Master of the obvious

Found in a Yahoo! new article: "It's the largest defensive preparation since Desert Storm," said a Bush administration official. "The rhetoric they are hearing coming from the United States — they're taking it very, very seriously."

Do you think so? This is news? In a related news item, it has been reported that many residents of Chicago have been shopping for winter clothes in anticipation of the upcoming season.

Why is it so hard for me to go to bed?

OK, I am a night person but lately I have been pushing it. I don't know why I can't get to bed at a decent hour. I am not talking about insomnia. I will sit in front of the computer the damn TV or even play a little guitar with Super W. Anything at all in order to avoid going to bed. The infuriating thing is when I finally hit the sack I will grab whatever book I am reading at play some tunes and read read read. Or at least try to read read read. Usually I will have postponed the reading reading reading until it is late and I am tired and want to sleep sleep sleep. It's stupid and it drives me crazy. I manage to piss myself off nightly.

Tonight, as god is my witness, I will be in my room before midnight with a book and/or notepad in my hand.

Speaking of reading. I have an American Heritage Dictionary which I keep within reach of my reading chair/bed/park bench. I often mispronounce words and I think it is a direct result of defining words to myself in context when I was a middle schooler. It took me a long time to admit I may actually need to use a dictionary. Vanity, I guess.

Read on the bus: Dealing in Futures by Joe Haldeman (short stores)
Listened to on duy bus Dreamland by Robert Plant (if you like Plant even a little bit you must hear the version of Hey Joe on this album.)

More...

I foundthis interesting BBC country profile at fark.

Now I am pissed

OK, some guy from that boy band NSync is starting his training for his trip to outer space. Goddammit, if a member of one of our stupid boy bands gets in space before me or someone much more deserving SF writer I am going to be livid. What a messed up week, first howdy doody in the white house wants to go kill a few hundred thousand Iraqi's and now I got to sit here and be a ground hog until I die while members of boy bands orbit the earth. Son of a bitch! Bring in the giant comet now.

Bums

I had a half hour to wait until my bus ran yesterday after work so I moseyed on down to the transit center to see what I could see. As I was getting ready to climb onto the bus a bum came up and axed me for some money for food. I lied and told him I didn't have any money. He moved down the line asking the people behind me. One of the ladies that got on after me must not have given him any money either because she was saying to another woman "He asked me for some money for some food. What does he think I was cleaning bathrooms for eight hours for?" Testify.

Convention

There is a convention of the American Legion in Charlotte this weekend. I was walking down to the bus stop after work yesterday and I realized that I had never seen so many people who were so obviously from Ohio.

Big Fat Tub o' Goo

Ever wonder what a big guy looks like right before he passes out from heat exhaustion? Check out this guy in the bottom left corner of the picture.



Investigating those that oversee you.

Check out this article. Maybe they should be more concerned about why our intelligence system completely collapsed last fall rather than leaks about the collapse.



Freaking Weirdos

Sometimes on the phone at the library you get calls from people that cause you to create the strangest image in your head. I just talked to a guy that sounded like some drugged up character out of a Quentin Tarantino movie. I could picture the old shitty Chevy Nova sitting outside a cheap motel, he's wiping the cocaine induced sweat from his forehead while his teenaged girlfriend from small-town South Carolina is passed out on the bed wearing nothing but Wal-Mart panties. He wants to contact a photo developer that would be open on Sundays. I don't even want to know what is going on. I can feel that in a couple of hours his Charlotte privileges will be revoked.

