Marathon Died for your Sins

I was biking around Boston yesterday, and I ran into the marathon. Now, the marathon wasn't a big surprise to me, because a friend of my roomate's who is running the marathon was staying at my place this weekend. I crossed over the river of runners a couple of times in my random perusal of Boston, which I'm wont to do on my days off. Peruse Boston. Not cross runners. You shouldn't cross a river of runners if you can avoid it. This is something I learned yesterday.
It occured to me, wading through the sea of sweaty bodies, that people run the marathon in celebration of the guy named Marathon, who ran from one town to the next in Greece like four billion years ago. Twenty-six or so miles he ran to deliver some important message from one Greek to another. Then he died of exhaustion. So we're celebrating the death of Marathon by trying our best to imitate his untimely demise. You kind of have to wonder who came up with that idea...
And then there's Jesus. The only thing I have to say about that is: what would evil robot Jesus do?.

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PS: When I say I ran into the marathon, don't get the impression that I did any running. Because I didn't. Sometimes I run. Monday wasn't one of those times.

PPS: People die often running marathons. The circle of life keeps.. um... being... circular.

UPDATE: I stand corrected. Tim tells me otherwise about the story of the Marathon. Maybe I'm strung out on endorphins. It could be, except that I've never taken any endorphins. But who's to say that matters?

failure to thrive

I recently heard a phrase that's stuck with me: failure to thrive. A friend had a kitten that was new to their house, and she said "it had failure to thrive, so it died. " "What does that mean?" queried I. Apparently sometimes animals in new surroundings just lose the knack of surviving, the will to live, and they just die. They fade away.
Humans can have it, too. The deaths of elderly people who simply pass on for no medical reason are often attributed to "failure to thrive." And human babies, even if they're well-fed, and kept at the perfect temperature, etc., often die if they're not held. Failure to thrive. It's an incredible phrase that keeps circling around my head like a semantic vulture, looking for some vague notion on which to scavenge.
And then I got to thinking: why is it that babies typically die when they're not held? And when is the point where you can stop being touched regularly, and you won't die? And what happens to adults who aren't regularly held/touched? Clearly, it has dire somatic repercussions. Which gets me to thinking about my girl-free 2006. Maybe I'm setting myself up for some actual medical problem with my policy. Lord knows I don't need more medical problems. So cuddling is in. But only platonically. Because Plato was gay, so it was okay for him to cuddle with girls without leading them on.

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blech

I was real excited about getting my last paycheck, until i realized that it's all going to taxes. Damn! I'm torn between my knowledge that taxes, when rightly applied, go to good services that shouldn't be free market-based (like fire departments and police, for instance), and my desire not to give a gigantic hunk of money to the government that I don't particularly support once a year. I mean, what, like a quarter of my taxes are probably going to support a war in which I've never placed any support? But it's not as though you heard it here first, so I'll just drop it. Squarepusher is the only music that gets me through angst like this. I require angular, brainy jazz-house music.
I went to New York City and back on Wednesday, to visit my brother/friend/ex-roomie/whatever. I spent the day helping him move from one apartment to another, which, though mundane-sounding, was actually a real boon in that it was a departure from my regular routine (the one that gives me the money that makes me pay the taxes). The Fung-Wah bus ride home was uneventful, except for when we got to Boston. The bus driver thought it would be a great idea to give us a tour of the entirety of Cambridge and North Boston before going to the bus station. We crossed the bridge between Cambridge and Boston three times, on three different bridges, before he finally committed to taking us to South Station. I have to admit, I wasn't impressed. But it's the Fung-Wah, right? The price is right. They give you a quarter when you get on the bus and say to drop the quarter in a box in the front of the bus if everything was satisfying, and to use it to call them if it wasn't. Well, I did my part and kept the quarter. It brought the ticket price down to $14.75. A bargain! I feel compensated enough that I don't have to call.
I didn't say it was going to be a fascinating post.

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A comment for a comment

It's worth here noting that Ean Frick, who wrote the Dig article about the gentrification of the Alston area that got the bee in my bonnet a while back, has posted a comment on my post to "set the record straight." Thanks, Ean for discovering my blog in your onanistic googling, and for thinking that my words are worth the reply. I'm sure that when it comes right down to it, we have a lot more in common than not. Except you're in the Dig, and I'm in the fucking blog-o-sphere.
(There are a couple of new words in the modern lexicon that really kick my ass: "metrosexual" and "blogosphere." It's unfortunate that these words made it to the popular press, and appear to be sticking, because they're perverse plays on pre-existing words that have little semantic value to attach to their incredibly weak aesthetic (aural?) qualities. I say we stop using them. How's about "well-dressed" and "the internet"? Hmm? Would that really be worse?
First the "blogosphere" then the big blue/green sphere.

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Post-Script: One word that should maybe enter the lexicon, however, is "crustfunders." Once again thank you to Ean Frick.

for the record

For the record, it's totally doable to drive to New York City from Boston, hang out for the day, and then take a bus back. It's not even that stressful or expensive. It's actually kind of pleasant. I went and was somebody else for a day. Older, more experienced, simply outside of my life. New York City has that effect on people.
For the record, nobody on MySpace or Friendster is actually interested in meeting new friends through the internet. I've done some mild research into the matter (in the form of cold messages to interesting-looking strangers), and nobody seems too interested in meeting in real life. Of course, this is loaded, because maybe it's just me that they don't want to meet.
For the record, it's only stalking if you don't leave them alone once they've stopped showing interest in you. Or if you can't tell that they're never going to show interest in you. That should be like written in stone somewhere on livejournal.com
For the record, there's no difference between sleeping in your clothes and sleeping in pajamas. Unless, of course, your clothes are super-fancy/tight and uncomfortable. In which case pajamas are better. But generally, it's just not worth the effort.
For the record, even though she was/is in the New Pornographers, Neko Case is a whole lot more country when she performs on her own.
For the record, it's time to drink the rest of my tea and go to bed.


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Bird's Eye View

A friend posted some pictures of me/my hands over at bird's eye view. Go and see her lovely photos.
In other news, I hope to sleep through the night tonight. It's my major goal for the day.

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Comment comments. The Meta-Comment

I don't know what the etiquette is in the world at large about leaving comments on blog posts, but maybe it's time for me to throw in my two cents. Maybe I've done this in the past? I can't remember.
Rule 1: Leave your name. If you don't know me, and you're going to comment about my writing, let me know who you are. Often I get anonymous comments, and I can guess who sent it, but usually I have no idea. It's hard to take something seriously (or jokingly, or whatever) if it could have been written by a robot for all I know.
Rule 2: Don't flame strangers. Based on my detailed analysis of the comments left on this blog, if you truly are anonymous (and not some friend of mine too lazy to log in with your own name), what you're writing me usually amounts to a flame. It's just not cool to flame strangers. It's not polite.
(not cool to flame? That's a strange phrase.)
I don't take this thing very seriously or personally, even though it's ostensibly all about me, but what are you people, raised in a barn?
Plus you should all write more comments. If I received a zillion more, the pain of the occcasional flame would dissipate.

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I'd Like a Venti Twitching Fetus-Cino with Cinnamon Sprinkles to Go

the lips don't drip
when you're taking a trip.
the thighs don't lie.

ur a dip.



am i?

Lunchtime IM Poetry with Osama

baste baby
oven 350
taste gravy
taste maybe
hehe
so dellishy!
lil'squishy
heh
cook 'till glazy
12:25 PM
makes ya crazy
feelin' hazy
w the taste shiz-azy
shiz-kebob
corn on the cob
eat like a slob
kiss a man named bob
buy a watch fob
bob likes gravy
baby gravy
he served in the navy
was very bravy
with a man-boy lady
thats pretty shady
taste the shady navy man-boy lady gravy
slurp it down
unless its brown
get rid of tha frown
then get outta town

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More Shameless Self-Promotion Than Usual

Okay, so by now, you've noticed that I keep posting links to my music web site at the bottom of every post, but you should really go and visit it now if you haven't recently. I've made it much prettier, added a couple of demo tracks, photos, basically spruced the place up. There's also the permalink to it on the right-hand side of this page, if you lose track of this post. And soon, very soon, you'll be able to buy CDs and possibly (gasp!) merchandise off of that page. But probably not much with the merchandise until I start to play more gigs. By which I mean any gigs.

Here's another reminder that Seasac Records has a bunch of my stuff (b-sides and demos, mostly), in addition to a whole lot of other cool music, all free and downloadable.

I've also joined the unwashed masses over at MySpace with a latiflearned page. But it's cool, because it's color-coordinated with my real web page. Be my friend if you're on MySpace. Lord knows my meager profile could use a few.

Have I said all of this already? Probably. Never hurts to say it again.

Relevant History

It's worth noting that my Boston friend whose name may or may not rhyme with Osama wrote a poem for/about/in response to me a while back. It's such a beautiful thing. I hope that you enjoy it, too.

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I'm on NPR!

Hey guess what? I'm on NPR's Open Mic Podcast starting today, apparently. They told me that they'd be featuring my music, but they didn't tell me when. It's a good thing I checked it out, or I might have missed it entirely.
If you want to download the track, you can subscribe to the NPR "Open Mic" Podcast in iTunes, or go right here to download it. Tell all your friends!

Latiflearned.com - If you're curious for more tracks, info, gigs, etc. you can find that stuff here.

Update: Here's another link to the actual story about me:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5298286

Another Update: You Macalester folks might like to know that Zack Kline, violinist extraordinaire, has also recently been featured on NPR's open mic. Represent!

