Jacob's Land of Bliss and Blisters

Today's Post Is Not Here

2009-11-15T20:11:00.001-05:00

I've written my post for today elsewhere. If you know how to find my baby blog, you'll see today's post there. If you don't, well, let's just say you can take a break from my month-long onslaught today.

Dreams of Africa

2009-11-14T18:33:00.002-05:00

And now for something a little different.

In case you can't view the video or can't understand the narration, here's what I'm reading:

Some days I feel like getting on a plane and flying to Africa. I'd disembark in Nairobi and drive north through the savanna, the baobab and acacia, the giant migrating herds and the packs that follow them with grumbling bellies until I get to the highlands of Ethiopia. There I'd hang a slight right at Addis Ababa, still heading mostly north until I get to Dessie. There it'd be another right and a 150 miles where I'd stop there in the desert, pick up my phone and call my wife to say, "I'm in Djibouti." I think my life would feel complete then and I could die, finally, without regret.

She's Gone Again

2009-11-13T08:04:00.005-05:00

She was in my class a year ago and she hated me. I was relieved on those days she didn't bother to show up. She was angry and I never could really find out the source, but she took it out on everyone, including me. She was one of those who was offended by polite questions, requests, and redirection. She only lasted a few weeks before she dropped out of school. I can't say I hated her. I won't lie and say I've never hated a student. I've hated a few. It's a simple fact, one most of us try to pretend is false, that some people are just bad and it starts to show pretty early on. I didn't think she was one of those people. But I was glad when she was gone. I couldn't find a way to break through and show her that I wasn't one of the bad guys in her life and the class was much easier to teach without her. She left, and another girl left, and the class turned into one of my best.

That's why I worried a bit when I saw her name on my roster at the beginning of this year. She showed up that first day, dead-eyed and looking like she would be as unpleasant as ever, but as the days passed I realized that the attitude was gone. Smiles replaced grimaces. An A average replaced the 12 she had the first time around. I actually liked having her in my class. She made me feel like a teacher. My class was her favorite, she said, and I thought maybe I had actually reached a student, helped change their life for the better. She gave me a boost, made me feel like a real teacher, made it easier to come to school each morning.

Only, she stopped coming to school a few weeks back. When she did bother to show up, the good attitude had faded. She now longer took out her bitterness on me. She'd been in class long enough to know that I was one of the good guys. She just didn't care about school anymore. I tried to get her focus back where it should be, but it didn't work. Eventually, she stopped coming at all. I still set her work for her on her desk every day thinking she may come back, but her sister dropped by today to tell me she was probably gone for good.

She wasn't the first kid who convinced me that maybe I could make a difference, who made me temporarily feel like I was doing something worthwhile, but every time I think I may have reached a kid this seems to happen. They go to jail. They just can't hack the stress of school. Their home life just sucks to much. They or parts of their life out of their control always manage to screw things up for them in the end. The only ones I can truly seem to help are the ones who didn't really need it to start with.

The Passing of an Era

2009-11-12T11:28:00.003-05:00

I'm aware that yesterday's post sucked. You don't need to point this out. That's just one of the side effects of NaBloPoMo. Sometimes you just have to shove out a post that's as stupid at the event's nickname.

It would seem that the last of my purebred araucana chickens is dead. Long live the last of my purebred araucana chickens. I have no hard evidence of this, of course. Unlike the normal poultry-based loss at my house, there was no stiffened corpse or ripped-apart carcass for me to find when I went out to feed the birds one afternoon. I just haven't seen the little black hen with the ear tufts and no tail for more than a week now. I'm assuming that this means that one of the neighborhood foxes (we have both reds and grays in the area) or a large owl or hawk swooped in and carried her away.

The weird thing is that there weren't even any feathers or a sign of a struggle in my back yard. If I were a TV police detective, this would suggest to me that the killer was someone the hen knew and trusted. I really doubt this hen was stupid enough to trust a fox. The more likely answer is that chickens tend to be pretty damn deep sleepers and whatever took her just plucked her from her perch and trotted or flew away. I guess the ducks could have been involved as they once shared a back yard and would have been familiar and known for peaceful behavior, but the ducks are too fat to fly over the fence now and they lack the appendages to open the gate. They don't even have thumbs. How are they going to work the latch? We're not talking archeopteryx here.

For those not good with paleontology humor, archeopteryx was one of the first animals considered a bird or at least a link between dinosaurs and birds. They still had gripping claws on their wings. Perhaps they could have opened the latch on the gate, but they don't exist anymore. Being extinct kind of rules you out in a murder mystery. Of course the hoatzin still exists and also has claws on its wings, but its claws are pretty pathetic. I'm pretty sure it'd be unable to work the latch even if I did live in the Amazon basin. Also, ducks are neither archeopteryx or hoatzin, which was my original point.

Either way, this kind of sucks because I spent over a hundred bucks a couple of years ago to buy the small flock of purebred araucanas I had for a while. Unfortunately, they brought with them a respiratory infection that wiped out most of my other birds and over the past two years I've had most of them gradually just die (like chickens are want to do) or be killed by wild and domesticated animals.