Goddamn Poker Night

So we play cards for a few hours and I'm up. Not up big, just ahead enough to gloat. I then have the great idea to play a game that I learned in high school while hopped up on Mountain Dew during a baseball spring trip in some garage in suburban Detroit during a rain storm with WLLZ in the background playing classic rock. That sounds like some northern Michigan Springsteen song. Something about how the rain was our dreams and 'Nam was around the corner yet all we knew at that moment was baseball and cards and the girls we hadn't yet had and how a milk crate with a piece of plywood on it makes a great card table and my car needs a new battery and we never did win the state championship and how when I see those guys our best memory isn't the games we won or lost but that evening in a cold wet garage and that is what living is all about, not winning or losing but being alive with good friends even though two of them never came back from the 'Nam but I made it back and the family farm ain't what it once was and I had to sell the land and move back to Vietnam and become a photographer but I never made as a photographer and had to move back to Michigan and work in a gas station and end up coaching my old high school baseball team and under my guidance we do win the state championsip but then I get called back to 'Nam and have to stand trial for those kiddie porn pictures I took when I needed money during my photography days and after ten years in prison I come back to Michigan and you know what's still there for me? Rock and roll is there. You see, it never left. It'll always be there for you and that's what I am here for tonight. I found it out and now I am going to show you...1! 2! 3! 4!...hit it!!

The game I suggested we play last night is called by different names in different parts of the country. Just like vagina and book. Simply put you get two cards laid down and front of you and you bet against the pot as to whether or not the next card is 'in between' those two cards. If the value of the next card is outside the first two then you have to place your bet in the pot and if it matches one of the two cards you have to double your bet. Since there were six people there with various degrees of bad luck we managed to raise the pot up to $21. My favorite moment was when new guy, Robin lost twice in row big and The Nation went into hysterics after the second big lost. We decided to quit and play a game of five car stud and the winner takes all. James took all, the bastard. He got dealt a full house. The odds of being dealt a full house are equal to that of a yankee surviving ten years in a Vietnamese prison.



We even learnt a new game last night. Some version of hold 'em, I think it's called. Whatever you call the game where the table shares two cards laid in the midde of the table. Michael liked it because it required less dealing. A valid reason from someone who won't learn to shuffle or at least fake it like his first two or four girlfriends.

Speaking of the Loch Ness Monster...

I had no idea he could walk on land. Amazing.

Something I have been working on

I am off the mob
the jostling diseased billions
a glaring, hating, compressed, hurting multitude
dressing carefully, considering their coming doom.
Stepping aside for amubulances
that rush the injured to hospitals
stacking them like logs
before a woodstove,
The lonely wander into
banks like ants to a pile of sugar.
Hustling their booty into their
oversized vehicles they circle
the centers of our cities
their exhaust interwoven
with soft breezes off
disappearing lakes
pacing the slow absence of the color green.

I am off the mob that passes
morality tests proudly for the privilege
of working inside a large box.
The corporation’s propaganda tinkling
from speakers in the cheap ceiling
like the announcements
in a prison camp or a collective farm.
Thanking their serfs which they pay nothing
as they scheme to pay less.
They are told that their souls
are valued by the company.
The chunk you leave here under our cameras
after you trudge home to your apartment
we cherish as the wasp cherishes the ant.
Be aware. Do not travel too eagerly to your home,
mind our perimeter of influence.

The General Pubic

I know it's not nice to poke fun at the retarded but...fuck it. I have been selling books on Ebay for the library recently. I sold a book to a woman and instructed her to send a money order made out to the library for payment. Instead she sent a personal check made out to me and misspelled my last name! Unbelievable. I have an email out to our finance manager right now. Hopefully he will take the check so I won't have to interact with this idiot again.

Charlton Heston

I know we were all saddened by Charlton Heston's recent announcement that is brain will slowly be exiting the building. It caused me to be concerned with his safety. I hope they install trigger locks on his gun collection soon. We don't want any unfortunate mishaps. He might forget to unload a pee shooter before cleaning the damn thing.

Stranger in a Strange Land

No not me, I mean the classic novel by Robert Heinlein. Notice I didn't called it science fiction or SCI-FI or SF or any other meaningless designation. I am reading it again. It's one of those books you go back to occasionally. We all have them. I know that Bookpimp reads "The Happy Hooker" every two years and the One Big Loud Guy reads the "North Carolina Driver's Manual" every Thursday. The reason I mention the book is that it gives me the oddest dreams. I am not going to go into the plot of the book since it is a novel and all good novels take too long to describe but it's both spiritual and satirical and funny as hell and I am at the point in the book I might start to have funny dreams. Not as funny as those whoppers Super Wendell describes but strange enough to disturb me and cause me to wake up mumbling.

