http://mistervikas.livejournal.com/

http://mistervikas.livejournal.com/


my blog is gone.

not non-existent, just not here. i'm on livejournal. see you there.

pass the big cone hat, please

i am stupid.

...i choose to ignore the stunned gasps, cries, and silence that just issued.

no, it's true. sure, i can drum out pi to 18 digits { 3.14159265358979323, in case you were wondering } but i can't calculate it that far. well, not without sitting there, sticking fingers in and out of the air as i count decimal places in my head.

i'm an idiot. for a thorough examination, here is a brief listing [not a LIST, but a LISTING. shut up, they're different]:

1) i yearn to shave my shaggy beard-growth in order to be clean shaven, yet know ahead of time and decry after the fact that i look very, VERY young when clean shaven.

2) i wasn't able to tie my shoes until 3rd grade (possibly the 4th)

3) i have shocked myself in the last six months. with electricity. from an outlet.

4) i have eaten dirt and other concoctions on a dare. not for the money, but the principle, however stupid it was.

5) i have confused a plant with a person. on more than one occasion.

6) i jump into snowbanks, huge ones, fully dressed and aiming for my face.

7) i was convinced, at the age of 8 or so, that i could build a functioning robot within one week.

8) i doubt the advice of professionals while attempting to do what they do on a daily basis (i.e. carpenters, painters, electricians and plumbers).

9) i have gotten lost because i would not stop and ask for directions (but in all fairness, there have been plenty of times where i didn't get lost)

10) i will wait twenty minutes for the slurpee machine to attain the perfect consistency demanded of my coke slurpees.

11) i am late to meetings, appointments, and parties for things like #10

12) i have forsaken much of my college education, being late after spending too much time sleeping and then ironing my clothes before leaving for class.

13) i don't think i know any state capitols. ANY! and i barely knew to spell it CAPITOL. barely.

14) i forget people's names with startling frequency.

15) i regularly try to take ALL my groceries up the stairs in one trip.

16) i feel no need to unplug appliances and devices before opening them up to troubleshoot or just generally poke around.

17) i drive twenty miles out of my way to save ten cents on gas.

18) i have found occasions in which i discover my own chewing gum caught in my hair.

19) i once tried to 'improve' a tesla coil by changing the number of turns and length of the coil on a whim...and without calculating anything remotely close to a resonant frequency or impedance differential (that one was for all you techies out there)

20) i have tried to persuade women by 'reasoning' with them (now to towel off all the spit from your boos and hisses)

21) i have tried to turn a toothpick over in my mouth, top to bottom, using nothing but my tongue.

22) i closest thing i've ever come to 'winning' in chess was when i and my equally horrible partner both had nothing but our kings left on the board, slowly moving together and apart, one square at a time.

23) WE HAD NOTHING BUT OUR KINGS LEFT ON THE BOARD. now come on, that's just plain horrible. and hence, stupid.

24) i once asked someone who was the better baseball player, Ken Griffey Jr. or Babe Ruth.

25) i have no idea who gore vidal is.

26) i once spent ten minutes trying to say 'kennator sennaty'

27) i once spent ten minutes trying to say 'senator kennedy' when i was 14...and i couldn't even do it in writing with #26.

28) i thought the store named Dulux Paints by my house was pronounced "DOO-LUX" Paints until two years ago.

29) i can calculate the intensity of the sound coming out of my mouth to around a 1% accuracy and then convert it to decibels, but i can't seem to realize that i'm always talking too loudly.

30) i spend most of my grade school years convinced that i could telepathically talk to animals and ask them nicely to obey my commands.

31) i change my accent accordingly whenever i leave the state, to match that of the geography i visit (ya'll know wher i'kin find a gas 'tation 'round 'ere?)

32) i have a deep seated fear and mistrust of any animal that is smaller than me and therefore is able to move much faster than me.

33) i keep all my eggs in one basket (laptop, cell phone, backpack...i even POP my email...)

34) i turn my air-pressure-keyboard-cleaning cans upside down and sprayed my own skin with the freezing liquid (since the pressure is so high inside the liquid becomes gaseous to leave the can, but if you hold the can upside down it comes out in droplets and is VERY VERY cold, as most natural gases when in liquid form).

35) i splattered myself with oil while attemping to deepfy things without a splatter-barrier. repeatedly.

36) i CANNOT recite the alphabet backwards. i just can't.

37) i have had to throw away phone cords because i chewed them too much.

38) ditto on headphone cords.

39) i think chewing on the little red cheese spreader that come with Handi-Snacks makes me look rugged.

40) i buy post-its so i can simply pull them off and fold them in half compulsively, to see the edges stick together.

41) i deliberately make noises with my nostrils. i attempt melodies, as well.

42) i put a pen behind my ear and then wonder the rest of the day where in the world i lost it.

43) i have dreams of walking down the monroe st. bridge, listening to the monroe st. bridge music guy banging on his plastic container drums, and then sitting down and jamming with him on the trumpet i happen to be carrying at the time.

44) ditto for the train.

45) i aim to dress like a mix between ricky ricardo, fraiser crane, bill cosby, and emmet l. brown.

46) i am incapable of roller-blading.

47) i try to fix most things by melting plastic that just happens to be laying around.

48) i talk to the characters on my tv screen.

49) it took me 10 minutes to remember the word 'scarf'

50) i have super-glued a mask to my face for halloween (phantom of the opera...) and, as a result, learned what my facial hair looks like from a third-person perspective.


so there you go. all i need is a big cone hat and a dictionary to make sure i can spell d-u-n-c-e correctly.

meri ludki bhoth achi hain

I just got a new WATERMAN pen!

It's a fountain pen!

It's in a box!!

With BLUE INK!

IN A BOX!



...my girl is super awesome.

i scream.

i like ice cream.

seriously. like you wouldn't believe.

that is all.

john hancock was clearly enamoured

what gives the average man any right to document some vested interest in the topic of love?

possibly when he realizes, from time to time, that it is not an at all easy topic, something formally understandable or cogent.

it just says something when you love a person, a principle, a place so intensely that it frightens you sometimes. it says something when the thought of you losing it brings you to tears, without any provocation, logic, or rationale. and it definitely says something when you choose it all with open arms.

just close your eyes and swim in it.

pardon my zinger

it seems that i'm not used to people laughing at my ignorance.

i mean, i'm the subject of jokes and jibes, yes. but i'm not used to simply being laughed at outright. the example:

"vikas, did you go to 30th Street?" someone asks me, here in Philly. she sounds surprised; given the heat, i figure she thinks i walked a far way to get the food currently in my hand.

"oh, no, i went to the train station."


and so she laughed. and then a passerby, being told of the situation, also laughed. a serious sort of laughter, chorts and chuckles and a very hearty core. for you see, although we are on a cross street that is not close to the number 30, the train station i went to is nevertheless called the 30th street train station.

hence, i was ignorant. hence, i was laughed at.

now this wasn't mean or malicious or anything close to that tint. it's more of a sort of unexpected laughter, an unheard laughter. i'm just not numbed to the sound of someone saying "you don't know such-and-such?? hahahahahahaha"

and i'm fairly sure i don't do it to others. i usually try to get other people to laugh, rather than find a reason to laugh myself. so if i do jab at someone, it's only so that they laugh with me.

maybe that's what they were trying to do, and maybe i just wasn't laughing. not like it matters, it's just making me aware of the fact that there are things that go on in normal life that i'm just not a party to as much as most.

sometimes i look out the plane and see my ambition flying overhead

when i get back to school, i'm either going to get very, very bored or very, very excited. since that's such an odd way to introduce an entry, you are, no doubtedly, shaking your head or rolling your eyes. possibly sighing.

so, i explain. you see, i do not study physics because i have a test coming up. or a job that requires me to keep up to date. i don't even have a single person in my life that will challenge me on the topic, causing me to out-do her/him in an effort to save face or claim superiority. so the fact that engage in the activity at all must be very obvious of the fact that it, quite simply, my calling.

why aren't you focusing professionally on it then? you clearly must be asking.

well, a calling doesn't necessarily require engagement on a constant basis. i mean, it's a calling; if it weren't a calling then it would just be some thing i kinda want to do, or some thing i have to do. instead, it is what i do out of choice and what i do out of personal interest. therefore, it doesn't have to be what i do every hour of my life in order to be the most important thing i can do with my mind.

making a film is a life goal. i may have lost interest in another few years, i may have been haunted by the thought of 'maybe if i'd made that movie' for the rest of my life. i don't know. but i have never pretended that i can't have what i want. it may take sacrifice and dedication and the sort of work that makes some people tired at the thought. but those are the costs of doing anything important. so if it's something i honestly want, i do everything possible.

so, i take my time with physics. my only worry with this is that i will have wasted the most potential of my life, squandering my youthful imagination and insights (no laughing) on things like movies and romance and financial juggling. but i made my choices. and i am happy with all of them.

getting back to the first sentence, finally: i study physics outside of career interest. therefore, i may be overstudied for my first year or two of grad school. this would keep me bored.

but if i'm lucky, really really really really lucky, i can land that special class, that special teacher. that special research project that will give me an honest shot at getting what i want. and what do i want out of physics? i want to make a difference to the lives of everyone in the world. even slightly. i never pretended to dream small. i just don't expect it to happen without a lifetime of effort, sacrifice, and intense choices.

back to work.

even lazarus had to stay in the ground a couple of days

did it really take this long? have i been mulling and idling and whiling and whistling and wary and worried for over three months without a post?

looks like i have.

but the assumption here is that the teeming masses (ha, i bet you don't even know what teeming means, otherwise you'd be criticizing my obviously incorrrect usage of the term) have any interest whatsoever in my quote-unquote life. and you know me, i pander to the masses. especially if they're teeming.

seriously, look it up already. you're embarrassing the both of us.

besides, i've been catching some flak from my regular readers (read: 1-2 people) about not posting in awhile. which is an especially mixed mention from a certain someone who receives my panderings via snail mail these days, wink wink nudge nudge hug hug kiss kiss. you know who you are.

so let's try to displace all the rumors and heresay and non-commital moans that might be circulating about my last few months:

- firstly, this is not a list. i don't like lists, if only because so many other people like to put lists in their blogs. so this is not a list.