Honestly, I'm kind of over the whole chicken thing. It's a pain in the ass to keep them fed and watered when I'm away, and I tend to be away when I don't have to work. Luckily, I'm pretty much down to the the pullets and cockerels that the little black hen hatched back in the summer and these buggers are fairly wild. I can't get close to them and they fly over the backyard fence at will and have managed to survive several visits by my parents' dogs, who gladly kill chickens when they can catch them. Considering the fact that the ducks turned out to be safer when I let them roam free than when I put them up for the night (we lost half of them in the span of a week when I penned them up at night and haven't lost one since I stopped bothering), and the last of the chickens are half wild, I'm thinking I'm just going to let them be. If something gets them, well, it's just a chicken and these were free. If they live out four or five years before they finally kick the bucket, well, then they deserved it.

And If I die of some mutated strain of bird flu that finally managed to make the jump from birds to humans effectively and lethally, then I'll just chalk that up to irony. If I want to consider myself a writer, I have to be willing to die for irony.

Happy Veterans Day

2009-11-11T16:27:00.002-05:00

Today is Veterans Day and I have to admit that in recent generations, there aren't that many in my family, especially if you use the narrower definition of veteran that requires a person have served in combat to earn that title. My mom's parents were too young to be involved with World War II and too old for Korea. Her dad was in the Navy and Merchant Marines, but wasn't old enough to join until after the war had ended. He did spend some time in occupied Japan, though.

My dad's parents were almost a decade older, however, and his dad actually did serve in the Marines while the World War II was still ongoing. Still, I never much thought of him as a veteran. First, he rarely mentioned his time in the war and whenever he or anyone else ever talked about it they usually described him as having spent the entire time in the Philippines peeling potatoes. He had run off at a younger age to Atlanta to join the military, but his dad chased him down and dragged him back home to wait until he was drafted. By then, the war was winding down and Granddaddy didn't get deployed until many of the Pacific islands had been largely cleared of the Japanese. He did occasionally tell the story of his first day at boot camp. He'd never learned to swim and he said during physicals the sergeant threw him in the pool, he passed out, sank to the bottom, and when he woke up he was in uniform on a ship without a speck of land in sight.

Of course it doesn't mean that I don't respect what veterans have done to keep the rest of us safe just because my granddad wasn't what we typically think of veterans. K's grandfather had a much more distinguished military career than any of my grandparents. He was injured twice by shrapnel, once in the leg and once in the face. One of those times came shortly after he stormed the beach on D-Day. I never would have thought it only knowing him in his old age as I did, but the guy had apparently been a badass during the war. Guys like him are the reason for this holiday. Even now when I don't exactly think many of the wars after World War II were fully justified, I fully respect the risks and sacrifices veterans make.

Of course, it hasn't always just been the soldiers who worked so the rest of us could stay safe. My dad's mother actually was a Rosie the Riveter. The only way that descriptor could have fit more literally was if she had actually been named Rosie. She spent the war putting rivets into bombers at a factory in Atlanta, so when I tip back a beer in honor of the veterans today I'll have her in mind as well as people like K's grandfather and, yes, even mine.

I'm Just so Cool

2009-11-10T17:05:00.003-05:00

By the time most of you read this, John Allen Muhammad should be dead. If you don't recognize the name, Muhammad was the elder of the two Beltway Snipers who killed 10 people around Washington, DC, in October 2002. He is due to meet the executioner just hours after I post this.

There are a few times in my life when I say something out loud and then a while later I am shocked at my own prescience and appalled at my friends' and family's inability to hang on my every word. First (and perhaps more compelling), I declared that Barack Obama would be the first black president while he was still giving his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention for John Kerry's run for president. I actually said this out loud while sitting at the copy desk at the newspaper where I worked at the time. It may be hard to remember this now, but Obama at the time was still an Illinois state legislator and I was watching the damn speech on mute while I worked. What I did was freaking mind blowing. Unfortunately, four years later when Obama actually won, no one remembered me saying this. Stupid piss ants.

Another amazing encounter with my inner clairvoyant came during the 2002 shooting spree. This took several weeks to unfold and when news of the first deaths started rolling out, I made a joke along the lines of "It seems unfair that all of the good serial killers are white. This seems to be unfair discrimination. Why aren't there any black serial killers?"

Then a couple of weeks later it turned out that the two killers were, in fact, black and it kind of looked like I controlled the world there for a few seconds. But seriously, if I could control the world, I seriously hope it wouldn't be limited to dictating the race of serial killers. I'd like to think that I'd focus more on ending poverty and ignorance or something.

Then again, I've done very little of importance with the limited abilities I actually have, so who knows.

Thank God It Was the 90s

2009-11-09T08:26:00.003-05:00

I've been sitting on this story for a while now. I'm sure it will entertain, but considering the nature of it, I've always been a little hesitant to share it in this fairly public medium. See, in high school, I have reason to believe that I was on an FBI watch list for domestic terrorists.

It all started when I was in high school and I went to the post office to get a PO box for me and my friends to share. I'm not entirely sure why I decided this would be a good idea. Perhaps it was because I wanted to get porn without having to worry about my parents finding it in the mail, although I never actually ordered any porn, so that seems unlikely. More likely was that I wanted a separate address for the two e-zines I published at the time and it would give me a little more privacy with my mail order purchases of CDs. There was no real need for this, but I was a teenager. I hid things from my parents I didn't even need to hide.

This in itself was no problem. I'm now a little surprised that the United States Postal Service just allows teenagers to rent boxes like that, but they did. The problems started when the only box number left was 666. This is a superstitious area, so why the local post office had that number at all is strange. A lot of tall buildings don't even have a 13th floor. Why does the post office have a PO Box 666?