Superfluous Use of Homeland Security #23437

Found in an AP news story I found on the Drudge Report in an article about Illinois installing spy cameras at highway rest stops:

"People needing help simply push a button on the emergency box. That automatically alerts authorities and sends them pictures from that camera so they can see what is happening. ``It adds to our homeland security,'' said Mike Monseur, a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Transportation."

I feel safer already. I hope they leave a few blind areas at the rest stops so truckers can still enlist the services of prostitutes. You don't want a bunch of frustrated truckers on the road. They are already hopped up on speed you don't need them all backed up too.

Dumb phone call of the Day

In case you don't know, I work in telephone reference for a major public library in a major city. I just took a call from a guy who wanted the North Carolina commercial driver's manual on audio tape.

"We've got problems, we've got challenges, this generation has got challenges to meet and we're going to meet those challenges head on. We've got the challenge of fighting and winning a war against terrorists and we're going to win that war against terrorists."
W. Bush at the foot of Mt. Rushmore.

How can someone who speaks like this be the president? I know it's been run into the ground but, Jesus, I had a gym teacher more articulate than this guy. Another thing. What is up with those pictures of him at Mt. Rushmore? God, they're laughable. He looks like a high school freshman standing in front of a mural of the last state championship football team.

In case you were concerned, my toe still hurts. It's not crippling but I know it's there. It's like your cat hacking up a bug he ate. Not a disaster but something you would rather not hear or have to deal with.

More cats and bamboo and barfing.

Gallagher, being the incredible selfish food hound that he is, finally gobbled enough bamboo to cause vomiting. Leafy cat barf is more disgusting than the usual half-digested dried food pile.

All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field. Isiah 40:6.

Last night I cut a piece of flesh off a toe while trimming my toe nails. It hurt like hell and it is a little stinging annoyance right now.

Cats Like Bamboo

I recieved a bamboo plant as a graduation present a few days ago and I keep it on my desk at work. It looks really cool sitting next to my goth girl bobblehead. Barbara and I got to talking about bamboo and she said that she thought she had heard that it's easy to grow bamboo in your home from a cutting.

There is a small grove of bamboo in the courtyard out the back of my apartment building. I went out earlier today and cut a three foot length of bamboo off a plant. Did you know bamboo is very tough? I tried to cut it with my Swiss army knife and had no luck and had to snap the piece off with my bare hands. I was surprised by it's strength because I was only cutting a piece about half an inch in diameter.

When I brought the leafy branch in the insane cat, Gallagher, ran off in fright. After he composed himself he returned and began munch greedily on cuttings on the floor from the trimming I had been doing. He ate so much I thought he was going to barf so I took it away from him. He is a plant chewer but I have only seen him go after plantlife like that when I put catnip out.

I stuck a stem in a glass of water and placed it in the window in my room. I was laying on my bed reading and Pippin came in and walked across my book, perched on the window sill and caught a whiff of the bamboo and walked over and took a bite. What is up with that? What is there about bamboo that would cause these guys to go nuts ?

I was wondering if bamboo is native to the states and according to encyclopedia.com there is a native species of bamboo called cane. So I guess I have cane growing in my room. It appears that bamboo is edible so I guess it's not that big of a deal for my cats to eat it. I just don't need one more thing that they can barf up.

Email Signatures

Another feature of living in this here electronic age that no science fiction writer ever envisioned: the email signature.

An email signature is like a mini mix tape for your friends. It's a slice of personal philosophy, a dry little slab of your beliefs. A signature can be any dang thing at all. It can be something funny a friend said, something no one else has ever thought before you did, a line from a comic, a song lyric, a verse from the bible, a quote from a writer or the theme song to Gilligan's Island.

