Desire is tingling at the back of my throat.
It's sort of like that serene, gentle pain that lingers in your voice
When you finish screaming.

It's like a ripping. In lots of different directions.

One more attempted blog post tonight. One more failed jumble of awkward sentences.
It's not really writer's block, I just don't feel the same desire anymore. Just need someone new to write for I guess.
And until they come?
Hmmm.

It's an interesting feeling, being able to look the manifestation of my sin straight in the eye. I wonder sometimes if I'd do it the same way twice, ignoring, of course, all the times where I did do it the same way twice. Or three times. Or thirteen. Like all things, it's just a matter of time before I get used to it.

An excerpt from a grading sheet for a paper:

"Dear Andy,

Even though you may have been feeling under the weather and therefore not up to the standard of your usual sparkling wit and articulation, your analysis of the sonnet is quite good, and I especially appreciate your relating the many formal disjunctions in the poem to Wordsworth's distraught state of mind..."

Having my sickly, neglected ego inflated by a professor never, ever fails to brighten my day.

I get really strong impulses sometimes.
My most recent was to just jump in the car with my friend Connor and drive to Alaska.
To no particular place in Alaska, Anchorage maybe (for the name recognition), but I just want to see some cool stuff.
People call these "the best years of your life." These years have been absolutely incredible, but I'm going to do my damnedest to make sure they aren't the best.

"If I could have my wasted days back
Would I use them to get back on track?
Stop to warm at karma's burning,
or look ahead but keep on turning?"

Frantic-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tock.

First Paper of the Semester

I do not recommend beer, Facebook, or Youtube as study aides, and especially not all at once.

Extensive research on teaching English in Germany this summer turned this little morsel up:

Colorado China Council
Non-profit organization searching for college graduates to teach English in China for the duration of one academic semester or year. Travel expenses covered. Excellent mental and physical health required.

Oh boy, sign me up!

Life is fucking hilarious if you stop and think about it.
I don't mean that in a morbid sense either; just think about all of the ridiculous, mind-bendingly unlikely links in the chain of events that brought you to where you are now.
I never fail to smile and shake my head when reflecting on what a strange, wacky journey this whole life thing has been.

---

It's been surprisingly easy to let it go.

It used to occupy my every waking though.
It used to sow the seeds of deep-rooted paranoia: burning eyes, wet cheeks, uncertainty.
It used to fill me with explosive, sublime happiness: more wet cheeks, quiet nights alone with pretty handwriting, an irresistible urge to smile.

And I just tossed it away like an orange peel.
I've become a rather callous bastard. Even the knowledge of that only fills me with a slow, distant sensation of remorse.
Someday it will come back, and when it gets ripped out of me again I might reach down and feel the tender, raw edges with my fingers-- touch the wet, mangled remains and scream and convulse in pain. But for now?

Nothing.

"That, I guess, is the language of the Rohirrim," the Elf commented, "for it is like to this land itself; rich and rolling in part, and else hard and stern as the mountains. But I cannot guess what it means, save that it is laden with the sadness of Mortal Men."

Scenes from the Library

[It is mid-afternoon in the campus library, the sky is bright and blue outside, and the verdant green of the trees is tinged with the yellow of Fall. A patron approaches the desk. She is of medium height. A vacuous expression is on her face, and her brown bangs are drawn away from her forehead by a clip in her hair. A piece of white gum can be seen migrating about her cow-like mouth in between phrases.]

Andy: Hi, can I help you?
Girl: I'm, uh, looking for a physics book.
Andy: [trying to mask the weariness of telling people too look up their own damn call numbers again and again] Do you know the call number for it?
Girl: [completely confused] Uh... What?

[Andy's look of disbelief is barely concealed.]

Andy: Um, you know. The call number for the book? The thing you look it up with?
Girl: No, but I know what color it is.

[Andy is usually patient with this type of patron, and will often look up the number himself, but this is a special exception.]

Andy: Ok. Well, there's a computer right over there where you can look that up for yourself.
Girl: [annoyed] Alright.

[A handful of beats pass as the Girl walks over to the catalogue computer.]

Girl: Uh, this thing isn't working.
Andy: Excuse me?
Girl: [louder] The computer isn't working; it's, like, shutting down or something.
Andy: Ok, then I'll look it up. What's the name of the professor?
Girl: [pausing, deep in thought] Crach.

[Andy searches through the catalogue for the name. No professor named Crach is found.]

Andy: [wearily, rotating the computer monitor around to show the Girl] Well, it doesn't look like he's here. What's the name of the course?
Girl: Ummmm, Intro to Physics.

[Andy searches the catalogue by class. There isn't a single physics class listed.]

Andy: [sighing a little] No luck there either. What's the name of the book?
Girl: "Physics."

[Somewhere in the distance the clanging of a final nail being pounded into a coffin can be heard. The book is, of course, not found.]

Andy: Well, I can't find it, but maybe if you can look it up for yourself and bring me the call number we can help you out.
Girl: [still not getting it] But it's a physics book.
Andy: [now incapable of being surprised or phased] Yeah, but there are at least a hundred books back there, so without the call number I can't find it.
Girl: Fine.

Curtain.

Keep both feet on the ground, or you'll fall over.

ENERGY

I can feel it pulsing and flowing through my body it starts in my chest and works it's way throughout my veins until I can feel it gently tingling in my legs and my eyes are being tugged open mercilessly and my fingers tremble and my jaw quivers as I stumble over words and sentences flow past my lips without breaks or periods

:)

I love you, downstairs neighbors.
I love the shitty god damn music you play at all hours of the day.
I love how when you speak/yell at each other it sounds like you're actually IN my apartment.
But most of all, I love listening to you vomit in your bathroom at two in the morning on a Wednesday after a heavy night of drinking.

That's why I'm cranking my guitar amp to eleven and blasting you with the heaviest death metal licks I know.
Have a nice day.

Desire

My love, you will kill me one day.
It's a beautiful thing really, the very nature of our relationship will be the death of the two of us, but I don't mind.

When I hold you I feel like the world just melts around me. Before I knew your tender touch, your curves, your smell, the world was grey and barren. I've been burned a couple times by my desire, and each time it leaves me bitter and tainted. I wonder what it was that ended the relationship. In the end it always comes back to me. I spend weeks, months festering in my own self-loathing, feeling the blackened pit where my heart used to be crumble and collapse, completely powerless against my own despair.

I wonder if it's even worth it, to go out of my way and seek out love again. I wonder how I could trade a temporary moment of sheer bliss for months of torment, question the very nature of my own happiness. Am I even capable anymore of existing without you? Of living a fulfilling life without the constant reassurance of your presence?

And then I look at you, hold you, feel you pressed against my lips, and forget everything.

Bacon, I love you.

Road Trip, Final Installment

The next day's drive was only 330 miles or so, so I didn't set my alarm for the morning. When I woke up I headed down to a park I had seen on the side of the road on the drive to Pier W. I headed down some stairs and walked out onto an old pier jutting out from the beach with a bagel and cream cheese. I took my time eating, carefully avoiding the lapping waves and seagull crap as I gazed out across Lake Erie. After a good 20 minutes or so I jumped back in the car and entered the highway for the last time. The drive went so smoothly I forgot to stop for lunch, and the gray storm clouds and rain which had dogged me from the moment I entered Nebraska finally let up. It was a beautiful day as I entered Pennsylvania, and once I got into the hills of Upstate New York I really started to get excited. When I saw the first sign for Ithaca I almost yelled with glee. Our old Golden Retriever Jenny used to bark and scurry around in excitement in the back of our car when we were making our final approach to our cabin in Idaho, and I suspect I felt a comparable emotion as the end of the trip finally came in sight.

I saw Cornell in the distance first, and then I started passing a few familiar stores until I finally got within sight of the main section of town. I stayed in my friend Connor's house that night, since I got there a day early after cutting out NYC from the itinerary, but the next day I helped him and his housemates move out (since it was a sublet and their lease had ended), and they in turn helped me move my stuff upstairs. Walking through the front door for the first time filled me with absolute elation, and the place is still as cool as I remember it being way back in February. It is a little creaky and rickety, the fridge is way too big for the kitchen, and the walls in the living room seem to have undergone at least four or five very unprofessional college kid paint jobs, judging by the various missed spots on the walls and accidental brush strokes on the molding. None of the previous residents seem to have ever heard of painter's tape before. But there's an undeniable charm to the place, and the location can't be beat. I'm going to very thoroughly enjoy living here.

I took almost three hundred photos along the way. Every 100 miles I'd take a photo of both me and the scenery. Uploading all of those would take forever, though, so here are a select few of the ones I took, plus some shots of the apartment and the Commons. For some asinine reason Photobucket decided to send the ones I rotated right side up to the front of the list, but aside for the first three all the photos are in order. The itinerary I took for the trip can be viewed here.

I'm glad I made the drive, but I wish I'd taken a bit more of an interesting route. Grandpa recommended staying "on the blue roads," and if I did it again I think I'd seriously consider doing that. The only big city I passed through on the entire trip was Cleveland, but aside for that all of the little towns along the way were pretty much identical. Their economies depended entirely on the highway for survival, and didn't have much going for them culturally. I guess you can only experience so much of America at 70 MPH, but there'd probably be quite a bit more to see and experience on the less traveled roads.

