sensory memories

It's been a while. I found this piece that I wrote sometime this summer in my documents tonight, and thought it was blog worthy.


The smell of zest triggers memories; zest reminds me of summer camp. In elementary school I went to camp every summer; the camp was named Indian Village and I was a proud to be in the Apache tribe. Every year, before leaving for camp my Mom would take me shopping for supplies: toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, not deodorant, I wasn't old enough for deodorant, sunscreen, bug repellent, and soap. It was always Zest soap. The problem with bar soap is that once you take it out of its original cardboard wrapping it is no longer a friendly travel companion. The only way to avoid an awful mess is to place it inside a plastic bag. However, in third grade keeping my soap in good condition was not high on my priority list - - there were rabbit furs to buy, lanyards to make, and games of capture the flag to play. Naturally by the end of the week my bar of Zest soap was pretty gnarly, with small rocks lodged into it, dirt spattered about it, giving it a sandpaper texture. Maybe even a small leaf would find its way onto my bar of Zest soap. It is interesting that this sea-foam green bar, designed to wash away dirt, was so prone to attracting and holding onto dirt itself. By Tuesday I would inevitably deem my bar useless and toss it into the black duffel bag containing all my clothes. Slowly but surely each garment would begin to take on the zesty aroma. And slowly but surely the smell of zest soap became connected with childhood and camp.

Three versions

Smokey Robinson & the Miracles



The Beatles




She and Him

What?

Something that Struck my fancy

While reading an essay for my composition class called, "On the Fear of Death" by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross; I happened upon this quote that made me pause:

"Are we becoming less human or more human?"

Guthrie

“I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard travelling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think that you’ve not got any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I’d starve to death before I’d sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.”
– Woody Guthrie.

The Beauty of Ambiguity

This month on the cover of my National Geographic Magizine one of the headlines was:

"High in the Ozarks."

Perfect

This rules

Tucked away on top of my hill

I have become a hermit. Kinda.... well i guess not really at all. I have just stopped following what is going on in the rest of the world. This is a familiar occurrence for me. Every time I come back to Westmont I get so trapped in this little world of friends, books, quizzes, lectures, and essays, that I feel cut off from what is happening in the rest of the world. I haven't blogged since being here, I haven't payed attention to any current politics since I have been here, I have no idea what the current situation in Georgia is, I hardly know anything about Hurricane Gustav, I have hardly even been following the Dodgers. I hope that when I get back into a rhythm and get my schedule nailed down I will become more aware of the world outside Westmont.

current tastes

DeYarmond Edison - Silent Signs

Radiohead - OK Computer

Bruce Springsteen - Greetings from Asbury Park NJ

Ryan Adams and The Cardinals - Cold Roses

The Beatles - Abbey Road

I am pretty pumped on this

A video from the Radiohead show last night

Something I find worth noting

Republican Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin has 5 children.
The oldest, a son named Track.
3 middle daughters: Bristol, Willow, and Piper.
And the youngest, a son named Trig.


Those are some wild names.

In other news Radiohead is nuts live.

Mountain lions were a possibility

There is an abandoned mine in the hills of Nuevo. The other night at around 9:30 pm, me, Jeff, Jamie, and Jeremy decided to go to it. With the summer coming to a close we were itching for an adventure, our stomachs were longing for the exhilarating hollow ache which is only brought on by fear. Getting to the mine is about a 40 minute hike, 15 minutes or so on a private gated road, and then 25 minutes on a path which winds through the hills. Jeff was the leader. Jamie was always falling behind. None of us had been to the mine at night, I had never been to the mine at all so going at night was semi frightening. I had no idea what I had ahead of me. We were purposefully trying to freak ourselves out. Jeremy made me get a pocket knife from my house to protect us from wild animals. The whole way up we were talking about what kind of ferocious animals might be sleeping inside the mine. We were also talking about what we would do if we saw people up in the hills. Seeing people in the hills late at night was probably the worst scenario we could think of; it seemed unlikely that anyone who would be up in the hills at that time of night would be up to anything half as innocent as what we were doing. After many discussions about what we would do if there was a mountain lion, or if we saw a trucks headlights, we made it to the cave. The mouth of the mine is pretty small, you have to crawl through it, but once you are inside the cave you can stand up strait. Before we went in we threw rocks inside, and screamed into the opening, hoping that this would cause any creature to reveal itself to us before we went inside. After Jamie yelled in a commanding voice, "is anyone in there." We figured it was abandoned and safe. I was the last to enter. As I was walking through I was wondering if there were any rattle snakes or Black widows living in the cracks of the cave. The walls of the cave looked like solid granite, you could see the scrapings where the picks had swung. The mine probably went back a hundred feet, the further you went in the thicker and mustier the air became. Once inside, the fear left pretty quickly. When we got to the back of the mine we sat for a while, turned all the lights off, and let the complete darkness surround our silence. It is a good thing to sit in pitch black every once in a while, it takes your mind to places it needs to go.