Awesome

The Pentagon wants to unleash cyber-insects on our enemies. You know, the terrorists. Wherever it is that they are. Never mind how we'd actually go about controlling insects with a remote control. I think this is fantastic. It's just fucking out of control that somebody out there has the hubris to suggest that we remote-control insects to be our spies. Think of the civilian spin-offs: remote-controlled butterflies with webcam mounts to hover outside of your neighbor's bathroom window. Malaria mosquitos to attack your high-school principal. The fun never ends!
I don't even know what I'm talking about.
I watched the 40-Year-Old Virgin last night, and just about peed all over the couch, I laughed so hard. I thought it ironic, me celibate this year, watching the plight of this (fake) person who's been celibate for 40. It just put my whole shit in perspective, you know? Yeah. Plus it's so funny it induces bowel movements.
Tomorrow I'm going to Ottawa, which should be cold and take way way way too long on the bus. It's actually faster to take a bus to Canada from Boston than it is to take a bus to Northern New York. Strange. It's way cheaper, as well. I plan on taking beef jerky and my iPod Nano, which has proven to be as good a conversation starter as a pet toad in your lap. And if the conversation's still dry, I can always show off my missing tooth.

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blast from the past

Did you know that Iran resurrected Abraham Lincoln to be their new president?

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cognitive dissonance

I love those moments when people's autonomic communication tics clash with their socialized responses. I went to this gym near my house the other day, to check it out, and this fellow (we'll call him "Brad") gives me a tour of the place. "Hi. I'm Brad. What's your name?" He says to me. Donald. Nice to meet you. Then we turn a corner to officially start our tour. The very next thing out of his mouth is "What's your name?" Donald. "Mine's Brad. Nice to meet you." Then we commence with our tour. The first stop on our tour was the men's changing room, then on to the freeweights, cardio, etc. We got back to the office, and he said, "Have you seen the changing room?" I couldn't tell which part of this guy was on autopilot and which part was actually trying to talk to me.
You'll hear it if you listen for it. People walk into my office and say "Hi Donald" under their breath and then "Hello Donald" to my face. Like their little mental rehearsal leaked out into meatspace. My roomate occasionally mutters something utterly uncoordinated with our current social context by way of greeting. Like, we'll both be in the apartment for a couple of hours doing our own thing, and then we'll meet up in some room and he'll say "What's going on?" You know what's going on. We've both been here for hours. This isn't annoying, it's fascinating. I never say anything about it, it just goes into the mental catalog. But I'm taking notice!
What's the normal thing to do socially in this situation? Do you pretend you didn't notice? That's usually my tack. But is it also acceptable to say something like, "You realize that you're skipping like a broken record?" If somebody could get back to me on the protocol, my social life would probably benefit.
Then there's the other question. Why are we skipping like CD players without noticing it? I blame electronic music. It's Aphex Twin's fault. We can trace it farther back. Terry Reilly is the progenitor of our unconscious tics. His minimalist music has chipped away at the very foundation of our cognition.
Shit! I'm going off on a tangent again.
Till next time...
Until we meet again...
Hasta la vista...
My name's Brad. What's yours?

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temperate, with a 35% chance of irony

I received an email just now, and upon perusing the recipients list compulsively (does anybody else do this?), I realized that 90% of the email addresses were gmail-based. Google owns the personal communication of a generation. This blog is google. They know every personal interaction, they have receipts of all of my e-purchases, it goes on and on. What happens if they change their motto to, oh, I don't know... "BE EVIL!" I can see the (slightly modified Onion) headline now:

Google Moves into Sinister "Phase 2" of Operations

Maybe it's time to simply host my own email server and blog. Take the internet back into my own hands. With the Patriot Act coming around again, maybe it's time to escalate the paranoia in both directions. That's what the internet is for. Well, that and porn.
While I'm at it, I should cancel my Friendster and MySpace accounts. I don't know to what degree this would keep the advertisers out, but maybe it could help. On the other hand, I got an advertising call on my cell phone because Latiflearned.com is registered to it, and now the whole world knows. Woops. So maybe having your own web server isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Enough rambling!

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other, related resolutions

I want to write fewer songs about girls. Like any other resolution, this seems to be easier in theory than practice. Which is funny, because having to exercise self-restraint in the songwriting process is akin to dry-humping. It's not precisely what we're built for. It creates tension. But that can be good tension. I feel that unless I write songs about other things, like, you know, fields of sunflowers or very old buildings, I will be an expert at something nobody wants to hear about.

They say that songs had any power at all, we'd all be in love. I think that's uncharitable. Songs have made a lot of otherwise boring sex pretty entertaining. Don't look for an oracle when what you want is a glass of beer. That's been my family motto for 4/7000ths of a generation.

But it's not like anybody's going to be having sex to my music.

If you do, though, let me know. I'd appreciate it.

The other family motto is "Work like dogs, eat like kings."

(He said, writing a totally unnecessary blog post from work...)

With all of that behind me, it's worth noting that 50% of the songs that I've written in the last month have been about girls. Breakups, even. Which is funny, because I haven't broken up with anybody for half a year. Where's my self-control?

tuned in

I'm so tuned in to the frequency of my cell phone's ring that I hear that frequency everywhere. Sometimes I play guitar, and the string harmonics create the exact same frequency. It's usually when I'm playing hard, so I'm not sure if I'm really hearing the phone ring. So I stop playing. Or when I'm listening to music really loudly. Or sometimes I just imagine it. The phone manages to interrupt my life even when it's not doing anything at all.
I see two solutions:

Solution A: Throw the fucking phone out the window. Those devices irradiate your brain and pollute your soul, making you believe that communication and life down to the minute is somehow superior to a more relaxed pace. Faster life is better life. Throw it away.

Solution B: Can my generic telephone ring tone, and get the new Kanye West polyphonic. Impress my peeps on the subway with my vast library of dope phone beats.

Clearly, it's a choice between the lesser of two weevils. I fear change. I'll leave everything the way it is, and adjust myself.

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Crack!

I have one problem tooth. Or should I say had one problem tooth. The only tooth with a cavity (knock on dentin), the only tooth that ever broke. I had a root canal. Didn't take. Had a crown. Broke. Three different times. So today, i had the tooth pulled. For better or worse, that hunk of problem is gone from my life. Hopefully.
They don't tell you very much about what's going to happen when they pull your tooth. This is probably because you're sitting there in the chair, gums numb, thinking things like "This is going to be like pulling teeth! That's exactly what this is! Pulling teeth!." And we all know how hard that is.
But it's really not that bad. You have the option to go under, but I think that's for wussies. All they do is take your tooth in a pair of pliers, and yank it out sideways, using your head as leverage. I thought they'd have something more sophisticated than that, but it's really pretty much the same as the technique I use for pulling nails out of boards.
The bloody tooth stump is pretty cool-looking, too.
I drove to the dentist, which is basically news in itself, because I drive so infrequently these days. Now, I don't know if you've ever driven on a Saturday in suburban Boston, but here's what people do in suburban Boston on a sunny Saturday afternoon: they go and get their car washed.
Now, car wash guys must make a killing, because I only saw two car washes between Jamaica Plain and Norwood, but both of them had lines all the way into the street. I'm thinking: it would take less time and money to go to the store, buy car wash supplies, and do it in your driveway. But clearly I'm missing out on something here. Some essential Boston experience, akin to the joy of going to Fenway park and getting glares from suspicious Red-Sox fans because I'm not wearing anything red. It's like reverse McCarthyism around here. But I digress.
In summation, eat more dried plums, and don't take the gas if you're getting your teeth pulled. It'll be something you can bore your kids about someday. And make sure to check out the Dedham car wash. Dedham. So hot right now.. Dedham.
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My Hopes

People like to talk about the change that's coming over the music and video industry. The transition between analog mediums and non-transferability that comes along with it to digital mediums and the ability to make perfect duplicates. It's not a transition anymore. It's happened. Analog, much as I love it, has been relegated to DJs and audio purists; those willing to put forth an awful lot of effort to listen to music and have it sound real. The rest of the world is on digital, for better or worse.
It's my hope that we'll use this in a good way. I see it going in many directions. For instance, we could end up in a world where you have to pay some fee to Sony every time you want to play a song. It's not out of the question; it's what the record companies have always wanted. Now the technology is in place to do that. We're just not quite under the yoke of that technology yet, with CDs and MP3s still being ubiquitous. Ever try to use somebody else's WMA? Have you noticed the spyware/malware embedded in your latest Warner Bros. CD purchase?
Anyway, I digress from my hope. I see us as potentially being a culture glued to our broadband connections, downloading music at our whim, experiencing our art through a vibrating magnet and an LCD. It's so easy to do things this way. It's cheap, you don't have to get up, it's gratifying, it's instant. Records are so much easier to achieve/create, in a lot of ways, than a solid live performance. But it's my hope that we can parlay this technology into real human contact. It's so easy to hear a band's record, to get that advertisement, as it were, that maybe more people will start going to live shows. When recordings become ubiquitous and essentially free, maybe the live show will become (as it once was and remains for many) the venue where the true originality happens and is expected. The records are what gets you there. Live shows are already the place where artists (and TicketMaster) actually make their money. It would be ironic if we went full circle from the invention of the phonograph, where records were considered a cheap imitation of live shows, through the record-as-product, and back. It would be ironic, but it would also be excellent. Because we've reached a point where we need to make an effort to have actual human interaction, and it's my hope that maybe the availability of everything at our desk will push us back out into the real world, seeking reality with which to corroborate.
Seems like a long shot, but it's actually my driving force in seeking out art. Maybe it could work for everybody...