The Golden Age

Sitting under the shade of a red, weathered sun umbrella outside a little coffee shop, I exchange a knowing glance with a tall, twenty-something camp counselor as he leads his group of boys along the shop fronts. They're on a scavenger hunt I think; when they were on the other side of the Commons he checked off a few things on his list that the boys had found: Barney and Charlotte's Web in the window of a used bookstore. He mentions something about needing a cattle-prod to keep them in check, and they scream in amusement, quickly returning to laughing and yelling incoherently about nothing in particular.

I feel the burns on my fingers from the coffee mug as I turn the page of my book:

Page 242
"Frodo found himself walking with Gandalf. 'This is the Hall of Fire.' said the wizard. 'Here you will hear many songs and tales--if you can keep awake. But except on high days it usually stands empty and quiet, and people come here who wish for peace and thought. There is always a fire here, all year round, but there is little other light.'"

The patterns of clouds passing over the sun flow across the pages as the sentences roll by. A man with dreadlocks down to his knees greets one of his friends sitting in the amphitheater. His friend has been there for a while now, his head bend over the neck of his guitar, bespecktacled eyes picking out the same five chords over and over, periodically looking up and acknowledging the passers-by. A little down the way a man raises his fists in victory and grins at his opponent over a chessboard, clearing the pieces off of the table and declaring, "It's all mine!" Even further down a woman sits in conference with a bronze statue seated at a table, frozen in time, left hand spread out over notebooks and folders, right hand gripping a cup of coffee.

Birds chirp,
Couples chat,
A topless woman walks down from one end of the Commons to another, holding her t-shirt carelessly in one hand.

And I live here?

Road Trip, Installment 2

Utah is very interesting for a number of unique reasons, but one of the things I like most about it is the mountains. They're big, very pretty, and give you something to look at in addition to helping you orient yourself. These mountains lasted for about an hour as I set out up Parley's Canyon, and once I hit Wyoming America became one gigantic pancake of a landscape. I had some conception of the vast breadth of the flatlands, but no idea of how incredibly unchanging the scenery can be. From Wyoming right up until New York there were nothing but corn fields and farms for as far as the eye could see. Even the slightest little hill became very interesting.

Sitting down in a car for eight hours a day, which may seem daunting at first, is actually not as bad as it seems. At first I was a little worrisome to think about how long it would actually take to drive the 650 miles from Salt Lake to Nebraska on the first day, but once I sat down the miles just flew by. I even found myself getting into a little bit of a frenzy, intentionally not stopping at gas stations to take rests to see how far I could actually go in a sitting. By the end I think I was averaging about 200 to 300 miles at a time, only stopping twice a day for gas or to make myself a sandwich. Getting 35 to 40 miles per gallon also helped me stay on the road; there's no better incentive for continuing on when you don't actually have to stop!

The towns I stayed in weren't terribly interesting. I picked North Platte, Nebraska completely arbitrarily. Initially I had planned on staying Cheyenne, Wyoming, but that didn't seem far enough to go on the first day, and I didn't want to have to make up the distance on the other days and completely wear myself out. North Platte was a funny little town. The hotel I was staying at was in the center of a big collection of other hotels, and there were about three local restaurants I could find in the dozens of chain restaurants surrounding them. Beyond the tourist/traveler section of town were just flat little suburbs.

Davenport, Iowa didn't have a lot going on either. I chose it because I thought I recognized the name from the Music Man, I think at one point it's mentioned that Harold Hill is from Davenport. Instead of a whole assortment of hotels there was just one lonely little one right off of I-80. Downtown seemed to consist of a modest little strip mall along the side of the main road, and everything else was houses and farms. For dinner that night I indulged myself with my one stop at a fast food restaurant, and chose McDonalds. You could tell the place was well patronized; it was absolutely gigantic. There was a big dining area with a bunch of booths and nooks with tables in them, and there was a little kids section as well with chairs shaped like Ronald McDonald, all facing a television showing a Disney cartoon. Oh to grow up in middle America.

I was going to stay with someone in Cleveland, and was going to venture out of my way to head down to NYC to see a few of my friends in VoiceStream and to get shown around the city, but both of those plans ended up falling through at the last minute, so I ended up just staying in another hotel outside of Cleveland for the last night. For dinner I headed off to the Pier W restaurant, which had a great view of Lake Erie, and was right across the bay from downtown Cleveland. The place had complimentary valet parking, and as I was walking down the stairs from the entrance an elevator opened up with trio of old businessmen discussing whether money was being allocated properly in the Company. They all had suits on, I on the other hand was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, and the shirt had stains on it. I couldn't help but chuckle a little as I was lead past the other patrons by the hostess, feeling the incredulous looks on the back of my neck. Dinner, a 16 ounce steak, was served on a square plate. Dessert was creme brule with chocolate shaving on the top, with strawberry wafers arranged artfully in whipped cream on the side. It was incredibly expensive, but absolutely delicious, and the view was incomparable.

Teh Road

(This is an email I sent out to my family, it's a summary of the trip from SLC to Ithaca. I'm gonna post it in installments because of the length, so it might read a little awkwardly, but whatevs.)

Well, after an intense four day drive across the United States from SLC to Ithaca I'm all moved into my new apartment in the Commons. The Commons used to the main street in Ithaca, but was closed off to traffic and is now a two block pedestrian zone. It's full of little local shops and restaurants and bars, and there are tons of people out just walking around or hanging out when the weather is nice. As I type I'm sitting in my living room, which overlooks the western end of the Commons, and it is so damn cool to be able to say that!

To begin, fitting a year's worth of things into my little four-door Saturn proved quite tricky. Dad was a very shrewd car loader though, and with his assistance we fit all of my clothes, guitar and guitar paraphernalia, coolers and boxes with food for the road, and various other boxes full of of stuff into the trunk and backseat, along with a pretty sizable and very heavy TV securely strapped in with seat belts.

Initially I was pretty worried about the trip, as I'd never driven more than a few hundred miles in a sitting before. I had awful visions in the days before the trip of me rolling my car somewhere in Nebraska, having to escape the wreck by dragging myself over broken glass and twisted metal as the car burst into flames. I was also completely paranoid that my car was going to get broken into and all my stuff taken. Both mom and dad had told me in the days leading up to the trip about a friend who was moving to Boston with his wife for grad school. After leaving their car and U-Haul trailer unattended for a few minutes they came back to find the trailer had been snatched. I laid awake for many hours thinking about this, wondering where to park my car in big cities, thinking about how to hide the fact that I had a car very obviously packed to the brim with expensive things.

I started out in silence in the morning as I made my way from my dad's to my mom's house to say goodbye, and as I drove along I heard a mysterious squeaking coming from the right side of the car. I hadn't heard it the day before, and was completely at a loss for what it could be. The only thing I could think of was that my brakes were worn too thin, and that the feelers were scratching along at the rotor of the wheel, warning me that the brakes were almost gone. Thoughts of having to end the trip early, rescheduling hotel reservations and calling friends in different cities to cancel meetings swirled around in my head. At a stoplight I jiggled around with a few things stashed in the front seat. The squeaking was, of course, a pot lid rattling on top of a pot. I grabbed the lid and slotted it somewhere in the back seat, and traveled on in silence.

Catalogue of things the two crazy people in the alleyway behind my apartment yell at each other while I'm trying to sleep:

"This country has given EVERYTHING to you, and you dare disrespect it?!"

"I'm gonna light you on fire!"

"I've been fucked by the best, and that's why you're angry at me! That's jealousy! That's what Paul Newman said!"
"Fuck Paul Newman!"

They're out there every night. I've got half a mind to sick the police on them to shut them up. To be updated as more random things get shouted in the night.

Day one of the epic Superroadtrip

In numbers:
Miles traveled: 647
Rest stops taken: 2
States: 3- Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska
Volume of Coke consumed: 24 fluid ounces
Ham sandwiches eaten: 1
Gigantic lemons on trailers: 2
Gigantic Jesus statues in western Nebraska: 1
Albums listened to: 11
Avantasia- The Metal Opera Part Two; Equilibrium- Turis Fratyr and Sagas; Queensrÿche- Operation: Mindcrime; Radiohead- Amnesiac; Sonata Arctica- Reckoning Night; Blink 182- Enema of the State; Ensiferum- Iron; Daft Punk- Human After All; Blind Guardian- Nightfall in Middle Earth; Edguy- Burning Down the Opera.
Times I almost crashed into things/drove off the road: 3

Lessons learned:
Taking pictures while driving is very difficult and often stupid.
Reading texts while driving is also very stupid.
One should not try to both line up a shot and drive while looking through a camera's LCD screen- the time delay on the screen, while small, is significant enough for near-catastrophic, 80 MPH collisions with traffic cones to occur.
Don't accelerate to 88 MPH just so you can take a picture of the speedometer. There are cops lurking around, and you aren't driving the Delorean anyway.
Nebraska is, in fact, windier than Wyoming.

(Full write-up and lots of photos forthcoming)

Sleep talking

(We were up at my grandparents' cabin, staining the exterior)
Me, in my sleep: "Kit, are we going to stain the deck now?"
My brother Kit: "Well, seeing as it's three in the morning, probably not."
Some time passes, I fart.
Kit: "Aww, cute!"
Me: "You think so?"

Ghost

It was one of those nights. One of those nights at the end of one of those days. One of those days when you're just tired all of the time, alternating between hope and sorrow, questioning all those things you once took for granted. When keeping your eyelids open is almost impossible; when you pause halfway up a flight of stairs because continuing up seems pointless and you can't remember why you were walking upstairs in the first place.

Yes, it was one of those days. Forlorn sighs, watery eyes- despair.