A couple of times a year I get a compliment from an email recipient that mentions my choice of signature somewhere in the email. Usually near the end. You know, after all the important stuff has be relayed they say, "Hey, I liked that quote at the end of your email. Rock on, homey." It makes me feel good all over. I feel like I have enriched someone's day as much as a full body massage would enrich mine.

I makes my day when I get complimented on my signature. Getting a positive response to a new signature makes me cry like those researchers did at Alamogordo. It warms my tummy like a bowl of oatmeal. It tingles my toes like I have been sitting cross-legged for twenty minutes. It choaks me up like a mouthful of saltwater. Perks me up like a shot of Cuervo. Makes me spin like a spinnin' wheel. Rocks me like a hurricane. Ungulates my hemoglobin like Madonna disrobin'.

Anyway, the next time you get an email from me and signature is new you better tell me how much you like it or, so help me god, we will never speak again.

Dave Attell, one funny bastard

Since me and a few other blogites went and saw a right funny guy, Dave Attell, tonight I figured I would get the first shot off now before they wake up tomorrow and scoop me.

Dave has a show on Comedy Central called Insomniac. To put it simply, Dave goes out drinking in a town he is performing in and films his encounters with the locals. Maybe it should be called Alcoholic instead of Insomniac. It's different than other reality television because he doesn't belittle the other drunks he meets. I'm not saying that he doesn't poke fun at them, he just isn't cruel about it. Many of the jokes he makes on the show are self effacing so it all equals out in end.

Anyway, we saw Dave tonite at the Comedy Zone. I went with Super W, Bookpimper, James and the One Big Loud Guy. There were three opening comedians. They were all OK. Not great. They did better than I could in front of a crowd of people but most of their stuff was pretty standard stand up. One guy even did his what was obviously his signature joke and then told us he had t-shirts and bumper stickers for sale with his signature joke on them. We know you are trying to make a living, dude, but at least wait until the end before you hock your shit. He's bucking for a sitcom, I can tell.

Dave was very funny the whole evening. He must have been onstage for more than an hour. He did a few bits I had heard before but, much to his credit, he didn't repeat them word for word unlike lesser comedians like Pinkard and Bowden who I saw do the same exact show three times in a row in a two year period. Dave's show was pretty unstructured. He definately has a good number of set pieces he will jump into but I would be willing to bet that he does not do the same show every night. I would compare his approach to that of a good band that may play the same set of songs but not all of them every night and not in the same order.

It appeared to me that a couple of times he felt like he was losing the crowd because we didn't laugh uproariously at a couple of jokes. What he didn't notice was that although the crowd didn't scream at every joke they were listening very closely. It reminded me of a story that John Cleese told about the first Monty Python tour of the U.S. He recalled being a perturbed by the lack of response from the crowd. He mentioned that backstage and someone told him to look at the crowd while the next skit was being performed and he saw that the crowd was mouthing the dialogue. The reaction to Dave's jokes may not have been what he expected but we were with him the whole way.

Dave said 'fuck' a lot.

He said if you have sex with a horse you are guaranteed a ride home.

He said that a good name for a child would be Pizza Pussy Santa since everybody likes at least one of those things.

He said that eggnog is elf cum.

He said that some smells don't go together. Like cotton candy and whiskey. That smells like somebody just got done fucking a clown.

He compared his fat belly to getting a tattoo.

He said a pack of cigarettes cost seven bucks in New York which causes you to think, hey, for three more dollars I could be smoking crack.

He said that since the drug ecstacy makes you want to hold people you shouldn't take some right before you go to jail.

Dave is funny.

Pictures of Wrigley Field

All three of the long-time readers of this blog know that I went to Wrigley Field this spring. I took some photos there and I have just now uploaded them to my personal geocities site so we can all enjoy them together. I had to redo this since geocities has gone the way of Angelfire and won't allow you to link directly to a file. Jerk faces.