Next came the bombs. First, one of my friends had a demolitions supply catalog shipped to our PO box and I brought it to school to give to him. Unfortunately, during band class the catalog slipped behind my saxophone case and the assistant band director found it later in the day. Considering the facts that many of the items for sale in the catalog were intended to blow things up, my friend had used the name James Hetfield, lead singer of Metallica, and the address was PO Box 666, he felt the need to turn this in to the administration.

The next day we were called into the office and had to talk to the school resource police officer about the situation. Nothing really happened to us. We were excellent students who never got into trouble and I honestly think my friend got the catalog entirely to satisfy his curiosity. Seeing whether they'd send a catalog of explosives to a 16-year-old may have been the main goal, even.

The scarier bomb-related instance had nothing to do with the PO Box, which we discontinued after the demolitions catalog incident. This instance had to do with the bombing of Wal-Mart. Most of my friends were in the band and on the afternoon before we were to leave for a road trip, a couple of my friends and I drove over to Wal-Mart to waste some of the time we had between the end of school and the time we had to be back to load up the buses. When we got to the store, the power in the building was out, so we got back in the car and drove away. So far, so good. It wasn't until the next Monday when we were called in to the police station to be interviewed by a detective for the bombing of Wal-Mart that we even knew anything had happened that afternoon. Apparently, not long after we left, someone pulled up to the front of the store, opened their door, and rolled out a two-liter bottle containing aluminum foil and an acidic cleaning product that exploded next to the lawnmowers.

Now, I will say emphatically that we had nothing to do with this. In fact, we didn't even have to get our stories straight because we just had to tell the truth of what happened and the stories would already be straight. The informant who fingered my friend as the one who had been driving said the car had driven past the front of the building, slowed down, and then had driven out the side entrance. We had parked near the back of the parking lot and had just gone straight out the front entrance without ever passing near the front of the builidng. We were as innocent as could be in the case...

Except that we had been messing around with similar explosives using aluminum foil and household chemicals. We'd heard about some of our classmates getting probation for making these things and then sticking them in people's mail boxes. We agreed that was pretty stupid, but thought trying them ourselves would be smart. I can't really vouch for my practical intelligence during this time period. Anyway, we were cowards, so we used 20-oz bottles instead of two-liters and we always made ours out in the woods as far away from people and pets as possible and we only made a handful on one occasion. I'll admit it was stupid because there was no way to know exactly how long it would take the thing to blow or any way to stop it if something or someone got too close while the pressure inside was building, but it's too late to change that now. By the time the Wal-Mart thing happened, we'd not even thought about these things for months. Combine that with the fact that we'd gotten caught with a demolitions catalog a year earlier and the fact that we had nothing to do with the bombing felt a little irrelevant. I was already a blossoming liberal. I didn't exactly trust the legal system to not wrongly convict me. I mean, if they could put an innocent guy on death row on occasion, they could surely put me on probation for a bomb I didn't make. After all, we had been there around the time of the incident and an eye witness had identified our driver by name as having driven the group of people who did this.

Luckily, the detective believed us and let us all go without any problem. It helped that the eye witness was known by the cops to be untrustworthy on occasion. We were lucky with the timing, though. I'm not so sure the cops would have been so lackadaisical had this happened in 2002 instead of the late 1990s. Unfortunately, I've always had the feeling that my dad really didn't believe us, but didn't really care. That always struck me as a little weird.

Please Shut Up

2009-11-08T21:32:00.002-05:00

I'm not sure what the deal is, but E has been screaming for about an hour each morning for the past month or so. This usually only applies to weekdays because he's upset that we can't give him much attention while we get ready for work. By we, I should clarify that I mean my wife. He wants nothing to do with me when he's tired, upset, or sick. The kid loves me when life is good, but when life is only fair to middling at best, he wants his mama.

Today was the rare exception of the extended morning fit pitching on a weekend. K was able to get up with him and when she tried to get him some breakfast he started a fit that lasted for what seemed like a good hour. I was still trying to sleep off my late night from yesterday's Atlanta blitz, and at one point I picked him up and told him that if he needed something or wanted something he needs to tell us and we'll get it for him. Otherwise, he needed to just get over it. Then I put him in his room and told him he could come out when he stopped crying. This was about 8 a.m.

I woke up again just before 1 p.m. K said that she could hear him whining for a while after I stuck him in his room and when she thought he'd calmed down enough, she went in and was able to finally get him to eat. He was wonderful the rest of the day.

It's just really strange to me how the kid won't even fight being put to bed at night, but being alive in the morning can be such a hassle. We're not even waking him up. He wakes up around 6:30 every morning and comes out of his room on his own. I'm just ready for this phase to be through.

Foosball's the Debil

2009-11-07T23:59:00.001-05:00

Today featured me spending eight hours on the road for a four hour football game. Frequent commenter Julie and her husband invited me to a Georgia Tech game today. Actually, they invited me and my wife, but my mother-in-law was in town this weekend so Kim had to stay behind while I went off and partied. This is a short post because I want to get to bed now, but here's a list of what I like and what I didn't like about today's blitzkrieg football outing:

I liked:

Getting away from home for a bit.
Seeing a game at Bobby Dodd Stadium for the first time in years.
Being able to scream and yell and jump up and down like you only can when you're in a stadium.
That the weather was absolutely perfect for me, especially once the sun went down.
Tech winning.
Getting to see Julie and Matt and even Courtney and Mickey after the game.