I watched the sun --a blood red orb in an orange sky-- sink beneath the far off mountains. I cleaned and straightened everything out in the house. I even played my guitar: something I haven't done in months. After sitting on the deck in solitude, glass of water in hand, watching the iridescent shimmer of the yellow and orange lights of the city below, I decided it was time for a night drive.

Driving at night clears the mind. There's something about headlights and darkness, the barren emptiness of wide swathes of asphault, the single-minded focus of the driving, that's cleansing. I chose a nearby canyon and turned in.

The road was narrow, and near the bottom there were a lot of cars, but as I continued to climb the cars thinned out, and eventually I was the only one on the road- a lonely pair of headlights and a gurgling engine stabbing straight up at the full moon. Campfires and trailheads floated by in the blackened periphery of the road as I continued to ascend. I finally reached the top, and it was there that I saw it.

The ghost.

It was a disembodied light floating in the forest. It moved with an ethereal grace, drifting through the trees with an otherworldly motion. I quickly turned the wheel and hurried back down the road, not wanting to disturb it. It gave me a sense of foreboding, a deep spasm of that unnameable, primal fear of the unknown. I hurried down to a spot further down the road and parked the car.

I stepped out and glanced up. Far off, obscured by the trees, was the moon, and over my head the inky blackness of the night was punctuated with a swarm of stars. I never really see them anymore. I might catch a handful with an occasional glance into the night, but nothing like this. As I leaned against the car and craned my neck further the ghost reappeared.

This time the floating light was a little less threatening, and I restrained the urge to hide from its glance. As it wandered down the road it gazed from side to side, eventually turning its attention to me. It regarded me with passive curiosity, a sort of detached interest only ascribable to the truly foreign. It knew so much, this ghost, and it seemed tired, disinterested. I thought of waving to it, but kept my hands by my sides. It gazed at me for a while longer and then turned away, wandering further down the road until its light was swallowed by the darkness.

---

Postscript: I've been in a really awful mood for the past couple of weeks. This is the product of all that frustration, I think. Occasionally the Passion seizes me so incredibly hard that I just have to let it explode out of my hands before it burns itself up and disappears. I literally stopped on the side of the road in the middle of the night and wrote this out on my iPod Touch. I was crying by the time I got to the end.

I really want to add more to it (one particularly delicious phrase I thought of was, "One of those days when your mood swings back and forth like a corpse strung up at the gallows."), but I think that would dilute the aesthetic of it. I've made the barest possible changes, just changing a few words and fixing typos.

It's meant to be read slowly.

Overheard in the waiting room

"Gonna take me a mutha fuckin NAP!"

I glanced up from the Esquire I was reading, trying to restrain my face from shooting the baseball-capped stranger a look of incredulous disgust. The guy was in his 20's: jet black hair, goatee, light blue jeans hanging down below his ass. He fit the perfect description of the type of person you'd expect to see in a car audio store. He half sat, half threw his body onto the other half of the couch I was sitting on. I payed his companion no heed, and went back to reading about Jack Johnson. Hopefully they'd be finished working on my car before too long. He adjusted his cap as he spoke to the guy he had walked in with:

"Man- once I get my papers from my P.O. I'm gonna roll myself a gigantic fattie."

I had to choke back my giggle. To my left was a rotund lady in her 40's, drenched with sweat; across from her in the small waiting room --adorned with posters of Lambourghinis and Ferraris-- was a high school girl. To admit that I am going to smoke weed, even to admit I have a parole officer, is something that I would have trouble confiding to my closest friends in complete privacy. This guy was surrounded by complete strangers. His friend, a gangly-looking fourteen year-old, spoke up:

"What was that?"
"I said I'm going to roll myself a fattie," he said, louder, "a marijuana cigarette."
My shoulders shook with silent laughter. A huge smile spread across my face as my eyes watered. His intonation was cool, impassioned. It had the self-assured confidence of a complete idiot who doesn't know he's stupid.
"Jesus, it's been forever since I got high man." He continued.
"How long?"
"...Three years. And I could probably get ahold of some reaaaally sweet, smelly ganja too."
The teenager, likely his brother, laughed obediently, his braces glinting in the dim overhead light, his knees coming up towards his chest with every bout of laughter.

---

And that's all I wrote. I have problems with projects that I can't complete in one sitting. This is about all there is to it, though.

Well, maybe no part two for that last one. It was just going to be a review of an album nobody's listened to anyway. But I did strongly intend to write something.

Prolog Auf Erden

("Prologue on the Earth")

The time has come. After almost six months of impatient waiting the time has finally come. Every time I try and devote my full attention to something --to really immerse myself-- there's always interruption, always some dumb little thing that draws me away from whatever it is I am trying to indulge in. It's infuriating, and inevitably breaks the tenuous connection I might have been building with a book or a piece of music. But not tonight. I will not stop listening until I'm ready to stop. I lock the door, turn off the lights, and lie down.

I turn up the volume for good measure, and press play.

A tremendous, soul-rending power chord slams through the silence with terrible strength. The bass drum behind the guitar pulses with steady regularity. It is tame, calm- simply warming up for the deluge of furious beats that its slowness portends. In the distance ominous, heavy bells clang as that first guitar chord rings on and the choir sings out in a single octave. The guitar changes chords- down a third to a lower set of notes. The drums, choir and bells stay where they are, creating wonderful tension within the sound that is resolved in another two measures.

The pattern repeats itself, and at the next cycle the guitar shifts into steady eighth notes, staying on the same chord. The choir has moved higher. This is building up towards something dreadful, I can sense it looming on the horizon. I steady myself for what may come, thrilled with the steady, exciting pace the song is revealing itself to me.

And then they appear.

The brass section thunders in, compressing my lungs with colossal force, overpowering the other instruments with the gargantuan magnitude of its sound. Their part is simple, but sweeping, regal, and jaw-droppingly majestic. It is perfect. The drums have switched to a galloping pattern now, and as I lie there, my heartbeat quickening, my entire body chilled, my soul desperately opening its jaws to accommodate the glory of it all, I can almost feel myself on the back of a horse, riding alongside thousands of fearsome, armored warriors across a muddy plain under an overcast sky. Flutes and pipes gently take over from the trumpets, ringing out in a tender, higher octave, elaborating on the musical theme the trumpets introduced. Orchestra hits strike through the sound like flashes of lightning.

And then it all stops. The guitar strikes four deep, resonating chords, complimented by cymbal crashes. My mouth spreads in a fiendish grin as I prepare for what I know is coming:

One.
Two.
Three.
Four.

The drums explode in a violent, thunderous cascade of beats as the distant roar of the vocalist slashes through the air. The sustain in his pained, feral rasp is magnificent. There is a sad, far off loneliness in it, speaking of fury and desire. I slowly sink into the wall of sound as its grip tightens over me. He stops for a moment as the drums and guitar continue on, and then returns with the same long, mournful scream, this time layered with other echoing, indiscernible words. Violins make their entrance, playing a slow, sad melody over the senseless, rushing clamor of the band below. The warriors are dying, striking each other down with malice and spite. Blood and rain is splashing up from the muddy ground, horses and people are writhing in pain. My heart quavers.

And it all stops once more. The guitar returns with the same four chords as the sad screams fade off into nothingness:

One.
Two.
Three.
Four.

The song shifts from 4/4 time into 3/4 time, and a more peaceful melody sweeps in, devoid of the heavier instruments. It contrasts sharply against the furious battle scenery of the last segment; my mind's eye is swept away from the disfigured, bloody corpses of the fallen warriors to mountains, forests, streams. As suddenly as they left, the trumpets return again, blasting out victorious triplets like beams of sunlight shining through the forest canopy. And they're building up to yet another arrival- the pipes. They move throughout the music with elven grace, trilling through almost familiar phrases, tinged with the slightest hint of Baroque. I sink further into them, swaying with the rythm.

The pipes head up an octave and get very quiet as a single voice speaks. I don't know what it is saying, and catch only hints of words as it speaks, but I don't need to understand them. The voice is low, calming, full of wisdom. It comforts me as it tells its story, and as he speaks his last words the volume of the instruments in the background gradually increase in volume. This is it. This is the culminating moment of the entire song. My mind shifts gears, attempting to understand the buildup of sound, frantically awaiting the approaching resolution. My breathing feels tightened, my fingers tingle, and then it happens:

The pipes explode into the forefront, striking out with awesome grace, captivating all of my attention. My eyes literally water as the sheer wonder of it all pours its way into my ears. This is the moment the drums have been waiting for as well, and they return with a blast of sixteenth notes that carries the melody along. The scream is back as well, still far off in the distance, behind the other instruments, but this time the sadness is gone; it now tears through the music with a primal sense of satisfaction, of victory. The wall of sound crashes down on top of me, and I lie there dazed as the music finally comes to an end, the sun shining out onto a green landscape, fresh with rain. I lie there wrapped in darkness, my heavy breathing and blazingly fast heartbeat the only things cutting through the silence, and try to steady myself before the next song comes.

This is what I have been waiting for.

(Part one of two)

Interview with the Hobo

It was Tuesday, 5:00 PM. I just got off of work moving big cardboard boxes full of office furniture in the LDS Church Office Building. If I may make an aside- the building looks like a gigantic penis,the main section of the building and the globes on either side representing their obvious body parts. I've always liked to think that the design of the building was the result of one architect's gigantic, absolutely amazing prank on the Mormon church, but I've never known for certain. Either way, it gives me joy to know that I work in the giant penis building, but I digress-

I walked out into Temple Square, arms bruised and scratched, knees aching, but filled with that incredible feeling you get after working eight straight hours lifting and pushing and maneuvering big heavy things: knowing that you are finished and have absolutely nothing to do for the rest of the day. I was feeling pretty damn good. I walked up South Temple onto Main Street and sat down at the Trax station (Trax being SLC's light rail system) and waited for the train.

