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Out of Buns
Posted 12:00 PM, Jul 31, 2007 |
The post office I went today was out of envelopes. Out of envelopes? Yes. The only thing worse would have been if they were out of stamps. This is like McDonald’s being out of buns.
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More Guitar
Posted 12:59 PM, Jul 30, 2007 |
My birthday is coming up, you know, so I got myself an electric guitar and the EC purchased an amp for me.
The electric is so much easier to play than the acoustic - barre chords are markedly easier, as are bends, and hammer-ons and pull-offs and slides all sound much clearer. The trick is, of course, finding songs to play. You can’t play the same songs on both instruments - well, you can, but most songs work markedly better on one as opposed to the other. Don McLean’s Vincent doesn’t work well on electric, and The White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army doesn’t translate to the no-feedback, genteel strumming on an acoustic. So I’m playing little riffs, learning little guitar solos, getting used to the dramatically different weight of the electric vs. the acoustic, and also testing the bounds of the amp, which is small but was still clearly not designed for apartment living with neighbors that are hard of hearing except when applied to rock and roll.
So far, turning the amp up to 2 seems more than loud enough to bother the neighbors (no complaints yet, though). I can’t imagine turning the amp up to 10, let alone 11.
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The Golden Plumber’s Crack
Posted 8:42 AM, Jul 27, 2007 |
The EC and I have had some plumbing problems in the bathroom. We started a few weeks ago by calling one of the four plumbers recommended by our Homeowner’s Association, but they never even returned our call. 0-1.
Then we called another, and I think they didn’t return our call either - my memory is hazy with visions of leaking drains. 0-2.
We called another, had an appointment, and they never showed up, nor did they ever call to explain why they didn’t show up. Our appointment was lost in the ether, and we were now 0-3.
Ah, but Mike Diamond Plumbing! The EC swore they would be great. They’re a chain! A plumbing chain! We can’t go wrong.
If you’re a continual reader of this blog, you know that, in fact, we can go wrong, and I’m about to tell you how we did go wrong.
We made an appointment for last Friday. They didn’t show up! They didn’t call! But we gave them a second chance, because we had a coupon, so we rescheduled for today, this Friday.
They called me yesterday and left two messages, both of which said they were coming to service the plumbing. I called back, explaining that our appointment was for tomorrow. The dispatcher looked and said, “No, it’s for today.”
“I understand that you think it’s for today. But it’s not. It’s for tomorrow. We made it for a Friday after you didn’t show up or call last Friday.” Well, she was nonplussed, but did tell me they’d come by tomorrow, first thing.
Of course, first thing means I have to wake up early on a day off, but that’s okay, it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make. If they actually do the work.
So, this morning, 8:30 AM, they called me and said the technician was on his way. Then, the dispatcher asked me if it was an apartment, condo, house, etc. I told him it was a condo and he asked how many stories. Strange question, but I thought he was just asking to help the tech identify the building. “Three,” I said.
“Is there a garage underground?” Now I thought he was just asking to help the technician find a place to park.
“Yep.”
“Well, unfortunately, we won’t be able to service your address. We can only service buildings with 3 stories or less, and technically your building has 4 stories. Our insurance doesn’t cover us doing work on buildings with 4 stories or more.”
“…”
I did tell him that they should ask these questions when people call to make appointments, rather then when a technician is on his way to the actual job. I explained that we originally made the appointment at least two weeks ago and already had them not show up once, and now we were going to have to find someone else and wait at least another week. He apologized, and looked up who took down our appointment info and speak to their supervisor.
So that’s that. We struck out again, 0-4. In baseball, when you strike out four times, it’s called the Golden Sombrero. Maybe this is the Golden Plumber’s Crack.
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Kangaroo
Posted 10:50 PM, Jul 24, 2007 |
 The kangaroo arrived on Tuesday, I think, or Wednesday, perhaps. I swore to myself I would remember what day it arrived, a monumental occasion, certainly, and so how could I forget, what need was there to write it down? But of course I forgot.
Last Thursday, I stubbed my toe on one of the sofa legs, and it was a Sunday when I waxed the floor and spilled pine-smelling wax all over my leather-strapped sandals. These are things I do not need to remember, the day I washed the dishes, the day I made a right turn on red, but it was Monday, and Monday again. I could circle those days on the calendar.
