Winter Rain

  My sleep was uneasy and some sightless horror chased me into the gray dawn. The morning, hardly distinguished from night, mocked the weariness in my limbs. Born into the gray as a fish below the ambits of light, I struggled upward, hoping to find a point where reach could meet reach.

  The cool, damp air crept between my seams pressed dead lips to my flesh. I showered until steam billowed into the hallway, heat grabbed rapaciously by the darkness. Below my red, scalded flesh, was slate, cold and unmoved.

  Driving through puddles, a gray wall of clouds caressing the skyline, like a Siren reaching down to stroke a piece of driftwood. She wonders about the acorn that became the tree that became the boat. As I wonder about the thought that became the word that became the virus in your heart.

Finality

Well, it's over. A brief 2 months and 17 days.  The candle burned, then flickered, then bloomed brightly one last time before leaving the room to darkness.

So what did I learn? What's the takeaway?
I  try not to do regrets. What good are they? Every regret can be redirected into a lesson.

I should have listened to all the warning bells that went off in my head right away. The feeling of being tired, unbalanced, almost manic. I should have realized the cold seas of her eyes were the same that filled men's lungs as they sank to the bottom. I should have realized when there was no honeymoon period, when, after the starter pistol went off, I was pulling my feet through mud. Fighting for every inch of affection, running through the hurdles, too tired to lift my legs over.

So what did I learn. Relationships are like a dance, both people are responsible for their own balance, but when you can trust someone enough, you can start to play with counterbalance. That's where you can explore different centers of gravity, push yourself beyond what you could achieve alone. But when your partner drops you again and again, it's time to find a different dance.

August 28th, I sent a text to my friend Jen. I wrote:

She is going to either utterly destroy me,

or she's going to gild me with invicible armor. 

Either way, it's going to be a hell of a ride


So clearly I wasn't totally blind to the perils. I saw great potential for either success or failure. 

I am relieved that it's over. Relieved that I get to take care of myself for a while. 

And can I just say for a second that I'm a great fucking catch? Can I say that? I am bright, funny, and charming. I'm a good dancer. I am financially secure. I am disease free. I can speak, with some eloquence, on most topics of conversation. I am a passionate and attentive lover. I am thoughtful and kind. I surround myself with good, honest, well-intentioned people. I have an open mind and a full heart. I respect people and their stories. I constantly strive to understand the world better. I am playful and witty. I like to play games, to improvise, to "yes-and" almost anything. People at my job like me and value me. 

What the fuck was she thinking, throwing this away? Driving me to the point of insanity. Draining every last ounce of energy. What was she thinking?

Sundays with M.

Dear Follower,

As there is now only one (1) of you, I guess these have become letters more than blog posts. Although perhaps even you having adjusted your notification settings so that my infrequent updates don't manage to make their way into your sphere of perception. Nevertheless, I shall blog on. It's almost liberating knowing that these little posts are more of an offering to the goddess Entropy.
Maybe Entropy is male. It seems like destruction is more under the purview of the less fair sex and creation under the purview of the fairer. Maybe, intrepid follower, you will grant me the poetic license to do what I may and if the gender of my personal pronoun offends, then I shall hide behind my aegis of atheism.

I met a girl. Her name is M[redacted]. She is...complicated. She is complicated and lovely. She is complicated, lovely, and warm...like a slow sip of scotch.  She looks taller than she is; she has pale blue eyes, like the heart of a glacier. The heart where the ice is pure because all imperfections have been forced out under titanic pressures. Shipwreck allusion unintended.
She has dark hair and a dark wit. She dances like a succubus on duty. She can pierce my heart with a glance.
I've known her for fewer than 14 days.
I feel especially exposed with her. I told her as much after an incredible night of swing dancing. I told her that she scared me because I didn't know what she was going to do with me. This sounds, inadvertently serial-killer-ish, but what I meant was that I was...like those Black Lab lyrics "Will you be there on the ground if I should fall...fall for you." This relationship is starting to feel like a trust fall, but I didn't even look behind me to see if she's looking.
We exchanged books. She gave me The Perks of Being a Wallflower and I gave her Jack of Shadows. Aside from the fact that you would be hard pressed to find two more different novels,
Perks was fantastic. Truly the heartbreaking work of a brilliant mind. The more I read the more I think I learned about M. Someone's favorite books can tell you more about them than a direct interview.