You can see the pictures here

Wasn't that fun?

Someone dumber than Shaq!

An actual quote from a real story: Rap singer Kaleidaskope says removing the air bag to install a TV in the steering wheel of his Mercedes-Benz CL 55 "was all for show" and that he rarely drives the car outside his Long Island neighborhood. "It makes a statement. It says you're either a ballplayer, a rapper or making some serious cheddar (money)."

Screw the airlines

I have heard all kinds of talk and read all many words concerning welfare and how we should "put them people to work." And they are working. Working part time, ill-paying jobs that pay less than the welfare they were on. Yay, the working poor have grown. So, with that in mind, why should we bail out the airlines? Do we need to be able to fly to Seattle, LA, Florida and New York? These chariots of the gods that left their contrails across the otherwise unblemished Michigan skies that I gazed upon as a youth, are they really necesarry? In northern Michigan, where I grew up, they caused superstition and fear and I spent my formative years as a member of the Iron Bird cult. Maybe these corporations should get a job that pays and doesn't cause fear in our barbaric northern tribes. Something like prostitution, advertising or hot dog vending.

Listened to on duh bus:   The Executioner's Last Song by the Pine Valley Cosmonauts on Bloodshot Records.

A salute to female athletes

It was a long time coming and it was a hard fight but now women are recognized at all levels of athletics including the high jump. Bless you Blanka.

Something less sexist

Ok, so it's Saturday and I am work again. No big deal, I got to listen to the Mekons on the way to work this morning. I was watching bit of the boob tube last night and there was a documentary on Marine Corps boot camp and the church on the training base had art on their stained glass windows that featured Marines guarding the pearly gates. If that is even remotely possible then the Mekons will be the band to welcome you in. Ok, the Mekons and the Waco Brothers and maybe the White Stripes and the Bunker Brothers will play during lunch breaks.

Jimi Hendrix at the Isle of Wight

In the summer of 1970, 18 days before he died, Jimi Hendrix headlined at the Isle of Wight Festival in the UK.

I just got back from watching his Isle of Wight performance via DVD at the Visualite. It was very cool. They had a pretty large screen with a projector displaying the video and they had the sound system cranked. The performance was lightly edited so it had a good flow like a live performance should. More than once I almost forgot I was watching a video and felt like I was a real concert.

Since Hendrix is usually grouped with all the drug and booze casulties of that time period it was revealing to see him in the performance. What I saw tonight was not a junkie on his way out but an artist at the top of his game. It proves to me completely that his death was accidental and not the culmination of an abuser's lifestyle.

I also saw a in person what I had read about him as far as his growth was concerned. He only played two of his 'hits,' Purple Haze and Foxey Lady and he didn't exactly fly through them but they were not the same songs you hear on the radio. Like Dylan, he was unable to play the same song the same way twice. He got bored and that was easy to see. Also, newer songs like "Freedom" and "Back from the Strom" had a lot more energy and were truer to the recorded versions that the old stuff.

His humor came through a couple of times also. At one point between songs someone must have yelled the name of a song they wanted to hear and Jimi mumbled, "Yeah, we'll uh, play that later...next time." During 'Machine Gun' there was a long drum solo while Jimi gave instructions to the sound guys and halfway through the solo he did a little riff from the song from the side of the stage and smiled at the drummer. Near the end of the show he signed off by saying, "peace, love and all that bullshit."

I got into Hendrix early back when I was in tenth grade and I have always wanted to see a live show on a big screen at high volume and tonight, like my trip to Wrigley Field, was a rare fulfillment of a dream.

Holy Screaming Eagle Shit

Today when I left my post-apocalyptic dorm-room style abode I was shocked to feel that the air outside my home was colder than the air inside for the first time since the spring. It was lovely. It felt like autumn. I was looking for a pile of leaves to jump into. It won't last long but it's nice to get that occasional reprieve during them hot summer months, you know.