And so the kangaroo died six days later, so either on Monday or Tuesday. I knew I would remember, but also knew I would forget.
I woke up and went to the basement, and there it was, leaning over in the corner, its eyes staring like little tar pits, endless, gelatinous. It reminded me of a bottom-weighted balloon that you can punch and it will fall over and then come back for more. But the kangaroo did not come back, and I had a dead kangaroo on my hands.
So the kangaroo arrived on a Tuesday or a Wednesday, and died the following Monday or Tuesday, but that information does not help me remember his name. Nor does the fact that I buried him two days later, on Wednesday or Thursday, just as the smell was starting to escape the basement. My father suspected standing water: Is the window leaking again?
It hadn’t rained since two Wednesdays ago, and the backyard, under the swingset, was dusty. It was packed down from years of skidding heels and jumping from the top of the pendulic swing; all of this made it difficult to dig a hole the size of a kangaroo, especially at night, when the scrape of a shovel against a stone could wake the neighbors.
And so I dug through the night on Wednesday or Thursday, and so maybe actually buried him on Thursday morning or Friday morning, which is to say I actually buried him three days after I found him dead in the basement, which is good; I feel like I gave him time to rise from the dead, as if he was sleeping, or as if he were a Christ-kangaroo.
The hole was strangely shaped, large and rounded at one end, and narrow and pointed at the other. I thought of cartoon characters running through walls, leaving holes in the exact shapes of their cartoon bodies.
The kangaroo was heavy, weighed down by a thick, musty smell that certainly could have been water damage. I vowed to check the seal around the basement window, just in case it had rained. The last day it rained was Wednesday.
I lugged him up the stairs and across the living room. His kangaroo paws left two wide trails of upraised carpet that caught the low moonlight delicately. It looked as if he was leaving behind trails of undisturbed morning dew.
I laid him down gently in the hole. I was glad he was not a fully-grown kangaroo, although also sad, because even kangaroos should not have to die young. And so, I laid him down on Thursday morning or Friday morning, and then began to put the dry, packed dirt back into the hole, pushing it with the back of my heels as I could not bear to look.
It was summer, though I cannot remember what day it was, because in the summer, all the days run together, and even all the summers of my life have run together, and so maybe the kangaroo arrived the summer I turned sixteen, or maybe it was just last summer, but I cannot remember because I didn’t write it down.
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Guitar Hero
Posted 11:04 PM, Jul 22, 2007 |
I had a guitar lesson today - the first one I’ve actually paid for with real cash (others have been reimbursed beer). Boy, what a bust.
Maybe it’s really tough to teach guitar, or maybe, when I say, “I’ve been playing off and on for about 4 years,” which is true, people assume I’m better than I am. So anyway, today I met this guy, Marshall — well, let me back up a little.
About a month ago, I went to the post office. I had my iPod with me, and so when I got to the counter I tucked the earphones in my pocket. The postal clerk and I got into a conversation about music, and I mentioned that I played guitar (again, qualifying it with words like “not very well.”) She mentioned that her brother, Marshall, was awesome at the guitar and I should call him for a lesson.
So it all started at the post office, which should have been a sign.
I finally arranged to meet with Marshall, way out in Glendale (a 30-45 minute schlep for me). I got there, went inside, set my stuff down, and realized I had left the book from which I’ve been working on the car seat. I told him that I’d run out and get it, but he said, “Well, if you want to - I was just going to show you some things.”
Oh boy. There’s the problem. Showing isn’t teaching.
Listen, I know it’s tough to teach anything, and guitar is maybe tougher than most. Maybe. I know it’s tough for really good players to take it down a fret or two. It’s tough for me to teach kids to add fractions with like denominators, sometimes, too. But still.
So I get the book, I run through a song - well, part of it; he stops me before finishing - and then it’s off to the races. We talked about diminished 7ths, power chords, damping, harmonics, 12-bar blues, rock progressions, and that was just in the first 30 minutes.
We did eventually come back to the song I was working on - “I’d Love To Change the World” by Ten Years After - and he showed me the chords for it. Okay, so he actually did teach me that, if by that I mean that I returned home and was able to approximate it. So he taught me 4 chords. (He also taught me 5 chords with which to play the intro to “Stairway to Heaven,” and then proceeded to tell me that if anyone ever requested “Stairway to Heaven” at any of his gigs in the future, he would shoot them.)