My word well is starting to dry up, so I say goodnight, gentle follower. I hope whoever you are, wherever you are, you are loved the way you deserve to be loved.

Your friend,
Charlie

The Veil

I have nightmares. I don't know where the line between nightmare and night terror is, but I think my experiences lie somewhere in the middle.

I will wake up, sometimes just 20 minutes after I've fallen asleep, and I will be haunted by some image I saw in the twilight kingdom. I will see, with my waking eyes, some phantom, some demon that existed only in dream. The fact that I can carry that horror from my dream state to my waking life reminds me how thin is the veil between dreams and reality.
Sometimes I will awake in a panic, imagining I'm covered in spiders or that something is standing over the bed, watching me with dead, lidless eyes. In those moments, the horror is real. I awake and there's already a backstory in my mind. My reality is completely consumed with the creature reaching out to squeeze the life from my body. I will sometimes throw back the covers, leap out of bed, and turn on the light. I will look around my room and at some point, reality returns. My own, personal narrative is restored and I remember who I am, where I am, and what is real and what is not. Like a crane dropping a cargo container full of memories onto a train, I become me again. I calm down, maybe even laugh a little, and go, fairly quickly, back to sleep. The next day, the memory of the event will wrapped in gauze. Distant, hazy, and laughable. Like a dream that fades upon waking, so does the memory of the abject terror.

But as hard as I try to forget entirely, the event always leaves a little fishhook in my brain. And sometimes, during the day, something pulls on the line connected to that fishhook. Something whispers, what if? What if that crane malfunctions and the cargo container gets stuck? What if, standing in that moment of confusion and horror, nothing comes to fill the amnesia? Then I would be a raw nerve, a freshly drilled tooth, existing in pain forever. I would run into the lonely maw of night, chased by a demon whose continued existence is just as much of a surprise to him.

Dialogue exercise:

Dennis: Hi, I’m Dennis.

Bar Girl: Hi.

Dennis: What are you drinking?

Bar Girl: Hemlock.

Dennis: You hardly seem the gadfly type. What cruel device of fate has sent the poison to your lips?

BG: Sorry, I’m not interested.

Dennis: Really? Even after I picked up on the Socrates reference? Or was that a trap? A little intellectual honey for the over educated barflies?

BG: Something like that?

Dennis: O.k. no harm no foul. Just out of curiosity what was the correct answer?

BG: I’ll know it when I hear it.

Dennis: Like podcast porn. Gotcha. Well, enjoy your evening.

BG: What, that’s it?

Dennis: Now I’m confused. Usually when a girl says she’s not interested, there is a singular interpretation.

BG:Unless she wants you to fight a little. Unless she was just waiting for the second bite to set the hook.

Dennis: No thanks.

BG: No thanks?

Dennis: Listen. We’re one of the only species where the female does the peacocking. Even with peacocks it’s the male. So, in defiance to the rest of the animal kingdom, you, the female, don your Friday night best, sit at the bar with lips that can be seen from low earth orbit...your, ah, femininity amplified via silk contraptions with levers and pulleys that would make a greek shipbuilding scratch his oily head.

BG: Point being?
Dennis: So, we’re confused. The men. Somewhere inside this mammalian brain, we’re thinking, this isn’t right. Shouldn’t I just stand in a field and flex, maybe sing the song of my people, until a woman deems me genetically viable, bends over and presents?

BG: Sounds barbaric.

Dennis: It’s more honest that this debasement of nature.

BG: So sing me the song of your people.

Dennis: Even if I did know all the words to that Right Said Fred song. I wouldn’t waste my breath, expend those precious calories to someone who’s just fishing.

BG: What if the bait were irresistible? (uncrosses legs)

Dennis: I’m too sexy for my shirt, too sexy for my shirt...