I disliked:

The fact that it seemed like the refs were trying to screw Tech out of the win.
The fact that Tech required overtime to finish what should have been an easy win.
The fact that the gas station in Duluth didn't have sunflower seeds so I had to pop Jolly Ranchers to keep myself alert on the late-night drive home.
The fact that I also had to use the restroom of that gas station with a line of impatient people waiting on me. It's bad enough having to use a gas station restroom without having to answer repeated knocks on the door.

I have to say the fact that Wake Forest's defenders seemed to possess an unnatural ability to make tackles while lying on their stomachs with a Tech player sitting on top of them did not fit into either category. It was frustrating watching plays that should have been huge gains end up only going for a yard or two one multiple occasions because these guys kept getting open field tackles while on the ground, but it was impressive to watch. I'm not kidding. Grobe must run a belly tackle drill in practice or something. If Wake Forest's defenders had played the entire game from their stomachs they wouldn't have given up a point.

Screw proofreading. I'm sleepy.

NSFW

2009-11-06T10:18:00.003-05:00

Yesterday's post sucked, didn't it? You don't have to be polite. I'm perfectly aware that Thursday was a big freaking letdown after the beauty I managed to craft on Wednesday, but this shit is going to happen. I have to post every day this month or I will feel like less of a man, and my penis is very important to me. I have no idea why I think my penis or your perception of it can be affected by how well I stick to NaBloPoMo, but it's what I feel and one should always follow one's heart. My heart says that a man's value is entirely in his penis and when he loses that, he's got nothing in this world.

But enough of that. I had intended to make yesterday's post more self-deprecating. I'm perfectly aware I'm not really as good at calling college football games as I think I am. Sure, I get it right frequently enough that if I were putting money on these picks that I'd actually end up coming out well ahead at the end of the season, but that's only because I'm not putting any money on it. The second I placed a real set of bets, I know I'd somehow manage to blow every pick. I'm not a gambler. Never will be. Despite that, I start getting a big head every time I see the green "correct" pop up next to one of my picks. It's all too easy to ignore the fact that my success is at least half based on luck. It's true that having a little bit of knowledge gives you a decided advantage, but I don't really even pay attention to things like type of defense and how well the other offense plays against teams with that sort of defense. I just look at past performance and generalize that to the future and follow my gut. The only problem with that is that anyone who thinks their gut actually knows what it's talking about is an idiot. People really suck at perceiving reality and assessing risk. Our guts are actually mentally challenged.

And that's why I am a jackass, but at least I still have my penis.

This Is about Football

2009-11-05T11:18:00.002-05:00

Sometime later today I'm going to be making my college football picks for the week. I've participated in a college pick 'em league for the past five or so years and after the first year, I've always done really well. I've won the league twice (including last year) and I usually finish in the top five in a 20+ deep league. Now, college football isn't exactly the most evenly matched sport in the world. If we were to just pick winners, everyone would pick the favorite and leave it at that. Upsets are pretty rare in college ball. That's why everyone gets so excited about them. To make it more interesting, the league I'm in picks against the spread, which Yahoo! gets from some Vegas betting group. This makes the game much harder. For example, everyone knows that Ohio State was going to beat New Mexico State, but would the Buckeyes win by more than 44 points? That's a tough decision. Until that game, OSU had not even scored 40 points in a game and they'd played some pretty lousy teams. I picked NMSU to beat the spread. I was wrong. OSU won 45-0. One lucky stop by New Mexico State, a field goal by the Aggies, or even a shanked field goal attempt by the Buckeyes, and I made my pick. Despite unlucky picks like that, I'm still picking at about 56% accuracy.

One of the reasons I usually do so well is that I watch a shit-ton of football most falls. I know to bet against Ohio State because I know that the Sweater Vest is too conservative of a coach and won't score enough to beat the spread. I'm also starting to apply this rule to Tennessee. Lane Kiffin is a cowardly coach, unwilling to take the risks (like going for it on fourth and short in the other team's territory) that inspire the players. Actually, if you buy into statistics or are a fan of Gregg Easterbrook, going for it on fourth and short in those situations isn't taking a risk. It's actually the more logical decision. The problem is that if you go for it there and fail, people blame the coach. If you punt there and fail, people blame the players. Coaches who kick in this situation are hamstringing their team in order to save face. Despite the fact that Kiffin is willing run his mouth off like a jackass, he coaches like a pansy. Tressel is much more respectable, but he's still a pansy.

It's just that this year is actually a let down so far. I usually pick at well over 60% accuracy and I'm currently sitting at 11th place out of 21. My problem this year is that I'm just not getting to watch enough football. I've only had two weeks in which I was able to sit in front of the TV all day like God intended and watch every game available to me. Because of that, I don't understand the dynamics of this year's game well enough to succeed as I should. When I should have been watching the Big 10 Network or whatever game was on Versus, I was playing tennis or going to concerts. You know, living my life. How stupid of me.

The Saddest Clown in the World

2009-11-04T11:26:00.003-05:00

No, Courtney, this post isn't really about clowns. It's safe for you to keep reading.