Unfortunately, that’s about it as far as positive things I can take away from the lesson - 9 chords and part of 2 songs. Sure, when I play my strings still rattle and buzz, I don’t hold my hand in the right spot, and my thumb always creeps over the top of the guitar neck instead of supporting behind it. But it’s a good thing we got those damn chords out of the way.
Don’t get me wrong - Marshall is a nice guy, and even though we went for about 1.5 hours, he charged me $5 less than the original quote because he didn’t think I “got my money’s worth.” And, it was only supposed to be one hour for $20. So instead I get a 50% bonus for a 75% discount. I’m not complaining too loudly about that.
I guess the real lesson is that I need to learn more chords and practice changing between chords quickly. I also need to really work on barre chords. Then, after that, I can learn rock and blues progressions, maybe, or possibly make sure my estate is looked after, what with death looming on the horizon.
Lastly, I left the lesson feeling like I know nothing about the guitar. Awesome. Seeming tangent: until I started college, I was never really challenged by schoolwork (other than conic sections, which I now love because I’m a math nerd). Even in college, most subjects didn’t really challenge me, with the exception of some of the brutal math classes, including the aptly numbered Math 666 Advanced Abstract Algebra. So I’m not used to people trying to teach me things and me being totally lost. Even in Math 666, I wasn’t even close to totally lost - I got an A in the class, finally. So today was one of the few times I can remember that I was being taught something and I was totally lost. It was as if someone was sitting down to teach me creative writing and I was still learning what a pencil was. Basically, I felt like I knew how to hold the guitar, sometimes, maybe, and that was it.
Learning should not be overwhelming and frustrating, but for a lot of people, it is. I guess I gleaned that from today’s lesson, and also this: a lot of the kids that come in to Ye Olde Math Shoppe really struggle with mathematics. It must be a lot like my guitar experience for them each and every day they sit down and try to learn mathematics. Once they get behind where people think they are, everything just goes over their heads. People want them to do division, and they can’t do subtraction, let alone multiplication, so it may as well be in a foreign language.
Maybe I can take that and my feelings from my lesson today and shape it into something positive.
As far as future guitar lesson plans, I’m obviously not returning to Marshall - no ill will there, and I already told him I don’t think it would work - and maybe I’ll find another teacher, somewhere, but right now I think I’ll just hide out and play.
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New Blog
Posted 9:28 AM, Jul 22, 2007 |
Considering new blog. Proposed title: The Adventures of Bloggie March. Will never actually make this blog, but wanted to share the clever title with you. Good news, also, in that it actually isn’t taken yet.
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The Further Adventures…
Posted 1:25 AM, Jul 21, 2007 |
I read two chapters of The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow. So far, Augie has been trained to go get his mother free eyeglasses from the dispensary, and has also been sent temporarily to live with his aunt or some such thing. It’s really beautifully written (can you hear me wringing my former-English-major hands in glee?), but not so interesting.
Possible further adventures of Augie March:
- Peeling potatoes to make new soles for his shoes.
- Eating cardboard.
- Taking a bath in a fire hydrant while his house is burning.
- Wrestling a goose.
These things would be awesome. Of course, maybe all these happen in the next book, Augie March and the Deathly Hallows.
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Betty Ball, Queen by Proxy
Posted 10:57 AM, Jul 18, 2007 |
Our homeowner’s association has their annual elections coming up next week. The EC and I generally don’t attend meetings (generally = never), and don’t have any plans to attend this one. We’ve often joked about giving our vote, by proxy, to any of the old cranks that live around the building, but we’ve never gotten around to doing it.
This morning, while I was still in a half-awake stupor, our doorbell rang. I threw on yesterday’s hamburger-grease-smelling shirt and opened the door. It was current HOA president Betty Ball! Terrific! What a way to start my morning.
She explained that the meeting was coming up, and said that they need a majority of residents to show up or the meeting would have to be postponed. Or, of course, we could vote by proxy instead of showing up, and that would be fine. She had a form to fill out that lets you give your proxy vote to someone.
