking limbo state. When I was younger it used to produce a kind of mild terror in me, somewhat akin (I would think) to the sensation of being trapped underwater, although certainly without the real risk of the latter situation. But nowadays it’s just a curiosity of my daily sleep routine. It happens and I don’t think much of it.

Lessons learned from last night’s ordeal:

1. Do not eat a plate of your mom’s beef stroganoff, however good, before polishing off the meal with a glass of milk, half a Hershey bar, and falling asleep for a “nap” 30 minutes later (this all occurred around 9:30 last night, mind you). You will wake up a couple of hours later, by which time it will be nearly midnight and there will really be nothing left for you to do except go back to bed again, rendering one of the chief purposes of the nap, recharging one’s energy for a spurt of activity afterward, useless.

2. There are few more effective means of erasing the lingering feelings of an unpleasant dream than having a pleasant dream upon one’s return to sleep, even if said dream did involve Keira Knightley, who I do not find particularly attractive, in a lead role, it was nice nonetheless (and all quite chaste too, no worries).

3. Being wide awake at 4 a.m. is a great opportunity for a nice long shower, and to catch up on one’s reading.

4. In spite of the above realizations, the day was still off, and I found myself assailed at the most unconventional times with strange emotions pinned to odd moments in my past, like feeling an overwhelming amount of nostalgia for the days of the second semester of my freshman year, when Steven Ramsey and I would hit the gym every other day right after studio, lift for an hour or two before playing racquetball, and then loading up several plates at the dining hall fifteen minutes before they’d close in the evening. Good days. It was a good routine. But hardly worth the tides of feeling ascribed to it for minutes on end by my subconscious at random times during the day.

5. We’re still not there. Going running in half an hour and we’ll see where that leaves us.

I am really creeped out right now. What a horrible dream. I fell asleep early tonight on the couch in the TV room and just woke up. There are imprints in my palms from my fingernails from having my hands clenched in my sleep and I’m looking over my shoulder every few seconds in paranoia.

I dreamed that I lost control of a borrowed car at around 100 mph, sideswiped a bunch of parked cars before skidding to a halt, and walked away from the scene in the ensuing chaos. I can still hear the police sirens in my head and feel the gripping paranoia. The weird thing is even in my dream I knew it was a dream, and that fact didn’t make me feel any better. I’m going to go take a shower and head back to bed. I hope I’m able to fall asleep again.

This really is my favorite strip at the moment. Today’s made me laugh aloud.

On an unbearably slow day here at work, in the spirit of propagating a little time-wastage, perhaps it might interest you all (though not me in the least) to hear about my immediate family. Props to Emily for the idea!

Dad (Edward, 54): Senior electrical engineer at IBM, where he’s worked ever since he graduated from NCSU in ’72, and even before then (co-op). Likes golf, cribbage, model trains (though he rarely works on his room-filling train set upstairs), and recently, coin collecting. I gave him a crash course in eBay and he hasn’t looked back. Not artistic or abstract, but very analytical and can figure most anything out if he applies his mind to it. Disciplined, diligent, financially responsible. Raised in a low-income military household with an alcoholic father, and in spite of that worked hard through college and afterward to build a strong, stable family and financial life. Not a book reader but those he does read he absorbs very well. Morning person. Has no knowledge of popular culture whatsoever and has a habit of spontaneously singing a verse or two from a cheesy ’60s pop song that he doesn’t remember anything else about. Landscapes the yard to relax–the lawn is the envy of the cul-de-sac and beyond. Our personalities are the most dissimilar out of anyone in my immediate family and I hardly knew him until my mid-teenage years when I started dealing with standard high school stuff (girls, grades, sports, etc) that he could relate to and talk about. His conscious adaptation of his parenting style to respond to the various life stages his sons have gone through is something I admire to the ends of the earth.