An unrelated interest
I just discovered recently that a publication that is handed out by women with large boobs on Thursdays at Trade and Tryon between 11 and 2 called the Rhinoceros Times has a column by a guy who used to be one of my favorite writers, Orson Scott Card. Not that he can't write no more, I just lost interest in what he has had to say in the last few years. I ain't giving up hope.

I'm not sure what the Rhinoceros Times is supposed to be. They appear to publish in Charlotte and Greensboro but it looks like they have worldwide circulation as one of their aspirations. Check out their webpage here. I guess they got Card because he is a resident of Greensboro and he's not afraid to voice opinions no matter how far to the right they are. He does give honest opinions and doesn't appear to distort the truth like columnists from all sides tend to do.

I was just now doing research for a column for Michaelcosm that is going to send me to hell more directly than before. I was already on a pretty fast track but I think this idea will put me at the front of the line. I hate lines. I figure if you are going to go somewhere get there as directly as possible.

Anyway is this tiny bit of research I was doing I saw that there have been antipopes! That's right popes that are not recognized as having served in a pope-like manner or became pope dishonestly. I could be happy as an anitpope.

An evening at the ballpark.

For the first time in a few years I spent an evening at Knight's Castle in Fort Mill, SC to see the Charlotte Knights play ball. Maybe someday we will have a ball park near the center of Charlotte so we won't have to drive a half hour to get to a game in another state. I went with Super W and the One Big Loud Guy. We snuck down to the front seats behind the third base dugout late in the game. No one was checking tickets since attendance was below three thousand and it seemed like one of those deals where you could sit pretty much where you wanted. That's the way it should be at a minor league game anyway. All tickest should be seven bucks and you can sit wherever the hell you want. Now that would be fun. They still don't open the grass area up unless there is a big crowd. I don't like that either. What's the point of having a grassy area and not allowing people to use it. Silly.

We got to see a pitcher for the opposing team, the Toldedo Mud Hens, named Fernando Rodney pitch an inning. He was throwing over 95 mph according to the radar gun readout in the left field wall. We were right at field level and I think the radar gun was pretty accurate because he was throwing smoke. I was intimidated and I was in the stands. One of the Knights' players was completely over matched by the pitcher but fouled a few pitches off and managed to fly out. It was a gutsy performance by the batter.

I have to say that nothing embodies the pastoral and timeless traditions of baseball more than the One Big Loud Guy doing call and response with a bunch of kids hyped up on sugar on the other side of the diamond. He's holler "whoo!" and they'd holler "whoo!" It went on for a while....

War for oil, war for industry.

I found this link on Tom Tomorrow's website. Along with Drudge Report, I check it every day. My question is whether or not there has ever been a country in our position in the history of the world? We can, if enough reasons can be manufactured, march into just about any country and remove their government from power and a good number of their citizens from the planet. Especially if that country has lots of oil oil oil. Oil oil oil. Oil oil oil. Oil oil oil.

Please god, hear my prayer. Please, please remove all the oil from the planet right now. In your divine wisdom leave us petroleumless today so that we may stop killing people on the other side of the earth. Then we can stop importing live bombs and begin again importing Levi jeans and bad TV shows and then incur the rest of the world's disgust and pity rather than hatred.

In other news, I listened to a cool Beat Farmers bootleg on the way to work today. It's a how from 1992 in Long Beach, CA. It sounds like quite the party. Country Dick Montana is in fine form.

Speaking of the Beat Farmers. You may have heard of Johnboy and Billy, once local morning show guys that are now syndicated to all points rednecky. They used to play a song called "Happy Boy" and big dumb ole Johnboy would sing along with it. I, like many others I am sure, thought it was Johnboy singing since they never credited anybody with creating the song. I thought it was either it was Johnboy singing or they had hired someone to record the song. It turned out to be a song by the Beat Farmers that is sung by Country Dick Montana who had a very deep voice. Once I discovered this I realized the Johnboy and Billy never credited the Beat Farmers on the air because they wanted people to think it might be Johnboy singing. It's not plagarism but it sure does stink. Like I need another reason to not like those guys.