This song Pumps me up.

Cataloging

This weeks Top Albums

Bruce Springsteen- Born to Run
Top Tracks:
Thunder Road
Tenth Ave Freeze-Out
Backstreets

Beirut - Lon Gisland Ep

Top Track:
Elephant Gun

Bruce Springsteen - Live from Hammersmith and Odeon 1975
Top Tracks:
Thunder Road (Its a version that is just piano and Harmonica)
Lost in the Flood
E Street Shuffle
Jungle Land

Ben Kweller - On My Way
Top Tracks:
I Need You Back
On My Way
Believer
Here Me out

Inspiration

I just saw a guy walking down the street with a tattoo that said "Cowboy up." I think that is awesome.

And you know what? I think i will. I will cowboy up.

Jury duty #2

I think that in my whole morning at jury duty I had 2 maybe three interactions with another person. I pretty much kept to myself and my book.
Here is one of my interactions: I went to the coffee vending machine to get a hot chocolate. There was a woman ahead of me getting a cup of coffee. For some reason her cup was taking a while to fill up. She looked at me and said:

Woman: Sorry, its going real slow.
Me: Its ok I am in absolutely no rush.

She left, I got my hot chocolate.
I didn't want hot chocolate really, I was simply wasting time. I was pleased that there was a delay.

The thing that gets me thinking is that there are people out there who would have been annoyed that it was taking her long to get her coffee. Some people would be in a rush to get their coffee and go back to their seat to do absolutely nothing but sit and wait. People, myself included, are strange creatures.

Jury duty #1

The guy sitting next to me was wearing this tie. He didn't get on a jury. Like me he didn't even come close. I bet he was disapointed. You only wear that tie to jury duty if you want to appear like you are glad to be serving your civic duty. You only wear it if you want to get on a jury.

You wear these cuff links if you don't want to get on a jury.

Instance

Last night me and Jeff were sitting on lawn chairs in Jeff's front lawn. We were just chewin the fat, talking about everything and anything. Jamie pokes his head in Jeff's window and this is what ensues:

Jamie - You guys want to get some Steak and potatoes, I really feel like a hearty meal.
Jeff - I'm down
Jamie - No you guys have to come with me, I can't go out alone in my underwear, I need you guys with me and then I can go out in my underwear.
Jeff - ok
Jamie - naw, it's ok, we don't have to go.

Jamie made a sandwich. Me and Jeff talked a little bit more. I went home.

They know....

The flies attack me; I will be watching tv, or reading a book, or lounging talking to friends, or whatever else it is I do. They Land on my legs, my eyes, my elbows, my neck, my nose, my lips, my feet, my hands, etc. Finally I get frustrated enough to grab a fly swatter. As soon as I sit down with the fly swatter there are no more flies to kill. They have all fled. Now you my say: "you should be happy all the flies left when you grabbed the swatter. You have struck fear into their hearts. Your power and cunning with the swatter has brought you victory." But this is not how I feel. I want to punish the flies, to kill them for the small annoyance they have caused me. I want the satisfaction of seeing them smushed on the coffee table. I know that when they flee from me like the philistine army fleeing from David after he lopped off Goliath's head, they have left only to go annoy someone else, to poop and vomit all over the house. I want to terminate them.

I am sensing a general trend in topics on my blog.

I made some montages for call of the wild

The Apoidea have struck back

I felt something land on my shoulder. I went for the palm smash kill technique. This turned out to be a bad decision. My palm smashed a bee. The bee stuck its stinger directly into my hand. Swiftly I pulled out the stinger, stepped on the bee, and put ice on my palm. Luckily I am not allergic so I only had to deal with the temporary pain of a sting.