She said, “I’m Betty Ball - here, I’ll just write my name here on this sheet for you,” and then proceeded to write her name directly in the blank where you indicate who you want to give your proxy vote to. She didn’t say, “If you turn in this form, I will get your proxy vote. Basically, she’s running a not-so-subtle campaign to steal unsuspecting residents’ proxy votes. If I had a secret video camera, I would post footage to YouTube and we could watch it over and over again and basically run her campaign into the ground. But, alas, I don’t have a secret video footage, she’ll probably win, and we’ll be subjected to another year in the terrible reign of Betty Ball, Queen by Proxy.
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Bacon for the World
Posted 10:08 PM, Jul 14, 2007 |
While returning home from Ocean’s Thirteen, we stopped at Jack in the Box. The EC got a Sourdough Chicken Sandwich, which comes with bacon, which she forgot to ask for it without. No problem - I removed the bacon while she drove. But then the question arose: what do you do with four pieces of a bacon in a moving car with no trash receptacle?
Obviously, you throw it on the street. I rolled down the window and shouted, “Bacon for the world!” and tossed the bacon onto the street.
Later, the EC uttered a sentence never before uttered in the history of time. “Can they trace bacon?”
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King Dork
Posted 10:49 AM, Jul 13, 2007 |
Last night, for the first time in a long, long time, I read a book from start to finish in one sitting. I was reading, originally, The Black Swan, which was so insufferably boring and patronizing and ridiculous that I’m not even going to bother making a link to it. But the book I ended up reading instead was Frank Portman’s King Dork, which is probably my favorite new read in 2007. Sure, it’s “Young Adult” fiction, but it’s 330 pages and way better than any of that Hogwarts stuff I keep hearing about. It’s better than some fanciful tale that tries to teach you a lesson. Man, this book… It’s so good.
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Lady Bird
Posted 3:36 PM, Jul 11, 2007 |
With the passing of Lady Bird Johnson, this was the best photo the Star Tribune could put together. I like how the photo isn’t even about her - she’s simply in the way, and not happy about it, of a conversation between Clinton and Shrub Sr. Even the caption, “… leans in… over Lady Bird Johnson” is poorly phrased.
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Jump Shooter (or Hamstrung)
Posted 2:18 PM, Jul 11, 2007 |
When my brother and I were growing up, we had a basketball hoop in the backyard - it was mounted on giant timbers buried, with concrete, in the ground. There was a little plywood box with a shelf in it that we could put basketballs in - it had a little latch so we could close it. It was pretty swell, except that the constant change in temperature in the early spring and late autumn didn’t do wonders for the basketballs if we forgot to bring them in.
We never had the “court” paved or covered in concrete or anything - there was a sandy part near the free throw line, but the rest of it was pretty uneven grass and clumps of dirt and weeds. As a result, I can’t dribble a basketball very well. I’ve never really enjoyed playing basketball mostly for that reason.
I’m a pretty good shooter, since that’s all we’d do at our basketball hoop - I can still hold my own against other aging 28-year-olds with rusty hamstrings in a game of HORSE, but that’s about it.
It only recently occurred to me that the reason I can’t dribble is because of the lack of concrete. Even the kids around the corner, they had a hoop in front of the garage, but that was grounded by a dirt driveway. It was like playing on the smoothest surface on earth, though, compared to our court.
Recently, my dad said he was by our old basketball hoop, mowing the grass, and bumped into the plywood box he had built. He said it simply fell off the post where it was mounted; most of the back of it had almost entirely rotted away. Much like my hamstrings.
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Squid Story
Posted 8:39 AM, Jul 11, 2007 |
Scientists found a 26-foot-long giant squid on the beach in Australia. It weighs about 550 pounds. Those are the facts.
Another fact I did not know about giant squid is that they are inedible, primarily because their bodies contain large amounts of ammonia to help them stay buoyant. Thankfully, CNN included a quote from a zoologist, noting, “It would not taste very nice at all.” I love that that’s the best quote they could include from the zoologist - a quote about how good ammonia tastes.
That is all your cryptozoologic news. For now.
[insert ominously quiet timpani drumroll here]
(Yes, Year of Glad now comes with sound effects! Turn up your headphones! Turn on your monitors!)