- we finished production of the film on May 14th. it was a stressful last weekend for everyone involved; there was an outdoor scene in the rain at 3am, a domestic violence scene taking up an entire day, and lots of moving and shaking.

- for that last day of shooting, i got a haircut. yes, a haircut. i had been growing my hair out for almost 9 months or so and it was incredibly volumnious. but we hit the flashback scene that weekend, and in order to push back the years and make me seem the doe-eyed young beat cop, i cut my hair, shaved, and took off the glasses. all were impressed with the change. so, alls left is editing, color correction, soundtracking, and i'll have a finished film. throw in some trailers so i can attract further gigs, whatever i can muster for a premiere, and i've got myself a lifelong goal squared away into a neat little package (approximately the size of a dvd. approximately)

- consulting now takes me to philadelphia, PA four days a week. i'm working long hours, missing my home, missing holly terribly, and basically at a loss for what to do with myself when i leave the office. i don't leave the office at an hour appropriate for roaming most of the city, and yet early enough that i have a couple hours to kill before having to go to bed. i try to work out, but even that can't always happen if i'm dead tired when i get back.

- i've been slowing working on my next feature script; it's coming together, to be sure, but it's slow going with working long hours and constantly being too tired to feel enthusiastic. but it's coming along, and i get that giddy little thrill once a week or so when i add another page of dialog to my notebook (mind you it's a very small page, but i'm still giddy nonetheless)

- i'm paying off my movie debts slowly. surely, slowly, but surely. but so very slowly. but so ever surely.

so that's the nutshell. what kind of nut? who knows. but those are the overarching themes. also of note are my attempts to come home the past two thursdays:

on july 20th, my flight was delayed 3 hours. at first. my 5:00 flight turned into an 8:15 flight. fine, i think. i'll just wait it out by watching something on my laptop or writing a letter or staring at my latest equations in consternation. but then, at 6:00, i get a text from holly telling me that my flight was cancelled.

um, i'm sorry? cancelled? because you see, poor, poor, naive reader, i had never been informed of any cancellations.

so what to do? the line to the counter was inCREDIBLY long, since about four flights were coming through these gates and everyone had a bone to pick. so the gate counter? not an option. the next best thing, then, is to head downstairs, to the ticket counter...

the art of waiting has never been perfected so well as by those attempting to get to the ticket counter lady. never. ever. so, needless to say, i spent an hour in line for the ticket counter lady while simultaneously on the phone with the airline, trying to get another flight. the first flight out, it was rumored, came on saturday morning. this is was not good, given that i had a wedding to attend friday afternoon. so what to do? i stayed on the phone, through the woman on the other line attempting to get me a new flight. at first, the plan was to: take the train to DC and fly out of Dulles by 8am friday morning, then get into White Plains, wait 3 hours, and fly out to O'hare, getting into chicago around 2pm. just barely enough time to get to the wedding. this plan was accepted.

but then the woman on the phone put some more work into it because she liked the sound of my voice so much (i was nice, she says). so after some work, she landed me a flight at 8am straight out of philly, getting me into o'hare around 10am friday morning. even better. better still was immediately afterwards going straight to another airline and catching a flight an hour later. yes, much better still.

so i made it home that first thursday, around 10pm.

***

on july 27th, the story was slightly different. my 3:00pm flight was delayed by 15 minutes, so nothing horrible. but the problem lay in wait at o'hare; my friend from france was coming to visit my city, arriving at noon. but she said she would be fine waiting until i arrived at 4:30pm. so, a slight delay but nothing horrible.

not horrible, that is, until we actually got into the air. delays upon delays upon delays; chicago was hit with a deluge of biblical proportions, water water everywhere. this delayed us in the air, forcing the pilot to circle around and take alternate routes, keeping us airborne until we were allowed to land.

not to spoil things prematurely, but we weren't allowed to land. instead, after having been delayed in the air by about an hour, we land in, bum ba da bum...

milwaukee.

why in milwaukee? because fuel costs money, and we were burning by flying around the city whilst it rained. so we landed to refuel and await approval from chicago and the milwaukee landing strip we were on to leave. these approvals took about 4 hours. we couldn't get off the plane because there was nothing to get onto; we were on a landing strip, not a gate in site. so we sat and sat, waiting and waiting. waiting and waiting and waiting.

remember when i said the art of waiting could never be perfected so well as by those waiting for the ticket counter lady? yeah, well, i was wrong. it's equally well perfected by those waiting for two traffic control towers to approve your right to leave the state of wisconsin.

so, after about 8 hours of sitting in the same airplane chair, i get to o'hare. at about 10pm, after adding in checked luggage retrieval time and the line to get a taxi (which was so long as to shock the least shockable person on this or any other planet).

what will this next week bring? when trying to meet holly at the airport before her trip? when trying to get home in time to enjoy anything at all? only the future knows, my friends.

here's my hundred...you know where to put it

the general consensus seems to be that i should post more often, laid bare and so succinctly stated by certain salty someone: (i didn't mean the salty bit, it just went with the alliteration. go with it.)

'ah you should post more often'

it is the simple statements that compound upon the poundings aside my salty head (see, now i called myself salty so we're even). statements that include, but are not limited to, the following:

"vikas, why do you look so tired?"

"vikas, why are you eating so much ice cream?"

"vikas, how did you manage to bite your own tongue without actually eating anything?"

"vikas, you're a prideful, pedantic poseur. a pathetic palindrome of paltry, pasty penances. the same forwards and backwards without being any more interesting."

"vikas, you need a haircut."

and for your information, that tongue thing? never happened. no, not that tongue thing, the other tongue thing. the tongue thing three paragraphs up. up, up, wait no too fa...yeah, that one.

and now that the weird simple-statements-that-compound-the-salty-whatever thing is boring me, we move on.

ahem.

it's almost foreign, typing for myself again. the passing of january took with it the last of the real keyboard titterings. did i just type titterings? i mean come on, honestly. typing and typing and diving into code, emails and emails and shooting calendars and speeding my palms over a sea of plastic keys. filming became winter's final coat of snow, looking very nice from a distance and feeling great when you've got a fever. but a layer over the world that you would feel differently about if it became permanent. except without all that drama i put into it just now.

it's more like i'm glad to be all the things i am with this film. calling me a producer and a writer and an actor and an entrepeneur and all the other shiny little gold labels that i've been given over the past six months doesn't impart the particulars of each job. there is difficulty and ease and a hundred other shades. sometimes i sound like i'm complaining, sometimes like i'm proud.

most times i sound like a damn fool.

but you get past trying to do it all and knowing it all and having more pies than you can put fingers in. you get past the point of being a perfectionist and you start being a realist. or a humanist. whatever the word is for knowing when to quit and knowing when to flick off the laws of life.

and i just saw a jetta commercial that ended in a car crash. caught you by suprise, didn't preach and didn't say a thing. just kinda happened, laugh laugh har har BANG. way to go, jetta commercial. way to go.

but the next few days are waiting for the final location, the last three weekends of shooting. so that brings me to weekday work. a blurb from my day (note: if you don't know SQL then this won't make any sense. and if you do know SQL it still won't make sense, but that's for a whole other reason).

select star from table comma table comma when thingie AND thingie AND thingie equal junk. thingie.

mind you it's a little more elaborate than that, but what isn't elaborate these days. am i right? okay well maybe summer isn't that elaborate. and breathing: if you're lucky then breathing isn't elaborate at all. i also hear that toupees aren't very elaborate but i don't have the energy to find out.

oh yeah and ice cream, ice cream TOTALLY isn't elaborate.

but commentary on life doesn't seem to thrill me the way it once did; it was the pedagogical meanderings of euphemism and mental pronunciation that tipped me over and kept the words spilling out of my head like some sort of little teapot without handle or spout.

the lack of thrill might be simple exhaustion. maybe complicated exhaustion. maybe i'm actually happy and i don't need to dive into phraseology as a distraction for life. maybe i'm horribly unfullfilled and the dank depression of life has clogged any and all creative pores.

...right. let's stop for a moment and think about the possibility that i have clogged pores. i mean honestly. think about it. can't think about it? exactly.

but with these things it's an exercise in exaggeration and elaboration. they call it putting a hundred on ten. being a volcano yourself to get a rise out of someone else. make 'em laugh, make 'em cry, get a look or a laugh or a sigh. get them to listen by putting on the show. it might be a freak show, but i hear freaks get to eat lots of ice cream.

ha...ha?

there is something just plain funny about not laughing.

think about it for a second. when you're sitting there, all the elements viable, everything around you screaming in hysteria over the fact that you're just not laughing your spleen onto the dining room table.

hmm, maybe you just don't get it.

because when you find something funny, you laugh, right? your funny bone is tickled and the resultant symptom is a chuckle and a chort.

simple bimple goggity blap flap. sizzle bizzle whizzle iggy dingle bop? hibbity. jungarupfazy?


that's what i thought.

spot me a philosphy, would ya?

i am the definition of tired,

the personification of sleepy, a tribal statue erected in honorarium of sloppy exhaustion.

tired and sore. were soreness a painting, would be i the paint. if achyness a trumpet, i the limber keys. if pedantic nonsense had a name, it would be vikas.

anyway.

yes, so tired. and sore. a good kind of tired and sore, in a way, but also not good in another way. just the kind that obstructs things, the kind that prevents you from holding your arms up without having to try and stretch them out first (think village people and YMCA but pretend that one of them was doing the letter 'T'. that right there, that move, is what i'm talkin' 'bout)

there are clouds outside my window and a fog inside my head. i'm running on automatic. or maybe manual; whichever one implies that you're running along without request of actual independent thought or imagination. where your agenda for the day is

1. breathe
2. eat (maybe)
3. sit at desk
4. breathe

with the occasional bout of typing. but those things are okay, when it's nice looking out.

sure it's a little chilly, but "chilly and chili and chile are all good things," i've always said, "so keep 'em coming." honestly, i've always said it. i even wrote it to amber g. in her middle school year book while she simultaneously wrote "have a nice summer" in mine.

freaking middle school. the paths i could have taken, had anyone responded to my enthusiasm about chilly, chili, and chile.

