living deliberately

my new lunch spot.


amazingly, this is just a short walk from my office. It's a cozy spot, just enough far away from the road to be a little peaceful. Good for a read.


There are lots of wetland birds hanging out, nesting and getting a little bit territorial. We had a tenuous relationship while I was sitting there.* Based on their apparent agitation, I don't think they approved of my presence. No worries, little birds--I don't even like raw eggs.



*I have a well-placed fear respect for red-winged blackbirds. They are highly-protective of their nests and won't hesitate to swoop down on you. I experienced this multiple times during a summer job where I had to walk through lots of fields checking natural gas lines for leaks.

ride of silence

tonight katie and I are taking place in the Ride of Silence: an international bike ride to remember those who have been injured or killed while cycling on public roads. I've been pretty fortunate in my cycling career, with a few near misses but no serious accidents. When I think of what can happen, though, I remember an incident I saw back in April 2005.

On my standard bike ride out Hines Drive, a long winding ride frequented by cyclists, I saw a whole gaggle of cop cars and ambulences with their lights on. As I passed all the police tape, I saw some broken motorcycles down on the road, an SUV that was missing a front wheel, and a severely mangled bicycle. I was seriously shaken by this. Here's the story as told by our local bike shop.

"Small pieces of jagged plastic and metal were flung for hundreds of feet around the pavement. The road was closed. Yellow accident tape wiggled in the breeze. To the left, a motorcycle, or the largest fragment of a motorcycle, was lodged nearly upright in what remained of a wooden fence. A pile of wreckage lay in the center of the road surrounded by a gruesome stain on the pavement. The remnants of hasty medical aid blew in the wind. As we rode closer and jumped across the grass to the bike path we saw the pile of wreckage was roughly half of a motorcycle. The back half. The front had disintegrated. On the shoulder was the contorted, tortured cadaver of a road bicycle, completely mangled, one wheel entirely gone with tattered spokes hanging from the hub in a mangled rear triangle, the other wheel still clamped to the broken fork and bent at wild angles. In a field a hundred yards away was a black Jeep Liberty. The front left tire was gone, the floor board of the driver’s side was exploded inward and upward, both axles were broken and the remaining wheels tilted at random cambers. The vehicle appeared to be deposited randomly in the field, as though the explosion had lifted it up and set it down in the field."

Through some physics-defying miracle, the cyclist survived. One of the motorcyclists did not.

So, next time you're driving,* Whenever I'm out riding I want to mentally project to all the drivers around me: you're driving a two-ton battering ram. Share The Road.


*(this sounded too preachy and, to the few people who read this, I know you're not the problem! So I modified.)

works every time

when I'm at my most work-disgruntled, these never fail to right my mood:

(1) Seu Jorge versions of David Bowie songs.

(2) Interpol - I don't know why, but no matter my mood they're always just what I was looking for. Brian totally backs me on this one.

(3) Ray Charles's "What'd I Say, Parts 1 & 2"

(4) this picture, which is slightly disturbing and funny no matter how many times I see it.

I just heard this sad song by another band

I need to stop going to see old punk bands. Last night we saw X play at the Majestic. I was overly excited for this concert because, as mentioned before, I have an unusually large love for rockabilly punk. I'd seen most of the members of X play as The Knitters a few years ago, and it was a knockout. But then two years ago we saw Mission of Burma play and, while the music was dead on (and it's all about the music right?), it was....disappointing. I can't completely express why. Is it sad to watch a bunch of 50-year-old dudes try to recreate the energy of their early 20s?* or is it the lack of energy in the aging crowd?

Katie and I mused before the show about what kind of crowd it would draw. "Old," I said. "Let's play 'Spot the Person' when we get there," she said. "The aging punk, for example. Or the person who is a librarian by day**. Or the person who came straight from work, dressed for an office job." This was much easier and more fun than I had expected.

X played amazingly, but man....age has not graced them well. And their first song was the first song off their first album, which just seemed like an olive branch to get the crowd shifting on their feet. Exene seemed tired. John Doe looked really into it. Billy Zoom was....odd. But the crowd was almost exclusively stock-still. Detroit crowds tend to lean towards the non-movement side, but this crowd was in rigor mortis. After X finished, the usual encore cheers were listless and weak. Some dude behind us actually yelled, "C'mon out and play already!" [because I'm OLD and have to go HOME]. X dutifully returned to the stage, and John Doe remarked, "Man, that was a real Hollywood encore," which didn't sound like a good thing.

I still love X. The twisted harmonies, the sad, offbeat love songs. "The world's a mess; it's in my kiss." I'd probably go see them again and just stand up in front and dance by myself and shout my fool head off. But, as Katie said on the way home, "We've got to find some new music."



*the exception to this was Sonic Youth two years ago. Fucking amazing. I mean, Kim Gordon was what: 53? I still wanted to be her.

**as it turns out, Exene Cervenka is a librarian by day. K's comment to this: "Wouldn't really have guessed she would have fit the search criterion."

Exene from when I was too young to know.
(photo By Jenny Lens, stolen from swindlemagazine.com)

up in outer space where there's no oxygen and nothing makes a sound

what is it that knocks the substance out of one's self-worth, leaving an illusion of person behind? Walking, sorta talking, purportedly breathing, but not a person.

I was that non-person yesterday. It's scary and despairing and illogical, but it happens. Nothing so dramatic as a breakdown; instead, a paralyzing sort of nothingness that invades. Self-nihilism.

Today is much better. A decently long bike ride facing death-by-SUV on Ford Road helped bring me back. When I got back, Katie had made dinner and planted the little stub of pine tree that I had neglected to a slow death by dehydration. Last night I had some good sleep and interesting dreams about camping in the backyard of my office and doing sound engineering for people I knew in high school, but whose names I couldn't recall. Where are all the cables? are these mics wireless?

I'm still on the coffee today, but it's calming instead of edgy. Positive feelings and ambition. And today is our friend Becky's birthday! I forgot to shout her out last weekend, but she's one of the best moms I know. Happy Birthday to Becky. She once sang "She's Like Wind" to me at karaoke, just because I didn't know the song.



seaweed - fruit bats

borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered '80s

I have the biggest vacation hangover today. I hate everybody. That's not actually true: I wish them all the best, I just don't want to be around them. I kinda want to get cozy on the couch with a few favorite people and together the group of us will create a spherical ball of mental energy that will force the world to go away. And then we'll nap like a big pile of gerbils.

I wish I had fur. I don't need the tail so much, though.



I'm losing my edge - LCD soundsystem

To All the Mothers

Happy early mother's day, especially to my cousin and her ridiculously cute daughter, Sophie, pictured here with devoted dad. Those cheeks are out of this world. They're like little rosy planets. And I need to find out where I can get a swimsuit like that.