The Apprentice

The horse I rode had pedigree. Its mother was a Glinishmoor Plainstrider and its father was a demon. This particular demon was summoned during the third full moon of the year by way of a phial of virgin's blood (willingly donated), a fortunate lightening strike, 3 apples from the 400 year old "grandfather" tree growing in the king's courtyard, and an incantation spoken in a language known only by 3 people in the entire kingdom. The demon's proclivity for bestiality and its species indifferent gametes should have already been inferred.
So why is the junior apprentice riding such a steed, carrying, in a small burlap sack, one of the most valuable artifacts in all the kingdom? Because everyone else was dead.

Chapter 1: Escape

Evolution

Whole batches of proto-humans must have been lost. Those for whom self-awareness was the ultimate curse instead of the ultimate gift. Those early earth dwellers gazing up into the night sky, undimmed by light pollution saw only emptiness, only the potential to fall and not the potential to be caught. It was the lucky ones who survived, the ones who simultaneously discovered the truth and accepted the lie. The lie is that something persists after death, that this planet will spin forever. The lie is that your progeny will inherit the stars.

If there is a god, that god is certainly a buddhist. He is teaching us the lesson of impermanence. He has written his philosophy into the very laws that churn the matter and energy of the universe. If god were a christian, there would be an end to this and a beginning to something else. Rivers of blood and multi-headed dragons aside, we could envision a universe in which this existence were a staging ground for something even bigger. If god were a hindu, then the expanding universe would eventually decelerate, and collapse in on itself...perhaps even time would reverse as the great twisted string of reality wound back down. Once crunched, the universe would begin again in another cosmic explosion (expansion). Universe without end, cycling in and out, a great, cosmological lung. But, no, we have this. A universe that was booked on a one way ticket. The universe will expand into nothing. Heat death, they call it. The death of all energy, all matter. At first, I didn't understand, I thought, well....maybe all the planets are gone, but we can build a space station that can float in the middle of nowhere and that would be o.k. But it's not that simple. The universe won't allow that. As the universe expands, the entropic forces will increase until everything is torn apart to its constituent atoms. Nothing will survive. Our space station, no matter how sturdily built, will be unceremoniously vaporized, like a fish that lives on the ocean floor being pulled too suddenly to the surface.

So why is god a buddhist? Because this is it. This is everything. There is no past, there is no future, there is only now. Those that wait for something better will find only oblivion. So what do we do with a one way ticket? We enjoy the journey. Why? Because this is it, motherfuckers. This great, beautiful, terrifying, magnificent, horrible universe is the only one that will ever exist. It's our playground and our graveyard. When you die, you will go into the ground. You will return your borrowed atoms to the earth. The earth will be vaporized, "our" galaxy will collide with other galaxies, everything will violently die, then slowly drift apart.

And so I choose to live. I choose to enjoy this world and help those around me to enjoy it as well. When viewed at just the right angle, this makes everything else seem trivial. Our fellow travellers are confused. They have been seduced by people who are frightened. They have been told a lie and that lie is keeping them from enjoying their journey.

Hearts of Space

I was recently directed to a podcast called RadioLab. It is delightful, stimulating, and often bittersweet. I have yet to encounter an episode that didn't thrill me in some fashion. For those interested in my discipline of choice, Statistics, you could do far worse as an introduction to the field than to listen to Radiolab's episode entitled Stochasticity.

But this is cursory to the impetus for me to dust off the old blog and share something with the internets. When I was looking through different podcasts the idea suddenly came upon me to look for a radio program I used to listen to in high school. This program came on MPR every Sunday night around 8 or 9 o'clock and featured esoteric, new-agey, ethereal music. I would catch it whenever I could and was always entranced by the exotic sounds that would drift through speakers. The show was Hearts of Space and the host of the show would always end each episode by saying "Safe journey, Spacefans, wherever you are."

Hearts of Space was special to me for several reasons, not the least of which was I often shared the experience with my dear friend, Fast Eddie. Additionally, back then I didn't spend a lot of time listening to music. I mean, music was a pretty consistent backdrop to most of my activities, but I rarely listened to music for the sake of the music itself. HoS was different. When 9:00 rolled around, I would turn up the music, darken the room, and give myself to the music. This was long before my experiments with psychotropics, and I think this music sent me into something of an altered state. 