the week has progressed. there have been many trips to gymnasiums, grocery stores, hardware stores, big stores little stores stores that climb on rocks. etcetera. but none of them have captivated my spirit, none of them have rocked my soul and sent me vaulting into hopeful expection of my next trek to the ____ store.

but maybe i'm expecting too much. maybe shopping catharsis has no reality, maybe i'm looking for something that doesn't exist. like a jackalope or jimmy hoffa's gold fillings.

fine, fine, i take back the jackalope thing. it's not right to make fun at the non-existence of such an obviously realistic creature.

blufarumbum.

live and let

sometimes, i think, you just lose all track of time and tenets. you forget all the things that you were hoping to do and all the people you were hoping to meet. you end up living without all the big things that you wanted for yourself and, somehow, you got through the months and years on the little things that you've been too busy to pay attention to.

and it's not a question of whether you're happy, or a question of whether you're wasting your life. at least not the important question. because with enough time you end up asking the important questions, and realizing that all the planning and hoping and dreaming and wishing and wanting and wasting and whiling away hours only amounts to a big chunk of time spent living in your head. all the time wishing that you could forgive the hurts, forgive love, forgive god, and be forgiven all the same.

i may spend too much time being happy with increments. i may spend too much time having dinners and laughing and just swimming in bliss to realize that there's something else that i should be doing instead. that maybe laying in bed for that extra hour next to warm skin is actually stupidly wasteful, that i should be out selling my company or doing volunteer work or reading that book on QFT that i still haven't finished for 6+ years now.

i may be too flippant with how i want to live my life. it's not like i don't plan to marry, it's not like i don't plan to have kids. so why aren't i saving my money, so why aren't i making sure that all the things i want for my family will definitely happen. i may be living out the dream in my head in one hour segments, living with complete disregard for future and past. just embracing every touch and taste i've waited so very long to enjoy.

but no matter whether your life is perfect or in shambles there's a few things that have to be put away before you can move on to tomorrow. because there have been so many people that have hurt you and so many people that have loved you and so many people that could have been so much more. there are so many places that you want to see and so many sights that you want to find. but the world is too big, and people are too human. so it's important when you get a chance to come to grips with that, to see the tapestry and enjoy what sections you can before the sun sets and you're left with darkness.

and it's nice when you get to take a breath, close your eyes, and wait out the night because, for the most part, all has been forgiven.

pass the butter, please.

on a roll. a textual roll, i'm on a textual roll. a literary kaiser, a phraseologic sesame seed bun. a lettered brioche. alphanumeric baguettes with creamy written interiors.

yeah, that's all i got.

come on in, the water's fine

i am in need of something to need.

well that's not really true. i need lots of stuff. dimmer switches, more lights, more crew, more cast, more production assistants. more pants, more shoes, more gloves, more scarves, more shampoo.

more cufflinks, definitely more cufflinks.

sometimes i need more gas in the car. sometimes in need some ice cream. sometimes i need to watch tv. sometimes i need to sleep. sometimes i need to NOT sleep (wink wink, nod nod, chuckle chuckle).

but that's not the case right now. because i never really need those things. they are wants and preferences and hopes and weird dreams. but i'm using the fully forced aescetic meaning of the word right now.

NEED

the way we need air. or water or food. the way we need a good set of teeth. the way we need a toothpick. i need something. i just don't know what it is yet.

but who ever does know what they need? not need-need, but NEED-NEED. maybe i need surgery. who knows? maybe i need a new sense of self. maybe i need to relax more or i need to buck up more.

maybe i need a mansion. or a yacht. or a really big ocean.

maybe i need a student, or a teacher. maybe i need fish.

i'm talking NEED-need. like how, sometimes, you NEED coffee? ten times more need than that. crazy, huh? exactly. that's what real need is. it's crazy.

therefore, i need to be crazy.

how do i go crazy? maybe i should drive on the wrong side of the road or try to fit twenty people into a phone booth (a small phone booth, not one of those big ones, because that'd just be stupid and easy...like your mom. BOO-YA!). maybe i should make more bad jokes. maybe i should do a headstand at work.

maybe i should take a running jump and kick the glass wall in front of the pseudi-cubi-cle (a cubicle with low walls, mind you) and cause it to crash and crack and just sit there while everyone stares and wonders what just happened.

or eat cheese, maybe i need to eat cheese.

maybe i need to make up sounds and sing a fake song with them (boom bamg piggle pop bant, hibbity joogle kalk, tyup dyup rup rup, nah-ga nah-ga nah-ga villy cix. triggy womp womp. luggaluggga lug. opfisticacky. ung.)

there are paperclips on the wall and nothing holding them up. is that paradoxical? a tool for attaching being attached to something without having anything attaching it to the thing to which it is attached?

crazy isn't a state of mind, chief. it's only the puddle of sanity being splashed all around after you've jumped into it. it's the drops of water from swimsuit or salad dryer, spattered little splotches of rationality retched onto the walls of the cage, all ready to form a pool again at the bottom...but not just yet.

i can't get no-oh...sat...is...fac...shun

so the last couple months i've been all over the map. an example:

me: hey
friend: yo
me: what do you call those things that you wrap around your neck to keep warm??
me: i REALLY can't remember, i don't know why
me: SCARF!!!
me: nevermind
friend: are you doing drugs?

a short but sweet IM conversation detailing my inability to grab a toehold onto basic vocabulary. at least not right away. the film has kept me preoccupied and so have the long hours i've been throwing at everything on my plate. so the question you have to ask yourself is "so, like, seriously....who cares?"

well i guess i care. there's been a lot of ice-cream eating at work, lots of making sandwiches at work. lots of coming home and emailing and calling and gazing into eyes and falling asleep. lots of sleeping without sleeping. lots of dreaming without closing my eyes. the only suggestion i have for those of you missing out on such things is this: you're totally missing out.

new folks at work, old faces at work. the weekly grind in filming but that's coming along nicely. the finished product will be quite the finished product, i think. very much worth...well worth everything.

i have two more films to write. i want to shoot more, obviously, but in terms of acting and investing i'm only going to stick with my stuff right now, thank you. it's been cold outside, which is nice though badly timed. we have an outdoor shoot in a bar alley that will not be nice for actors if it's colder than cold outside. so that is something to be considered.

beyond that, well things are just a matter of time. i have ten minutes to breathe today, so i write. some people seem to think that is impressive or some other malarky; more like it's what i do and that bears no semblance to intentional or ambititious paths. it's more just something that must be done, like bathing or taxes.

i want to help other people some more. family and friends, those that are more than family or friends. help people get through school, help people get out of school. help people take chances, help them learn to rein it in some. help people laugh. help people do what they want. help them just be important in the ways they would like to be important.

so all in all, there's a lot on my plate. but it's a massive plate, reader. massive and tough as granite...no way i'm cleaning my plate right now.

wow is 'wow' spelled backwards

wow.

weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and then a day or two. then weeks and weeks. i'm not posting, i'm not sleeping, i'm not eating, i'm not watching any television and less than any movies. i'm not reading. i'm not fixing things (well, mechanical things at least). i'm not staring into space. i'm not sweating equations in my sleep. i'm not writing. i'm not cutting my hair. i'm not shaving. i'm not lounging.

but i'm liking it.

no more wishing for something to do, no more feeling powerless. no more waiting for something to happen. no more wishing there were something to come home to. no more wishing there were someone to talk to. no more feeling trapped and no more feeling unable.

no more being alone. no more bitter or jaded shards of nostalgia whipped with longing. no more watching everyone else pass by.

i am shooting my film. i am buying a house. i am writing more scripts, i am reading more scripts. i am planning ahead and i am being spontaneous. i am not worrying and i am not being careless. i am working hard. i am sleeping well (when i sleep). i am not alone and i am not going to be abandoned. i have stability and the chance to do anything.

oh yorick. too bad you were a tool.

there are more things, horatio. seriously, just, like, stop being a jerk and expand your mind or something. because (and i'm not trying to be that guy here, horatio. just saying)...well because your philosophy sucks.

like, honestly.

more things, horatio, in heaven and earth. plenty of things and lots of things and so very many things in heaven and earth, more than are even DREAMT of in your philosophy. so really, seriously, honestly, just, like, get a new philosophy.

or visit heaven. or roam the earth. dream more or want to dream more. just dump the philosophy and check out all the stuff.

honestly, horatio.

freaking freak freak

freaking groundhog's day.

just, just...freaking groundhog's day.

first of all, who the hell decided to give one of my days to some over-hyped rodent with a shadow-casting complex? who the hell maintains the authority, not to mention has the need, to hand over 24 of MY hours of MY week of MY year every year for MY entire lifetime?

and what the hell is all this shadow/no-shadow business anyway? why is that no one waits in suspense when i wake up and walk around naked for about twenty minutes trying to find a lightswitch? why is there no audience waiting in silent suspense and overcoats, a mass of rural boony-boons hovering and shivering and gripping their breaths to see whether or not i notice my shadow cast on a wall or floor or ceiling? (i have a light that shines upward, so shut up)

okay okay, so maybe i'm a little peeved because i take this occasion to the extreme, maybe i'm a little miffed because every year i want to play the movie of same name over and over and over.

and over

and over and over and over and over and over and over

and so on for however many loops may loop in a day. maybe i'm a little scorched because i've only managed to pull it off one year (thank you USITE computer labs at UofC), maybe i'm just furious over the fickle fancy and fact that it would be nice to be prepared and ready and totally on top of the game when it comes to doing something completely trivial and pointlessly entertaining.

but still, it's a freaking groundhog, people. it's a hog, on the ground. seriously, get a life.