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Marquee
Posted 11:12 AM, Jul 10, 2007 |
From an article at the Minnesota Twins website (emphasis mine):
“[Torii Hunter’s] career has been a prolific one so far. Hunter played his first full season for the Twins in 1999 and has been a marquis player ever since.”
While some may consider Hunter’s good humor and good sportsmanship to make him the modern-day equivalent of a nobleman, I hardly think this is what the author had in mind.
Seriously, where do they find these writers and editors? Or do they even find editors anymore for something as rapid-fire as the web?
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Concert
Posted 2:10 PM, Jul 9, 2007 |
The Decemberists/Band of Horses/Andrew Bird show at the Hollywood Bowl was stupendous. Band of Horses was pretty good, Andrew Bird was better, although I think I still prefer his records to his live shows, and the Decemberists with the LA Philharmonic were terrific. They played some songs they don’t usually play, but that have excellent strings and horns parts (Los Angeles, I’m Yours), as well as The Tain, their 18-minute epic that really benefited from the horns section.
I’ve been really busy, in other news, but doing what, I don’t know.
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Potential
Posted 7:51 AM, Jul 6, 2007 |
Tomorrow, the EC and some other folks we know (and a bunch of folks we don’t know) are attending what has the potential to be my favorite show ever. We’re heading over to the Hollywood Bowl to see the Decemberists, accompanied by the LA Philharmonic. Also, opening are Band of Horses, and one of my personal favorites, Andrew Bird. So it could be, like, the best show ever. But no pressure.
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Bass Line
Posted 12:54 AM, Jul 6, 2007 |
Is there a better bass line than the one in The Who’s I’m Free? No, I didn’t think so.
Tommy is one of those albums I pull out every few months and get hooked on again. Fantastic.
In other news, I’ve basically written a song that you can’t hear because I don’t have a microphone. For no real reason, I’ve named it “The Seersucker Suite” even though it:
1) has only one part, so it’s a suite at all,
2) has no words at all, and thus
3) has nothing to do with seersucker suits.
I’ve also now mentioned my own guitar playing and classic rock pioneers The Who in the same post. Consider this life goal accomplished.
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Swimming My Way Toward the Light
Posted 6:00 PM, Jul 4, 2007 |
I’ve never been much of a swimmer. I took swimming classes, once, and hated them and consistently felt like I might be dying.
Recently, the EC and I have taken to the pool here in the complex where we live. We’ve gone twice, and wading in the pool is nice, although pointless. However, any attempt at swimming is a near-death experience.
Really, swimming is just trying not to die, over and over again. When you swim, you’re really trying to kill yourself, and your body just won’t let you do it. Every time you go underwater, you are trying to drown yourself.
I have admiration for swimmers - it’s hard work, not dying, over and over again.
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Prison Nickname
Posted 4:48 PM, Jul 2, 2007 |
I’m not really interested in getting into a Republican vs. Democrat debate (not that anyone debates anything in the comments around here except for the true definition of the term “rat-dog”), and I’m also not interested in bashing the Shrub.
Now that you know what I’m not interested in:
I’d like to know how the founding fathers (or their followers) came to decide that presidential pardons and commutations are a good idea, or even an allowable idea. The Shrub has commuted I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s sentence, stating that Libby will suffer enough with the permanent stain of a conviction on his record. Had the Shrub commuted Libby’s sentence on account of the fact that he will have too many names when he gets his prison nickname, well, that would have been a good reason. Or, if not good, at least acceptable.
This seems like a lapse in judgment of whoever gave the President this power - I thought we were supposed to have checks and balances, so how is it that the President gets to do judicial things for which there is no recourse or chance to oppose?
Boy, I sure don’t understand my government.
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Heat Stroke
Posted 8:07 PM, Jul 1, 2007 |
I don’t have heat stroke.
I did spend a lot of time in the sun in a Fidelity-sponsored lawn bowling tournament, in which my team (selected by means of a blind draw) placed a solid third, with a 3-1 record, winning each of our 3 games by decisive margins (we were awarded the maximum, 6-point differential for each victory, even though we beat the other teams by more than 6 points) and losing our single match by 1 point. We had the maximum differential possible for a 3-1 team, and thus came in 3rd, behind the two 4-0 teams, and winning a handy $70 for each team member.
Even if, say, I had heat stroke, it’d be worth it.
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