Mom (Cindi, 51): Renaissance woman extraordinaire. Homeschool teacher, Odyssey of the Mind coach, ESL and Worldview teacher, young women’s small group leader…and the list goes on. The most incredible cook I’ve ever known–her baked chicken or pot roast is to die for and her desserts are superb. Can’t recall ever having experienced her bomb a dish–she’s always gotten it right. Voracious reader (at least a dozen walls in various rooms in the house are covered by full bookshelves), always on the up-and-up with regard to popular culture, cultural trends, and especially politics. She’s the reason behind the half-dozen or so newsmagazines that arrive in the mail any given week. Night person. Took it upon herself to expose her sons to a wide range of cultural experiences–performances, museums, sightseeing trips (especially when we lived in Europe) and more. Our personalities are relatively similar. When I have an original (to me at least) thought or observation about relationships or sociology or politics or what-have-you, she’ll usually be the first to hear about it. She’s one of the few people with whom I feel like I can explain myself adequately and phrase things the way I want to in conversation. Certain people just have that effect on me.

Paul, 23: Mr.P, a.k.a. the Gentle Giant. 6’1″, around 225 lbs, and wouldn’t hurt a fly. Meteorology grad student at NCSU, wants to be a storm chaser eventually. Came in first place in a southeastern U.S. forecasting competition participated in by some pretty weighty names. Big but surprisingly nimble for his size. Very athletically adept. He’s one of those people who actually plays better in the heat of the game–he’ll make shots he wouldn’t normally make, which is contrary to how it works for most people. Was NCSU Intramural athlete of the year a couple of years back when he participated in every sport except cross country. Co-coaches a neighborhood baseball team and has been a church youth group leader for the past 5-6 years. We share an avid appreciation for Spongebob. Loves all sports and has an amazing knowledge of players and stats. Used to be an enthusiastic birdwatcher but that’s waned lately. Has a very expensive digital camera and takes wonderful pictures. Very silly sense of humor, and a much better storyteller than he thinks he is. Quite artless with regard to females (to the slight consternation of my parents), a quality he and I share to a degree but David seems to have managed to avoid. Looks the most like my dad out of the three of us (which still isn’t all that much).

David, 20: Divad, D-Qwon, etc… He has an LJ so I have to be careful what I say, heh. Tall (6’3″ or so) and *lean* varsity soccer player for NCSU (we’re a big family). Mechanical engineering major. Can build most anything out of anything. Has constructed a rocket-powered skateboard, swiveling water balloon launcher turret (with me), remote-controlled Battlebot, only slightly scaled-down trebuchet, a long string of vehicles for Odyssey of the Mind (both ride-able and smaller-sized), among many other things… Great welder. We can geek it up about technical topics for hours on end. Very intelligent and great student; he has my dad’s analytical mind coupled with an ability to operate in more right-brained circles as well (he’s a very good writer, for instance). Great cook–has pulled off some very exotic dishes. The most social of us three and has the widest group of friends and acquaintances. David’s and my personalities are more similar than Paul’s and mine–in some respects we have pretty similar approaches to relationships so there’s always a ready conversation topic.

This cartoon

1. UNC Printing Services is the bane of my existence this morning. They managed to mess up a 1-color 200-item job they’ve printed several years in a row. This is the equivalent of getting into a wreck while driving a car straight down an empty six-lane highway with no turns. It doesn’t happen. Not only was the job a day late, it was printed on the wrong paper and the middle signature was backwards. Obviously it was unusable and it ended up letting down one of my favorite clients over in General Administration. Frabjous day, really. If there wasn’t some annoying little legal clause about Printing Services having first right of refusal on every job that comes out of here (since we’re both parts of the University), I’m pretty sure we’d send everything elsewhere. *sigh* Trying to decide what to e-mail the client in the job post-mortem is tricky.

2. I’ll say it again: This station rocks my socks. They’re playing David Gray’s “Babylon” at the moment, a song that I singlemindedly, unashamedly love.