...freaking groundhog's day.

as close as i am with lewis carroll, i don't call them looking glasses

i have a short to write.

not so much having a short to write, but more like i have to write a short. it is requisite, it must be done.

ha. seriously, ha. have to do something? me? have to do something? me? maybe you should go look me up in your who's-who-among-people-who-don't-give-a-frick. yeah, look it up. bad picture but it gets the idea across.

i'm reading neil gaiman. i'm liking things so far, but i'm just about finished and i have the sinking feeling that he's going to pull an arthur c. clarke in that the climb up the mountain is fantastic but once you get up top you're kinda thinking "yeah. so yeah. yeah. well, um, yeah. this is mostly...well it's the top of a mountain, isn't it. not much going on. yeah. so, yeah. hmm. mountain, huh? yeah. yeah see it's the top, i get that, but...yeah. so. yeah." almost word for word, that digression, from when i finished a fair bit of clarke series.

nothing going on today. which i guess is nice. but i'm getting used to being busy, or at least having my hands covered in pie (a finger in every pie? get it? meaning i'm doing lots of different things? get it?) so downtime is a bit like thinking "yeah. so yeah. yeah. down time, huh? well, um, yeah. this is mostly...well not much going on, huh? yeah, down time. so, yeah. time that's, um, down and stuff. yeah. pie, huh? that's interesting. yeah. yeah."

but otherwise it's been getting busier and busier. i'm sitting here and knowing how much good there is, what chances i have, what a time awaits me. but it's all in the distance and i look through binoculars at a life that is not my own.

a bit like wonderland, maybe. but i can't stand smiling cats. they distract too much from my being distracted.

i prefer my stuffers in fishnets, thank you

buying presents.

the thing with buying presents is that you like to buy them. well, if you're me or many of the people i know. or if you're santa. or if you're mother teresa. or if you're a parent. or if you're a grandparent. or if you a big brother. or if you're a little sister. or if you're a girlfriend. or if you're a mentor. or if you're poor. or if you'recently weathly. or if you have lots of wrapping paper. or if you want lots of wrapping paper. or if you're a greeting-card writer. or if you're a greeting-card publisher. or a greeting-card marketer. or if you're me.

the thing with buying presents is that you put the extra effort sometimes that will, quite frankly, go unknown, unseen, and unheard. but who the heckums cares, anyway (let's not cuss with the holidays right around the corner. right there, on the corner. hiding behind the lamppost. pipe in mouth, gloves and hat and smile on face).

proper present buying is an art, obviously. but subtle and without the extensive training requisite of the classical arts. instead, it is an air mixed of observation, creativity, timing, preparation, intuition, and plain luck. true of the others, yes, but distinctive all the same.

the art has been good. i like.

plans are in the works. dealing with the film, dealing with the production company, dealing with UPS (see the previous posts, reader. it's something, to be sure). dealing dealing dealing, the lady's got a pair of queens, the gentleman with the fedora just scored pocket aces.

more stuff and stuff. the equipment is all here now, now we have to prep auditions for the killer and interview crew. but that's all in january, folks...for right now it's buying presents.

the thing with buying presents is that you have to have a tree under which to place them. but the thing with christmas trees is that, not only do they cost money, they also cost space. meaning the apartment is a little less than little. meaning that there just isn't room for a twenty footer if you know what i mean.

wink wink. nudge. nudge.

so a trip to ace hardware on a whim (next to the subway that my father used to own. the ace hardware that kept me entertained for hours and hours and days and days, during all those times being babysat by a 13 inch television and maps of manhattan on the walls of the franchise. the ace hardware where i dreamt of owning swiss army knives and wire cutters, voltmeters and all sorts of funny lookin' tools) threw me into the world of faux trees and far too many decorative lights.

but a little searching and i found them; little lawn trees, fake little ones with a minimum of built-in lighting and a central trunk of wire that is meant to jut down into the ground and keep the little guy planted in the dirt. they come in two to a box. the perfect size and two of them, to boot.

but meanwhile at the office a crisis has been averted. what crisis? the coffee crisis.

the thing with the coffee crisis is that it's not a full-fledged crisis. it's more of a problematic problem. an itch. a scabby scab. a loose thread that just needs to be picked. etcetera.

this scab revolved around having to leave the building to get any decent coffee. this loose thread is wrapped within the sweater that is francise coffeehouses. no coffee at work is worth a second glance, simple as that. as un-elitist as i am when it comes to the stuff (shut up) i nevertheless like to drink coffee that hasn't been burnt or sitting in a vending machine, thank you very much.

so what do i do? i buy a bag, bring it back, and make my own. any time, at any point. there are coffeemakers in the lounge, there is plenty of space to do my whole lets-make-coffee dance, there's even a sink and junk. crisis? averted.

but the coffee escapades coupled with presents, joined with movie plans, epoxied with production problems, superglued with house buying, nailed to dry cleaning problems, paperclipped with car problems, all hanging from a mop of ever-longer hair and tongue-on-flag-pole stuck on my continual scruffiness...see now i forgot what the point of the paragraph was.

see the thing with blogging is, you gotta keep it short. yeah.

the wall will always end, no matter how high you want to climb it

so i'm at work, right?

sitting here at work, right? so i'm here, at work, sitting here at work, and i decide to check on the boxes. the equipment. the film equipment, in boxes. coming via UPS. three boxes came yesterday, 11 more yesterday.

11 boxes, very expensive boxes. 11 boxes, all left outside, all huddling on a lawn on the verge of rain overhead. 11 boxes, all full of film equipment, left on the lawn, the delivery confirmation FORGED BY THE DELIVERY GUY in his effort to just not come back the next day.

11 boxes and a forged signature. what can i say about UPS? nothing, it seems. nothing at all. because all the angry phone calls, all the waiting and the managers and the peons and the back and forth and back and forth and back again...the end result? there is no end result.

work has been full days. full days and full nights and full full full. for two days at least. come on, stay and stay and stay and leave and sleep. and come back.

roomie and self went out for sushi, good and good and good. the nights are coming along, the days are full and taut. i'm feeling good. the movie is soon to come and i have to set up things. but i come home and feel so relaxed and at home.

i sing songs.

i finally feel like i'm on the verge of making or breaking myself. living on the edge of a cliff where i fall over or drive all the way back to some place i've never known. i feel like there's undiscovered territory at every junction.

all while working 50 hour weeks. all while planning new years parties and buying film equipment.

what's weird is how i feel weird talking about it. shy, i guess. when people ask me "what's the movie about" or "what's your company do?" i tend to start shrieking internally. it's unnoticable until ten minutes later, clammy hands and cold sweats. wiping my brow and all that jazz.

and the company now has a new name.

i finally feel like i'm in a modicum of control. and now all i need to do is just find a gym. i'm learning new things at work: legacy stuff, coding stuff, analysis stuff. inter-employee-sorta-kinda-stuff. and so on. i'm finally coming to grips with the things i didn't want to think about.

but see, i need to write shorts. something short, horror or scifi or even a western. something, anything, just a short to shoot.

learning that things don't turn out the way you want, but i'm prepared for that. so maybe i'm not learning it at all.

but most of all, i smile ever time a christmas song starts up.

that house of pancakes doesn't seem very international to me

perhaps someday there will be a little plaque outside, a neat little copper-colored mix of metals. a plaque that details in fine and simple letters the fact that our band of few patroned this establishment so regularly as to have practically laid its brick and mortar. perhaps there will be a little plaque, or a sign. maybe just some plants or something.

or a statue. yeah, like a really big and matte and imposing statue. titanium, or something.

it snowed this weekend. lots of snow. it's the kind of sight that makes me remember things with that foggy recollection of hopes and dreams. the kind where you go "this reminds me of that...thing. you know, with the guy." the not-so-memorable memories. anyway, snow. snow that i looked at while driving to ihop, snow i looked at while at ihop. snow and snow and snow and snow.

i met with the director, our new hair/makeup person, and a few other friends from times past and present. it's been awhile, so it was nice to get together and laugh and laugh and blah bippity blah blah. the suggestion was even made to throw a hotel party, all the gang getting a big room and just having a space where you know you'll have fun amongst friends. so i'm gonna look into it.

afterwards? came home and all that. today some boxes came, three of them. the film equipment is either going to trickle or tsunami, what with there being thirteen boxes or so in all. it's all so terribly exciting, yes, but i've been up late and just can't get the will to wail and wow myself over such things. yawn.

otherwise, i've decided i need a new name for the company. my previous company name met with distasteful glares and confusion, and even some multi-colored remarks about my ability to fornicate with myself. but sunday took the wind out of whatever sails i have...the ihop audience was not impressed. the constant barrage of discouraging responses was basically a sign to realize when to just let go. so i let go, and i'm thinking of new names for the company.

i've even been twiddling with ideas to change the movie title...gasp. no, seriously, gasp. i'm asthmatic, shut up. jerk.

right, whatever. anyway, ideas and ideas and ideas. more ideas and scratching out ideas and erasing the scratching out then scratching out again with a deeper scratch...you get the idea. the topmost concern was whether or not to keep a 'THE' at the beginning of the title.

think about it, what if it had been named just "Wizard of Oz" or "Shawshank Redemption" or "Green Mile"...but, by the same token, what if they had been named "The Top Gun" or "The Magnolia" or "The Fight Club"...there's a subtle art here, friends, and it should not be taken lightly, to say the least.

but sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and no one puts it as well as the brother did when asked about the "THE":

"fuck articles, man."

i salute you, bruh. wholeheartedly.

what kind of clay is that stuff made out of, anyway?

the intentions of mankind are myriad and unwavering in their attempts to appease the ego. i do what i do because i want to do what i do. i do what i do because i'm a sick and twisted mass of sapienic flesh that is only concerned with the self.

what a load of crock. and i don't mean the pottery.

i don't care what anybody says, 90% of the things i do in a day are for somebody else. mostly because i don't give two whiffs about myself and because i'm more concerned with the people i care about. it is my job to take care of those who are placed in my care, intentionally or not. it is my way to simply help those around me feel better about any part of their day.

which, again, may be a load of crock.

there is always the convoluted mess that vomits out of any interpretation of these things. the fact that doing things for others so that you feel better about yourself is really just helping yourself. the fact that doing things for others to do things for others to do things for others to make everyone all happy-go-lucky is really just a pathetic god-complex hiding behind a mask of benevolence even though it's all just wanting to make yourself feel superior and pedegogical.

there is always the narcissim behind the saint, the saint behind the narcissist, and all the foggy malfeasance on the part of your righteous intelligence.

and then there's the pedantic ramblings of a goofball who barely wants to make sense.

i say gooday, sir

haha.

