Tim McGraw: My Next Thirty Years

How does the knowledge that I am listening to this become a thought that I am not dimwitted but eclectic? I suppose I, myself, cannot be eclectic, just that my taste in music can. Well, it's a fun song if you haven't heard it.

Fuel: Shimmer

This song makes me think of a warm night in August in a friend's house with all the windows open and a breeze coming in, at one a.m. with a mini-concert happening. This song was covered, and it made me believe in local talent. Excellent.

Tonight, I'm a little sad, a touch down. Not because I had a bad night; the opposite took place. But I just got word that my cousin can't make it down here for the weekend as planned, though exigent circumstances are the cause and not anything else. It is understandable and expected, but its disappointing. It would have been great. Again.

But more than that, tonight I'm just letting some old demons come out to play, the ones I usually keep chained and shackled in some faraway dungeon. But it's just a tease, really. They're not out for good. All this just makes me feel aimless because of a lack of a job this summer; disappointed at my personal and public failures of the past and just a little repentant at the thought of the scant successes. I'm probably overdoing this, playing the melodrama for all its worth, using hyperbole because that's what I do. I'll get over it soon I'm sure.

Semisonic: FNT
Mr. Mister: Kyrie

Saw a really great docu today at the Ebertfest, called "Stone Reader." It's too complicated to really get into here, but the gist is a seaching. Searching for many things, but on the surface, a book -- this amazing book called the "book of a generation" published in 1972 and forgotten, left for dead in the trashheap of America's consciousness. Well, the documentarian, if he can be called that, goes on a quest in 1998 after picking up this book and reading it and completely falling in love with it after failing in '72 after high school. Mark Moskovitz (the guy) looks far and wide across the country trying to find Dow Mossman, the author, who seems to have simply vanished and never written again. I won't continue, since I will make you all see it once its out on DVD which I presume is soon since they mentioned it at the screening. But there are many truths uncovered, both intentional and not, and it is really a wonderful film to watch. Alternately enlighteneing and creepy (at the bibliophiles and their Trekkie-like secret speech that is both intimidating and beautiful) it includes things that are typically ignored in film, and the culture. I'll let you see it and uncover them rather than tell you. I can't wait until September when I can finally read this book. The panel after the film turned out to include some interesting people: namely Jeff Lipsky, the real-life "Dude" from The Big Lebowski.

After speaking with Mary, I feel a little better, more like a person and less an outcast or leper. Thanks to that. To all those whom I owe emails, and the list is long, know that I will write you, but that I am notorious for taking forever and a day to do so. I'm sorry, I'm horrible. At the very least, tonight, I can assuage my demons with the story that I know someone who was bitten by a monkey today. So great! Monkeys make me laugh really hard. I'll drink to that.

No Music Unfortunately

I am in a campus computer lab right now in between classes wasting time searching the internet. Thought I'd update my little internet baby.

The drive back to school Monday made me think of driving in Duluth in the middle of the Cold War. While Duluth is infinitely more depressing, the sky was overcast and dreary and really really boring. Wish Cindy could have driven back with me. Someone to talk to. If you've never been to Duluth, MN, don't go. It is horrible and I've only ever driven through it. The constant fart smell of the paper mills, the ALWAYS overcast and gray skies; the city has the highest suicide rate in the country, and it is clear as day when you see it. Plus, the roads are ridiculously confusing. Remember those toy car tracks that every little boy, including me, had in the 80's? The winding track that was remote powered or something that you could increase the speed of the little car faster and faster until the car flew off the track and killed everyone inside in a painful and fiery death? Well, aside from the hyperbole, that is what Duluth is like, except instead of just one windy, up-and-down road, there are ten and they all converge onto and away from multiple intersecting points. It may, in fact, be the gates of Hell. I'm looking into it.

I am reading a book on Ebola for a class and it scares the shit out of me. Granted, the book is ten years old -- but no new evidence has emerged to my knowledge -- but we have no idea where this Level 4 biohazard even comes from. The first modern case, in the early 70s, emerged from Kitum Cave in Mt. Elgon in Kenya, but that doesn't mean that's where it hides out since scientists have tried to locate it in there dozens of times. Anyway, the book is about the emergence of the disease and how it showed up in the D.C. area in the late 80's. It is the most horrifying disease I have ever heard of and I hope I never get it.

Why the hell is it so cold out? It is the end of APRIL!

I really have no respect for young people who wear those chunky two-cent digital watches that my grandpa's brother gets for free and mails me from Vegas. I don't mind nice, expensive digital watches, but those cheap ones that once you wear them make the plastic wristband smell like feet are disgusting.

Lately, I've been looking at other people's fingernails when I should be paying attention in class. I've come to the conclusion that I have oddly shaped fingernails and am abnormal.

Starting Wednesday, the Ebert Overlooked Film Festival will be taking up my time. Weds. is "All the Right Stuff," which I've already seen, but liked, and will see again and hear interesting people who made the film discuss it afterwards with everyone's favorite film critic. I hope he brings his wife Chazz again.

Here's to warmer weather.