A guy in a green jacket with a bunch of plastic bags crossed the street and sat down next to me on the bench. He was sort of doubled over, moving slowly, his white cross trainers scuffed and torn and worn down. I didn't mind. I think I attract homeless people.The same thing happens with little kids and animals- they are inexplicably drawn towards me. I'd forgotten how much fun homeless guys are to talk to, though, and was pretty tired, so I didn't pay him any heed at first. After a while he glanced over at me, looked down at my shirt, and opened up the conversation:

"Ohio State University, eh?"
I was wearing an Idaho State University t-shirt. He was reading at an angle, though, so he probably didn't see all of it.
"Idaho State University, actually."
"Aaaah, what are they up there, the Bengaaals?"
I was very impressed with his knowledge of the team mascot of a pretty unremarkable Idaho school.
"Yup, the ISU Bengals. This is the second time someone has asked me about the shirt, actually, but they didn't get the mascot right."

A little more time passed, we both sat in silence. I leaned back in the bench, holding my gloves, occasionally peering down the track to see if the train was coming. He spoke again:

"You ever watch the Today Show?"
"Uh, yeah, sometimes."
I don't watch the show at all.
"I was watchin that on them HDs over there. Duh hur."
He had a funny way of laughing to himself after every other phrase or so. He was very pleased with pretty much anything he said. With absolutely nothing to say, I responded with a simple, "Ah, nice," and left it at that. He soon dived into another completely random topic of one-sided conversation:

"A buck 25!!" (referring to his red Gatorade), "Got it over at them Rite Aid.... Rite Aid, duh hur."
"Yeah, I could definitely use some of that right about now." We were sitting in the sun, it was in the mid 90's."
"Yup, made a dollah today! You got a dollah?"
Homeless people use money to buy booze and drugs. I had many dollars, but not for him;
"Nope, sorry."
The Gatorade was turning his mouth into a vibrant shade of red. He smiled at me with his one tooth, his gums and lips slathered in crimson liquid.

"Yup, made a dollah, duh hur. Hey man, you wanna see my wallet? I got a really nice wallet man, all shiny leather, check it out."
For a little while I believed him. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. This wallet was actually a huge wad of 3 by 5 pieces of paper. He flicked through the pages with his thumb to show me his incredible wealth. It could have been a joke --a really bad, out of place joke-- but his characteristic laugh was absent as he showed me his wallet. He seemed completely serious, as if this really was where he kept his money. I glanced in between the slips of paper as he thumbed through them half expecting to see dollars tucked away somehwere, but they were nowhere to be seen.

"Hey man, you want a dollah? Here you go man."
He took a slip of paper and handed it to me.
"Uh, sure... Thank you."
I took it and looked at it. It came from some sort of phone book, with a bunch of numbers for different departments at the University of Utah's hospital. I folded it up and stuffed it in my pocket. He went mumbling on about something; I think in a few places I heard things about Interpol and gunships. I made a mental note to speak more clearly around others. He went on yet another tangent;

"Hey man, I worked at the U for six years, doin janitorial work, got my education up there."
I highly doubted that, but listened on anyway.
"Yup, got two years of college under my belt man, got grant money from California to go to school, duh hur."
I find it interesting that anyone in California would pay for a Utah education, but I listened on,
"Yeah man, I'm fuckin continuin my education, check this shit out man,"
He handed me one of his many plastic bags and held it open. I peered inside- it was full of blank printer paper. This guy has some sort of strange fixation on paper I guess. I admired the vast collection of academia he had in the bag, and handed it back. Before the train arrived he imparted one more piece of wisdom to me;

"I got some real good bread in here man, this is the good shit."
He reached into a different bag and held up something wrapped in black plastic.
"You get some good fuckin bread at funerals, man, that's the one good thing about them."
I decided to get on a different car than him.

Coming Out of the Closet

Deciding one afternoon to clear out all of the old crap in my closet to make room for my new crap, I set up a basket for recycling, emptied out my trash can, and delved deep into the dusty, long forgotten corners of my closet. I've kept some really stupid stuff over the years, but some of the stuff I found was really interesting, and I'd forgotten about a lot of it. Among the more notable items-

-A cumberbund (those black things you strap around your waist) from a tux. I remember very specifically looking for this one afternoon before a choir concert in high school and not finding it. I had to race down to the nearest tux shop and buy one, and barely made it to the performance in time. I have two now I guess!

-A bra, blue skirt, and black top. ... Uhhh, what? I have no idea where these things came from.

-A bunch of sketch books. For a while I was convinced as a little kid that I wanted to be a comic book artist. The drawings really suck.

-A computer magazine from 1997. The ads are the best: laptops with 200 MHZ processors and 2.1 gigabyte hard drives for $6999! I held onto it, it's become far too valuable by now to ever throw away.

-A newspaper from New Zealand. Why would I save this thing?

-The outline for a story I wanted to write once, scribbled on an envelope. I had a nightmare once, and literally screamed after waking up from it. For a long time I wanted to write a book about it, but I'm just hopeless when it comes to writing fiction, so I just let what I wrote sit. This was a really valuable find though, I may try again in a while.

-Slips of paper with dreams written on them. I used to write them down a lot, not any more though.

-Fliers from when I taught guitar. $10 for a half-hour lesson. It was a stupid job to quit, now that I've actually spent time working at real jobs.

-The "Naked Issue" of the SUNY Purchase Independent. This annual edition of the campus magazine was in circulation right around the time I visited the campus. And you thought Ithaca was liberal.

-A copy of The Book of Mormon my stalker gave me for Christmas. This girl used to follow me home at night after rehearsals for the musical and watch me park in my driveway. Sometimes she'd park on my street facing the opposite way and watch me drive home. Thankfully it only went on for a few months.

A Fire Inside

For the disappointingly commercial edge their music has taken as their popularity has grown,
for all the lame high school English class literary references they throw into their music,
for that awful thing Davey Havok has done to his hair in recent years,
lyrics like this make me wonder why I write:

Breathe in the life of the summer's death
as the orange and red breathe their first breath,
so welcome as they're burning through.

I'd never really paid attention to the words before now, I'm not much of a lyrics person, but wow. For a bunch of 90's punk rockers, AFI can turn a phrase.
(And I spelled Malleus Maleficarum right on the first try!)

Inside Cat

Johnny Mathis stands at the precipice of Outside, crouched down, sniffing at the door frame. This is no ordinary unexplored closet or space beneath the bed, this is something new entirely. It is unfamiliar. Outside is ever present behind the windows he so often growls at the birds from, but when faced with the prospect of actually setting foot outside the house and exploring he has no idea what to do. His ears pricked up, he daintily cranes his grey and white head out, peering around the corner. I stand a few feet behind, keeping my eye on him as I clean out and reorder my bookshelf.

While Johnny is inside the house he is bored, complacent, a little hostile. He'll often leap up while lounging on the carpet in the center of the floor to chase after some sort of ghostly prey, his claws digging into the carpet, his tail raised up. While I walk down the stairs he makes sport of chasing me and swatting from the first staircase as I make my way down the second. He is truly the master of the house- sometimes seeking affection and attention when feeling bored or playful, always dashing away in disgust whenever anyone makes to pet him or pick him up.

To see him so humbled in the face of the great, unknowable vastness of the deck above our backyard is very funny. Every noise and motion I make sends panic straight into his little feline heart, and he dashes out of the room, only to return to the vestibule of Outside after a few moments. Even now he is sitting in the center of my room, surveying the giant collection of random things scattered over the floor, standing tall, chest thrust forward, ears standing at attention. Yet when faced with the unfamiliar he is flattened to the ground, on the alert for any number of fearsome beasts that lurk beyond the protection of the sliding glass door.

I used to be an inside cat.
I wonder if I still am.

Cellar Door

"A sight for sore eyes."
It's really a beautiful expression. It is perhaps a little cheapened by it's heavy, cliched usage, but if you take a minute to think about it, it's really very pretty.

"Sore eyes." Sore implies too much use. Imagine- having eyes that are always sore. To have experienced so much, to be so jaded and world weary as to have sore eyes --to be so unenthusiastic about life that even looking out at it is a painful exercise-- how awful. One of my favorite lyrics is, "Now let me close my eyes cause I don't wanna see anything anymore." It implies an unthinkable level of pain, weariness, hopelessness.

And to be the recipient of such a complement. To be someone with the power to inject new life and enthusiasm into a splintered, dried up human being. To be the one that makes even looking at the world with pained eyes worthwhile again.
How incredible.

Desperate bitterness

Why the fuck am I here?
I'm sitting in a Starbucks in the god damn University Hospital at one in the morning. There are med students all around me with laptops and textbooks trying to study.
I do not approve of this adventure.

I ease the tedium of my helpless silence as the five around me chat away with embarrassing volume by sucking my coffee from the little oval hole in the lid.
Not bad: load this up with enough milk and sugar and I could drink it casually.

Videogames, sex, random inside jokes, new cell phones, videogames, more sex: there are few places in the conversation to work myself into. Bitterness laced with ennui seeps in. I content myself with my coffee, in its ridiculous little philosophical paper cup, slouched in my seat, legs crossed.