christmas songs are awesome, simple done.

taking two hours to get to work 20 miles away is ridiculous, period.

realizing that i'm happy for people that...well for people that i wasn't thinking i'd be happy for in the past is splendiferous, end of story.

and looking at the next year from this end is just as exciting as it gets.

over and out.

crash, maybe not so much with the burning

new new new new new.

what's new? well, lots of stuff. this week, at least.

i have bought all our film equipment. and i mean ALL. lights and lights and flags and nets, mics and mixers and monitors. a tripod stand, XLR cable. headphones.

ladies and gentlemen and ladies...we are now in business.

of course it's a matter of time, waiting a week or so for everything to get here. but we can officially start on working now, filming and shooting and writing and directing, acting here and gripping there. what's my motivation? what's my motivation?

monday, though, was intensely uncool. sunday night, you see, i spent at the director's house, until roughly 4:30am, going over every single piece of equipment that i bought, making sure there was nothing to miss and nothing to switch.

came home, slept an hour or so, and off to work. halfway down the street i accept and come to grips with the fact that my cell phone is upstairs in the apartment, all warm and powered and whatnot. but i left it and headed out, more concerned with traffic times than the location of my phone. big mistake, of course, but that comes later. i took my break to order all the equipment, the various processes taking hours and hours and hours to confirm that the order had gone through. order numbers and phone numbers and validation and confirmation. when you drop so much money there's red tape, you see. and i was wrapped up in so much of it you might have well called me tapey-mctape. (fine, so that was a lame nickname. just let go of it, already. sheesh)

so then, lunch. on my way to lunch? my tire falls off my car.

cough. MY TIRE FALLS OFF MY CAR. disentegrates, falls apart. hanging off the wheels, little strings coming off the checkerboard underneath the rubber. kathunk, kathunk, screech boom skraaaaaaaaaaaaclump. the embarassed looks as i pulled into the jewel parking lot (right across the street from my dad's old store, to boot).

mind you, monday was cold. very very cold. subzero temps and me without anything but a coat and very thin slacks. so i go into jewel and call my dad to see if he can pick up the car (being that i borrowed it from him for the week, of course) but given that my cell phone was at home i had to use the pay phone in jewel.

pause. just to ask, is it common knowledge that pay phones are now $0.75 FOR THE FIRST THREE MINUTES????? after that's another $0.50 or something like that. so it comes as no surprise that i had only three quarters on me, and hadn't finished planning my rescue within three minutes on the phone. forget this, i think. i'm just gonna walk back to work and call from there and not worry about anything until later today.

yeah. right. not only was work two miles away, temperatures subzero, me cold already even in the store...not only all that, i didn't even know how to get back without taking the highway. which became a moot point after about 3/4 of a mile, because i find out by then (after trekking through my share of knee-high snow banks and bundles) that the ONLY way to make it further south without some horrendous detour is to cross the highway.

double yeah. triple right. so i head back to the jewel, manage to get some change from a guy outside, all sighing and thinking that things might smooth out now.

when i walk right into the glass automatic door. smack, smoosh. blumph.

back to the payphone, quarters in one hand and my nose in the other. call the dad, get things settled, and wait half an hour. he gets there, i get to work, and things progress.

without my cell phone, though, things started falling all over the place again. not only could i not call my credit card company to let them know that i hadn't recieved my new card in the mail (because i don't have my new account number and, hence, couldn't navigate the voice menu), the only way i knew how to was to call with my cell phone, since that was the number they had on file for me.

throw in some more being-cold stuff, a dash of film equipment mayhem, and that's pretty much the day. the rest of the week went along alright, more changes to my order; i switched mics and shockmounts and boompole, juggled credit around a bit, and basically kept chugging along and here i am.

last week i wrote up a new scene for the film. a quick insert that will drastically help with character development, i think, and a new way for me to throw a few controvertial subjects around while i'm at it.

as for this weekend, there's gradschool apps, more writing, cleaning and cleaning and writing and eating. waiting for the equipment, waiting to hear from companies. waiting for a lot of stuff and waiting for a little stuff.

while i'm waiting i've been rehashing the recent past. looking at my old spec for Scrubs, looking at some old letters and notes. looking to see if some friends were on, wondering what i would do if they were. realizing that i saw two movies since i got home and i'm just not all jumpy to see another one. thinking about all that i still have left to do, and how exciting that is.

this look is the best thing i can to do phase myself right now. there's not a soul on the planet who's unfamiliar with me as clean-cut, the three-piece kinda guy with a penchant for talking the way he writes. but now i still walk around with the slacks and tie, the wool topcoat and the shoes and the whole bit...

...all with this mop on my head and shag on my chin. a clean hippie, or something. shirt and tie and slacks and shoes, coupled with disheveled hair and longer-than-stubble stubble. it's kinda weird.

and we all know how much i like weird. score.

2 + 2 = you're clueless, dude

a weekend at home.

thanksgiving was good. came back to the apartment and cleaned up, prepped for a certain someone's birthday, and worked on the script some. cleaned and prepped and sat and watched and other things. i sang some ray charles, an important point given that i had shelved him for a few months now and i was due for a little sonic purification.

i rushed some things, spent about four hours trekking between ikeas, and managed to see more family again on saturday. it seems that the vast majority haven't seen me in some time; mind you, 'in some time' may mean something like a month, maybe up to a year or so. but the consensus was clear and all the fault thrown at me. practically stained my sweater.

and fair commentary on the look. growing out the hair and shaggin' out the beard for the film. such classicaly cliche anti-cop tools...but like any fool, i'm liking it. the thing with longer hair, though, is that there's a month or so where it's just in the middle, a nexus where the hair isn't long enough and isn't short enough. just sitting there, waiting for me to grow more or cut it down.

as for the film, we're getting down to the equipment. all the lights and DP equipment is picked out by the director/DP himself, so i'm ordering that soon. as for the audio i have to talk to some audio guys though i don't know when that will happen. but the lights have been chosen and we're all set to order. mostly.

the slowly changing look. i wanted to for a myriad reasons, some for film and some for myself. this weekend my parents saw what the last couple weeks have done to my style-wise.

"you look like a...a...poh-it"

a what, i asked my dad.

"a poh-it"

oh, i said. a poet. a poet.

"yeah. you look like a guy with a broken heart, walking around and not cutting his beard or his hair and being depressed. you look like a poet."

there are times of insight when you simply have a hard time understanding how someone could peg you so well. there are times when someone with all the history and resources to actually understand you actually understands you, though without realizing the import of such.

there are times when you have just been coasting along and taking yourself for granted. all while everything is changing. all while your definition of self is so fargone as to be obsolete.

well after that we went to the family gathering, listening to the adults play their hindi music games, laughing with my brothers and somehow feeling comfortable without thinking.

i'm a fool, it seems. how awesome is that?

i try to give more than thanks

the weekend.

we all know what i'm talking about: food and family and friends and fondue and feeble feeble flibbity floobopbam. the question is whether we are in the middle of teenage angst, the middle of twenty-something confusion, thirty-something desperation, fourty-something disillusionment, or fifty-something passivity. the question is how we treat a periodic celebration, vaugely identical year after year, after time drips by.

i walk down the street and hear it from perfect strangers, let alone friends. that i am so much older than the skin on my face. that those older and younger are in tune with me and that i seem to attract those of the fairer sex with those years which make me seem all the more palatable.

along with this presupposed veil of adulthood, i figured out that if i'm not older in spirit i at least know how to fake it. maybe not consciously, mind you, and maybe not with the flare of someone who seems adult because they actually are adults. but still, the commentary gets to me. but not now, these last months of a year. familial socializing, laughing and being that which i've spent so very long keeping bundled up behind psychological camoflage.

point is, people, that i like thanksgiving. i liked it before, and i liked it this year. i revel with christmas and divali and thanksgiving and halloween and birthdays and even valentine's. a chance to do something drastically stupid and over the top (hallmarks of myself of course) with the chance of applause, or at least just not being asked if i have a psychological problem or something.

presents and gifts. jokes and cooking and sweaters. mocking brothers and then punching out a guy that starts talking trash about them. blankets and coats and gloves and fireplaces.

mistletoe and games of chance, betting with food.

the weather outside is frightful,
but the fire is so delightful.
and since i've no place to go...

...that's right...

let it snow let it snow let it snow.



say a few thanks for me, folks. i'm sure there's plenty i haven't had time to say.

Week of Silence '05: Day 7

the thing about sleep is, it's very sneaky. like a wily fox all ready to pounce and bite you when you're too distracted by something shiny in the corner. it's that pretty girl, comforting and kind, whispering hot breaths and silent imagery into your head when your guard is down for just two seconds. it's death without the finality.

it's friggin awesome, the way you can get high on sleep like that.

so, of course, this is what i did. sleep. and sleep. alarm, flailing arms, muted alarm.

more sleep.

now this isn't the ideal situation for a guy who, say, needs to return a rental car by 7:15am or else he'll get charge a whole other day's worth of usage. and it isn't the ideal situation for a guy who's spent a week throwing himself about the greater fifty-state-area and, as such, has a whole bunch of stuff to finish up before returning to work.

psssst, that guy i was talking about? just me all over.

but since when have i been the fellow that swims in ideal situations, when have i drunk anything but spilt milk. when have i ever given up sleep (in a bed with just that certain warmth that should never be taken for granted) to do something as uncharacteristically me as return a rental car? on TIME, no less. so enough with that train of thought and hopeful fantasy, you. we all know what happened and that's the end of it.

sleep sleep sleep.

now it wasn't over indulging, it wasn't dionysian in the least. it was simply settling and warm and heart poundingly calm. and then i woke up.

the thing about waking up during the week of silence is, you're always afraid the night before. this kind of subtle and riptide-like fear that you'll wake up and forget for a few seconds that it's the week of silence. that some stupid commentary like "man, am i thirsty" or "bloody hell it's cold in here" or "damnit. honey, i think you threw my back out again last night" you fall asleep with the pinprick haunt in the back of your mind that nags at you to remember and not let it all fall flat because of a stupid ten seconds of being drunk on sleep. so i woke up and probably was as close to saying something as i ever get. why? because it was damn cold in there, i was friggin thirsty, and i definitely have a problem with my back. this close, i think. this close.

the day passed rather quickly. what exactly happened, i don't remember. at least not right now. roomate gone for most of the day, food to be cooked and scripts to be polished. emails and phone calls and emails and other things. a few minutes, here and there, to think about the letters and the emails and the phone calls i didn't make. and wouldn't make. a few minutes laughing out loud with every ounce of air in my lungs for the first time in a week. a few minutes of singing out loud and talking out loud.

but, all in all, it all lead back to ending the night with a few minutes of simple, silent silence.

lesson for day 7: getting back into the swing of things usually doesn't involve any swinging, the daily grind is rarely a daily grind, and sometimes the best days come after the best days.