Austin Powers is a Piece of shit

How unfunny can a movie be? How much material from previous installments can you retread? How many obvious puns can you insert in one movie? How can you have such a hilarious opening sequence and then and then and then.....just suck balls? Do yourself a favor, wait for it to hit the dollar theater and watch the first ten minutes and then go get some dinner. If you are in some multiplex try and duck into Austin Powers as it is starting and catch the opening. Be sure not to let the creative opening lure you in. Just know it does not maintain.

I didn't expect a movie as original as the Southpark movie but a little effort would have been nice. I shouldn't say that, maybe they did try. Maybe like Ed Wood, that is just the best Mike Myers is capable of.

The Japanese are some sick bastards

The Movie Guy showed us an interesting selection of movies last night at Bookpimp's place. Every couple of months or so an even that is called "movie night" takes place at BP's. The Movie Guy has an amazing talent for choosing good bad movies. Some might think that Space Balls is a good bad movie. These people haven't seen Ms. .45 Summary: mousey mute waif girl gets raped twice in one day and goes on a shooting spree in New York and kills only men. The Lesbian Straightener was keeping score and in his words "was tripping over symbols."

After we struggled through the eighty minutes of Ms. .45 we trekked over to the movie room of Bookpimp's apartment complex. The movie room is fucking amazing. It's the Sistine Chapel of entertainment systems. The sound system is so good that it's just like sitting in a theater. We were shown a sick piece of Japanese sadism called "Ichi the Killer." The plot: indescribable. The violence: constant and bloody. The ending was like Hamlet, everyone died. Although it was disgusting it was not revolting since most of the violence was cartoonish and much of it took place off screen. The sound effects are what really grossed everyone out.

Two scenes stand out to me from Ichi the Killer. In one scene Ichi, who wears a mutan ninja turtle type suit with the number one on his back, runs into a room full a yakuza and kill them all. All we see is the open door while buckets of blood and entrails fly out the door. A human face actually smacks a wall and slides down it like a flat snail that looks like a human face. The other scene standout scene features Ichi killing a guy with the blade that sticks out the heal of his superhero boot. He slices the guy from head to crotch, slicing him in half. The two halves of his body slowly seperate. Disgusting yet entertaining.

When is the next movie night?

I went and saw the second Men in Black movie today. Quick review: funny, smart and entertaining but not hilarious, genius and awe inspiring.

Do you have any idea how hot it is in this town? I rode my bike to the 3 o'clock showing of MIB II at the theater at Park Road Shopping Center. It's about a ten minute ride and I was drenched in sweat when I got there. How did people live in this part of the world before air conditioning? How did anything get done? I think the ridiculous weather might explain why slavery lasted so long in the south. I know I wouldn't work outside in this heat without an overseer kicking my ass every ten minutes. Last summer I busted up an old chair so I could stick the pieces into the dumpster and I almost died. Oh, it was fun beating a chair with a sledgehammer and an axe but I wouldn't want to have that as my job. Doing work like that is what got that guy in trouble in To Kill a Mockingbird.

Nostalgia or sentimental memories?

Sometimes you have to pull that high school year book out and see if those faces create different thoughts than they did a couple of years ago.

I see a picture of someone I haven't spoken to in 15 years and I can picture them smiling at me. I remember how people smile, not how they frown. I see guys I thought were not so smart sitting in an electronics class and they look stoned. I see a girl I had a big crush on and I still think she is cute and then I realize she is about 16 in the picture. I see people I didn't like then and I am pretty sure I probably wouldn't like them now. I also realize I should have been on the year book staff so there could have been some decent photographs. I also saw pictures of a lot of people I had forgotten even existed. You see how a person holds herself and you see her differently.

Maybe you should never look through that old year book. It just causes confusion.