Somehow the topic of conversation comes to my major. English. The fat one looks me straight in the eye and asks me, "So what are you going to do with that?"
Her tone is mocking, derisive. An hour later while driving home I would think of a hundred frightening, unfriendly things to growl in return, but I respond with a simple "Whatever I want." The others get a laugh out of this. That was sort of my intention; I'll take my fair share of bullshit if it means I don't have to snap at someone and cause a scene. I sip my coffee, keeping eye contact, giving her the coldest hint of a glare over the rim of the cup. She quips with something about being unemployed, I give a simple shrug. Razor blades and spite start boiling in my stomach, I fall silent for the rest of the night.

Your first words to me had to be that. You assume I'm a completely incompetent, lost little boy, floundering through academia in a desperate attempt to find myself in this big, scary world.

I have never been more sure of myself than I am at this moment in my life.

Thoughts on time, age

I live right above my old elementary school. Our house is on the hill directly above it, so I can go out onto my deck and look out over the school, 33rd south, the valley, downtown, it's a great view. Makes for some stunning sunsets.
While taking a break outside to sit and think for a little, I looked down on the school. It was recess, and all the little kids were out running around and screaming, playing on the swings and various plastic playthings strung out on the grounds.
What a bunch of wusses these school administrators have become. When I was a second or third grader we had this big, nasty, splintery tower of wood and old tires that I'd play on a lot. It went about fifteen or twenty feet in the air, and the only thing to save your fall were wood chips. Gravel if you landed on the wrong side, and maybe asphalt if you jumped too far out. They tore it down one year, and now everything is metal and plastic, covered in greens and purples and yellows, with this black squishy stuff on the ground to cushion falls.

A bunch of different feelings flashed through my head when I was looking down on them as they played, but the one thought that passed through my mind was this-

"Poor bastards."

Now why did I think that?
I can be quite a cynic sometimes. Not so much nowadays, but maybe the thought was just a random misfire: the poisoned remnants from when I was a little darker. These little guys don't even know they're growing up on a melting planet; living in a floundering country; disenfranchising billions by living a lifestyle they are unaware of and have no control over. Maybe I'm mourning their future, all of the things you and I have done to it.

Perhaps it was jealousy? Of youth, lack of responsibility, or all of that romantic bullshit we assign to little kids? Although I don't think it's that either. By any reasonable measure my childhood was great, but that doesn't wash away the resentment of a few things I don't care to mention. No, if given the option, I wouldn't go back.

I don't believe that life is a curve. It doesn't reach an apex and then dwindle as you get older. My life has only gotten better as I've gotten older. Maybe I'm setting myself up for a seriously rude awakening in thirty years or so, but I think the secret is finding a way to deal with the changes and accept them, to acknowledge that you lose a lot with age but gain just as much.
Maybe I'm just stupid.

Surprised for a change

To begin, let's start with a couple of pictures-

This is Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.

This is Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

If you'll note, Harrison Ford is fucking old as hell in the second photo. On July 13 he turns SIXTY-SIX. When he filmed Raiders, he was a spry young man of 39.

This is precisely why I dreaded Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Like Phantom Menace, Clone Wars, and Revenge of the Sith before it, I really feared that Kingdom would ruin an already incredible trilogy of movies. I watched The Empire Strikes Back so many times as a little kid that I would literally memorize huge chunks of the script, and Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade were some of my favorite films.

How terrifying, then, to learn that George Lucas was making another Indiana Jones. Indiana Jones differs from Star Wars in that the movie would be a total flop without Harrison Ford playing it's eponymous character. What I feared the most from the new Indiana Jones was that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg would burden another legendary franchise with an overwrought, CGI-laden disaster. Even worse, I feared that the Nazi punching, whip wielding archaeologist that I know and love would be a feeble, impotent, doddering old geezer in this new installment, completely robbed of his power and charm.

Hell, Indy didn't even HAVE Nazis to punch in this film. It's set in 1957!

How surprised I was, then, to find myself enjoying the film as it went along. I could go on about the refreshing "minimalist" treatment Spielberg gave the film when it came to CGI (there's still a hefty amount, but it's tolerable), the two hundred well deserved "Harrison Ford is old" jokes, the old school car chases, but the deciding factor for me was the first time Indy took a punch. I take a perverse pleasure in watching Indiana Jones get beat up: it makes his victory in the end that much more satisfying. Not only did he take a lot of abuse in the film, he dished it out too, and nary a stunt man was used during the filming! Ford did all his own stunts, and put on fifteen pounds of muscle for the role, which at sixty-five is quite a feat.

And so, even though many critics were disappointed with the film, citing it's formulaic plot and predictable plot twists as weaknesses, Crystal Skull didn't fail to live up to the other three movies. After all, when have the plots for any of the other three movies been at all believable? It was total camp when the chieftain in Temple of Doom rips that guy's heart out, and it was absolutely goofy when Sean Connery took down that Nazi airplane by scaring a flock of seagulls into the propellers in Last Crusade. While Crystal Skull stretches the traditional plot elements of the first three movies to rather fantastic proportions (I won't give anything away by saying what), it was a satisfying experience in the end.

Can't let go

I was going to go on a big, sardonic rant on this little piece.
I was going to point out the incredible wealth of ironic, sometimes offensive little statements.
I was going to ridicule this into dust.
But I think everything I have to say is self-evident.

This is the description for a Facebook group created by one of the girls I went to high school with. It is entitled "Skyline Girls are hotter than Olympus Girls" (sic).

As a point of clarification, though, "the Rock" is this painted, football sized rock that gets passed around between Skyline and Olympus every year. The ownership of the Rock is determined by a football game in the fall. Apparently if was sent down by a bolt of lightning during a thunderstorm and found by the two schools' football coaches while summiting the peak of a mountain or some dumb shit like that.

Enjoy.

"This group is a tribute to feud that has gone on for years between the two neighboring/rival schools of the Skyline Eagles and Olympus Titans......beautiful girls. When it comes down to it, Skyline women are the reason the eagles have topped Mt. Olympus and beyond in every area. Obviously, the football team couldn't have taken state so many years in a row and defended/stolen the controversial ROCK from Olympus without the (leadership of Coach Dupaix and Marshall) but mainly the motivation of the gorgeous skyline girls who would only date them if they did so.... That is the reason Olympus never won, their girls just weren't cute enough so the lack of motivation and determination was at a high point...Lady Eagles are just THAT HOT and WORTH IT! Girls from Skyline can go without makeup and still look BEAUTIFUL, let alone.. play sports and totally eat alive other teams in a non-cat fight, professional fashion. Unlike Lady Titans, Skyline women don't need orange makeup, fake eyelashes, or bleached blonde hair to set herself apart from the rest. Skyline women are naturally pretty, down-to-earth (even though they have a lot of money), FUN, and every man's fantasy!!!!!! Most boys from Olympus would rather date a Skyline girl, Not only because she is smokin' but they just want to have some part in the Skyline Tradition of Excellence, AND Skyline men know they are lucky to have us. Let's face it, The Lady Eagles have got men suicidal everywhere....and that's what makes us the sexiest girls alive and therefore........ hotter than Olympus girls!"

Unfinished

Here's a bunch of stuff that I've stopped and started. Once I stop working on something that usually means that it goes uncompleted, so I figured I'd just put them out as is.

"Scraps from Childhood"

I really hate it when people whore out the figures from my past to sell me things.

---

Untitled

First period, Graphics class, my senior year of high school:

"I've only read one book in my entire life."
"Oh yeah, which one?"
"Catcher in the Rye. I just do the same book report over and over again in different classes."

My parents had to physically take books away from me as a little kid so I'd do my homework.

---

"Well Oiled Living"

Only halfway through class. Jesus, over forty minutes left. The minute hand on the clock creeps forward with a sadistic slowness, each time I look back the interval between where it was when I last checked and where it is now diminishes. Twenty minutes here, fifteen, ten, five.
Why am I here?
One of my professors always asks us after an assigned reading, "So, was this worth your while? Was the time you spent reading, that hour or so you'll never get back, a valuable expenditure of your life?" What a poisonous question to ask; now I'm asking myself that question about everything. I'm finding that, for the most part, none of this damn work I'm doing in this particular class is worth spending my time on.

"Ok folks, I'll see you on Thursday!"
That's questionable, actually. I'm calling it a two to one shot I skip this class completely.

I walk out the door, using the same stairwell as always. A song --one of the three or four cycling through my head all day-- starts up again. I time the beats with my footsteps. Right, left, right, left, one, two, three, four. I get particularly ADD about timing my footsteps and the music when walking up and down stairs. The fourth beat must fall on the landing of a staircase when heading up stairs, on the last step of a staircase when heading down. The second beat is acceptable to finish a staircase with, although the first or third beat leaves me feeling awkward.

The timing of beats, of course, necessitates memorizing whether a staircase has an odd or even number of stairs. I take the same path every day: Williams' staircases, even; between Textor and Campus Center, odd; the circular staircase from the Handwerker to the library, even; the stairs in the library, odd.

---

Untitled

"HI! I've seen you around somewhere before."
I have no idea who this person is. Hold on, maybe I do. We had a class together once, almost two years ago now. Didn't recognize her with the glasses.
She is too close. I back up, trying to ease the nervous, clenched feeling in my stomach; she steps forward. From this distance I can smell the Keystone on her breath. It reminds me of Freshman year a little bit. Apparently we have another class this year, Jewish and Christian Interpretations of the Bible. We talk about the Documentary Hypothesis and Mosaic Authorship, midrashic exegesis, the merits and demerits of our professor.
...
"I have a question for you, Andy Frah."
She's now sprawled out on the couch. She sort of had my last name right in the beginning of the night, but after several rounds of beer pong her pronunciation got progressively sloppier.
"What?"
"Do you like girls, Andy Frah?"
Hazy thoughts collect themselves for a second,
"Yes."
"Do you have a girlfriend, Andy Frah?"
The question had been sitting on her tongue ever since she introduced herself, it was only a matter of when she was going to ask it. She is a sweaty, drunken mess. I contemplate how best to answer this.