I think the saddest person in the world has to be a coke fiend with a sinus infection. You may counter that, in fact, a heroin junky with collapsed veins would be the saddest person in the world, but those people are freaking resourceful. They will find a way to get that brownstone into their system. In fact, I would argue that heroin addicts are quintessential Americans in that regard.

Cocaine users, on the other hand, could just switch to crack and smoke it, something that wouldn't be affected much by their clogged sinuses, but those who use cocaine have too much pride to lower themselves to using the upper alternative of the poor. These people wear fancy clothes, suits to work, and drive their one-night-stands home in fancy cars. They can't be caught fondling a crack pipe!

You may also try to counter that smokers facing a new government cigarette tax are the saddest people in the world. This is patently not true. They're just the whiniest people in the world. Cocaine addicts with sinus infections are much more sad.

Why am I rambling on about cocaine users with sinus infections, you ask? Let's just say that if I had saved and weighed all of the issue blown forth from my nostrils these past few days that I'm not sure that I'd be exaggerating if I said it would have been measured in pounds. This is the sort of thing I think about while blowing my nose.

I am in no way implying that I use or have used cocaine. I think I've made it clear in the past that if I were to take illegal drugs, I would much prefer downers over uppers.

I'm All for Secularism, but Jesus, France!

2009-11-03T10:43:00.002-05:00

France recently convicted the leaders of Scientology in the country of fraud. Now, I'm for criticizing and mocking the Church of Scientology as much as the next guy, but for some reason I get a bit squeamish when a government takes legal action against them. I believe in separation of church and state and I think that the government should be indifferent toward organized religion. Basically, the state shouldn't care if religion exists or not. This may sound like a very anti-religion opinion, but in fact, I believe governmental indifference is actually good for religion, at least if you're not the dominant religion in the country. Once a government takes interest in religion, they start to take sides on the issue and the result is either governmental control or influence on religion or an infiltration of government by the dominant religion at the expense of minority believers.

Of course I understand that Scientology is a unique case. A lot of what it does makes it come across as a bunch of sleazy snake oil salesmen looking to make their company billions of dollars rather than the supposed goals of "real" religions in fostering world peace, entrance into the good afterlife, and personal improvement. The problem here is that Scientology is really only an extreme version of many traditional religions. They encourage members to give as much money as possible to the church with either the implied or explicit message that doing so will help one's chances at happiness now or after death. They use outlandish stories* to scare or amaze their members enough to keep them in the fold. Now, I'm not accusing the corner Baptist church of taking advantage of its members in a cynical scheme for profit (although I will accuse the average televangelist of that). I honestly believe the people running most churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples are sincere in their belief that what they're doing is right. Still, to an outside observer, an unbeliever, how different is the taking of offerings and the verses about tithing in the Bible all that different from what the Church of Scientology does? The level of pressure and amounts of money changing hands differ, but that's a matter of scale, not substance.

Basically, what I'm saying is that if we allow them to go after Scientology, what's to stop them in the future for going after smaller, but more mainstream denominations? No religious leader can prove for a fact that what he preaches is real. The law isn't supposed to work on faith. Of course, I understand that if we allow too much religious freedom that we end up giving cover to criminals to operate in the open without any way for us to stop them. That's why I'm ambivalent about this more than angry.

Also, I think in France's case the attacks on religious clothing (something that usually affects Muslims more than anyone else) and the governmental agency that fights cults have more to do with protecting traditional French culture that it does with protecting a secular government. After all, what is a cult except a small religion? There is no real way to define it, and France doesn't currently even try. Instead, they define the actions that can lead a religious organization into getting in trouble.

In other words, France, you need to stop worrying about what your citizens believe and worry more about the fact that they're putting a McDonald's in the Louvre.

* I'll admit that the stories of Christianity don't sound that weird to me, but then I grew up in that religion in a culture where it was dominant. Still, even I have to admit there's a lot of stuff there that wouldn't make a lick of sense if I were to read them through only the lens of my personal experience with the world. I'm using this as an example of why it's hard to legally distinguish between religions and not as a critique of any religion or its believers.

I Think I Have a Hole in My Sock

2009-11-02T11:30:00.002-05:00

I think I have a hole over the big toe of my right sock today. I know it wasn't there when I put the sock on this morning, so my toe must have worn through the threads in that area sometime after I put my shoes on and before I started writing this post. This annoys me and will be on my mind for the rest of the day until I can get home and remove the offending sock. Of course, I will not throw away the sock. It will remain in use until a hole is worn into the other side, but it will not be worn on the right foot ever again.

I have very sensitive feet. My wife and parents have always made fun of me for how long it takes for me to put on my socks with all of the fine adjustments I make before I'm satisfied. When I was little, I'd refuse to wear any socks that had the seam going over the toes instead of at the end of the toes because of the way it felt. I gradually got over that little hang up, but I'm still picky about just where the bumps and ridges of the seam lie on my foot. Millimeters out of place and I'll be driven crazy with the urge to remove my shoe and start all over again.

I blame my parents for this. I've always assumed that my obsession with the comfort of my feet came from the fact that I was raised half-wild. I rarely wore shoes, and I'm willing to bet I spent the large majority of my preschool childhood without any shoes on my feet. At home now as an adult I still go barefoot. No shoes, no socks, just the skin of my soles against the hardwood floor. I'll put on flip flops to go feed the chickens because I don't like the idea of walking around in chicken shit, but that's about as far as it goes. As a kid, it was even worse. My mom stayed home with my sister and me before I started Kindergarten and I never attended a preschool. At home there was never any reason to wear shoes. We lived way out in the country and the sandy soil and grass didn't have many things to bring discomfort to a couple of unshod kids. Putting on shoes was only for going into town to the store or, later on, to go to school.