Latiflearned.com - Go Listen. Then see me live (whenever I get my shit together and start performing live. Anyway, it'll be on that page if I am).

Dried Plums

"Dried Plums" are the best thing to happen to prunes since prunes came about in the first place. The word "prune" has all of these negative connotations. We say "wrinkled like a prune" or "prune-y." Prunes mean old people, and they also mean pooping. Nobody wants to think about old people and pooping. So we don't talk about prunes. And nobody would buy a prune, let alone a whole box, because that would mean being associated with old people and/or pooping. Regardless of how well we would be pooping, we just don't care for that association.
Enter "dried plums." You may have noticed in shopping at your nearest food-conglomerate-convenience-utility store that the word "prune" is absent from the box. Advertisers have become savvy to the poop/prune complex, and have diverted a future generation from having to be subjected to the vagaries of old people, poop, and prunes by calling them what they actually are: dried plums.
Try it. It sounds a lot better. Mmm... I love dried plums.
Here's my new catch-phrase for Girl-Free 2006: "Ought Sex." Two months down and I haven't even broken a sweat.

**Update - 03/01/2006** - The local neighborhood store stopped selling dried plums. Boo.

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New Words (or, A Soapbox for a Soapbox)

I learned a new word today. Actually two words, but they're related: "yupster," and "yindie." Can you guess what this means? Let me quote from the article where I read it (The Dig, 2.22.06, p. 9):

"... the new 'yindie' or 'yupster' trend: young and hip, but professional. Too square for the tatoos and tight pants of the scenesters; too uptight for the relaxed fit of the b-boys and bedside DJs."

This in the context of an article about how a neighborhood (Allston!) is going downhill, because the punks that made it so sweet are leaving and the lame-o students and Young Urban Who-Gives-A-Fucks are moving in.
You can see where I'm headed with this. Tight pants aside, they're describing me here: ripe old age of 23, pro computer skillz, young, hip. No tattoos. More-or-less symmetrical hairdo. Fancy coat. No Technics on my desk. The implication is that if you're "professional," you're square, no matter how hip you look and act. No matter who you are, you're getting judged by your job.
Well, I'm sorry, Ean Frick, if mom doesn't pay my rent and finance my "homegrown" lifestyle. Hipsters are the same as the hippies were: hanging around and looking cool, talking big and living off your newfound morals is a lifestyle you can't support unless mommy and daddy are footing the bill. Sorry that I can't find an image that I'd want permanently etched into my forearm. Sorry that getting on my feet and learning how to pick up my beer bottles off the floor and put them into the recycling qualifies me as not fit to live in your down-to-earth rat-infested Allston Beat utopia. And it's a shame that you feel that way about me because I've got a job; we've probably got more in common than you think.
The first thing you get asked when you meet an American is "What do you do?" We should be more careful about defining ourselves by our employment (or identifying with our lack thereof). Real people don't always do what they want, and real people aren't defined by what they look like. They aren't definable at all.
I don't live in Allston, but gentrification is happening all around Boston. The same trend of homogenization and commodification is happening in Back Bay, Jamaica Plain, Cambridge, Brookline, everywhere. The real issue is that the city as a policital entity doesn't care about independent arts, affordable housing (rent control), public services (MBTA, looking at you here), etc., and that the people who live here are all too willing to replace JP O'Drinky's with Club Aqua, or to let somebody else do it for them without putting up a fight. Place the blame where the blame is due, and *do* something about it if it bothers you. For instance, the Brattle in Cambridge has been putting up a good fight to keep it's doors open and independent film happening. Send them a donation; we can turn this town around.

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Compensation

It's funny the ways in which we compensate for the world we've created. We know we're built for grass, but we make roads out of asphalt, and then we have to make special shoes for us to be able to run on those roads without hurting our knees. We create cities, big dense stressful polluting non-human-friendly environments, then cram ourselves into them. We drink a gallon of orange juice a week and take yoga classes and drink de-stress tea, we smoke and we drin, we plug our ears into headphones to dull our senses to the overload. It's funny how humans are so proficient at creating environments that we can't tolerate. But because we're so adaptable, we tolerate them anyway. Modern science allows us to survive everything, enjoy little.
The thing about compensation, though, is that it's just as easy to overcompensate as it is to simply compensate. Especially when it comes to self-medication. The point is to be sure that you're still experiencing the life that you're living. We're living in a time when we've got an option to ignore everything, and paying attention is simply a choice we have to make, not an inevitability. So, um, I ask you to please make the choice to pay attention, and experience your life. If we don't do that, collectively, then the hard times ahead will be made that much harder.

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Moved In

Well, I finally got a bookshelf yesterday, a big beautiful thing, six feet high with shelves over a foot deep. It allowed me to finally unpack the remaining five boxes full of books and CDs that comprise the rest of my life. It was cathartic to see my music, the novels I intended to read and forgot about, my old books on origami, my spanish-lanugage flamenco poetry, guitar parts, and to finally have a place to put them and refer to them daily. It's the kind of thing that makes you feel like yourself, but you don't know you're missing it until you get it back. I get that impression a lot lately, like there's a lot I've been missing, and it's just a matter of waiting before it comes back into my life. But after several months, I can take having a bookshelf (and a desk and a dresser) as finally being able consider myself moved-in to this place.
That said, i'm probably not going to stay in this particular apartment for more than this year. It's just not quite right, for the rent I pay. Not like you need to know why it's not right or how much rent I pay, it just sort of bears saying things like that if I'm to keep up any pretense of the "mass-email"-ness of this blog, and not go the way of a friend who just gave up on blogging in general. I'll probably stay in JP, but don't quote me on that. You can quote me on the girl-free 2006 thing, but not on staying in JP. I'm committed to the former but not the latter.
JP (eace on earth)
Donald

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Evolving

I hear that every seven years, your body has completely regenerated itself. That's to say that in seven years, every cell currently in your body will have been replaced with a similar one. This means that you're literally a new person every seven years. Which explains why I also hear that our lives go in seven-year cycles.
But think about this: say you've got a physical ailment, a bum leg, say. Theoretically, in seven years your leg could have healed itself. It's an entirely new leg, after all. What's to say that it can't be a good leg instead of your old beaten up version? A leg upgrade. So if we could just harness some ability to tell our cells to stop reproducing bad legs and start pumping out good ones, we would be on the road to getting better with time. We would be more like fine wines than nice cheeses. Or would we be like leather bags? I dunno, something that only gets better with age. Like, literally gets better with age. I love this idea. Everybody start telling your body to pick up the pace a little, let's see some real healing!

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Jeans

I was shopping for jeans in Boston. This took me to a number of stores. It took me to such a large number that I decided to do as Daryl Zero and stop looking for any pair of jeans in particular. I looked at all jeans, in all stores. Because if, of all the jeans in the world, you're looking for one pair, your chances of finding it are very slim. If you are very slim, your chances further decrease. If, however, you're looking for any jeans at all, suddenly you find what you are looking for everywhere you turn.
My unbiased search led me into Neiman Marcus. Neiman Marcus is near the Back Bay Metro station, and it contains jeans, so it's a likely candidate for my completely non-weighted look at the world of jeans. After some poking around, I see a pair that catches my eye. Banishing any thoughts of "these are probably too expensive for you to pay for" until I took a closer look, I, um, take a closer look.
Now, these jeans are pretty nice, at first glance. Premium jeans. First-rate jeans. A good dark wash, straight legs. The kind of jeans that look like they fit, and haven't already been lived in for a couple of years. Which is what I was going for. Upon closer inspection, however, I noticed that these jeans had these gigantic brass tetrahedronal rivets. Egyptian pyramid rivets. They played tricks of scale on your eyes, not being accustomed as our eyes are to seeing rivets of this magnitude on a pair of jeans. You don't even notice they're there, they're so big. A closer reading of the little booklet that accompanies the jeans says the following (paraphrased):

"Your new jeans have rivets that are the best thing to happen to rivethood since the metal shop. Your rivets must be treated with the utmost of rivet reverence and care. Do not wash these rivets as you would a pedestrian garment such as a three-piece suit. These rivets demand that a left-handed Elbonian sherpa rub them daily with a chamois. If not rubbed with the proper level of care and rivet respect, your rivets will disengage from your jeans and attach themselves to Michael Jackson.
In addition, your jeans are treated with a special dye that cannot be washed, because it will disappear, being magically treated to bond with all elements and turn into formaldehyde. Also, don't sit on any white couches, because the color of your jeans will dry-bleed onto your white furniture, and you'll be left with a rash.*"

So, let me get this right: these jeans cost $450, and I can't wash them or sit down in them? You would think that for $450 dollars, you'd get a bit more performance out of a pair of jeans. But that's just my completely unbiased opinion. I guess I'll just have to settle for looking worn and baggy. Worn and baggy is so hot right now.

*I made up the rash part.

Latiflearned.com - Go Listen

Pre-Approved

I have been Pre-Approved an awful lot more in the last few weeks than I ever was up until now. Until I moved to Boston, I had never been Pre-Approved. Nobody was happy to tell me that I qualified for a low interest rate, and a high credit limit. They were content, it seems, to leave me alone before. But now I have been Pre-Approved.
This is fantastic. Approval is imminent. Think of the possibilities once I have gained Approval. Things that had previously been banished to the realm of pure possibility happen when you're Approved. And Pre-Approval is the first step toward sweet Approvability. This is exciting, for while being in a Pre-Approved state is motivating in the extreme, my cultural assimilation will not be complete until I reach complete and utter Approval. Then and only then can I stand in the ranks of the Approved, and in some cases the Twice-and-Thrice-Approved, and laugh deridingly at the unwashed, unApproved masses.