Finding the right song

My obsession for the past ten months or so has been one thing- the Nissan Z. A year ago, in exchange for some work around his house, my uncle let me borrow his. I wasn't even a car person beforehand; I had a passing appreciation for attractive cars, but I was much more focused on other things. After driving the Z for two months, though, I was absolutely, positively hooked. It is very beat up and has about 300,000 miles on it, but even after 23 years it still kicks ass down the road.

(I'm a shitty photographer)

The most endearing thing about the car, for me at least, is the stereo. Music isn't quite the same with a set of headphones as it is at 80 miles per hour, the wind violently whipping around your hair, bass drum beats resonating in your lungs, the volume so loud you can hardly hear yourself yelling. Old, tired songs took on new life in the car, and the songs I first listened to in the car I'll always associate with wind and acceleration and the summer sun.

And so, to christen the car I need to find the right song. I've literally been thinking about this since August, and I still haven't decided on an appropriate song. Here are the finalists, listed in descending order of taste with comments-

Meatloaf- Bat out of Hell
Best lyric- "I'm gonna hit the highway like a battering ram on a silver-black Phantom bike / and when the metal is hot and the engine is hungry and we're all about to see the light / nothing ever grows in this rotten old hole and everything is stunted and lost / and nothing really rocks and nothing really rolls and nothing's ever worth the cost."

I was obsessed with this song as a little kid. My dad and I took a trip to Durango, Colorado once to do some kayaking, and I think we listened to this about ten or fifteen times in a row on the way down. The song's all about love and escaping from a dead end town and going fast. The guy in the song does lose control of his motorcycle and dies in a ditch on the side of the road by the end of the song, though, so this might not bode well for me.

Avantasia- Devil in the Belfry
Best lyric- "I will forget her, but I won't forgive / the curtain has fallen, behold the messiah."

I only recently discovered this one. Avantasia's earlier stuff is absolutely incredible, although it took me a long time to get into (some) of the songs on their new CD, and this is one of the best tracks. Tobias Sammet is a massively talented singer, and instead of staying with the choir on every other chorus he keeps on going higher, and the effect just kills me. At the same time, though, I'm an increasingly big believer in bad omens and real life symbolism, and the lyrics really don't fit this period in my life. As stupid as it is to admit, I'd be half afraid that I'd jinx myself if I listened to this on such an important occasion.

(These next two are a little more barbaric)

Ensiferum- Iron
Best lyric- Either "Tasted the snakes poison, I've broken every bone / felt a thousand gunshot wounds, but there's nothing that whiskey can't cure" or "Blazing fire under the moon, burning taste of lead / we'll ride forever, cause the Iron is stronger than death."

This song is absolutely intense. It's one of the ones I first started listening to the first time I had the car, and I always imagine myself behind the wheel when I listen to it. Right when the vocalist gets into "Blazing fire under the moon..." the drummer lets out with a stream of 16'th note bass drum kicks that feels like machine gun fire. Every time --every time-- I listen to that it sends chills down my spine. Another track on the CD (Iron), "Sword Chant," is what I based this post on. Ensiferum is easily one of my favorite bands, and this may very well be the song I pick.

However, we also have-

Equilibrium- Wingthors Hammer
Best lyric- Well, the whole thing is in German, but- "Fern im Jotenreich auf einem Hügel saß er / Thrym der Thursenfürst, Herr von Riesenheim."

This song completely hit me out of nowhere. I discovered these guys over winter break, and while I was almost certain then that "Iron" would be the song I choose, this is a serious contender. The song is pretty damn nerdy --it's all about Thor losing his hammer and his quest to reacquire it-- but the first minute of the song is absolutely intense. First the guitar and trumpets, then the flutes, then a drum roll, and then the vocalist busts out with a huuuuuge, mind-bendingly long scream, gives himself a few bars of rest, and then does it again. It does lose a bit of appeal for me after the second verse though, and I've listened to it so much by now that it's getting a little old, but it's still a very likely option.


I'm still really torn on which one to pick. I really love Iron, but I'm naming the car Blitzkrieg, and it seems appropriate to compliment a German name with a German song. I've never tired of Bat Out of Hell, but I love Devil in the Belfry too. I'll probably end up playing all four at some point, but I still can't decide which to play first.

Andy sees boobs.

The semester is over, and instead of heading straight back home I'm staying for senior week (the week between the end of finals and graduation). I'm living in an apartment with two gay guys and two girls. Anyway, I rolled out of bed around 10:30 this morning to find them all sunbathing in the backyard, the girls in bikinis, the guys in swim trunks. They invited me out, but I had a few other things I had to do, so I turned them down. I took a shower, shaved, brushed my teeth, and got some breakfast. I sat down on the couch in the living room, intending to eat my banana and bowl of cereal and then play a round or two of Mario Kart before attending to my rounds. I took a brief glance outside.

I expected to see two bikini clad women and two shirtless guys lying out on the grass. Instead, my eyes zoomed right in on this big, fleshy, globular thing.
Uhhhh, what? Thats not Joe's chest, but it has a nipple on it....
And then it struck me. Inside my mind the thing that controls my "HOLY FUCKING SHIT!" reaction started working on overdrive.
The girls had taken their tops off. Beforehand I couldn't even identify what I was looking at, but the pieces fell together, and I realized that I was staring at the unclothed breast of one of Joe's housemates.

I was thunderstruck.
I couldn't even think.
I stood there transfixed for a second and then tore my eyes away.
What the hell do you do in a situation like this?
I took a double take, and then a triple take. The other girl had taken her top off as well. I met her last night. I stared helplessly for a moment and then walked back into the kitchen, completely unsure of what I should do next.

"I really want to play Mario Kart." I thought, "But.... but they're just... out there!"
"They must have known that I'd see them. How the hell not? The backyard is right there, and I have to go through the living room to leave the house."
"But can they even see me? They're lying on their backs, and it's dark inside the house."
"Jesus H. Christ! Now they're taking photos of each other!"
It was like I was an extra in a badly written porn movie.

A million different thoughts ran through my head as I alternated between gawking in dumbstruck wonder and looking away out of shame. Joe had invited me to have a beer earlier, I turned him down initially, but I now reached into the fridge, grabbed a Magic Hat, and popped the cap off.

After a few minutes and a few desperate gulps from my beer I decided that it was impossible that they wouldn't expect me to see them. It made no damn sense that they'd get naked around someone they'd only known for a few days, but apparently they didn't mind. I sat down on the couch and fired up the Gamecube.

Many, many times throughout the first round I went back and forth between thinking this was ridiculous and thinking this was completely awesome. There I was, sitting on the couch, playing video games with two nude sunbathers in plain view. How many times in your life do you get the opportunity to say that? Eventually I decided it was just too much, and went to close the shades. I paced around in front of the screen door for a minute, looking for the string to draw the blinds, and saw that there was none. I slid them left to right by hand, and then looked for the string to rotate them shut. There was none.

The four lying outside were all staring at me in silence, the awkward tension was building by the moment. Trying to justify myself, I muttered something along the lines of "Somehow I don't think I should be looking at this." They all laughed. I tried twisting the blinds by hand, but they wouldn't budge. I never got them closed. I sat around on the couch for another fifteen minutes or so before leaving.

I often reflect on the absurd coincidences that have brought me to where I am, on the ridiculous things I've done and experienced here, but I think this little experience has been the height of ridiculous things I've experienced in Ithaca. You grow up in Salt Lake City, and then find yourself in upstate New York a few years later, playing Mario Kart and eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch with two naked girls 15 feet away in the sun. It's now 7:30 and we have yet to discuss the incident.

Ridiculous indeed...

Assorted Memories

I get reminded of a lot of stuff all the time, just walking around doing normal things.

One time when I was ten or eleven I was playing outside at my grandma's house. There was an old guy riding around on a bicycle, and he called something out to me that I couldn't hear. After a couple seconds he tossed me some Jolly Ranchers and pedaled away, giving me a big smile as he went. Of course, all I thought at the time was, "Sweet! Jolly Ranchers!" I picked them up off the lawn and ate them, marveling at my wonderful luck.
I told my aunt of the good news a half hour later. After one really freaked out aunt, a call to poison control, and a frantic trip to the grocery store for some Ipecac I learned that you shouldn't take candy from random people. Or if you do don't tell anyone.

---

One time I was filming a skit for German class in junior high. It was set at a doctor's office, and I was one of the patients. We were very mature little thirteen year olds, with highly developed senses of humor and class, and we decided my ailment would be explosive diarrhea. To achieve this we smeared chocolate pudding on the seat of my pants. While in the hallway some girls walked by and saw my pants.
"Ew, what is that?!" They asked, with very prim, greater-than-thou looks on their faces.
"Well, uh, it's pudding." I said.
"Ok. We'll just call you poopey pants from now on." They said, mustering up the most demeaning, superior stares they could.
"Um. Ok."
And they did. I never really minded, but when I remembered this a few days ago I thought how nice it would be to go back and say, "You know what? You're nasty bitches and I don't like you."
I think that about a lot of people, actually.