Week of Silence '05: Day 6

it's the driving. it's the driving the driving the driving that's the key. key to what? whatever, that's not the point.

the point is the driving.

denver. after denver comes kansas. after kansas comes missouri. after missouri is illinois and after love comes marriage.

then comes the baby in the baby carriage.

anyway, the reigning commentary on kansas seems to be the following:

"it's flat. like, really flat."

"yeah. flat."

but the reigning commentary was silent for this leg, mostly. the journey through kansas was mute and matte, pitch black outside with light chance for plains. no prarie dogs. no twisters. no green witches or funny lookin' flyin' houses. no sparkly red shoes. no monkeys, flying or otherwise. no curtains and no men behind them.

instead it was fairly quick and to the point. kansas has left no indelible marks and basically holds no particular imagery in my mind. it's a state, and that's about it. what a sad set of affairs...but then again you can't have every state be memorable. because then they'd all be memorable. and if they were all memorable then they wouldn't be different, so instead of states they'd just be 'that place over there that's not over here but could have been over here.'

so from 5:30pm to 9:30am i drive and drive and drive and drive and then i hit missouri.

missouri. old roomate lives in missouri, though i didn't know if it was st. louis or not. i was gonna take a shot to just stop somewhere randomly in st. louis, somehow find an internet connection, hack and crack and find out where his school is and see if there's a way to look him up. nevermind that i'm not talking all week and that me showing up randomly at his front door like a walking smile that hasn't bathed in a notable amount of time would be kinda weird. nevermind that i haven't got a clue how to start looking for him and that it would just be a stupid way to inevitably waste my time. nevermind that there's no way to confirm if he's even at home, were i to find out where that is.

so, st. louis, although arch-tastic and shiny and respectable as you are, i'm afraid this is a passing interest. another time will lead to arch inspection, another day will lead to plumbing your urban depths. but for right now i want to get home.

so i go home.

from st. louis back to chicago the traveling fray is most ripe. driving in the afternoon and basically winding your way back up the midwestern countryside, full of corn and land and land and land and land and land and a couple trees and a silo and some other junk in the corner over there and land and land and land.

but going up into illinois just beat the band. it's things like 'soy city.' what a place, that decatur, don't you think?

'soy city'

seriously, what kind of name is that? is it cool? is it dorky? is it lame and, as such, effectively dorky cool? is it just something that bears repeating, a contemporary 'cellar door' for all you darko fans? maybe it's that i'm making way too much out of something that is basically a two word phrase. basically.

and i don't know about all of you, but pseudo-country music is just somethin' else.

"i like my women
a little on
the trashy side."

honestly now, how can you not think that's the coolest kind of redneck-country-boy-son-of-the -soil-kinda-jive line? it had a good beat, too, i thought. then we move on to the country singer guy goin' on about his dream woman and her entrance into bars, gettin' in there and just grabbin' a beer, shouting at the bartender to "play somethin' country." that one had a beat too, boy. there's some knee-slapping times right there, i tell you what. good stuff, good stuff.

but it was the rush home that rushed me home. just wanted to get home, clean up, comfort up, settle up. so i drove and i drove and i drove. up through the bottom and middle of illinois, highway to highway to highway and jumping lanes as i went. i actually made a pitstop over by normal, a notable town mostly because i was there for about four days a while back.

normal coffee (in that it was coffee bought in normal, il), normal gas, normal air and normal tracks. i head back home.

so the question is whether to return the rental car today or just keep it and return it tomorrow before the corresponding rental time from a week ago? either way it's charging me a whole day, it's just a matter of wanting to return it now or later. the question, it seems, was willing to wait.

so i get home. right about 5:30pm, i get inside, roomate all a busy getting ready for a thing. i get in, plop down the bags, rush to the bathroom and shower like a madman (or, like, you know...myself).

and then, my friends, the day was spent in silence amidst my city once again. i decide to return the car later and basically crash.

oh crashing. what a pleasant way to end the day.


lesson for day 6: there's no place like home, there's no place like kansas, and there's no substitute for putting an end to things.

Week of Silence '05: Day 5

okay, so where are my glasses.

seriously, where are my glasses?

i was wearing them last night; i went to sleep in my car, wool coat all blanket-like and warm with the car heater buzzing away into the oily hours. so i wake up, right? right. i look around, smack my lips and get out of the car to stretch.

so really, where are my glasses? come on, i left them right here. look in the front, look in the back, look in the coat pocket.

okay this totally isn't funny. where the hell are they. look in the other pocket, look in the first.

second, third, fourth and tenth (lots of pockets, if you've ever met me). front seat, back seat, other seat other seat.

trunk. I LOOKED IN THE TRUNK. this is totally not cool.

a thousand miles from home, no glasses, a rental car, no glasses no glasses no glasses where the hell are my glasses this is so not cool.

okay this is messed up. where the hell are my glasses. under the front seat, behind the front seat, glove compartment cushion spaces.

on top of the car. underneath the car. this totally is not cool at all.

okay, seriously, seriously, really this is just what the hell. where are my glasses?


where are my glasses?
where are my glasses?
where are my glasses?
where are my glasses?



where are my glasses? where are my glasses? where are my glasses? where are my glasses? where are my glasses? where are my glasses? where are my glasses? where are my glasses? where are my glasses? where are my glasses? where are my glasses? where are my glasses? where are my glasses? where are my glasses? where are my glasses? where are my glasses? where are my glasses? where are my glasses? where are my glasses? where are my glasses? where are my glasses? where are my glasses? where are my glasses? where are my glasses? where are my glasses? where are my glasses? where are my glasses? where are my glasses? where are my glasses? where are my glasses?

front seat back seat front seat under over behind inside outside. tenth pocket fourth pocket seventh pocket.

...first pocket.

oh hell no. hell no. the fact that i find my glasses in the first and last place i look...i'm surprised i don't get free stamps in the mail with LOSER embossed in red rubber on the front, $12.99 for ink. free shipping.

i need food. coffee and food. but not too much, i'm not dying or anything. so get out of the car (for the eleventh time, but now with glasses secured to my face as they should be) and get back in (after realizing i wasn't parked as close to the gas station as i thought) drive about fifteen feet (because sometimes it's okay to be lazy in colorado or wherever the hell i am at this point).

utah, right. utah. anyway, i get out and go into the gas station/diner (how in the world can you not just burst into awesomeness over such a little amalgam). first, peruse the menu. second, wait about half an hour for a waitress to actually look at me for more than five seconds before heading back into the rear of the kitchen. third, think 'to hell with this' and go buy cheap coffee and powerbars inside the gas station half of the gas station slash diner.

fourthly, the coffee was alright. so now, awake and with a proper ability to actually see things (20/20, suckas, in your face) i mosey on down the block to the

MUSEUM OF WESTERN COLORADO'S DINOSAUR JOURNEY

and then think 'crap' for not even knowing what state i'm freaking in. seriously, what's up with that.

but to be brief and summarize the museum: friggin awesome. scratch that, i want to be brief-ier: awesome.

there is a T-Rex {short for Tyrannosaurus Rex for those not in the know [Tyrannosaurus Rex meaning "tyrant lizard king" for those further not in the know ('terrible' being a word meaning "awful: causing fear or dread or terror" for those of you who never graduated...oh, let's say third grade)]} leg standing by the southern wall of the place, just sitting there upright and with a cross sectioned musculature.

seriously, friggin awesome.

moving on we go past the velociraptor info, the stegosaurus mockup that moves and gyrates his hips like a sugar-doped five year old elvis presley with a nervous disorder. moving on, and this is the best part, a utahraptor RIPPING THE HEAD OFF A SMALLER VELOCIRAPTOR! i'm talking bloody little veins and muscles, ribbons of red and weird sounds, the full effect just there on display, easily seen by any two year old who happens to waddle on by. i'm talking bloody teeth, tearing out organs with visceral splunges of destruction. f-r-i-g-g-i-n a-w-e-s-o-m-e.

oh and the people, reader. the people were the best. a few choice quotes from the trio that tailed me:

"it's creepy."

"really, those eyes and the way it looks at you, it's creepy."

"what do you call those things? the ones with the beaks, the flying ones? oh, they didn't fly? but they have wings. but maybe they did fly. well how do you know, are you an ornitheologon?"

"that one is still so creepy, no matter how many times i keep going back to it. it's the eyes."