Latiflearned.com - Go Listen

Kindred Souls

Have you ever met a kindred soul, and you just know it from the moment you meet that you have more than just "something in common." You've got that special connection, that philotic link that connects the two of you at the subconscious level. You're tuned in to the Ethereal Subconscious Vibe Network (ESVN), and they're sitting on the couch right next to you. The feeling you get, the knowledge that things are right in the world because there are people like this in it. I love that feeling.
Then they go into how you should accept Jesus the Saviour into your life, and sharp cheddar and wine are really bad for you, and public transportation is a waste of time, and Tom Waits is just a horrible beat poet with a bad band, and really there's nothing to say for fine art and dance, and they need to make the highways bigger, and the war's really a good thing, because the terrorists in Iraq and New Mexico need to be killed so that once and for all we can emerge as the nation you just don't fuck with, for God's sake, and fuck Johnny Cupcakes because the t-shirts at Urban Outfitters are way cooler. And you think, "How could somebody hate Tom Waits? I was so wrong."
So wrong.

Latiflearned.com - Go Listen

High Hopes and a Dash of Cumin

I had really big plans for today. i was going to have a physical therapy appointment, visit a museum, reunite with a long lost friend, do some yoga, and some more reuniting with (longer but less lost) friends. Instead, I had the appointment, bought some stuff, went for a run, bought some more stuff (which was a trip originally poorly disguised as a trip to the museum, which inevitably failed when I couldn't find the museum and decided to keep walking forward rather than retrace my steps), and made some really killer enchiladas. Which really ruin your momentum. All you can do after eating really killer enchiladas (RKEs) is coast for the rest of the day. Coast and ponder leftover enchiladas for a week and all that this entails.
I'm a bit concerned about the implications of my physical therapy appointment. They did some ultrasound on my head, which ostensibly relaxes your muscles. That's fine and good, and it did indeed relax the muscles in my head, with the requisite tingling sensation that I've come to expect from all visits to people who re-align my body/energy/aura. But isn't ultrasound the same procedure that they use on babies to make a picture for the pregnant mother, the orderly, and whoever else decides to lean their head into the room? This begs the question: what is that ultrasound doing to those babies? Does it make them feel relaxed? Does it increase their self-esteem? Does it make them more inclined to listen to Aphex Twin and enjoy it?
One of the things I bought today, a purchase of which I'm especially proud, is the CD by Alarm Will Sound called Acoustica, where they play the works of Aphex Twin. This is not to be confused with Apocalyptica, which is a string quartet that plays the works of Metallica. Or Bjorn Again, which is a tribute band to Abba based in Australia. But I digress: Acoustica is a really sweet album; it turns out that you only need 22 classical musicians, at the peak of their power and concentration, to be able to do a decent acoustic facsimile of an Aphex Twin track. "Why would I care about this when I could go and listen to Aphex Twin?" You say. And then you say "And I don't even listen to Aphex Twin." To which I say: you should try ultrasound. It'll loosen you up.

Latiflearned.com - Go Listen

Girl Free 2006

I've decided that, notwithstanding some of my previous comments, I do have a New Year's resolution. I've decided that 2006 is going to be girl-free. I'm just not going to date any of 'em this year. I get more done when I'm single. I kind of like the power dynamic that it creates with strangers. I like to feel that control, the smile/smile-back. I need to be productive. You can't be as productive when you've got somebody else around all of the time. it's a fact. So I'm not going to play hard to get, I'm going to be impossible to get. That's the way it is this year. Girl-Free 2006.

Update: In retrospect, this seems to follow pretty naturally from my previous post.

Latiflearned.com - Go Listen

Poof!

I was writing today to a friend from whom I have not heard in months. To sum up what had happened in the meantime, I said, "I put my head down, and when I looked up again, months had passed." It seems strange that all of this time since I got to Boston would have gone by so quickly; as it was happening it seemed like it would go on forever. There have been some really long days and a lot of experiences that I'd rather not re-live. It passed all the same.
My ex-girlfriend Anna told me once that the thing that's nice about dating somebody is that you have some frame of reference for your experiences. You can say, "I did this!" and experience the validation of somebody else saying, "Yes! It's true! I was there. It truly was grand!" This is a profound insight, I think, into why people couple themselves off in the first place. Surely it's better to have a record. Memories, like photographs (or journal entries), create a better picture of the past if they exist in plentitude. Isn't it a fantastic thing about memory that if you don't take pains to cast a memory somehow, it'll simply disappear.
Well, just the things you did alone will disappear. If you've got friends and loved ones, they will share some of the burden of remembering things that you would otherwise forget. My sister and her boyfriend remember things about France that left my mind long ago. Maybe you don't really need a boyfriend or girlfriend. Maybe they just condense a process that occurs with every human with whom you come into contact.
if that's the case, you deserve some thanks. Thank you for coming here and reading, for caring enough to want to remember. It means a lot to me, though I say very little about it.

Pets

I think that we should give pets more human-like names. I mean, Fluffy or Zoltan are fine names and all, but I don't think that they accurately represent our pets' status in our lives. It would be like calling your boyfriend "Dopey." I propose that we give our pets the same names that we would give to humans: "This is my dog, Joe." "Say hello to our new kitten, Mary." If they're going to be family members, why not give them appropriate names? It helps to remove the cognitive dissonance.
For some reason I can't sleep tonight. Every time I get pretty close to falling asleep, I'm awoken by this panicked feeling, like I stopped breathing right at that moment where you go unconscious. I thought that I had my anxiety pretty well under control, but I guess I've still got a ways to go. If you're capable of sending calming vibes through ethernet cables (or wifi, if you're fancy), please direct your talents my way: I could use the help. I mean, it's 3:26AM and I've got to work today. But at least it's Friday, so no harm done. Heh.

The Edges of Things

"It was not hard for me to think of nothing, the way I felt at the moment. In order not to think of any one thing, all I had to do was think of many things, a little at a time: just think about something for a moment and fling it into space."
-Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

When I was littler, I used to get these hallucinations when I was trying to fall asleep. In that state before dreams, but after awake would feel like my head was in a vice, like everything about which I thought was infinitely expanding and contracting. It hurt my brain to think about it. I would think about the edges of things, edges so razor-sharp that there was an infinity in their frontier. I couldn't think about it for very long, because it would make me feel like I was going mad. It would make me feel a very real sort of pain and pressure. So I would think about other things. Garfield comics. Doing the dishes. Girls (later on). I was eventually able to make the hallucinations (or whatever they were) go away. But I never felt like I solved the problem. I just felt like I was ignoring it successfully. A minor victory, but I have to wonder if the battle wages on.
Murakami is a good writer; I feel as if the character in this book rationalizes things in a way that I find very comforting. Like, if there are humans out there who think this way, then I'm not alone. It's good to be reminded of that.

latiflearned.com - go and listen.

Latif Learned

I made a new album. You know, music? You like music, don't you? Get my album! You can get tracks and lyrics etc. over at latiflearned.com.
I hope that you enjoy it. If you ever forget that link, it's always over in my sidebar off of this blog.
Also, if you go to Seasac Records, you stand a good chance of being able to hear rare demos, b-sides, out-takes, Brazillian electro-remixes and other craziness. Also, you can hear the totally sweet bands Fujimo and Molocai and Ugly By Now, all for free. You're here because you're wasting time. Go and get some free music.

Toiling in the Fields

I've been thinking about the city. Life in the city, you have to admit, is pretty far-removed from what we're biologically constructed to be doing. Typically, people who live in cities spend the majority of their day immobile (sitting in chairs, which is actually a stress on the body), sheltered from the elements, etc. Fantastic. We've been through all of that before.
But if we're biologically constructed to be doing something more like running around in forests trying our best to kill rabbits and find berries or whatever, what is the analogue for a city-dweller? Is there anything that we can do to sort of simulate for our bodies the state of being healthy and normal?
So I think about my city friends who seem well-adjusted to life in the city. One common trait that they seem to share is that they're all really active. Always attending some event, or going to some party/event/benefit. Picnics. Bike rides. Shows. It seems like one way to be normal in a city is just to try to keep as busy as possible. Social hunting and gathering. Because food's easy to find, but it's just not right to sit around all day. A leisurely life in a city is potentially quite detrimental.
Or you could just join a gym, I guess.

listening to: Sonny Rollins - Saxophone Colossus

Somebody Watching

Do you ever do things when you're alone as though somebody were there watching you? Or like, if somebody were to walk in at that precise moment, they'd be sure to see you in top form? When I got my first Beta Band CD way back in college, I thought to myself, "This is the kind of music I want playing when somebody stumbles into my dorm room. They would think I was maximum cool." I guess that since I had that thought, it just sort of bled to the rest of my life. Now I make sure that I'm looking sharp when I'm vacuuming, that the lighting is proper when I'm doing dishes, that I've only got my good side exposed when I'm lying on the couch. I mean, what if somebody were to walk in at that precise moment? What if they had TV cameras? You'd want to be prepared, right?