Now I have feet of iron on the bottom, able to cross gravel driveways without the protection of artificial rubber soles, but the tops still don't like to be imprisoned, leaving me with days like this when an unexpected hole in a sock annoys the crap out of me.

National Blog Posting Month Is Back

2009-11-01T21:09:00.004-05:00

I didn't really think I'd bother with NaBloPoMo this year, but I've been getting annoyed with how hard it has been to get myself to show up and write a decent blog post lately. Writing frequently is good for me and for my writing and unless I have an audience (or can fool myself into thinking that I have an audience) that's hard for me to do. I wasn't able to do the National Novel Writing Month with Chris, so I decided to go back to my roots when I saw that friend and even bigger blog slacker Courtney was doing NaBloPoMo. The first time I did NaBloPoMo was in 2007 and I pretty much wrote a post every day between then and Dec. 31 last year because of it. I don't expect that sort of production to follow this year, but I would like to get back to something better than a post or two a week like it's been lately.

You're So Lame

2009-10-30T07:47:00.002-04:00

I wanted to say that the sky was a painting, the clouds grand surrealist brush strokes mixing with Rembrandt light, but everyone uses that metaphor of the sunset as art. I won't let myself make that tired old figure of speech. I'm too self conscious, too worried that I'll be seen as just another derivative hack.

Instead I'll just say this: The sky is cliché.

I Long for Sweet, Sweet Death

2009-10-28T10:11:00.002-04:00

Isn't it sad that all it takes is a bit of a head cold for one to question whether death is really so bad?

Maybe it's just me who jumps straight to the life-is-shit point of view as soon as my sinuses clog with inflammation and excess mucus. This may make me sound like a whiny little wuss, and I probably am, but I honestly tend to deal with discomfort fairly well. I didn't see the need to take pain medication for a severe ankle sprain or the surgical removal of my wisdom teeth. It really just didn't hurt bad enough to put up with that foggy feeling brought on by the pain meds. It took me three days to decide that shooting pains starting in my neck and bringing weakness to my right leg was bad enough to require a trip to the doctor. I didn't even complain about it. I couldn't move for a couple of days, but you didn't hear me complain.

My wife seems to think she deals with discomfort better than I do, but I think it's really more of her believing that old saying about women dealing with discomfort better than men. I'll admit my wife was a total bad ass when she was delivering our son, but here are the ailments that brought a mild complaint from me in the past couple of years: Pneumonia, multiple bouts of strep throat (the same disease that offed Mozart), and a herniated disk in my neck. Here are the types of things that caused my wife to worry that she was dying: tummy aches and moderate muscle soreness after she spent 30 minutes on an elliptical machine. I've got a feeling that taking a day off work because the flesh at the back of my throat is being eaten away by a colony of mean-spirited bacteria, or because the swollen connective tissue in my neck is pressing against my spinal chord isn't exactly overreacting to the circumstances.

But getting back to the cold thing, yes, I am a wimp in this regard. Honestly, even I find it a little strange that I find strep throat less of an inconvenience than a decent head cold. Part of it, I guess, is that strep throat gets to a point where the pain is so bad that the brain finally just goes, "Fuck it. I'm ignoring any signals from the throat until that stupid bastard stops complaining about his annoying house guests." Seriously, I've gone to the doctor before with strep, they asked how bad it hurts, and I responded "it hurt pretty bad yesterday, but today I don't really feel anything." That's usually followed by, "Oh my god! It looks like ground beef back there. That should hurt." See, I'm such a bad ass that I even shock middle-aged medical professionals with my badassery, but give me some swelling of the sinus membranes, ramp up mucus production, and give me a bit of a cough and I'm wishing I could die.

Oh god, I want to die.

since feeling is first

2009-10-19T11:05:00.003-04:00

I hate that I'm starting to "get" e. e. cummings. I'm not really sure the old anti-capitalizationist was actually a good writer or if he was more like Gertrude Stein in that he came through during a period when being weird and/or an asshole was enough to convince the contemporary intelligentsia that you were a genius of great proportions.

I hate teaching this crap, though. It's barely more than gibberish to me. To the kids, gibberish would probably make more sense.

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other:then
laugh,leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

I don't really care too much about poetry in general. Most of it is either stilted or self-serving, although I will admit to digging on the occasional piece of verse. I actually love that William Carlos Williams bit. It's such a subtle fuck-you. The coldness of sentiment in that one has even sparked a fairly active parody scene on the net. Really funny stuff. This American Life even had a segment dedicated to the poem and parodies created by their contributors. If you check out that last link, fast forward to the 50th minute. It'll be worth your time if you haven't heard it before. I know I've linked it before.

I do admire the way the best poets can pack so much meaning into so few words. They don't fall into my personal trap of writing the idea into the ground until it has lost more meaning than it conveys. As for my own writing, I eschew poetry for the most part. I tend to prefer prose. It better fits my disposition, I think. If I were a poet, I'd have to learn to get to the point and quit. I can never seem to do either.

I will write the occasional prose poem, though; if you're a regular reader of this blog, you've probably read several, although you may have not realized that was my intent.