I remember one night in particular. I came home late from somewhere and since Mom was away for the weekend and Brother was at college, I had the house to myself. I realized that HoS had already started so I went upstairs, turned on the stereo in the living room, and dialed in to MPR. The sound was a lone soprano voice over a barely audible orchestra. It was something medieval, something dark and lovely. I turned off the lights, lay on the couch, and immediately I was taken somewhere, some mist shrouded castle in Ireland where a spectre drifting through the halls sung her tale of loneliness. I could feel the damp, cold fog. I could see the pale half-moon languishing as the wisps of clouds grew denser. I could hear past her foreign tongue to the tale she wove with every crystalline note. 

The episode ended, and like a doctor helping the recently anesthetized to their feet the host gently released us back into reality with his reassuring "Safe journey, Spacefans, wherever you are."

And so I'm digging through all the old shows, looking for that specific episode. I wonder if I'll find it. Sometimes I feel like I should stop looking. Maybe the narrative above is more than pure recollection. Maybe it's some amalgam of memory and desire. Whatever the case, I'm glad I can rediscover this show. It feels good. It feels like two old friends visiting for the weekend. Playing frisbee and boardgames and reminiscing. It is comforting beyond expression.

Safe Journeys.

How I Met Josh Radnor

I know I've broken the blogging world record by posting twice in three days, but try to keep up.



Josh Radnor, star of the hit television series "How I Met Your Mother" (take a minute to chuckle at the title of this post) was in Bexley Ohio tonight to premiere his new movie HappyThankYouMorePlease. Mr. Radnor, a native of Bexley returned to the theater he used to visit as a child. During his speech before the movie he said "I wouldn't be making movies if it weren't for this theater." All in all he seems like a really nice guy and, perhaps surprisingly, very much like Ted Mosby, the character he plays in How I Met Your Mother (don't chuckle again, that's just condescending). So where do I fit in amongst the rich and powerful patrons who attended this showing? Well, it just so happens that my girlfriend is the Director of the Bexley Public Library. And it just so happens that the president of the library board is Alan Radnor, Josh Randor's father. So girlfriend and I attend the premiere (spoiler alert: the movie is freaking awesome), then we go to the afterparty. We see Josh Radnor talking to people, laughing, hugging, and being an all around nice guy.
Let me pause here to say that apart from a brief wave from Robert Guillaume when I was very very little, I have never met a famous person. So girlfriend and I were waiting to met Josh Radnor and I'm getting nervous. My heart is pounding and I'm thinking of what I should say and then girlfriend walks up to him and shakes his hand. The music is loud so Josh Radnor bends over to catch her name. She tells him her name and he says "Oh yes! I've heard a lot of great things about you." This hot-shot up and coming star of television and film has heard great things about my girlfriend. It's true, she's a rockstar.
They chat a little bit and then he looks over at me. Extends his hand and says "Hi, I'm Josh." So simple, so kind and unpretentious. I smile and shake his hand.

And that is how I met Josh Radnor. If you haven't seen his tv show, you owe it to yourself. It plays pitch perfectly to my (and probably your) generation, plus Alyson Hannigan is hot. The movie HappyThankYouMorePlease will be in theaters in February.

Sprocketplug Out

Summer Time

So here's what's been going on in my life.

August was a busy month. I gave a presentation on the work I've been doing this summer regarding some survey design research involving propensity scores. I tested for and received my yellow belt in hapkido.

Finally, I took my second qualifying examination for my Ph.D. program. If I pass this exam the next stage is passing a candidacy exam before starting work on my dissertation. Luckily this exam was something of a final hurdle. The two qualifying examinations act as a weeding out process for the department. If you fail the exams, they send you packing. If you pass the exams, however, you're almost guaranteed to graduate. The department doesn't give you your candidacy exam until they think you can pass it.

The qualifier was an ordeal, but it's over and I'm starting to wind down from all the stress. I still get a knot in my stomach when I think about it, but for the next week (until I get the results) I'm going to try to push it out of my mind.

On an unrelated note, I took my car in today for an oil change and had them look into a noise I was hearing from the passenger side front suspension. Turns out something or the other was broken and they didn't want me driving it for fear of a tire puncture during a hard turn. So I picked up a car from Budget which I'll be driving until the part comes in and they install it (a couple of days on the outside).