3. Eventually, I’d really like to coach an Odyssey of the Mind team. It’s an organization I was heavily involved in during the latter half of high school and the first couple of years of college. I can’t recall ever having more fun in my life than our team’s trip to World Finals (the highest echelon of competition) in Knoxville, Tennessee, during my sophomore year at NCSU. It will be said, though, that in terms of fun, that year narrowly edges out my other years of involvement in the program–they were all priceless. Something about spending a whole year together, going through the ringer together with a small group of other people… I’m sure most of you have experienced it to a degree.

And coaching a team–I can see myself falling very readily into such a role, especially after my teaching experiences last fall. When it’s a subject or a process with which I’m well-acquainted and have an affection for, there are few things I enjoy more than imparting that knowledge and that love to others. During my run last night my mind drifted onto thoughts of how it might be as a coach, and I was inundated with things I’d want to say, to communicate, to draw out of the group of kids. It would be a blast.

4. It’s David’s birthday today. Gotta do some lightning shopping this evening after work in preparation for the party tonight. Wow. My parents are teenager-less for the first time in 13 years. Happy big two-oh, D-Funk! One more year, then we can party ’til we’re purple :)

writing

This is the greatest internet radio station ever. So far they’ve played Travis, Innocence Mission, Paul Simon, Delerium, Aimee Mann, Barenaked Ladies (“Call and Answer,” no less), and Phil Keaggy (!), among others. Rufus Wainwright’s rolling cover of “Hallelujah” is playing at the moment. I heartily approve.

My car’s cd player has decided that it now has musical taste. It started acting funny about a month ago and I haven’t yet gotten around to yanking it and invoking the warranty. It still plays cds sometimes, if I put them in just right and, so it would seem, whether the cd player likes that particular artist or band. Some it won’t take no matter what I do; and some it gulps down greedily and starts playing right away. It seems to be all right with U2, which is good, but it doesn’t care for Hooverphonic, which is not good.

It’s raining tonight, which means I’ll have only gotten in three runs and two tennis sessions this week. Sucks.

My car is running perfectly. This is an extraordinarily rare occurrence for me. During my 10-odd years of car ownership, the car(s) in my perview have run perfectly approximately 1.3% of the time. How do I quantify this perfection? The car doesn’t embarrass me as it’s driving down the road, I don’t glance down at the instruments in paranoia every few seconds and 95% of the car’s subsystems work as they should. I wonder how long this will last. It’s been an arduous road to this point, but I supposed I sort of asked for it when I bought the car for $1200. I just hope it stays this way for a while.

I got a realtor two days ago. He’s a great guy who happens to be a good friend and an Audi enthusiast to boot. I had the “interview” with my grandmother on Monday afternoon and she’s willing to assist me with the down payment. I’ve started browsing houses for sale in the Winston-Salem area.

At the moment I’m reading (among others) an excellent book called Stick & Rudder: The Art of Flying. It debunks a lot of the popular misconceptions about flying and pervasive myths that pilots have clung to for years. Very practical stuff. Recommended.

me actually

unfinished

“One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continuously stating and repeating thevery very obvious, as in It’s a nice day, or You’re very tall, or Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you all right?”

Saw Hitchhiker’s on Saturday night. Not perfect, but a hell of a lot of fun nonetheless, and reasonably true to the spirit, if not the letter, of the books. The animated “guide” bits and the film’s depiction of the Heart of Gold’s improbability drive were the best parts, I thought. The romance and the scene introducing the Point of View Gun were less well-done (and no, not just because of Trillian’s line at the end of the scene).

* * * * * *

The goatee is back, most likely just for a few months until the heat sets in and I shave it off in a flailing attempt to cool down.

* * * * * *

Donald’s bachelor party on Friday night was good fun. We went bowling and made it through about a game and a half before a bevy of high school girls descended on the lane next to ours and the “laser bowling” started up. We adjourned to my parents’ house and played poker. I hadn’t played before and think I would have enjoyed it more if I knew the hierarchy of card combinations. As it turned out, with the number of guys that we had (~9-10), the game was very long and turned out to be quite boring, though all the actual poker aficionados in the group were getting into it.