"okay that one is too creepy, let's go to the next one."

and like any red-blooded whosits, the final stop was the giftshop. the giftshop where i ponder and pine and pour over all the gifts that can be bought. all the little googaws and giggitygacks that i was never able to gawk and giggity over as a kid.

which little piece of re-plasticised bone fragment should i buy, i ask myself. which fiberglass claw or paw or fossil or dropping should i pay up for and throw into some hidden corner of my new apartment? not only that, where are the patches? seriously, where are the patches?

right, so i'm not going to do all that again. needless to say there was much patches-searching and many fossil-pokings until after about an hour (bite me, yeah it was an hour. so what.) i picked out a fiberglass allosaur claw and a pterosaur pin. there were no patches, i'm afraid, so it was about all i could manage just to get a pin. it'll still be able to stick into my canvas bag, though.

gifts pour moi in tow, it's back to the car. funny thing, seeing clearly what with having your glasses and gifts and all: you tend to not want to drive and junk. call me crazy, but it took me, like, almost a whole minute to get over wanting to stare at fake dinosaur parts and not oggle the researchers who're working in the back of the museum on their day off. those researchers, honestly. why do they wear white coats? no clue. why do they seem incredibly cool when we all know that they really really really really really really really really really aren't? even less of a clue. but still, the dreams of oggling are hard to fade. so very hard.

driving. listening to the last vestige of comedy-on-cd. some nameless pieces of work that don't deserve repeating. well actually they do, if only to describe how only i can manage to find awesome stuff that isn't awesome. laurel and hardy, abbott and costello. the greats, the bestests, the legends. radio sitcoms, suspense and drama packed into a voice. everything you could hope for in a car, right? well, maybe? come on, not even a little? well fine then, who asked you. sheesh.

laurel and hardy? a cd of interviews with them. badly recorded interviews. abbott and costello? not actually on the cd, more promo material, the way steven segal was plugged for Executive Decision and who, we all know, had so little to do with the film that it makes you want to protest if only because everybody deserves a chance in the movies. even a less-than-popular steven segal. (no offense, stevo; big fan, honestly. honestly, big fan. huge. just huge.) so after the whithered attempts at comedy i sigh and put in the inevitable...

physics. on cd. brian greene's latest, if you are familiar with the man's prior publishing gems. mostly because i can't actually finish a broad-audience physics book these days without wanting to see the math and scratching my head then buying a math book then reading all of that without understanding what i just did just so i can go back to the physics book and read it again and realize that he was using said-maths in an illustrative context only and that it didn't really apply to the problem of that particular chapter. so, book on tape. cd. whatever.

the final verdict? brace yourselves...i liked it. finished it and everything. didn't actually learn anything new, mind you, just kind of filled in a few historical holes (progress of string theory, the whole hour spent over the fact that nobody knows what the M in 'M-THEORY' stands for, etc.) the important part, though, is that i had ideas. oh sweet sassy molassy does it feel good to roll around in the mud of theoretical physics again. college does nothing for the dreamer; it sucks away all life from the starry-eyed physicist. it takes questions and points them to actual numbers rather than outcomes. it throws you at a problem and says

'how many degrees/inches/seconds/kilograms/ergs/newtons/milespersecondpersecond/square meters/cubic centimeters/watts/ohms/coulombs/barns will such-and-such particle
rotate/drop/live/obtain/push/pull/accelerate/span/cloud/discharge/cause/encounter/take up?

rather than just ask

'what will happen?'

for the next few hours, i asked 'what would happen' and it was good. i pumped gas while factoring equations over general relativity, turned on the wipers while i contemplated the importance of virtual pair production in an 'intense' metric. i wondered about the lifetime of the sun but then got distracted and almost got pulled over because i kept trying to write down an equation on the windshield of my car instead of just letting the heat take over and evaporate it away.

more thinking. more gas. the last gas station i went to had, get this...a little pizza place inside. and i mean like little-little. the kind of fast-food mini-pie fare that you'd find at college campuses or mall food courts, with the little hotdog rollers filled with cardboard boxes housing ready-to-go lunch personal panned pizzas. but since when do i settle for personal pan, i ask myself. instead, i point to the "ultimate-everything-on-it-monstrosity-of-grease-and-cheese" 15inch on the menu behind the counter.

the girl looks at me, realizes i'm not going to say anything, and tells me it'll be about half an hour. here. in a gas station. in boo-bumk-town-village. half an hour now in a gas station with nothing to do (saving the cd for the road, you see). right. so after darting into the back to go through "mute boy's adventure in scary bathroom land" and walking back and forth between said bathroom and the car to get my brush and brush my teeth and junk, time passed just as easily as it should have. and i got my pizza. and bolted.

hours and hours, listening to the last of my cd. watching the mountains go by, slowly and steady and looking at all the restaurants that i didn't hit before and that had no hopes of seeing me now. more and more, mountains and mountains, highway highway rails and rails and dark and dark and cars and cars and mountains and mountains.

then, no mountains. what happens when you're going east in colorado with mountains and mountains and mountains and then BOOM! there's no more?

denver happens.

after about fifteen minutes into denver-seeing range i take a turn at the first recognizable franchise: barnes and noble. good 'ole bookstore, like that aunt that will always cook waaaaayyyyy too much food whenever you stop by in the middle of nowhere. good 'ole barnes and noble. good 'ole bookstore.

so i go in, peruse, stretch my legs. look around but still don't want anything to eat, don't even want coffee. but i'm tired, it's around 4 in the afternoon, and the light outside is beginning to go away. so what's the best course of action? sleep in the parking lot of a huge mini-mall, of course.

i get out of the store and try to find my poor self back to the rental. being a rental, i have no idea what the plates say, let alone remember anything more than whatever vague shade of color it is (on the road you only see blue, yellow, and red. green is a figment of your imagination.) so needless to say it takes me awhile to find it again. but the minutes slowed some, because there is a very very peculiar thing about all the cars in denver parking lots:

they all have colorado license plates. now hold your horses, there's even more...they're all DIFFERENT. i spot about 3 different designs so far, fifteen feet out of the store. is it a yearly change, do they offer different flavors of plate?

5 different designs. there's a lot more driving to do, but denver is a bit of a way station, a 'go any more west and you're, like, west and junk' kind of town. 7 different designs. sure, i'm probably not in the heart of denver right now, 8 different designs, but i feel like i fit in a little. suburban, still kinda midwest.

10 different designs. honestly, what's up with that. and where the hell is my car? seriously, this isn't cool.

oh, there it is. wedged between the identical buicks, one with a blue denver plate and the other with a yellow. more driving to be done, but it's all the midwest from here on out right? so i away to sleep in the parking lot and rise with the setting of the sun.

lesson for day 5: there's nothing wrong with physics, there's nothing wrong with pizza, and where there's a mini-mall, there's a nap.

Week of Silence '05: Day 4

waking up at 11am in a very tightly tucked and very warm bed in the middle of vegas after having gotten over the brunt of your sickness while not talking is...notable.

so i wake up. clean of nose and in more healthful health. to all of you following these travails:

YES, i have gotten mostly healthy. this includes the coughy/scratchy/monstrous throat and the various forms of nasal hatred.

YES, my ears still pop, though not as much anymore. such is the life one leaves, when migrating the tumultuous sea levels of the western USofA.

time reports are due for work. being on the road, though, doesn't make for ease of reporting. the trick is to find a way to get online whilst on the road, fill out my time report, send it off, and continue on my merry way. that's the trick.

back to the morning. right. so i wake up. now, i have to tell you, it did cross my mind, the idea of taking a hotel towel in case i find myself lake-bathing again before i get home.

oh yes, it crossed my mind.

but from what i can tell, the boys are back in tow-ow-ow-ow-own. the boys are back in town. i can tell this mostly because the song is stuck in my head, source unknown.

breakfast. something for breakfast. a diner, for breakfast. a good, boothy, old-fashioned, buck-tooth-waitressed diner. and an omelette for breakfast. with these requirement s in hand i promptly turned around and walked to the diner next door to the hotel.

score. Coco's, the place was called. and oh so cold, the place was. the import of this decision, though, was in dining at a place that looked like it could afford at least one pair of gloves for the cook. not my kind of place, the kind that can afford things. but given how i'm in vegas and given that lord only knows what sort of new cooties are spawned hourly in this region of the world, i'll play it a littler safer today.

my server was a scant asian woman, a kind of i-ate-something-sour scowl on her face that did nothing to dampen her laid back demeanor. irony in form, i guess. i scanned the menu, looking and looking and realizing that, not only can this place afford gloves for the cooks, the fully laminated menu complete with well photographed menu items and a dash of graphic design unmistakably signaled how nice this place was in comparison.

ugh, a nice diner.

uuuuuggghhhh, a nice sunday diner, at that.

so to hell with it, i thought. i'm gonna eat wheat and starch and all the other blood sugar hiking stuff that turns me into wheezy mcweeze. i'm gonna eat every last scrap.

anyway, i found the appropriate omelette ensemble and coffee selection and pointed my heart out as she tried to comprehend the choices. let alone when i decided that, even though i was going to throw my blood sugar into a whirlwind frenzy, it wasn't gonna happen with the sugar at least. so i found the sugar-free syrup listed on the back and pointed and underlined and pointed and pointed as she squinted to try and read what the hell it was.

i practically wore a hole into the menu. laminate and everything. she squinted for five minutes, figured it out, and off she went. she comes back in five minutes with the coffee in a funny flute-y mug and a little glass of cream. that's right, a little glass. like a shot of dairy.

in the meantime i sing along with the songs on the radio playing overhead. and to the sides. and from the floor. songs and music and classic crooning from a bygone era and blah blah blah. now, is it "so let your love flow" or "so let your love go"?? i sang both versions while some random old pop song played around me, the tune in my head drowning out a song i'm sure would have gotten me bopping along if i hadn't been focused on this flow-or-go dilemma.

and the coffee comes. sweet, great, great great great great great diner coffee. i haven't had coffee in sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo long, it just hits the spot so very well. the little shot glass of cream, just enough faux sugar, just the right blend of bitter and not. she plops down the coffee pot and moves on to the table behind me. i could hear the family telling a little girl to order. the waitress awww's just a little,

'whatchagonnahavehoney?'

she asks the little girl. at this point i returned to my flow-or-go fiasco, so i didn't find out what the little girl ended up having. probably pancakes or something.

then comes the food. oh, the food. hashbrowns, pancakes, sugar-free syrup and those little cubes of butter. and my omelette, my sweet sweet wonderful brilliantly crafted omelette. two minutes in and i've finished my coffee. eat eat eat swallow eat eat eat

breathe

eat eat eat. i'm eating too fast and writing too fast and looking too fast and singing too fast and fast fast fast fast BOOM. food's almost gone and coffee's long gone and songs all a blur now. and here she comes. with more coffee.

more. coffee.

time almost slows down when you're pouring a cup that really don't need to be drunk. and i guess that applies to all sorts of drinks. look over and see the waitress smiling as she hands over another straw, the oddly preppy couple here on a sunday morning in vegas watching everyone around them (too worn out from the night to be worried about making small talk), seeing the smoke rise from the cigarette in the corner and the almost flashing equations in your brain (diffusion, then osmosis, then pH balancing, then hormonal cascades, then waterfalls, then TLC, then cyclops, then odysseus, then poseidon, then water, then diffusion again...). fifteen minutes later and the cup still half full.