The car is fairly new Dodge Avenger. I like how the exterior looks, kinda badass, but it doesn't handle like it looks it might. Looks like a dolphin, handles like a manatee. I think it should trademark that in case dodge wants to use it in advertisements.

I had an "interesting" conversation with another patron at Carmax while my car was being inspected. I was sitting in the waiting area and SportsCenter was on. I was reading "With the Lightenings" a great novel by David Drake, and this dude sits down by me and starts commenting on the story being covered by ESPN. The story was about Roger Clemens. I don't follow sports, but I do remember the congressional hearings on performance enhancing drugs. Why was Roger Clemens returning to Congress?

From the LA Times:

The charges stem from Clemens' testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in 2008. Clemens, who was mentioned multiple times in the Mitchell Report, told the committee he had "never taken steroids or HGH."

So this guy said "You think the government has more important things to do then bring Roger Clemens back."

I glanced up and he was looking right at me. I think he's missing the point, but I just shrug and go back to my novel. So he said "I mean it costs them hundreds of thousands of dollar to do this and that could be money better spent making jobs for people." I was about to say something, but thought otherwise and said "Yeah, probably." And back to my book.

A few minutes later he says "I mean I've been a cop for 20 years and there's tons of more dangerous drugs out there. Heroin, cocaine, and these guys get all worked up because baseball players want to make themselves a little bigger."

Finally I said

"Well...I agree that congress probably had better things to do than investigate drug use in major league baseball, however, Roger Clemens is under fire now because he most likely committed several acts of perjury. Whether or not you believe HGH and steroids are bad, and regardless of what you think of the original investigation, the man gave false testimony to the United States Congress, and that cannot stand."

The man looked at me for a few seconds then said "Yeah, but there are tons of drugs that are more dangerous that you can get on the street."

I opened my mouth, then I closed my mouth and went back to my novel. The voice of my good friend Fast Eddie in my ear "Pick your battles, dude. Pick your battles."

the way of coordinated power

Much has happened in the past month. Spring quarter ended, Summer quarter began, I moved in with The Fighting Librarian, and I started (in earnest) a Korean martial art called Hapkido.

Some of you may know that I tried my hand (no pun intended) at the Japanese martial art, Aikido, a while back. The philosophy of Aikido was extremely interesting to me. The best way I can describe Aikido is that it is a non-violent martial art. It emphasizes balance, coordinated motion, and respect for your attacker. Your goal in Aikido is to take your opponents energy and us it against him/her. It rarely, if ever, teaches strength vs. strength. Anecdotally, I once practiced with a woman who was probably 50 years old, probably 5' tall and a biscuit over 100 pounds. Using some simple techniques, she threw my 200 pounds around the mat like i was a rag doll. We were taught ways to redirect the attacker's force and use that same energy to subdue, pin, or generally immobilize the attacker. There were ways to make the techniques more unpleasant for the attacker, but in general it felt like you were putting your opponent to bed. You took their energy and used it to put them on the ground. Then you applied a wrist or arm lock until they felt uncomfortable and asked you to stop (tapped out). Then you released and backed away. Aikido is often called a soft form, or a soft martial art. If someone throws a punch, you don't try to block it, you simply blend with it, redirecting the energy and putting it to your own use. Since you never meet force head on with more force, Aikido is called a soft form or a soft martial art.
A practitioner of a hard martial art once said that fighting a practitioner of Aikido was like trying to fight a ghost.
There are several Dojos that teach aikido in the greater columbus area, but I decided to join The Fighting Librarian's Dojang where I knew some people and my friend Sam wanted to start at the same time.

Now, Hapkido is very similar to Aikido as you can probably tell from the name. The difference being Hapkido incorporates some hard forms and also some weapons training. On one of the first days after I joined, we were doing some techniques that are similar to Aikido. In Aikido, if someone were grabbing your wrist, you can turn their arm, take their balance, and put them on the ground. In Hapkido, we learned to turn the attacker's arm, take his balance....but now you take his arm across your leg, strike down to shatter the elbow, then strike across to break the jaw. Therein lies the difference.
In Aikido, you leave your attacker in a position where he doesn't want to you attack you again. In Hapkido, you leave your attacker in a position where he isn't physically able to attack you again.