* * * * * *

Aaron wants to go to Australia over Christmas break this year, continuing our “tradition” of at least one big trip per year. I’m up for it, but I’ll be in the middle of my first year at PBC by that point, so the money situation’s likely to be more than a bit tenuous.

* * * * * *

Every Richard Maybury book reviewed by the School Library Journal on Amazon gets absolutely blasted, even to the point of being called “propagada.” Back in high school, those books were the foundation of my economic and political worldview. No matter–I suppose any material expressing something other than a milquetoasty “inclusiveness” or watered-down middle-of-the-road viewpoint will have its share of detractors. I can guarantee you my kids will read those books, along with 1984, The Prince, Wealth of Nations, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and most anything else they’re interested in and I can get hold of.

i couldn't do it 'cause i just dreamed it
the annual report is nothing; i want the v-10
careful with the rafters, come down from there
do i just go 'round here or is there another way in?

swivel sketching grainy pencil line control
what else do i remember?if the cat hadn't been there
then maybe i'd know more
as i plodded along the floor

if i couldn't be there then i had to do it
we had already conquered it in the waning days of april and
we could do anything, as we had that confidence that
follows conquest
   let not he who girds his armor
   boast like he who takes it off

we sure showed him.  he presented it to a
higher-up and flustered, returned
"go ahead and do it.
go ahead and see."

akula.
victor alfa oscar delta
my room stretches up and out
bathed in red, endless steel pillars
another time.  i can jump?can't i?
is it just for me or should there be more?
   turn the key and slowly unlock the door

and i come back to it, my penelope experiment
the first and the best and the only complete
   trève de doutes, son age enfantin 
it's a weak rhyme if at all
the urgency bears down, gare au fall

possible place.  voices swirl around, lopping
off articles and splitting infinitives
indiscriminatly.  what should i do?what
indeed when the very air on one side
of me seems like a wall and the long strokes of
sunlight on the other creep into my room
my room.
   je n'ai rien
   qu'un sac de rien, chérie

Okay so I definitely watched Apollo 13 over the weekend…

“This is Bob at Telepathic Graphics, leave a message and I’ll get back to you.” *beep*
“Hi Bob, this is Matt at Design Services. I’m just calling to let you know that we are GO on the #9 remit envelope…”

1. I’m selling several items on eBay at the moment, one of them a car tool that I’d purchased a few months back with the intent of using it to do some suspension work on my car. The tool is too big to fit under the fender of my little sedan, so I’m selling it. Thing is, I bought it from Harbor Freight Tools for around $30, and it’s currently selling for $50, and the buyer pays shipping. I even included the Harbor Freight item number in the auction listing so prospective bidders could look up the item’s price when new. I guess some people just don’t shop around…

2. I ate at the brand spanking new Rams Head Center cafeteria here at UNC today with Susan and her husband Ed. Amazing place, really. The food is beyond reproach for an all-you-can-eat $7.25 lunch (I had a chicken fajita and two slices of pizza) and the facilities are spotless, as well they should be. The overall design reminded me of a 1920s Le Corbusier architectural drawing of his visions for a “society of the future.” Efficient, high-tech, somewhat sterile… but good.

3. I have the house to myself all week this week. My parents have gone to San Francisco for a business trip and an mini-excursion around the wine country of central California. So it’s just Cleo (the cat) and me for a few days. Of course that can only mean one thing: Par-tay.

Just kidding. Maybe.

car stuff

lots of writing

1. As much as I dislike Orlando Bloom’s acting, I’m really looking forward to seeing this film. I think the visuals from the trailers coordinate with my imagining of that environment when I read Sir Walter Scott’s The Talisman. Yes, the film does have the potential to be an Alexander, but I have more hope that it will be done right with Ridley Scott behind the camera rather than Oliver Stone. Scott just has a better history of drawing out a coherent thematic core from epics of that magnitude. Well, that and the fact that Blade Runner is in my all-time top five. That alone pretty much guarantees I’ll go see it.