So, to finish, I'll end this ramble with a little stilted cheese of my own.

Driving West on I-16 at Dawn

I find it a little funny that no matter how fast I drive west that the tint of rose in my rear view mirror seems to expand and lighten just as fast as it would had I remained at home. Earth is so much larger than me, so much faster, so much more important. No matter how much I may wish I could keep the next morning from catching up to me, I always end up getting lapped.

By funny, maybe I mean sad.

Blood on the Bathroom Wall

2009-10-15T10:10:00.003-04:00

There's an arc of blood on the bathroom wall leading down to a trail of crimson drip marks stretching across the floor. The far sink is full of towels stained red from the cleanup after the fight.

This is one of the things I hate about working in a school full of rural or poor-neighborhood kids. They are 21st-century kids but they still live by a code of conduct from the paleolithic era. No insult can be ignored. Sticking up for yourself means being willing to throw a punch, even if it's just because the other guy called you a name or bumped into you in the hallway. The fathers even teach their sons to be this way. A kid can be punished at home for doing the right thing at school and walking away. We can't let ourselves raise cowards. It's better that we raise animals instead.

Each fight makes me angry. Fighting is stupid. Fighting is what a person does because they're too dumb to think of something more effective. Fighting is what animals do. It's what my dog does when a weaker dog tries to sneak a bite of his food. Humans don't have to work this way. In fact, what makes this attitude so horrible is that the real world, at least the real world we have in wealthy countries, doesn't work this way. You get in a fight at work, and you're fired. You get in a fight on the street as an adult and you're as likely to go to jail or be sued as you are to gain any respect. Fighting doesn't work.

Except that so many of these kids don't live in that real world. At home they have to deal with their own bullies. No one else has their back. My mom once taught a kid who went to sleep every night with a baseball bat so he could protect his mom from his step-dad when the old man came home drunk. I've taught students who were attacked by groups of other kids on the street for a perceived slight. They live with animals who sense weakness and attack when they do, so they have to be animals to survive.

It's a shame they don't realize that school is the one place they don't have to be that way. I teach in what is really a very safe school. There are adults here who really will have your back if you need it, but it's hard not to transfer the lessons you learn for 16 hours a day to the 8 hours a day when you don't need those lessons.

I understand why so many of these kids think this is just the way of life, but it's still really hard for me to feel it in my heart. I never needed to know how to fight. In nearly 30 years, I've never once had a reason to defend myself physically. There has only been one time in my entire life when I even threw a punch, and even then I saw that act as a personal failure. My dad and grandfather were proud of me. It proved to them that I was willing to stand up for myself, that I wasn't weak. To me, and to my mom, I think, it proved that I actually was weak, that I was not able to control my anger and deal with my problems in a more mature way.

I was in the eighth grade when I learned that the color of anger isn't red, but white. If my friends tell you the story of that day, I punched a guy in the face over a french fry, but that's not really the truth. The truth is that the guy had recently been a friend, but was a little too much of a bully. I had no reason to fear for my safety, but the guy was basically a jerk and I was getting tired of it. One day at lunch, he came over, sat next to me and stole a fry off of my tray. I didn't actually punch him for that. Instead, I told him to never do something like that again. He didn't take being told what to do very well, so he poked me in the chest and told me not to tell him what to do. The only thing is that he missed. Instead of the chest, he poked me in the throat, and I swung. I don't remember if I connected and I only remember swinging once. From the second I cocked my arm back, I only saw a wall of white and when my vision finally returned, I was already halfway to the office with a fat teacher yelling "Go to the office!" at my back. She must not have realized that I was already on my way to turn myself in. After spending the next three days in ISS, the other kids told me that I actually landed a few more fists on the guy's face before I stood up and slowly walked away. The other kid didn't throw a punch. I honestly think he was so shocked I did anything that he was paralyzed.

One could argue that because I was never really picked on by anyone after that "fight" that fighting was successful in my case, but that ignores the fact I was never really picked on before then, either. I was always one of the biggest guys in my class and bullies don't look for victims a head taller than they are. I was in the process of just breaking ties with this kid as it was. It had worked for the last kid who'd been a lousy friend and it would have worked for this kid as well. Eventually.

Besides, the kids who get into fights in this school are always the same few idiots. Their fighting hasn't kept anyone from doing anything to them. They just leave more blood on the bathroom wall than the rest of us.

Open Letter to that Lady at that Thing

2009-10-14T08:08:00.004-04:00

I'm playing another tennis tournament this weekend and when I signed up, I didn't notice that the matches would begin at 4 p.m. on Friday. Normally, most of the tournaments I play start up at the earliest by 6 p.m. on Fridays. Considering that I usually play in places like Macon, this isn't a big deal. I can easily leave work at the normal time and get to the tournament location just before I have to check in for my first match, assuming I have the first start time, which I usually don't. This time the tournament didn't follow the normal schedule and I didn't think to check, leaving my wife and me with the surprise of having to find a substitute for the last hour and a half of class on Friday in order to make our start times. I knew it was probably a lost cause, but I thought calling the tournament organizer to ask for a later time wouldn't hurt. The worst result would be that we'd be told no and we'd turn in the forms and find the subs to cover our classes. I had K make the call because I was swamped with deadlines for my masters classes. It turns out that this was a mistake.