This was the first wave of attack the apoidea have thrown at me, the war has just begun. The bee that stung me didn't survive, I did survive, thus I won. My enemies place no value on the individual life, their missions are suicide Kamikaze attacks. This will be a long ugly war.

Today....

I saw a yellow Hummer on the free way. The license plate read "Mr Suave."
It was awesome and I apologize that I didn't get a picture of it.

Mr Suave is now number 1 on my list of people to meet before I die.

Since growing my moustache I like to think I look like every famous person with one

Today it's Mark Spitz. I was swimming in the pool, Flopping around, inspired by the Olympics, pretending I know how to do the butterfly. I was also pretending I was Mark Spitz.

Maybe someday my facial hair will look that good, probably not though. He would have made a solid baseball player.

Favorite thing about myspace and facebook:

we get to see what girls couldn't live without. Very often a female social networking page will say: "I can't live without......"

My collection of things vital to life for these girls so far is: Golden Spoon, chapstick, coffee, naked juice, Iphone, coat hangers, hair dye, fiji apples, Whole Foods, and designer jeans.

Sorry if I am being pretentious/a jerk, I hate myself for it.

I like to pretend that people care about my opinion

These are my current albums of choice:

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band - The wild, the innocent, and the E Street Shuffle

Top tracks:
4th of July, Asbury Park (sandy)
Wild Billy's Circus Story
New York City Serenade

Pedro the Lion - It's Hard to Find a Friend

Top Tracks:
Big Trucks
When They Get To Know You They Will Run
The Secret of the Easy Yoke

Ryan Adams - Demolition

Top Tracks:
Desire
Dear Chicago
Gimme a Sign

She & Him - Volume One

Top Tracks:
Sentimental Heart
Change is Hard
Take it Back
I Should of Known Better

The glory days

Jeopardy might be my favorite show

Surprise, Arizona

Tomorrow I am going to visit my grandparents who live just outside Phoenix in a suburb called Surprise. Should be fun.

Interesting song, Interesting video, interesting guy.

Weird dream

Last night in my dream Steel played a huge concert. I think Thrice was headlining, but it was like woodstock big, just a huge mass of people. The only people from Steel who seemed to be able to make the show were me, Jeff and Jamie (who isn't really in Steel). Jeff was playing guitar and I seemed to always be switching which instruments I played. I never played keyboards, which is odd because that is what I play in Steel. We really sucked and I remember knowing it. I remember playing a pillow as a bass for a while. And I was also the screamer the whole show. For a while I was looking for a bass but couldn't find one, so I kept plucking the pillow. Jeff kept refusing to play any of our good songs. He said "stone your grandmas bear" was too boring and he refused to play "folk" for a reason I cant remember. All he wanted to play was Daedalus by Thrice. It sucked real bad, everyone hated us (which is normally the goal of a steel show), but I was disappointed. I think the woods kids were the only people who enjoyed our performance. I also think I remember someone saying they saw Paris Hilton at the show. It was an odd dream.

Poolside Pt. 3

The heat drove me to the pool. I jumped in and did a few laps, Bruce Springsteen's The River Album playing in the background. I got out and went into my usual post swimming position: Laying with my cold wet back on the hot deck, my arms spread in the style of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio De Janeiro. When drips of water rolled down the side of my face, it felt as though the heat from the sun was pushing the water in the way the backside of a magnet pushes metal away. I sat up. I looked down at my feet, which were dangling off the edge of the deck into the water. I saw a wasp inches away. Coolly, I pulled my feet out of the water, scanned my surroundings for a weapon, found a bucket (the type a kid would play with at the beach. It was yellow). I grabbed the bucket and placed it in the air above where the wasp was tranquilly floating in the water. With force I hit the wasp with bucket. After the first hit it was stunned, badly injured but not dead. My only objective was its death. Neither shall live while the other survives, and I was going to survive. I hit it probably 4 times with the bucket, but the water had softened my blows enough that it did not die. I decided to clean up my technique a bit; I used the bucket to push the wasp up against the side of the pool. I smashed it in between the bucket and the wall of the pool. The Boss was singing "Independence Day," and the victory was mine.

Today I watched

And

It was an interesting combination. Quite a contrast.

Good Authors tend to look pretty cool

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Walt Whitman

John Steinbeck

William Faulkner

Kurt Vonnegut

Jack London

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Flannery O'Conner

The Apostle Paul

Ernest Hemingway

Herman Melville

J.D. Salinger