2. The easy availability of information on just about any topic imaginable through Wikipedia has reawakened a habit I used to indulge in years ago, namely that of randomly grabbing a volume of the encyclopedia off the shelf and just browsing through it over lunch at home. Wikipedia makes the activity even easier to indulge in, since I don’t even need to get up and pull another tome off the shelf in order to explore a cross-reference that may have piqued my interest.

It’s certainly breathed new life into my once-rabid interest in anything related to aviation. Lately I’ve been poring over anything having to do with high-speed flight and associated methods of propulsion. Granted, most of this stuff I knew 9-10 years ago, but it’s fun to read again and to get up to speed (pun fully intended) with current developments in that domain. Some topics lately have included the XB-70 Valkyrie (quite possibly one of the best-looking aircraft ever made, especially when you consider its potency), the alleged Lockheed Aurora hypersonic spyplane, the Boeing X-43A, scramjet technology, RBCC and pulse-detonation engines, and supersonic aerodynamic phenomena like compression lift and supercritical airfoils.

3. After watching Almost Famous over the weekend with my mom (I’m always eager to get boomers’ reactions to films set in that cultural period), I was intrigued by one of the movie’s quotes, “Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid,” said by the mother when speaking over the phone to Billy Crudup’s character. Evidently it’s attributed to Goethe, who I’d of course heard of but hadn’t known too much about. I researched him and have found him so far to be a very compelling and progressive (in his own time) thinker. He’s very quoted, and I’d like to get hold of some of his work to see if his is the same situation as Thoreau and Emerson, where the quality of their individual thoughts, expressed in a sentence or two, makes much more of an impression than the works in which they’re contained, taken as a whole. Anyone familiar with Goethe have any recommendations for a starting point?

4. My car needs a new water pump. I ordered the necessary parts yesterday from an online parts source that I’ve dealt with before, and who is almost always fairly speedy (parts usually arrive in 1-2 days). I think the water pump must be on backorder, though, since the tracking number lists its delivery date as the 26th. My car’s been running quite hot lately and I’m eager to tackle the repairs as soon as possible, so that discovery was somewhat distressing. I ordered a lot of bits that should be replaced along with the water pump as well (timing belt, idler pulley, rad fan switch), so the shipment is in two parts, with one half arriving tomorrow, so there may be parts I can install over the weekend.

I got nothing. Nothing except the song lyric du jour running endless laps around in my head. Original thoughts still come, but they’re gone before I can grab them and commit them to memory. No muse whatsoever lately…my creative energies have been depleted by who knows what. Maybe I should take a break.

Comic strips that should just quit:

– Garfield. Once of the particulars of his personality were established back in the early ’80s (he’s fat, he has a teddy bear named Pookie, he hates Mondays, etc…) the strip never went anywhere. At all. Not a compelling storyline or issue to be found.

– Family Circus. Need I say more? As the movie Go put it, “And it’s always there, in the lower right hand corner, just waiting to suck.”

– The Boondocks. It tries hard to be a relevent social commentary, but its approach to communicating its stance on the issues has the same amount of subtlety and wit as a baseball bat to the head. If Doonesbury is on the editorial page, why not this? It’s not even remotely as clever.

– Sally Forth. This comic strip has the smarminess of an NPR voice translated onto newsprint. It’s one of the few strips where the quality of the humor seems deliberately aimed at producing a bemused smile at the most, and nothing more.

– In the Bleachers. Apparently no one told this guy that he is not funny. Like, ever. Maybe that’s why his strip has been segregated from the rest of the comics and banished to the scoreboard on the sports page?