enough already, i say, and chug the cup. wipe my mouth, pay my bill, and off i go to arizona.

about two hours out i decide to make a pitstop; i got the idea after remembering the roomie suggesting that i visit the grand canyon since 'it's only about 100 miles off the highway.'

honestly, how can you not get all warm and fuzzy over such incredible logic? well i mean other than being sane and junk.

right. so pitstops. i felt like making it a chock-full-of-pitstops kinda return trip. and so pitstops were made.

first stop, the first suburb of vegas that i happened across. i'd have to go look up the name of the 'burb again but i don't feel like being all specific. point is, i happened across said un-named suburb and took a veering right.

that's right, veering.

so what did i do in this nameless suburban utope? firstly, i drove. drove and drove until i found a place to quench my thirst for americana.

so i'm not sure if it's a suburb-of-vegas kinda thing or a suburb-in-the-desert kinda thing, but it was a different kinda thing either way. corrugated steel houses, the kind that look like they're made within four days and can withstand a hurricane (or at least come apart in big, solid pieces). random colors, pink and blue and purple and white. lawns of sand and gravel, neighbors to an acre of sod and clearly displaced grass.

a high school for a town of maybe 1000 people. a library, a bookstore. odds and odds and the occasional end.

secondly, i stopped. right outside the cozy almost-diner with big signs announcing the availability of ice cream and various forms of sandwich. taking ten minutes to park because of the five i spent watching the ice cream man unload his wares by the back. the air conditioning inside, the second half of the diner crowded with knicknacks because it is also an ANTIQUE STORE.

******

a quick aside: the country is erupting with antique stores. so many that i'm beginning to doubt the country is anything less than 500 years old.

******

the sugar free butter pecan ice cream, the huge scoops and the juggernaut of a plastic spoon. the cashier behind the counter whose life i try to imagine, the high school girl who may only have a couple hundred other students in her entire school. working in an air conditioned diner and then leaving into the stripped desert air.

so i ate the ice cream and then left it on the table to peruse the antique store in the other half (no food allowed, you see). this close to buying the typewriter, a portable guy that was such a staple even a decade ago. almost.

instead i returned to the ice cream, finished, and moved onward to the Lost City Museum in Overton, NV, south about one town over. more driving more driving more driving, little roads and bigger roads. and then i get there.

and i liked it. i go inside and look at the entry price but can't grasp which price applies to me, so i walk up to the cashier, let her tell me what is expected, pull out the wallet and collect my change. and then onward into the museum.

how arrogant and lame and naive, how bourgeois and pretentious to say the place was amazing. it is history, simply put, propped up and dusted off to give us an idea of what it means to be alive. be human, conscious of past and future. so i'm not gonna say all that.

carved stone and sand outside, petroglyphs carried over from other sites and embedded around the museum. just so very simply nice to look at.

the pueblos have stood stolid for so long it just leaves me in a bit of a silent awe. kings of kings, ozymandias and his ilk, all gone and forgotten. and here's a hut of clay and mud that stands taller than so many other long-gone monuments. to remember some mother and father and child, nameless and unknown, of all things.

inside i bought a patch, the start of my own future log. the way i would have bought huge stickers saying 'ITALY' or 'GREECE' back in the 20's.

and then back to the highway. what a thing, to notice shadows on the mountains themselves. trailing a valley for five miles and then seeing it curve off away from you into another direction. the driving kept up until utah and Zion National Park. by now it was 4:00pm and trying to find my way to the grand canyon would not only take about two more hours, it would also be in pitch black dark in about one hour and along some dirt road after half an hour. combine random dirt road, pitch black dark, and a really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really deep canyon and you get me not going there.

so instead i head to Zion National Park. being the tourist attraction it is, i of course travel the requisite touristy shops: places that sell dream catchers and leather wares, restaurants and trailer parks, an ostrich farm and a little bar off in a corner. i told myself i would go to the bar on my way back, but soon enough i was focused on the trip itself.

i got to the park around 5:00, minutes after the place closed down and left me unable to even get a patch. no tours, no multi-colored sunset shows, no silent oggling of countryside with seniors and hippies in an overcramped bus.

but i parked the car outside the visitor center anyway and walk around. the place is closed, of course, so i figure the least i can do is use the bathroom and fill up my water bottles using the facilities outside. walking to the bathroom, it becomes very obvious very quickly that there are no lights to be found anywhere. getting to the bathroom and finding it completely dark makes one not want to plumb the depths and hope for the best. so i head back to the car.

five seconds later, the lights go on; i can see where i am now, i can see the water fountains and the bathroom and everything between. so back to the bathroom, use of the facilities, and outside. outside and looking up, the stars smiling back at me again in one of the few places i can see them untainted.

trying to find my car with almost no light is no picnic, either. i ended up turning the alarm on and off so that the headlights would flash and point me back. go technology.

back on the road, back towards the highway. i picked up some coffee and a patch at a little coffee shop/antique store/random native american crafts store. good coffee, good patch. good all around.

ten minutes and i cross the bar i had decided on earlier.

man oh man. man. take a moment, my friend, and just sit down for this bit. it is not outrageous, not incredible, just simply without retort.

the bar was a dive without the atmosphere. the bar itself on the opposite wall when i came in, about 6 or 7 older folks sitting there chatting and socializing. the bartender standing there with her hands on the bar, straight out and supporting her when she says 'hi there.'

'what'll it be?'

i look at the wall, at the older folks' hands, and all i see is beer. beer in their hands, beer on the bar, beer bottles on the wall, beer cans in the trash.

and something told me any signals to her as to wanting otherwise would just get messy for no reason. so i point to a coors light, make it clear that i can't talk, watch as she grabs one and as she pops it open.

'i'll need to see some ID.'

so i produce ID.

'illinois, huh? we got another illinoian here too, funny huh?'

she points to an older woman at the far right end of the bar. the pointee looks up at me and smiles, we tip our drinks to each other, and i take my bottle to a table.

about three minutes later another woman from the bar comes over, pen and pad of paper in hand. she sits down, takes the pen, writes on the pad of paper. and she slides the pad over to me:

'how long deaf?'

i laughed. the third time or so that someone has thought i was deaf, the third time in ten years, all three during the last four days. after i finished my chuckles i waved my hands, a quick sweep across the throat that shows that i can't talk.

'oh, you're sick or something?'

a brief nod.

'oh, see i thought you were deaf. i used to date a deaf guy, see.'

she turns and makes eye contact with those at the bar whom she left behind.

'he isn't deaf.'

'yeah, we know,' a man and the bartender reply.

'yeah i thought you were deaf. i used to date this deaf guy. i had to break up with him, though, drove me nuts after awhile. thing was whenever we went out he always kept asking about what everybody around was talking about. i mean i can barely keep up with one conversation at a time, so he sees some people laughing and wants to know what the joke was and looks in another corner and wants to know what they're saying to the waiter and all that sort of stuff. i just couldn't take it anymore!'

i laugh. she continues on. wanting to know whereabouts in chicago i live. continuing on, about how she used to live around rockford, trying to remember the way back to chicago from Zion. asking if i went to the park, if i saw the colors in the sunset, if i took a tour. asking what i do for a living, where i work, how long i'm on the trip.

i wrote down five words or so the entire time. she kept on after i handed her my business card and wrote down the word 'computers.'

'oh i've had a computer for so long. i had a commodore as my third computer, i've been around them forever.'

she continues on, the trials and tribulations of laptops and desktops, the husband's technical skills and habits, formatting and defragging and the like.

'it's so funny though, how that sort of thing works out. my oldest, he's a little older than you, doesn't know a damn thing. last year he wanted to look at this porn site,'

oh yes, reader, we've suddenly turned in that direction.

'so he tells me he needs to use his credit card to prove his age. i told him "no, don't do that, here's another site that's free" but he keeps saying that they only want it to prove his age. about a month and $700 later he finds out what really goes on. should have listened to me, right?'

oh the laughter, my friends. the laughter and the laughter and the laughter. whether she knew that i was laughing at the absurdity, whether she instead thought i was laughing at his naivete, who knows. either way, the laughter was plentiful.

we ended some time later, about an hour, hour and a half in total. she ended wanting to know if i used ICQ.

ICQ. sweet googly moogly, how awesome is that? honestly.

so i left her with my business card and her intentions to email me some time later. why? who knows. these are the sort of things that i do, i guess, so let's not dwell on them.

and so i left. onward and onward, back towards the highway. by this time i was somewhat hungry but i didn't feel like a full fledged meal. so what to do? stop by the grocery stop next door to the gas station when filling up, clearly. what to buy?

pepperoni. sliced pepperoni. pizza pepperoni. a pound of sliced pizza pepperoni.

a pound in my pack and back in the car, ready to drive and snack and keep on till morning. so that's what i did. drive and drive and drive. and i come across Southern Utah University.

you see, the plan was to stop at each college/university that i could spot from the highway, randomly roaming and seeing if any parties or craziness or any collegiate activity was brewing whilst i happened to be in the state. so, seeing the signs, i of course had to make a pitstop.

first building i found was the athletics. students working out, other students working out. a couple students manning the equipment checkout counter. walking around, though, i somehow didn't feel like writing out my intention to find a party or a bar to the kids working behind the desk. so i thought about it for a few minutes, didn't really feel up for it, and left.

more roaming campus, driving about and see what's around. there must have been some sort of event, though; one of the auditorium/gym buildings was packed, people leaving en masse right around 9pm or so as i drove around. more driving. after about half an hour i come across a bar somewhere in the town. going in, it was definitely not my place for the moment. spread out, older people there, no students or revelry. just people sitting around, maybe playing pool. just not up for it. so i left.

and the rest is history. more driving, more driving, more listening to books on tape. by the end i decided on my next pitstop in the morning, a dinosaur museum. i'm parking at a rest area across the street and sleeping until the place opens at 9am. perfectly reasonable, i think.

lesson for day 4: there's nothing wrong with learning who you are, learning what you're like, or learning what spur of the moment really means.