Blanket

I just watched The Producers (the re-make with Matthew Broderick as Leo Bloom and Nathan Lane as Max Bialystock) the other day. It was pretty funny. There's a scene that keeps coming back up in my mind: Leo and Max are in Max's apartment, and Leo pulls this piece of blanket out of his pocket and starts rubbing it around his face. "It's not important, it just makes me feel comfortable," he says. But then Max takes the piece of blanket away and Leo freaks out. "MY BLANKET! YOU'VE GOT MY BLANKET! GIVE ME BACK MY BLANKET!" Up until that point he had maintained his composure, even though Max Bialystock clearly made him nervous. But when he lost his blanket, the thin facade of his composure wore through.
I like the idea, because everybody's got their blanket. Some thing or idea that, when rubbed the wrong way or put out of place, causes you to totally lose your cool. It could be something really small, like putting the tea bag in before the water, or stir-frying beef together with green peppers. It could be some past grudge that never faded, of which we do not speak.
Somebody told me once that our society is four skipped meals away from complete chaos. Best not to consider how thin that blanket that covers us all really is.
The Producers, though. Really funny movie, that.

I only think these things sometimes!

Blog posts and songs are snapshots. I would hate for anybody to get the impression that I constantly feel like I sound when I'm writing. That would be inaccurate. More accurate would be to say that I usually feel that way only for a couple of seconds, and in writing or performing the work in question I can revisit the feelings that it brought me. That way, I don't have to hold on to the more unpleasant things in life.
This could also explain why most of my songs are sad, and this blog isn't exactly the source of all things happy either. It's something I still need to work on, I suppose, letting go of the good things in addition to the bad...

Alchemistry

What is it that allows us to process ideas without thinking actively about them? I feel like much of the time I'm coming up with my ideas as I speak. How does that work? What kind of alchemistry allows us to not think not think not think and then eventually come to a conclusion about the way things were, the way things are? Is it a function of our memory, fading over the things we don't understand until we've only got a picture of the things that we comprehend? Or is it that our reality moves too fast, allowing us to only retroactively process that which, had we greater intelligence or perception, could have been immediately understood in the moment?
How is one to live in the moment when one can't understand the moment?
I've been feeling lately as though I'm sitting in the backseat of my life, watching it through a window. I keep thinking thoughts like, "wow, that was an interesting thing that you said," or "all right! you made it through another half an hour without forgetting to breathe!" Maybe this kind of meta-narrative happens often in other people's lives. If so, shout it out, because I'd hate to feel that I'm the only one.

Here's me and my brother playing tunes at Christmas. Stay tuned for links to Christmas photos.

Word. To the wise.

New Year's resolutions are for the kind of people who aren't constantly re-evaluating their stance in life to sit down and maybe try their hand at it. I don't think that shit applies to me. I spend too much time already thinking about how things have changed/are changing all the time. It's hard for any New Year's Day resolutions to contain any significance that any other day doesn't have. My advice is skip the resolutions and keep to the routine you've already got going. No sense piling any pressure on an already pregnant day. Plus it's hard to be resolved about anything when you're nursing a hangover.

I've had lots of musings lately that almost made it to the blog. Then I realized that they were all public transit-related. And this isn't a blog about that. So the question is: do I write inane ramblings about nothing of consequence simply for the sake of writing, or do I wait until I have something to say. I think the dates of my previous posts speak for themselves on the issue.
I realized just now that I have a few dear friends who don't know what's happened in my life lately. Too many changes, too big, happening too fast to fill everybody in. I made some reference to my heart being broken the other day. "Wait a minute, your heart was broken?" Well, yeah... I thought you knew. Wasn't it obvious?
No, I guess it wasn't.
Well, here come the holidays, the family, the travel, the more things to do at work, the end of the recording project, which should give me enough food for thought on which to chew (excuse my prepositions and my suppositions and my bad metaphor) that I eke something interesting/blog-worthy out of it. In the meantime, a healthy dollop of Holiday cheer your way. But if you ever call that Christmas tree a Holiday tree, I'm a gonna whup your ass.

The Other Shoe

As I walked to the Metro station this morning, I was listening to music on my little pod of music joy. I noticed about halfway to the station that the headphones weren't plugged in all the way. I plugged them in and the music soared! I completely failed to notice how tinny and bad it had sounded. It was only in the contrast that I realized.
Eventually, I got off the bus and headed to the office. Almost in the door, I realized that I hadn't taken the little headphone earbuds out of my ears, even though the music had stopped playing twenty minutees prior. I took them out, and felt better. Those things are uncomfortable! I could hear!
How many other things are like this in my life? How many half plugged-in headphones or unremoved earbuds do I have that I don't even know about? How many stoppers could I pull? How many things could I be seeing more clearly if I'd just remember to remove my sunglasses? How much better could I feel than I feel, if I could just find the switch?
Why is it that all of these thoughts happen during my commute? Do I stop thinking during the rest of the day?

Viral Marketing

I was walking on Newbury Street in downtown Boston with Erica the other day, ogling the passers-by by whom we were passing. We had this fantastic advertising idea: what if, say, the Gap paid people to walk around downtown and notice when you're wearing Gap clothes, then come up to you and say, "I love your jacket!" That would sure get people buying Gap clothes...
You see where this is headed. It turns out that the evil geniuses in the world of selling you shit already came up with this idea. The kicker for me is that they came up with it three years ago! There's a company called BzzAgent here in Boston that pays people to sell products to their friends in casual conversation. The idea is that you do this anyway: something like 25% of casual conversations contain some product reference. They just pay people to do it. There are caveats, of course, like you should tell your friends that you get paid to sell them shit, and people only sell shit they like. This does not make me feel any better about this being an industry. Not to mention that they thought of it three years before I did. Damn! I hate it when that happens!
We all know that advertising is evil. it's people trying to make you feel bad about yourself, to create voids in your life that only products can fill. What really gets me is that it seems like some of the great minds of our generation are involved in what's a fruitless activity, in terms of human advancement. Insurance agents and marketers keep better track of trends than research scientists, professors, and doctors. There's the real triumph of the free market. Can you hear me now?
PS You should all go out and buy the new Broken Social Scene album.

discussion question

Human beings are differentiated from other animals because we are the only species to make war.
Talk amongst yourselves.

changes - a rant

It's important to go into any relationship (romantic or otherwise) with the knowledge that you can't make other people change. I may have said this before, so I hope I'm not belaboring anything, but here I go. People do change, but it's never because you tell them to. At best, you can enact change in others by showing them a better way to do things, an alternative. At some point there's potential for it to dawn on people that their approach might not be as good as yours, and there's potential for things to be better. And they will subtlely change their life to be more like yours. We see this in fashion, advertising, but it also applies to domestic and interpersonal issues. It applies to everything. This is why you should live the life you preach; it's the only way to truly enact positive change in the world.
It's worth being careful around other people when they say that they've changed. Because even if you want to change, if you perceive a desire within yourself to be different, there's still a period of time before that desire is made manifest. You can want to change and remain the same. Or you can think that you've changed when nothing's different. I'm always leery when people say, "I've changed." That's usually an indicator that everything remains the same. The true change happens more subtlely; it usually it made apparent when somebody else tells you that something's different about you.
This applies to relationships, of course, because so many people do this cycle of breaking up and getting back together, on the premise that things are different now, that he or she or life or the world or your perception of it has changed for the better and that everything will magically work. We're getting better culturally at seeing that this isn't the case, for example, in the case of physical or sexual or verbal abuse. But not emotionally damaging situations. We're still stuck, culturally, on the idea that if all that happened was that somebody broke your heart or drove you crazy, without actually hurting you physically, you've still got a chance of making it together. I think it's worth possibly re-examining this notion. However, in the grand canon of notions that ought to be re-examined, this one takes a low spot on the list.

Things I learned on the bus today

It's nice to fall asleep on the bus ride home. There's no need to worry about missing your stop, because everybody gets off at Forest Hills. You can read your book until you get too tired/nauseated to keep reading (which usually happens around the Dedham Mall, halfway through the trip from Norwood to Jamaica Plain), and just close your eyes and drift off. Lean your head against the glass. But be careful! Because it turns out that when you really fall asleep, your head will flop dramatically, loudly and painfully thwacking whatever hard object happens to be in it's trajectory. And if that object happens to be the emergency window opening handle... Let's just say that you won't be dozing too much for the remainder of the commute.
I ride the subway for one stop to get from the Forest Hills bus station to the Green St. stop, near which one can find my house. The train stops at Forest Hills and turns around. Everybody gets off, the doors open and close and open and close and the train goes in the opposite direction beeping and rumbling, like mechanical Ouroboros eating it's own tail or some sort of Moebius strip. Today there was a man, a poor crumpled man with a cane folded over on the seat after everybody else had cleared out of the train. The conductor (apparently notified of the man's presence) was trying to get him off of the train. The man smelled of alchohol and was incoherent; another passenger had to assist the conductor in getting him off the train. The passenger smiled at me when he got back in the car. "Life," he said, "I guess he wasn't always like that."
I watched the movie Capote this weekend. The thing that was most striking about Truman Capote, at least in the movie, was his absolute selfishness. He would say any lie to anybody for the sake of him or his book. He seemed incapable of casting anything in his life in a different light other than that which emanated from him and for him. His lack of compassion was startling, dealing as he was with inmates condemned to death, prisoners who had no clear idea of why they'd committed their crime.
I feel the same selfishness. I saw this man on the train, and was struck because the only thing I could think to do to help the situation at all was to help move this man to a cold bench outside in the T station. And I didn't even help with that. I watched. I have no idea what put that man in that situation, but I knew that something could be done, that I could do something to help it. Standing there carrying thousands of dollars worth of electronic gadgetry, the picture of privelage, and I can't even conceive of how I'd help somebody so far out of the light I cast.
A subway worker was cleaning the railings on the escalator stairs as I walked out of the train, one stop and one world later. He stood in the middle of the escalator, walking down as the treads moved up, not moving in real space, wiping the railing clean with his rag. It's a minor magical force that allows scenes like this to happen. If I had his job, cleaning the escalator railing would likely be my favorite part of the day.