I'm very much enjoying my practice as it gives me an escape from my otherwise sedentary lifestyle. That, and it gives me a better chance against Fast Eddie's attack ninjas. I take my yellow belt test August 13th. I'll let you all know how it goes.

-SP

When does the searching stop?

 "Bang Pop" is in the running to be the next Freshman on MTV's Freshman 5. 

Vote for their video here:http://freshmen.mtvu.com/

This picture is awesome.

From the time I was a little boy I always imagined what it would be like to have my house filled with water. Not in the flash flood/my life is ruined, kind of way. I just wondered what it would feel like to swim through my.....
UGH!
I just got stuck in a 20 minute "conversation" with my neighbor. She has two dogs Bella and Petey. I have my back door opened to get a breeze and I heard her say "Peter?" I thought she was talking to her dog, but then a minute later I heard her say "Hey Peter?" so I poked my head out and said, "Marci? Are you talking to me?" and she said "No, my dog. But how are you?"
Now, I try to avoid my neighbor because although she is nice and well intentioned she communicates as though most of her brain has been burned away by a decades long addiction to crystal meth...probably because as far as I can tell her brain has been burned away by a decades long addiction to crystal meth.
She talks and she talks and she wanders from one subject to another, so "we" start out talking about her day and how she was cleaning houses with her daughter (who is pretty cool) and then I get to learn about her former 80 year old boyfriend in cleveland who retired at 51 and I get to hear about how she loves the jewish community up there because they are such big tippers during Christmas.
Me: "You mean Hanukah?"
Marci: "What?"
Me: "Well, the Jews usually-."
Marci: "And you know we used to clean houses of all the rich doctors and they didn't live in really nice neighborhoods and my son is going to fix my car because someone hit my car when it was parked on the street and..."

And so I stand and watch her little dogs bound around our shared backyard and I listen for the slightest pause so I can say "I really need to get back in..." but there is no such pause. The woman must be circularly breathing or something. I just can't interrupt people, at least not people I don't know very well. When telemarketers call, when greenpeace comes knocking at my door... as long as they keep talking I keep listening.

Eventually I get a word in and tell her I have to go back inside to do school work.
Marci: "Oh Sure, I understand."
Peter opens his door and gets one foot inside.
Marci: "So how is school, you acing everything?"
Peter: "Yep, school is going very well. Well goodnight!"
Marci: "How much do you have left before you graduate."
Peter: "Probably a couple of years. Have a nice night."
Marci: "That's great. Are you ready to....

UGH. Finally I have to interrupt her. I apologize profusely but I REALLY have to get some more work done. She stares at me blankly and I take this as my cue to run inside and throw the deadbolt.

I will never, ever try crystal meth.

Hoppy Birsdai to me

If you get the reference, you're as a big a gamer as me.

Blogging Under the Influence

For the past, oh, six days now I have been feeling ill. Symptoms fall in the range of your common garden-variety virus, sore throat, sinus congestion, runny nose, headaches, fevers, chills, speaking in tongues etc...
So I've been stocking up on vitamins, fruits, soups, drugs, throat lozenges and other tradition cures/alleviations. I bought a packet of NyQuil liquid caps to help me sleep since that seems to be the most difficult thing for me to do when I'm sick.
Last night, I was lying on my couch feeling miserable and self pitying and watching Firefly actor/producer commentary. It made me laugh, which made me feel a little better. At about 9:30, I decide that I want to hit the sack early, so I crawl upstairs to my bathroom and rummage around my medicine closet. Let me say here that I have enough medical supplies to support the third mobile infantry and enough drugs to stun a team of oxen. As I'm looking through my many and varied pharmaceuticals (some purchased over the counter, some prescription use only) I realize I have left my NyQuil liquid caps downstairs. I did however, notice a bottle of NyQuil liquid.