---

For my senior year in high school I took a class in the humanities for my last English credit. Our teacher was fresh out of the University of Utah. She had a couple years of experience, so she could lead an effective class, but hadn't quite been dried out on the stove of public education just yet. At the end of the year she read us her undergraduate thesis. It was on thongs. No, not the southeastern hamlet in England, not the sandal, but the underwear. It was admittedly well written, but I wonder what it says about the U's Humanities program when a senior can finish off her undergraduate education with an essay on underwear.

(By the way, check this out. "They are not only sexy and stylish but differentiate the younger men from the underwear of their forefathers." Go Wikipedia go.)

Deep Meditation on Eternal Truths

(Thought of around 8:30 this morning)

Why do Pokemon say their own names all the time?
I mean, I guess it's fitting that a Squirtle goes "Squirtle Squirtle!" But by that same token, wouldn't a turtle have to waddle around shouting "Turtle!" or a dog run around panting "Dog! Dog!"?

Last week of classes (if you couldn't tell). Hello delirium.

Late Night Experiments in Poetics

I'm done.
I can feel the weight of academia lifting from my shoulders. Only for a few minutes, though.
I take a little time to think, take a drink of water.

It's the end of the year.
I'm usually looking too far ahead,
All week I've been fast-forwarding: Tuesday was Thursday, Wednesday was Friday.
And yet I can feel time stretching out behind me.
It's a comfortable feeling. People always complain about how fast things go,
How years of personal history seem to disappear, how "The End" is coming up too fast.
How frightened they are of the open-ended void that awaits them after their education is over.

I take down my dad's watch, the ancient digital one I used to wear over the summer.
I haven't worn it since I got here. I doubt it's moved since I placed it on my bookshelf in August.
I wipe away the thin layer of dust on its face, and find myself both shocked and reassured by how long this year has taken to complete.
My life will be long enough, I think.


------

Hey hey! It's like prose with funny line divisions!
More like this to come maybe.

Come, Clarity

They've been showing up around the campus for a week or so now.
Ever since the sun came out of hiding little chalk drawings have been popping up everywhere. One on the stairs leading up from the library, one above the Terrace dining hall, a big five or six panel series on the Towers.
They're pretty damn cute. "Patience, my dear." "All you need is love." And, my personal favorite, "Don't go to class! Ok, fine, go. But don't let school get in the way of your education."

One of my dad's favorite words is "smarmy," that's one of the first words that came to my head once the little pop of gratitude I felt at seeing the drawings passed. Cute, idealistic, hopelessly naive. Public Safety thinks so too; several were washed away after a day or so.
Within the drawings, though, is a rare, cheerful kind of emotion. You see faded imitations of it in cartoons and romantic comedies all the time: that bright, glinting little flash of warmth and innocence, hints of new beginnings.

You could spend your entire life looking for the truth behind the lie the emotion represents: fairness. The overwhelming weight of your own experience, the tar and bricks from your past, blocks it out. It passes by occasionally, peeking through cracks, glancing down from the top of your prison, and departs without reason, leaving poison and broken glass in the pit of your stomach. The only things left to feel after the light leaves are the little rocks that bite into your hands and legs, the dirt on the floor, the chill of darkness.

Yet in spite of all the dirt and sludge being flung at us from every direction --the slime that clings to our minds and buries us with guilt and bitterness-- there are still one or two people left on South Hill who can say,

"Hey,
World,
fuck off."

Oh you hopelessly misguided few, keep drawing.

After I die

This isn't intended to be too morbid. We've been talking a lot about death in one of my classes, so naturally I've started thinking about the subject.

I don't think I want to be buried in a graveyard. The whole funeral home industry just preys on the stupid decisions people make when they're grieving, and to put a dead body in a cushioned, thousand dollar coffin makes no sense to me. I'd like to be cremated.

But where to put the ashes?

Not in a vase. To be kept in a vase on a fireplace mantelpiece would just be weird, and I don't think people would like walking past that thing. We cremated my dog when I was 12 or so and scattered her ashes around my grandparents' cabin since she loved the place so much. I think I'd like the ashes to be dumped at the roots of a newly planted tree. I could grow into it, become part of it, attain some sort of life after death if this is all there is. Better than rotting in a box.

The finale of Silence is coming.
Really.

No. Don't do that.

I've had a couple things on my mind, some of them for a while, some of them just recently.
One: when the hell did the lolcat meme become something people can use for pictures of things other than cats? Furthermore, when did proper grammar become acceptable in the captions? For instance:


That's not a cat, that's a fucking barbeque. Nor is it the least bit funny. I did not lol. I did not even crack a smile. The appeal of the lolcat lies in 1) cats doing weird things, and 2) the photos being accompanied by equally ridiculous language. And yet 3146 people on I Can Has Cheezburger? think this is worthy of 4 and a half stars. This is simply madness.

Even worse than this recent spate of non-cat lolcats on the website are the people that comment on the photos. Skimmie writes- "Tank u cweenmj!! I is in shawk at my fursst nawt secunds…only just woke upz, went frum bed 2 pooter and chekked da burgurs. I reelly needs caawfee right now, but can we sellbarate with white russians?!!!" Jesus Christ. I can't even read that. I can't vocalize what's so wrong about it, but it reminds me of the first time my grandma used "lol" in an email. It was just out of place. There is a fine line between a humorous misspelling and a completely overwrought, failed attempt at humor, this horrendous little paragraph belongs in the latter category.

This, however, is exactly how a lolcat should work:


This has all the ingredients of comic greatness: a pun on pop culture, a cat with a really cracked out expression on its face, and a perfect mix of internet vernacular: not too much, not too little. No more barbeques, no more chairs, and (as much as I enjoyed American Psycho), no credit card machines, kthnx.

Horror

I'm looking for a red Jack.
A red Jack in a forest of 52 cards. Could be anywhere.
Coooooome on red Jack. I need that to go on the black Queen so I can move that black ten off of that pile and uncover some more cards. Running out of options fast, that Jack is going to be my only salvation.
Maybe I should go back to reading... No, I should finish this first.

A reference librarian comes in with two friends, one starts looking through the shelves for a book. A few keyboards clack quietly in the distance. The librarian bids the duo farewell, saying,

"I'm going to be really brave now and take the stairs."

Her hair is grey, her face drooping and wrinkled. Her careless little sentence smacks me in the face.
My god.
To be so old as to find stairs threatening. To be so used to a withered body as to make jokes about it in passing.
She ascends carefully, step by step, holding onto the hand railing, almost uncertain of her footing.
My heartbeat quickens. The awful, terrifying realization that I'll probably be in the same position in a scant few decades tugs at the corners of my eyes. Something reaches its cold, clawed fingers into my stomach and squeezes.

Pity mixed with remorse and dread, wish there was a word for that. I go back to my computer screen, wondering how many untold days of my life I've squandered playing Solitaire.

-------

Silence Part 2 is forthcoming.

Silence, Part 1

Here's something a little more uplifting than my last couple of posts. A bit sentimental maybe, but I've wanted to write it for a while.

_____________

I excused myself for a few seconds at the after-party and stepped outside onto the icy streets of Brattleboro, Vermont. I needed a little time to be alone, collect my thoughts, and digest the events of the past weekend –indeed, the past month– and this was about the only opportunity I was going to get. It was cold outside, and my sweater wasn’t quite enough to keep the bite out, but I didn’t mind. I settled up against a wall, folded my arms, and thought back.

Every time I try and piece together the ridiculous series of coincidences that brought me to this a cappella concert in this small Vermont town I can’t help but smile and laugh a little. How improbable, how mind-bendingly unlikely. I suppose we should begin in 2003. It was late summer, I was a Sophomore in high school. I’d been playing the guitar for two or three years, and my lessons with my guitar teacher were almost purely centered around jazz, so I figured that auditioning for the Skyline High School Jazz Band wouldn’t be a bad idea. After all, what better way to improve myself musically than by applying the chords and concepts I was learning?

My dad dropped me off outside the high school, and I proceeded inside, guitar and amp in tow. I couldn’t read music very well, so I was pretty nervous about making an ass of myself in front of the band director. I walked up to a table outside the music room and asked, in a very sophomoric fashion,
“Is this the Jazz Band audition?”
The guy sitting at the table, who I later learned was the president of the school’s barbershop choir, looked at me for a second and said,
“Uh, no, this is the choir audition.”
“Oh.”
I stood there for a second, feeling incredibly dumb. Straps biting into my hand, I wasn't sure whether to turn around and leave or stay.
“Would you like to audition anyway?” The choir president asked. I agreed. Setting my things down in the hallway, I walked into the choir room.

Seated at the top of an amphitheater-style series of risers was the choir director. I made a sheepish hello. I, of course, didn’t have anything to sing, and so I sang “America the Beautiful” with the accompanist. Very, very badly. After this the choir director had me clap out a few rhythms and sing back a few series of notes. He remarked that I had a good ear after I sang back the notes to him, but I figured my overall dismal performance was going to be a deal breaker. I thanked him for the audition and walked back to the car, completely embarrassed.

A week or so later I got a call. Apparently I had made it into the barbershop choir, the Troubadours. I’d be singing bass.

My time with the Troubadours –then Concert Choir, and eventually Madrigals in my senior year– came to define my life. Walking into the choir room on the first day of class I barely had a grasp on what I was doing. If I wasn’t surrounded by other basses I’d lose my part completely. But I slowly learned to distinguish my part from the other three parts, picked up on the musical conventions of the style, gained a sense for what different chords and harmonies felt like. By my senior year I was convinced that I wanted to pursue this in college, and looked for schools with good vocal performance programs. I eventually settled on Ithaca College in upstate New York.