Intelligence carries with it a burden. It's hardly an original thought, but it's something into which I've run lately. Intelligence. When you're able to see a bigger picture, you're burdened by having to consider it in all of your actions. If only you could see each issue as only having two sides, or better yet, one side. If only everything had one finite answer! If only a sort of universal truth were achievable for any single question! But alas, it is not to be so, and so those who can fathom that an issue might not be resolved, that terrorism isn't the fault of all non-Americans, whose origin is to be determined by those in power at any given point in time, that there are several ways of mitigating natural disaster, that there is no pro-life versus pro-choice. It's all much more subtle than that. Of course. I'm preaching to the choir.
Sensitivity makes you pay a price. I'm sensitive to other people. I think about other people driving on the road, how well they're doing, making up scenarios for what might be causing them to drive the way they drive. I think about other people on the subway. I can make headaches go away, I can absorb that pain. But I can't let go of it. I'm too sensitive, not tough enough, and it takes a toll. I have to learn now how not to care about everybody, how to not absorb the negative energy of others, for my own sake.
Emotional depth makes you pay a price. You can spend your whole life pulling people in, needing this and needing that from others, and it can work for you pretty well, with only the occasional heartbreak, for which we have many outlets in this society. But try sometime *not* holding on to people. Try sometime just loving without expecting anything in return. You can find that you had a lot of assumptions that don't hold true. Even if you know it's the right way to act, you can feel like you're taken advantage of, because being selfish and needy is so much easier and so much more frequently done.
Isn't it ironic that doing the right thing just paves the way for those doing wrong to do worse? You can't be an honest politician, because the dishonest ones will smear your image or worse faster than you can say "Paul Wellstone." You can't love others freely, because those who love with strings attached will move in some day and want to take all of that love away from you, keep it for themselves. You can't address problems with multiple solutions in mind, because those who see in black and white will be more present in the debate with their extreme views. It's hard to tread fine lines. We're all treading such fine lines.

Bikes in Boston

Did I mention that I do my commute on a bike? At least, right now. As long as I can, that's the plan. it's faster and cheaper than the bus (well, maybe not actually that much cheaper, with bike maintenance included). In fact, provided that there's not a huge pile of snow around, everywhere in Boston is faster to get to by bike. Faster than the "T" (Metro). Faster than a car. Ever heard of Boston drivers? Massholes? Ringing any bells? So I'm really psyched about getting a bike.
Today I managed to get a nail embedded fully into my back tire on the ride home. Fortunately, I got the flat next to the one bike shop on the eleven-mile ride home. So I just walked in, and they say "Nice bike. Wanna borrow some tools and buy a tire and fix that flat?" Sweet. I was back on the road in 15 minutes. Which is nice, because the alternative is to wait for the bus, and go home dejected that my biking master plan has failed. Instead I just strolled in 15 minutes "late" with a story.
This bike I'm riding used to have a garage-door opener on it, back when it was at the apex of suburban bike glory.

Musicians have a certain power to insinuate themselves into your life. You could meet a guitarist, say, who happens to know a song that you love. And then he plays it for you, and you're hooked. That song has taken on new meaning for you. That song is now firmly attached to whatever it is he meant when he played it for you. Was he looking you in the eyes? How did that make you feel? You remember that every time you hear that song. Musicians have a power, when we mean to.
Sometimes you play a song, and you really see it when you're singing and you really mean it when you're playing. And sometimes you're just going through the motions. You can tell when a musician means it, because that's when you're paying attention. When they don't mean it, that's when you're sipping your drink, looking for somebody interesting to talk to.
When you write a song for somebody, you have that same power as the cover song, but with greater potential. That power to do harm or good. But you only have that power if the subject knows that the song is about them. It's amazing how a song that you thought was so personal as to be non-applicable to any new situation can be taken out of context.
I guess there should be a point to all of this. Nope. No point. Just an observation. Point withheld.

people

i've been thinking about holding people close. a lot of people in my life, myself included, have gone through some sort of dramatic personal life change lately, and it's typically got a lot to do with breaking up with other people. everybody's doing it. these things come in waves (why) they come in waves is a whole other blog entry).
i've been told that a lot of hurt in life comes from holding people too close. you hold people too close to you, and it inevitably hurts you during those times when they lean away from you. and everybody's got their threshold for how far that leaning away is. that's beside the point. the point is, the closer you hold on to a person, try to draw them into your life, the greater your potential to be upset if change occurs and they don't want to be with you anymore.
there's one thought. everything changes. no two people are ever going to end up the way they started. you have to deal with change throughout any relationship. change happens everywhere in life, which is ironic considering the human tendency to try to organize the inherent entropy of the universe. even energy tends toward randomness. how can you fight with energy?
but there's the other side of the coin. commitment. there comes a time with certain people where you can't afford to or simply don't want to have them be some floaty presence in your life anymore. you want them to be a big presence. in some cases, the only or the biggest big presence in your life. you want, in short, to draw them in.
but commitment and attachment aren't necessarily the same thing. you can be committed to somebody, but not require them to be in your presence, or require that they be so thorougly thinking about you 100% of the time. it's something that maybe we all know, certainly something that i know, but something that you constantly need to remind yourself is the case. because in my opinion, to have a successful commitment, you need to be exclusive, but not overly attached. it's a fine line to tread. a fine line indeed. at some point, you have to acknowledge that things will change between the two of you. energy tends that way. if nothing else, your perception of the situation will change as time goes on. little things will start to nag you, or big picture things will come to light and make you all the more wondrous at who you've got in your life.
the answer, then, is to create an environment where change is acceptable, and you change with those people who are close to you. you don't abandon them when you're tired, and you don't ignore them if they're trying to tell you something, verbal or otherwise. not if you're committed. but you don't close yourself off to change either. some of that change is going to be intentional, and some of it is going to be gradual and subliminal. when you're committed, you're going to end up in a new place from where you started. and that's what's beautiful about commitment: you get to experience your whole life and know that someone's going to be there to see it with you.
this makes less sense in every paragraph. maybe some other time.

Road Trip

So I talked about moving in to Boston. Well, the latest turn in the move-in was that last week (or was it two weeks ago?), I was going to stop by Potsdam for a weekend, grab a bit of stuff and come back down to Boston. Then my mom was like, "why not stay longer and drive your stuff home in my car?" I was like "Sure." Then my dad went "Why not grab some of the stuff for your apartment that I've got in Ottawa?" I was all, "All right." Then I remembered that I was supposed to go to a wedding in Milwaukee a day or so after I was supposed to come back to Boston. So I asked mom, "Mom, how's about I take your car to Boston, then drive it to Milwaukee and then back to Potsdam?" She was totally down.
I just got back from that road trip. Boston to Potsdam in the car with Danielle Cornett, sister Renee, and Becca D., all high school friends who happened to be going back home from Boston. Hang out in Potsdam. Get myself to Ottawa. Hang out with dad. Drive stuff down to Potsdam in dad's car. Drive all of my stuff to Boston in mom's car. Turn around the next morning and head toward Milwaukee. Stop at a friend's in Columbus. Wedding in Milwaukee. Back to Mansfield, Ohio. Then to Poughkeepsie, NY for a few days. Drive up to Ottawa, Canada, and then to Potsdam. Then take a bus back to Boston. I just got back.
So, it's been a relaxing lil' break for me. There are good pictures of it all, but I didn't take them, so you'll have to wait for them to show up at alexmarvar.com or something before you can see them. Aw, heck, maybe I'll post a couple... Later.
Congratulations to Kjerstin and Adam on their beautiful wedding, by the way. Love you guys.

The Neighborhood

I live in Jamaica Plain, Boston. That could mean one of a million things. That could mean that I live in a mansion on a hill surrounded by trees or next to a pond. That could mean that I live in a Dominican/Cuban semi-ghetto. That could mean that I live in a hippy crunchy organic vegan co-op. Walking around here is a study in neighborhoods within neighborhoods, and just how small the boundaries between one and the next can be.
Today, I walked over to Franklin Park, which is about half a kilometer away from here. I leave my house, which is in a predominantly Spanish-speaking, not-too-wealthy little sub-section. Cross over Washington Street onto a street called Peter Parley, and the houses get big and ornate, full of white folks. Across a street and you're in a different world. The streets are narrow and windy, and there are more trees. Everything is more closed in. Then I get to Franklin Park, which is sketchily maintained at best. But it's gigantic. So gigantic, in fact, that I almost missed the fact that there's a giant fairground set up in it, minutes from my house. A big big fairground. With Ferris wheels and booths and a stage and everything. The rest of the park is largely wooded, with these boulders and piles of stones everywhere. It's kind of fascinating. But then you turn around and it's the same thing in reverse.
I live in a house of music. The landlords are in a band called Lovewhip (which has a website you can google in your spare time). They have a recording studio in the basement. My roommate goes to the NEC, but I think I'm treading on familiar ground here. I think I just wrote about this. I'll skip it for now.
More neighborhood. There's a subway stop minutes from my house, and another just a few more minutes in the other direction. Downtown Jamaica Plain is about fifteen minutes' walk from here. I get wireless internet. I found a desk on the front sidewalk. Life is good.