The only problem is that this particular bottle of cherry flavored NyQuil expired in November of 2008. Now, I know what you're thinking, surely I just went downstairs and got the packet of freshly purchased nyquil liquid caps and took those. Surely I dumped that half used bottle of liquid death down the drain. *ahem*
So I measure out the appropriate dosage from the Cherry NyQuil and throw it down the hatch. At this point I can safely say that the flavor engineers over at NyQuil have a really good sense of humor. Calling this product "cherry flavored" is a sin equivalent to filling grenadine bottles with hamster vomit and selling them in bulk.

Now, I know what you're thinking, and in my defense, let me just say that drinking two year old NyQuil is not as crazy as it sounds. I've had a clinical trials course and I know something about what happens after the best used by date on pharmaceuticals. Usually, the product simply loses efficacy. The effects of the drug are lessened not changed.
So I crawl into bed with the taste of rodent upchuck still on my tongue and settle in for a nice long sleep....

I wake up at about 11:00pm and I'm groggy and dizzy but otherwise comfortable. In my semi-conscious state I ask myself, why did I wake up? Surely, the medication didn't work. So I stumble out of bed and go downstairs. It takes me a while to find the liquid caps (because I'm drugged out of my gourd). I crack them open and take the full the dose. This is where things get a little weird.


I fall asleep again and my dreams become vivid and grand. I can see geometric shapes laid out against a pastoral landscape and I hear the voices of Joss Whedon, Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk, and Ron Glass. They are talking and talking and they won't stop talking and when I wake up 2 hours later I can still hear them talking. That's right, I am awake and I can still hear the disembodied voices of the men doing firely commentary. I stumble into the bathroom and everywhere I look, there are shapes, mostly rectangles with dots at the vertices. The voices keep talking and the shapes are sticking to the walls and I stumble back into bed. I wake up two hours later and the voices are now a cacophony in my head. I try to close my eyes again but the room spins and I can see citadels built upon layered and interlocking rectangles with dots at the vertices. The noise increases until I feel my head is going to split open. Why won't they shut-up, I can't sleep unless they shut-up. As the voices reach a crescendo, I bolt upright and then there's silence.
I'm covered in sweat and my heart is pounding, but the room is cool and silent. I take a few deep breaths and fall back down to my pillow. As I close my eyes, all is quiet, but I see a single rectangle, outlined in silver, with blue dots at the vertices floating in the middle of my mind's eye.

An Evening with That Author Guy

The Fighting Librarian and I spent the evening at a book signing/reading with one of my favorite authors, Christopher Moore. There's nothing like hearing an author wax prosical to make you want to fire up the old blog.

He was supposed to read an excerpt from his new novel Bite Me: A love story (linked on the site above), but ended up just chatting with the audience for an hour and half. He told stories, talked about his new found fame, and then fielded questions from all the weirdos in the audience.

It was a really really good time. He was witty and self deprecating, funny and sincere. To be short, I would really like it if he and I became friends. I've actually written him a few fan letters and was amazed when I got replies...within 30 minutes. I'm not kidding. I wrote the guy after I read Lamb and not even half an hour later I got a response wherein he commented on my email. That is to say, unless he has some dastardly clever reply program, I think he actually read and responded to my email. Now that's a man who's dedicated to his fans.

For those of you who have not read Mr. Moore, I highly recommend picking up some of his stuff. Lamb is spectacular, but it's even better if you're familiar with some of the christian mythology. A Dirty Job stands out as one of the best and most hilarious books I've ever read. I put it up there with Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (though it's a different kind of humor).

I also, just recently, purchased a DROID. You may know if it as the only phone/operating system that comes close (in terms of popularity) to the iPhone. Now, you all know I'm a HUGE fan of Apple and the Macintosh computer. I learned to type on an Apple II gs and my first personal computer was beige Macintosh G3. I've had a clamshell iBook and powerbook titanium, and my computer right now is an aluminum iMac. I've loved them all. However, when it came time to get a new phone I had two reservations when it came to apple. 1) I like having a physical keypad for typing. Something about the iPhone touchscreen keypad drove me bonkers. I would start to twitch and mutter curses in german. 2) Apple's business practice vis a vis the App store is just short of despotic. I don't like the closed door iron fist acceptance rejection policy and I don't like that I can't make my own app and load it on my phone. Apple has always kept tight reigns on their hardware/software, but at some point you begin to stifle creativity. Enter the Android operating system. Made by a somewhat less despotic Google to be an open source, pretty GUI whereon you don't need to void your warranty to upload any app your tech savvy grandmother just made.