* * * * * *

In all actuality I’m not that bitter–it’s a gorgeous day out and it’s Friday to boot. I am, however, more than a little sore from the last of the moving yesterday (9 straight hours + 4.5 full truckloads + practically singlehanded). Somebody’s going to crash after work today.

light the sky and hold on tight
the world is burning down

I hate moving. It’s not just the feeling of being uprooted that gets me, nevermind if I’m actually looking forward to the next place I’ll be–it’s just the sheer quantity of stuff I have to move. Especially at this point in my life, a period where I’ve been eschewing anything superfluous in preparation for another big step, the reaffirmation that yes, I do have a fair amount of stuff just grates on me with every box packed and placed in the bed of the truck. It’s situations like these that make want to just sell everything I own and go hike the Appalachian Trail for six months. But then I suppose I’d have to brush up on my orienteering and fire-making skills.

To: The Weather
From: Your pal Matt
Subject: The rain today

Dear Weather,

Hope you are well. I’m glad Spring is coming around, and the sunny skies last week were fantastic. Really top-notch work with that. Kudos.

Matters are a little different today, however. Frankly, I’m not really a fan of your choice to rain and be cold. My plans today were either to:

a. Move the rest of the stuff out of my apartment.
b. Go for a run.

Preferably both, actually. So if you could please stop the rain and hike up the thermostat a knock or two, that would be great.

Thanks and keep up the good work,

Matt

1. Pearl Jam. I don’t understand their popularity. I suppose it’s really all a matter of personal taste, but for my money their music is hackneyed, derivative, and just kinda boring. I dunno. I will concede, however, that they have one of the best band names ever, right up there with Aphex Twin, Violent Femmes and Cheap Trick.

2. I balanced my checkbook for two consecutive weeks for the first time in a long time. That’s a good feeling. Knowing exactly how much I have, and watching the numbers all come out correctly. Nice.

Well the honeymoon is over. This program is not all it’s cracked up to be, specifically with regards to the text editing tools. The hotkeys for adjusting font size, kerning and tracking leave a lot to be desired, with increments of adjustment not nearly as fine as I need. Argh. So after losing about half a day yesterday struggling with the program, here I am at work. At least it’s not Sunday evening–if there’s one thing I hate it’s working on a Sunday evening.

I stopped by the grocery store on the way here to pick up a snack. That done, I took a right out onto 54 from Friday Center Drive. Nearing the corner I noticed two cars sitting next to each other in the two left turn lanes, immobile, preparing to turn left from 54 onto the road I had just turned from. This wouldn’t have aroused any interest at all from me except for the fact that their light was green. As I turned I looked to see why neither of them were moving, and I saw the drivers in the midst of a conversation, windows rolled down. Whether they knew each other or not I’ve no idea (probably so), and they ended their conversation within a second or two and drove through the still-green light. But what I ruminated on for a few minutes during the remainder of my drive here to work (during which I have to pass through about a dozen stoplights) was how we as a society would most likely find that odd–the act of not driving through a green stoplight. It’s almost as if we consider the allowing of an act the compulsion to carry out that act, and we forget that the freedom not to do something is just as significant as the freedom to do something. To use another automotive example, take the speed limit. Yes, we get upset at those drivers ahead of us driving more slowly than the speed limit, but unless there’s a minimum speed limit on a particular road, they’re well within their rights to do so, much more than those drivers who push the limit by 5-10 mph (or more), who by and large we consider much less of a nuisance on our commute home from work. Of course that doesn’t mean we should all go out and sit at green lights and tool along at 5 mph on the interstate, indulging the full extent of our freedom–we’d get pulled over and given a ticket, for one thing–after all, there is a degree of social acceptability on either side of the rule, but it did give me pause for a few minutes. It’s a metaphor for a concept that I haven’t been able to marry to a more relevant example.

InDesign is awesome. I’m here at the Gazette, and it took me about two hours to learn the program, get all my style sheets, libraries and colloquia transferred from Quark. It’s a breath of fresh air after the clunkiness of Quark, especially on OS X, where it had to run in classic mode, exacerbating the already-present slowness from necessary link to the license server. So nice.