Apartment Update

I walked home this evening, and found that the upstairs neighbor is moving out, and left his desk that is perfect for my apartment out on the sidewalk right in front of the house. So now I've got a perfect desk, and all I had to do was walk it in from the sidewalk. That's totally bitchin', if I do say so myself. I'm going to try to get my camera working and possibly take some pictures right now!

Boston, Baby!

I moved in to my apartment in Boston on Sunday. Yes! It's really great. It's within walking distance of two metro stops; depending on whether I want to go downtown or not, I can choose one or the other. Sweet. It's a three-story house, I'm on the first floor with Tim from Macalester, who plays trombone and upright bass and goes to the NEC (New England Conservatory). The second story is more musicians, who are moving out soon I understand, and the third floor is the landlord, who's also a musician in a band called Lovewhip. It's funny music. They have a recording studio in the basement. This is great.
I still haven't really moved in. I have nothing but a suitcase full of clothes, some books, and a guitar amp. It's daunting. I suppose I'll get my digital camera up and running and then post some pictures on my web page.
Oh yeah! I changed the web page, also. If you want to download the latest album, go to latiflearned.com. If you want to go to my exceedingly outdated pictures site, go to Opus 1. If you want to see a page I made for a friend, that includes a lot of pictures of me, head over to alexmarvar.com.

latiflearned.com

My web page is now at a (more or less) permanent site. Head over to latiflearned.com to see my (more or less out of date) web page that's not a blog. Sweet. I swear that there will be more development on this in the coming months. Eventually, it'll have my music and not be at all about me, personally. but more about my invented personality Latif Learned who plays guitar and sings.
I'm moving to Boston in a few days. Maybe just maybe I'll take pictures and then put them up on my latiflearned.com. Word.

I Showed Up Again on the Web

Explo put me on the website again. Also, I'm told that if you Google image Search me that I actually show up, thanks to CosmoGIRL! Thanks CosmoGIRL!, for making my web presence that much stronger. The front page of an image search! Sweet.
In other news, New Haven is hot as hell. Today is the first time in three weeks that it's been below 90 and not like a billion percent humidity. Darn! I like the heat. Although it limits your wardrobe options. Survival first, looks second. Ummmm... That's all.

Def Leppard

The one-armed drummer from Def Leppard is going to be wearing a t-shirt designed by my brother Ryan in the next issue of Spin Magazine. It was originally going to be somebody in Death Cab for Cutie, but now it's Def Leppard. But if you're cockney, the first word of each band is pronounced the same way. I never thought in a million years that I would be in any way, even the most periphally, connected to the one-armed drummer from Def Leppard. This is like a vicarious dream come true for me. Amazing!
Go see Ryan's T-Shirt Designs. Check back at this site in a couple of weeks. It'll be more complete then. You might even be able to buy a t-shirt on it then.

Go check this out.
What a crazy fun summer!

Summer

It's summer. I'm in New Haven again. The problem with sporadically blogging is getting back into the swing of it. What do you say? Does anybody even read this anymore? Probably not. No problem.
I'm at Exploration Summer Programs again this summer, working as the computer guy again. This is good. So good, in fact, that I'm going to be working for them full-time starting in September. Right now I'm just one of the summer employees. So that means move to Boston (Jamaica Plain, of course), have a salary and health insurance once again, pay off some of that impending college debt, put money toward retirement. The plan is to move in to a house full of musicians in a neighborhood full of musicians with musicians and record more albums and generally be a better musician in my non-computer-guy time. Then I want to bike across the country. Interested? In two or three years? Give me a call. Or email.
I got a new laptop. This is a real boon for me, because it's the first time since early in the France experience that I've been able to keep all my thoughts/music/data in one place, which means that things like blogging and recording music and taking photos and what-have-you are much easier. Its keyboard lights up in the dark. It makes me happy.
So yes, Boston. Music. Computers. What you would have guessed if you were guessing, basically.

Update

I've added translation features to the blog. This is basically the funniest thing ever. Check the sidebar.

Minnesota, Chicago, Whatever

I'm in Minnesota now. You know, hanging out with Anna, seeing all of my newly dumbfounded recent-grad friends, in addition to the old-school graduates who've been dumbfounded for a year or two now. I'm gradually re-accumulating my stuff, so that I can put it all in one place for once in my life. I found my classical guitar and all of my cool music books here in a closet. Sweet. Minnesota is nice, in the way it's always been. The trick is not to be fooled when you visit during the warm months into thinking that the climate is livable. Because it's not. It's the arctic circle.
There's a radio station here in the Twin Cities that is rockin'. It's an NPR station, but it plays cool and new, generally hip (if not often rockin' to the max) music. Go check it out, because you're wasting time anyway, and you know it. Among the recent few bands they've played (off the web site): Spoon, Sly and the Family Stone, and Thievery Corporation. That's not bad for a radio station. Plus they do a webcast. Go listen. I'm going to submit my stuff once I've got it in totally awesome CD format for them to sufficiently digest.
By the way, stop and ask yourself, "Self, am I sufficiently pimping Donald's CD to my family and friends?" If the answer is no, your horoscope will start telling you bad things. It's written in the stars, bitches.

Y'all should check out Esther's Blog. Especially if you know her. Actually, you should really only check it out if you know her, or want to know her, because it's like this one: news for people who cared before they got here. And if you don't write anything for long enough, even those people stop caring. Esther has Lyme Disease, which gives her mad street cred. And she linked my blog, so I've got to link hers. Tight, yo.

I'm going to Minnesota tomorrow. This is part of a larger trend of not being able to spend any significant hunk of time in one place, uninterrupted. I haven't been in Potsdam for longer than a week at a time, really, without having to do something like drive to Montreal/Ottawa/Toronto/Boston/Rwanda. It's not like I want to complain about it, because really it's cool that I get to do things like hang out in exotic Canadian cities, but it kind of blocks my flow, you know? Like, throws a wrench in the gears of my flow. Plugs the pipe of my flow. Thumbs its nose at my flow. That kind of thing.

I swear that one of these days I'm going to put up pictures of the guitar I'm building. Probably when it's done. My digital camera pisses me off; this probably has something to do with why I don't use it very often. You have to hold it funny and tell it you love it just to make it take a picture. And it has to like the way you framed the shot, or it turns out sepia. Fucking sepia. Gross.

Minnesota, here I come!

Some News

I'm now employed as a real-time person. Well, I will be in September, anyway. So it's off to Boston, I suppose. In other financial news, I'm back up on CosmoGIRL.com because apparently I'm good-looking and I stand to win a thousand bucks for it. You should really go and check it out. Because Anna also wins a thousand bucks if I win. That's two thousand dollars between us, all because you clicked your mouse (once a week until I win). And let's face it, if you're here and reading this, you're procrastinating anyway. Go and make me a winner!
There's something about seing two big burly truckers lounging in a pit stop on highway 401, eating burgers, and speaking French. Ah, Canada.

Lots of Time

I just realized, as I wrote the title of this post, that some people write "lot's" when they mean "lots," and that this has always bothered me.
But I digress...
It's been a while since I last wrote, I suppose. This isn't to say that I haven't been busy. Because I have. I've been building a guitar, for instance. This is like the most exciting thing ever, the concept of having something so complex and personal, and having made it myself. You always develop this rapport (pronounced rap-poor) with your guitars, and it seems like if you make the guitar yourself, you've already got your best friend there with you when you play. Plus it takes the music-geekiness to a whole new level, which can only be good. He said, as though it were inherently true.
I'll post pictures of the progress of my new guitar in due time. Right now I've got a functional but no-frets neck and a body-shaped hunk of swamp ash (that's a type of wood, people). All in due time.
I'm also about finished with the next album. In fact, you can go download all of the tracks right now if you want. That was a link. You can click on it. And then you get my new music for free. The site is http://seasac.gotdns.com/UglyByNow/latiflearned in case you want to type it in yourself. The tracks I'm giving away for free are the unmastered mixes, which, being MP3, are of a lower quality than the CD is going to be. I'm going to make a production run of the CD after I get the cover art all squared away and the final mastering (sweetening) done. Then you all can (and will!) buy it. I'll make a web page for that to make it easy on you. Independent musicians. It's more effort, but it's worth it.
Other news in my life: I'm singing (tenor) in a church choir. I fixed my bike. I bake like 6 loaves of bread a week. I work construction all day every day and it's tiring. I'm learning how to play pieces by Heitor Villa-Lobos, the Brazillian guitar composer genius. I recommend his stuff.
I'll write more frequently now. I'm in the swing of things. And it occurred to me today that I've been neglecting my friends since I got home. I'm on it.

To Clarify...

Here's the question posed to me, regarding my survey about love:

Do you feel our culture idolizes LUV and ignores reality OR did you mean that common love, i.e.: awareness of our interdependent existence, is being weakened by sex and violence in the media?

(That's Tim Weld who asked me that, by the way)

I initially wrote that I think we've got love all wrong because I just had this really bad feeling about it, and the time that feeling hit me coincided with me writing my last blog entry. Like, I was mentally processing all of the things that people have said to me about love lately, and was coming up short of a satisfying conclusion. Which would lead me to say, have we got it all wrong? Or to use Tim's vocabulary, is something getting in the way of our experience of common love (awareness of our interdependent existence)? I would say that our culture (our media, among other things) idolizes some sort of mishmash of love with other emotions or states, like attachment or commitment or sex, but is that the only problem here? I guess, Tim that I'm asking both of your questions, in an effort to get at the root of a problem that I can't articulate clearly. If that makes your response any easier.