Blind

We always eat lunch at the same time. It usually happens the same way. Sometimes I don't see her, but this time I sat precariously close to her favorite table. Maybe I'm getting a little masochistic, maybe I wanted to see if it would turn out differently.
I saw her things first, her bag, her coat, that scarf, and then one of her roommates sat down at the table. I said hello, sat down, stared at my food.

She set down a few things, and walked back to get something else.
Walked right past me. Not for the first time either, she's done this on a number of occasions. This time, like most of the others, she brushed right up against me.

Ignored, discarded, forgotten.
Insignificant, unimportant, unwanted.
How funny it is, making contact without making contact. It tears me apart, leaves me gasping, bleeding. It makes me want to gnash my teeth and growl. Imaginary fangs are bared, imaginary hackles stand on end, imaginary claws carve into the table. A terrifying howl, as substantial as smoke, rips through my throat and slashes through the air. I take a bite of my sandwich and sigh a silent, hopeless little sigh.

Go back in time a little, maybe a year and a half ago. She and I ate dinner every night, lunch at least five or six days a week. We'd watch movies, do our homework together in the library, take stupid pictures, head to Collegetown on Thursdays.
She was a friend.

I sit and think for a minute, get up, leave. I take the long way around so I don't have to see her. We cross paths anyway.
I meet her gaze. Her eyes dart away for a second, come back to greet mine. Pathetic. She gives me a smile, says hello. I give her an equally hollow smile, I don't dignify the response with words. That little jerk of her eyes told me everything I need to know.
If you don't want to look at me, I don't want to speak to you.

----------

Took a nap in the sun today, I thought about a lot of things. A band in the music building was practicing. I caught the occasional note from a soprano, mostly heard the percussion section, interspersed with little snippets of conversation from the people walking by below me. It was peaceful.
The wind blew my hair around a little, it brushed up delicately against my forehead. I concentrated for a bit, opened my eyes, and almost expected to see you standing over me, your fingers running through my hair. Maybe one day.

Silent Scream

Monday night, 10:00 pm, Towers Dining Hall.
I'm in line for food. I couldn't really eat dinner a couple hours before, I was too jacked up on caffeine and had too much anxiety churning in my stomach to really eat anything. A bite of salad here, a piece of carrot there, maybe a chunk of steak, I couldn't take anymore than that. I had to send my plate off into the kitchen almost completely untouched. I felt a little guilty for wasting the food.
And so I went off to work, and after my shift I was fucking ravenous. And so here I am, in line for Late Night, some of the most awful food on campus. I'll put up with it, I just need something to put in my stomach.

And then she cut in line. Right. Fucking. In front of me.

She was short, dressed in a pink hoodie, with her sweat pants tucked into obscene, furry little boots.
Black hair, carelessly drawn back into a ratty, half-assed pony tail.
Purple glasses, behind which rested oblivious, glazed over cow eyes.
And the voice. Oh that voice. One could spend hours listening to that excruciating voice were one so masochistically inclined. Long Island sharpened her speech to an exquisitely painful edge. It sliced right through my armor with each syllable, I could almost hear my bleeding soul cry out for mercy. My god it was beautiful piece of work.

And the words that voice spoke:
"So anyway, all I had at dinner was, like, a little salad, some of those potatoes and a piece of cake, so I shouldn't be overdoing it with Late Night."
"So, um, do you, like, want to go to the gym later?"
"Oh my god! What is that you're wearing?"

She crossed in front of me, I think, to join her friends. Her pack of hyena friends. All of them were at least a head shorter than me. I, the giant amongst a group of childish, chatty little pygmies.
If we lived in a simple time, one without the trappings of modernity, perhaps a more sensible time, I think I'd be able to kill all of them for getting in the way of my food without a silly hint of remorse.
It's simple really; eat or die.
Hey, why not?
I look at the silverware rack, giving a tender, then savage glance at the butter knives. My cultural conditioning keeps me from satisfying my baser desires. I damn humanity as I take my hamburger. As I walk to my table I catch her glance, wishing and praying for the venom in my eyes to reach straight through her. I don't know if I succeeded, I don't suppose it really matters.

I had two tests in a row today, one interrupted by a fire alarm.
My prospective landlord told me that there is another group of three who are eyeing our apartment. He told me the first to sign the lease and give him the security deposit is going to get the place. He might as well have ripped my sanity right out of my head; my paranoia about losing the apartment has grown tremendously since we spoke this afternoon.
We have our first concert this Friday for VoiceStream, I'm working publicity Wednesday morning in Campus Center, and we have three hour rehearsals both Wednesday and Thursday night. On three songs out of our fourteen song set I have no idea what I'm doing. Over the weekend we leave to do a gig in Vermont.

It's been a long time since I've been completely frozen in fear. My room is a mess, my hands shake, I can't sleep.
And she has the audacity to cut me in line. Were I just a little weaker I think I would have thrown things against the wall and screamed.
I considered punching a wall earlier. I still have a bump on the knuckle of my right middle finger from the last time I punched a wall. It was last year, I was in the shower. I can't remember what it was I was frustrated about, but I threw my fist into the shower wall four or five times. I hadn't done it before, I was curious how it would make me feel. The rush was satisfying at the moment, but the pain killed the satisfaction after a while.
I made a loose fist, singled out a cinder block in the hallway at about chest height, and paused. The grief inspiring realization that doing this is just going to make my hand hurt and not solve any of my problems washed over me with crushing finality. I walked on defeated, sort of tapping the wall with my hand as I passed.
And so I sit here and type, buried alive.

An Oldie but a Goodie

Yet another relic from deep within my hard drive. For a few months between graduating from high school and going to college I worked at a temp agency (a different one than I work at now) doing day labor stuff, mostly working in factories. My first assignment was pushing shopping carts at the local Sam's Club. I bitch and moan quite a bit, but I think it makes for a nice effect.

Andy Hates Shopping Carts

In the weeks since graduation I have been looking for work, partly to earn money, partly to get my dad off of my back about my laziness. And, seeing as nobody will hire a teenager that's going to be leaving in seven weeks, I had to turn to a temp agency. I told them I was mostly interested in clerical work, but that I'd also be ok with "light labor." I don't know why I said this, perhaps it was out of sheer desperation. As such, I suckered myself into pushing shopping carts for a day at Sam's Club.

I don't think I've ever done anything quite so stupid.

I arrived at my designated time of 11 o'clock, directly in the heat of the day, mind you, with the asphalt of the concrete amplifying the heat. I received a little orange vest so I wouldn't get hit by cars, a walkie-talkie for contacting me if a customer need my assistance in lifting some huge and completely unnecessary purchase into their SUV, and a name tag. My fellow shopping cart wrangler was named Chris, a rather short and vocal young man, also a temp worker. Chris thanked God repeatedly at my arrival, he was "barely holding up and really needed the help." Oh boy, this is perhaps going to be worse than I thought.

I learned many interesting things about Chris and the nature of shopping carts while working. Chains of shopping carts are like caterpillars- nasty, uncooperative, minimum wage caterpillars. One person can reasonably handle a load of about ten or fifteen without breaking themselves, but to save time two or more people are used to handle longer chains. One person will push from the back while the other pulls on the front of the chain to steer the carts into the shopping cart receptacle area. This is, as you can imagine, mind-numbingly boring work, and inevitably leads to prolonged conversation between coworkers. Chris did most of the talking.

Chris is "Italian," although he does not pronounce this as you or I would, for Chris is also a "Virginian." Instead, Chris pronounces it "Eye-talian" and "Vuur-ginian." I quickly learned that Chris is also a rather compulsively violent person, and recently spent 90 days in jail for assault. He blames the Utah court system, because "Utahns- they think they can just talk down to you. They think they're better than everybody else." One quickly comes to recognize that everybody hates Chris- from the police officer who arrested him, to the judge who sentenced him, even down to his manager. Sam's Club is dressing their employees in promotional Real Salt Lake merchandise (although I don't know why anyone would want to endorse that dead-end team), and Chris took his shirt home to wash (as everything you wear while laboring in the hot sun inevitably gets soaked in sweat). His manager was not pleased, and berated poor Chris for not returning the shirt. Chris spent the next two hours expending his endless ill-will towards said manager. I wanted to strangle Chris before the day was out.

You also learn that very little of what Chris says is actually true. The more interesting of Chris' rather fantastic proclamations were:

• While living in Italy his dad trained him to be a hit man. Which, apparently, is a lot easier in Italy than it is in the United States, because should you get caught (which Chris reckons is about a one in sixteen chance) you can just buy your judge off.

• Chris was recently propositioned by "four fine-ass chicks in bikinis" on the bus to come spend the weekend with them at Bear Lake. If I was a fine-ass chick I would not be caught dead anywhere near the likes of Chris, much less actually talk to him.

• If he didn't need the work he would knock in his his manager's teeth in for yelling at him about the Real shirt. Given their respective musculatures, I would give Chris about 10 seconds of consciousness before getting laid out.

My shift ended at seven, and I was positively elated to leave. Exhausted, physically defeated, and fatigued to the point of dizziness, but elated none the less. Were it not for Children of Bodom I probably would have fallen asleep on the drive back. When I took my shoes off at home I discovered lovely little blisters on my feet. The one on my right shaped like an oval, the one on my left mysteriously shaped like a seven. The next time you see someone pushing a line of shopping carts at your local grocery store, give him a smile and a nod, they deserve it.