The Motorola Droid, the flagship of the Android fleet, has a slideout qwerty keyboard and an open source philosphy I can get behind.

So far, I love it! I've never had a true "smart phone" before and I love how it syncs up with gmail and gmail calendar. The screen is big and beautiful and the apps are wicked fun. There's even an app that let's you download public domain literature.

O.k. that's all that's on my mind for now. I hope you all are happy and well.

=SP=

The long dark tea-time of the soul.

Hi All!

It's spring break here in buckeye country and I'm sure you're all wondering what's going on in the life of one Sigmund J. Sprocketplug.

The quarter ended fairly uneventfully, but it marks the last quarter of full time "real" classes. I'll need to take one or two more electives over the next year, but other than that it's just reading classes and dissertation credits (provided I pass my second qualifier).
About that, I take my second qualifier, which should be much less scary than the first, in August. Please send well wishes to sprocketplug@catlovers.com .

The biggest news of the moment comes from the realm of personal finance.

March was an expensive month for me mostly due to the crazy amount of money I owe(d) the United States government. I learned that my cocaine habit was not tax deductible and neither was the interest on my Faberge egg collection. Really, though, it was the fact that I do some freelance textbook editing and the publisher doesn't take out taxes before paying me.
I also got a speeding ticket in Indiana while on my way to Chicago to hear Free Energy rock the pants off some party people.
On top of that, during my last dental appointment, my DDS told me that my jaw is funny. It's a problem I've lived with my entire adult life

You see, when I bite down, my molars don't touch on the right side. Meaning I can only chew food on the left side of mouth. The dentist huffed and puffed a little and I was kind of "meh" but then he mentioned that over time I might develop arthritis in my jaw. Now, I'm not a doctor, but jaw arthritis doesn't sound like much fun. So I scheduled an appointment with ye ole apothecaries down at OSU orthodontics. A dental grad student looked in my mouth and said "your teeth don't touch on the right side of your mouth." Then an orthodontic resident looked in my mouth and said "your teeth don't touch on the right side of your mouth." Then an orthodontic specialist looked in my mouth and said "you have appendicitis." Then a nurse leaned over and whispered something in his ear and then he said, "your teeth don't touch on the right side of your mouth." He checked a little box that said "SURGERY" and sent me to a woman who told me how much I get to pay for them to break, saw, move, and screw my jaw. Spoiler: It's a lot of money.
Inspired by that wonderful christmas tale, The Gift of the Magi, I'm going to sell all my teeth to pay for my jaw surgery. They'll just grow back, right?


If I do get the surgery, it'll probably happen this summer. If/When that occurs I will be sure to blog about the whole experience. This will include audio recordings of what it sounds like when you try to sing "Surrey with a fringe on top" with your jaw wired shut. Before and after x-rays. Pictures of the slivers of left over adamantium that weren't used in the reconstruction process.

Snow Day!

Columbus Public Schools (including OSU) were closed today on  account of the Snowtorious B.I.G.
So the exam I was supposed to take today is rescheduled for Thursday and I have a full day to lounge about. Well, I spent the last two hours shoveling, but other than that...

Quick recap of the past couple months
 Modern Warfare 2:


And that's pretty much it.

I've been making some extra scratch as a tutor and I like it very much. There's something more satisfying about sitting with an individual than lecturing to a classroom. There are nuances of understanding and discovery that cannot be obtained when talking to 100 students. It's pretty easy work too, depending on which class I'm tutoring. I've taught the intro classes for so many years, I know the most common pitfalls and the best way to circumnavigate frustrations. Helping a student with Stats 135, I feel a little like The Player from Ros & Guil. He seems to know so much, but really it's just that he's "been here before" and the student can't figure out "the direction of the wind."

On a happy note, my old roommate from StOlaf is coming to Columbus for the weekend. And ye there shall be much playing of videogames and eating of pizza. I'm also trying to get together some people for a poker night, something we've never quite been able to do when he's visited.

Merry Christmas, Bitches.