I've been wanting to go to bed earlier and earlier the longer I'm home. I started out on a roll, capable of working all day and then doing errands and minor jobs until it was time for bed. Now, it takes me a couple of days to get anything done, if I do it at all. Because, after you work, well, you've got to eat and then shower and then eat some more and then you got an hour or two and then you start really getting tired. This is that routine I mentioned. On the one hand, I appreciate the slowing effect it has on life, but on the other, it can be disturbing to eat up a day so proficiently. Next week I paint, so I won't be so strained at the end of the day.
I don't have any new sweet music links, as I alluded that I would downstairs on this page. My computer in this house is really noisy! I can't record on it. Fortunately, Anna comes into town in three days (!) with her totally sweet computer, which I will use. That last track that I put up was recorded in New York City on my brother Ryan's laptop. It turns out that all you need is a powerbook, and everything is dandy.
The guitar I'm building is started. If anybody has the blueprints for a Fender Telecaster (69 thinline), I'd appreciate it. Sweet. I'll post pictures of the progress of that. Fascinating.
Does it ever occur to anybody out there that maybe we've got this love thing all wrong as a culture? Let me know. I'm doing a survey.

New Web Space

Life in Potsdam continues as normal. Going to the coffee house to hear acoustic guitarists sing old pop songs. Practicing my own guitar, in preparation to do the same. Working a lot. Baking bread. Making waffles. It seems like when you set up a routine, the whole point is to *not* have anything too untoward come up in your path. The problem with leading an easy (or maybe straightforward would be a better word) life is that you don't have anything about which to complain. Or, put another way, having few problems doesn't force you to think about solutions. All this is an obtuse way of saying that I've got nothing to say.
I have been at work, though! I found a new web space for my photo page. Which means that I'll be able to post more photos and such, in addition to meaning that all of my old photos that were up on the internet previously are now accessible. I still need to update the main page, though. It's http://www.freewebtown.com/donaldlatif for those of you who didn't catch that link up above. Go check it out, and confirm that it's just like you remembered it! I'm excited.
The new album's almost done. I have a feeling that my next post will have a sweet link to a whole bunch more music by me.

Back in Potsdam

I finally made it back to my hometown. The ol' permanent residence. Among the changes here: there's a new wine bar downtown. The CD store/cafe has become the CD store AND the cafe. I have an apartment in a house across the yard instead of my old bedroom. Other than that, it's pretty much like I left it. That's one of the things to love about this place. It's so calm and detached and changeless. Although Walmart's coming to steal it all away from us. People here as everywhere are all to willing to throw their money away and out of the county/state on cheap shit that they don't need or that will break. But enough about that.
I won that CosmoGIRL contest. Thanks for voting for me, for those of you who did. Now I need to win a big one, that happens in May. So come May, go out to CosmoGIRL's Web Site and vote for me every day (or as much as you can if it's more than that) until I win a thousand bucks. Come on, people. It's going to be awesome. Let's give Macalester College a name in the world of people who are socially acceptable. I'm in it for the college, really.
Presently, I'm working construction, which is great in that it's satisfying, meaningful work. It's just that you're always sore and tired, and usually hungry. But it's good, in the way an office job will never really be.
It's time to go eat lots of food.

I'm in Toronto. It's 12:30 AM. I wish that I could say that I'm doing something super-edifying, like reading poetry or writing songs. But I'm not. Not really. I'm in the final stretch of this funny online competition where I'm voted hot or not by teenage girls (see last post). Fabulous. My competitor (his name is Dawson. I mean, come on) cheats, but I've got a lot of good friends watching out for me. I'm still in the running.
I put up a new track for you all to listen to. I've got an album shaping up here. Anybody want to do cover art?
Toronto! Once apon a time, a friend (his name is Tom) and I were trying to get from Montreal to the hamlet of Potsdam, where we reside(ed?). But starting in Montreal, all of the highway signs pointed to Toronto. "Toronto, 400 million km" and the like. Toronto... Toronto... Toronto... But no United States. It's like they don't want you to find it!
But once you're here in Toronto, it's agreeable enough. My dad has a wonderful apartment in the super-nice part of town, so I feel privelaged simply by walking out of the front door. Been spending my time taking in movies, lazing about, coolin' out maxin' relaxin' all cool and all shootin' some b-ball out by the pool. There's a spa. And a gym. Boo-ya!
Thanks for votin' in this contest, to those of you who did. Congrats to Kjerstin, who's getting married!!! The first, the trend-setter. Way to go, lovely. You guys are awesome.
And that's our show for the day. As it says on the lid of the mayonnaise jar, "Keep cool. Don't freeze."

Battle of the Boys

The States, baby! Yeah! I'm back. And, actually, I'm not techincally in the States. I'm in Canada. You know, the *other* country in America the North. It took me going through Utrecht, Amsterdam, Boston, and New York to get here. Not to mention Potsdam, which is the ol' home town, through which I passed yesterday to get to Ottawa, where I am now. I'm going to Toronto on Sunday and then back to Potsdam to work like a dog and eat like a king.
Boring! Let's see... what's not boring?
First off, big fat props to friends Theo Marks and Mintje Whose Last Name I Do Not Know and Pascale LaFountain amd Ryan Greer for letting me stay in their places along the way. Without you wonderful people I would have starved and frozen and generally been uncomfortable and tired all of last week.
I made a couple of calls to the States from the Amsterdam airport and it cost me over $100. Watch out for making credit card calls anywhere at any time. You will be violated, in a quite uncomfortable way. Fortunately for me, I just found out that it wasn't $200 (!), because apparently some of the exceedingly large charges made to my card were fraudulent, which is rockin'. But not too rockin'. I'm still hurting.
Big news! I've been entered into CosmoGIRL's (a magazine for young teen girls, naturally) Battle of the Boys contest. It's like one of those hot or not contests, where you choose between two guys and decide who's hotter. But if I win, I get $1000. So on march 28, every one of you need to go to:
http://www.cosmogirl.com/guys/battleoftheboys/competitors/0,,,00.html
and vote for me, so that I win. That would be sweet in so many ways.
Anwyay, more stories will trickle out later, as always, but I wanted to put something down now that I'm home and the internet's stable.

Today worked out pretty well. We slept until around 11:00 (which is unusual for me, almost entirely unheard-of for Anna). After a breakfast of sweet condiments (jam and nutella) on toastie breads, Anna went to the gym (she signed up there a couple of days ago to combat the eventual boredom when I leave town), and I went to get emails with the computer. I sat myself in a good spot in the sun close to home and thought "wouldn't it be great if I got the internet here?" and I checked and I did! Score. So I figured out how I'm going to get back to the States, precisely. I leave in a week.
!
A week! Crazy!
And I uploaded a couple of new songs.
It was such a beautiful day we decided that we couldn't spend it indoors. We made up some chorizo sausage-and-gouda-on -baguette sandwiches, got a bottle of wine, I grabbed my guitar, and we went to sit in the park. Some wine and sandwiches later, I pulled out my guitar and I'm strumming and singing, and this group of three people about our age come over and just sort of hang around while I'm playing. This happens often, so I payed it no mind. Then they started humming, at first softly, so that I barely noticed, then louder. I offered them some wine and we sat there and I played and they sang and we drank wine. It was so warm that I was wearing sandals, and I had to take off my overshirt.
Since then, I've been sleeping. Chili for dinner and now off to a friend's to watch a movie. Worked out pretty well for a Wednesday.

Hey, this is pretty cool.
My friend Paulo put up some of the Ugly By Now stuff on a web site called ccmixer.org, where people can trade samples. Then some other guys took samples from my guitar and put them into their own tracks. There's this one and this one. I'm so flattered right now.
Also, I'm appearing, apparently, in the June/July American edition of CosmoGIRL! See if y'all can spot me.
cheers,
Donald

If you're reading this, it means that Anna and I just got back from our (just over a) week-long trip to Brussels and Venice. We can do that, you know, because we're in Europe. And you're (most likely) in the States. So there!
I'm probably glad that I'm back on a real computer, instead of an internet cafe one. I'm probably desperately trying to record a few more tracks before I lose access to the recording setup that I've got here (somebody else's computer). I'm also probably packing and mentally preparing for my return to the States, which will happen in a couple of weeks.
We probably had a wonderful time, visiting monuments you'll not see soon and eating food to which you wish you had regular access. Things like real pommes frites and Belgian beer and real Italian food from real Italians. Aah; a place where a soda is assumed to be an Italian Soda. Just like how toast here is French toast (not really) and kisses here are implied to be French as well (I haven't done any research into the matter). Beats Freedom Kisses any day of the week. But possibly not Hershey Kisses. Especially those caramel center ones that they've got.
At any rate, it's probably good to be home, even though the trip was probably really sweet and edifying and exhilarating and such. Please write, because we're probably lonely/sick of each other after a week together with nobody else. But don't write physical letters to me, because they'll get here about the moment I reach the States. If you want to write them, send them to the Potsdam address. But now I'm really getting ahead of myself, aren't I?
-Donald 02.16.2005

-Update 02.27.2005
Yes. All of what I wrote before I left is true. I would like to add that pizza in Italy is a billion times better than pizza in any other country. The trip was really great, mostly involving walking around for twelve hours a day, pausing only for local food treats (see above). Three weeks or so left in Montpellier! So begins the crazy countdown, where time loses its relativity and all of your experiences seem like a blur. Followed by culture shock on re-entry, then eventual boredom, followed by renewed desire to leave the country again. Boy, I really have a tendency to get ahead of myself these days!
-D