And now it’s raining outside. First of the Spring/Summer afternoon cloudbursts? Perhapsibly. In any case, it’s washing the pollen away…

A coworker forwarded this to me:

See ‘Larry, Cat in Space’ one last time
posted Sunday March 14, 2004

Join Morehead Planetarium and Science Center Saturday, March 19 at 10:30 a.m. for the final showing ever of ‘Larry, Cat in Space.’ Larry has been a beloved fixture on the planetarium show schedule for many years. However, with the addition of ‘Magic Tree House Space Mission,’ there will no longer be room for Larry.

To help send Larry off in in style, the planetarium is offering free admission to anyone — child or adult — who dresses up as Larry (or any cat).

What’s this world coming to if they bump Larry for a “Magic Tree House?” I mean, what the hell? I don’t even wanna know. *sigh*

* * * * * *

In other depressing news, Prince Rainier III of Monaco died today. This hits home for me because it’s a place where my family and I used to spend a lot of time (we attended church there every week for about 2 and a half years at the TWR complex) and I have fond memories of Sunday picnic lunches on “the Rock,” watching the changing of the guard at the front of the palace, playing around the pyramids of cannonballs all welded together near the walls and looking out over the sea at the horizon. Of course it’s not like all that will disappear, but when there’s an event that affects that little world, I feel it too. By all accounts he was a benevolent prince and I witnessed a lot of the improvements he made to the little city-state while they were still under construction. Oh, and he was married to the most beautiful woman ever, Princess Grace.

* * * * * *

I have been ODing on U2 lately. Between finishing up the “Flanagan bible,” splurging on the Best of 1990-2000 DVD, and having the albums from that period (’90-’97) in heavy rotation at home, at work and in the car, I need a break. It’s not that I get tired of the music itself–it’s brilliant stuff–but they also happen to encompass U2’s “ironic period” when the band protested the excesses and misplaced priorities of politics and culture by seemingly indulging in them, in the their music and in their shows. It makes for grand artistry and some of the most poetically bittersweet lyrics ever sung, but it’s hard to listen to too much of it in a sitting. It’s almost like watching a really good art film with a tragic ending over and over–I adore the methods used to make it and the mechanisms employed to convey the messages within, but I can’t bathe myself in too much of the mood, the feel, without wanting something clean and pure and straightforward and good. That period of U2’s development produces some incredibly insightful commentaries about human nature, but almost all of it isn’t overly “life-giving,” which is something I need. So I’ll shelve the U2 for a little while after I finish the book.

This is so messed up. I want to get a credit card, which I haven’t really felt the need for up ’til now, so I can build credit. I applied for one a few years ago when I lived in Florida, and got turned down for “Insufficient Credit.” I thought, okay, I’ll pay some bills, build up my credit some, and reapply. Well, here we are three years later–I’ve never paid rent late, don’t have any debt whatsoever, and a solid job. I decide okay, I’ll get a credit report first from the three reporting agencies just to make sure I’m in the clear. So I do, and it comes back with “No account information available,” even though further down in the report it shows companies have inquired about my credit, and so on and so forth–so I know it’s not a bogus report. I thought this very odd indeed, so I called the 1-800 number to speak with someone about it. I dialed the number yesterday and (this blew my mind) a real human being picked up on the second ring, and was very helpful to boot. I had anticipated having to wade through endless automated menus before being on hold for at least fifteen minutes. She scurried around, talked to various folks, and proclaimed that the consensus was that I just don’t have any credit. I couldn’t believe that, since there are certainly bills that I’ve paid late, and a medical bill even got transferred to a collections agency last year when my financial status was really dire. I thought if anything there would be some smudges against my record, but it appears there aren’t–but nothing positive either. I suppose no credit is better than bad credit… It’s got me in a catch-22, though, since it seems like I can’t build credit without a credit card and I can’t get a credit card without building credit. I swear, of all the things to do in America, I thought for sure getting a credit card would be one of the easiest. People own 3, 4, 5 of the things–I can’t get one. It’s really messed up.

Well. Par-tay in Chapel Thrill :)