Telling this woman that she was being unnecessarily rude wouldn't have done any good. We may still have to deal with her at the tournament and people who go out of their way to be rude to strangers probably don't care enough to make being called out for being a dick matter. Here's my open letter to her just so I can get it off my chest without causing any problems.

Dear Person,

I understand that the website said a couple of days before the draws were posted that singles matches may start at 4 p.m. on Friday, but I honestly didn't notice that information. Besides, that fact is irrelevant. When my wife called, she didn't come in with the attitude that she was important enough that you just had to drop everything and accommodate her wishes. We were hoping that perhaps some slack had been built into the schedule that could accommodate us or that someone else had asked for a move that would complement ours. We weren't asking for anything huge. Anyone who knows my wife knows that's just not the kind of person who would act like she was entitled to whatever she wants, and I was sitting in the next room when she called. I know that she simply explained our situation and then asked if moving our start times was possible. When you said no, she said, "I understand." That's where the conversation would have ended. Instead you sarcastically asked her if she'd bothered to read the tournament website and turned what should have been a 30 second conversation into minutes of bitchiness that left my wife visibly upset. Despite your attitude, she never once responded with anything other than understanding and politeness.

As her husband, this left me angry enough to want to call you back to bitch you out in return or shoot off a snarky e-mail apologizing that our small problem caused you to have to take a few seconds from your lousy, bitter life to answer a phone, but I held my tongue and my fingers. Talking to you obviously wouldn't do any good because you are not a decent person. I understand that perhaps you'd had a bad day at work. Perhaps we were just one of an endless stream of people calling to ask to have our early start times moved back and you were getting irritated. Perhaps your husband is a cold lump who doesn't love you anymore and won't give you the divorce you so desperately desire. Heck, given the sound of your voice, maybe you just found out that you have lung cancer from smoking a few packs a day for the last 20 years. I don't care. None of this justifies being rude to a stranger who approached you politely and deferentially. I can understand someone having a bad day and snapping at a loved one. They actually have a reason to care how you feel and they know the real you. They know that the jerk in front of them isn't the normal person and that you probably just had a bad day. They'll be around to see you later after you calm down and you can make things up to them. Even then, it's not right, but it's much more understandable. When you do this to a stranger you cause hurt that you won't be around later to clean up. You leave the insult open ended. No decent person does this. You obviously are not a decent person.

If you happen to stumble upon this open letter and somehow realize I'm talking about you, remember this: It's okay to react with sarcasm and anger to people who come at you with bitterness, anger, and the belief that everyone else is simply there to serve them. Doing so makes the conversation pointless and futile, but no one is going to fault you for not being a saint. However, when someone comes to you politely and with deference and you reply with sarcasm and irritation, you are a bully, and bullies are worthless human beings.

You suck,

Jacob

Life Goes on Long After the Thrill of Living is Gone

2009-10-13T09:08:00.003-04:00

It seems bizarre that only a year ago, less than really, I was putting up a fresh post every day. Often I would put up more than one a day. I was on fire. Blog 365 was my bitch and I was pimping her out like, well, a pimp. Now gaps of a week without a new post seem all too common, and it sucks. I genuinely felt better about myself last year when I forced myself to write daily. I like to think I became a better writer by going through the extra effort. Sure, I ended up producing a lot of junk posts to get something up when I needed it, but the end result was that it was worth it and I'm better off for having done it.

The problem is that now I don't force myself to slog out those bad ideas. Last year, I wrote through writer's block. I wrote about anything I could think of, even if it didn't even interest me that much just to get the post up before midnight. The funny thing was that by doing that, I actually had fewer days where I just couldn't think of anything worth writing.

But to keep this from being a pointless post about not posting, I'm going to talk about the lottery. It embarrasses me a little to admit that I occasionally play the lottery. Whenever I notice the Mega Millions jackpot has gone over $100 million, I'll buy a ticket. I know its still stupid. I know that the chance of my winning is so low that it might as well be no chance, but I play. I rationalize it by telling myself that the lottery money is managed pretty well in my state, and it's true that education in this state has benefited from the lottery money. The lottery here hasn't become the cause of funding problems like it had in states where they used lottery money to replace education funds instead of using it only to create new educational programs that couldn't be funded without the revenue it generated. I've personally benefited greatly from millions of poor people hoping for a better life. The lottery funded the distance learning lab that allowed me to take advanced classes and college courses that I would not have otherwise been able to take in my tiny high school about 40 miles away from the nearest university. The scholarship program funded by the lottery also kept me from having any student loan debt when I graduated back in 2001. Sure, there are starting to be some funding shortages in these programs, but the fact of the matter is that these programs wouldn't exist at all if it were not for the lottery.

Of course, that doesn't mean that I entirely support the system. It feeds far too much on the poor and the desperate and helps the middle class and wealthy disproportionately. That's the exact opposite direction the flow should go. No one really benefits from taking from the poor and giving to the rich. Everyone benefits when you move the poor up the socioeconomic ladder, if only because there are more consumers who can actually afford the crap you're trying to sell them.

Of course, I'm not one of those poor who are preyed upon by the lottery. I'm actually part of the middle class it disproportionately helps, so I can afford to drop the rare $5 for a ticket. I'll never match what the lottery did for my education, so it's not like I'm entirely wasting my money. Part of my money goes to help education in my state, something I genuinely care about despite hating my job in that field, and part of the money goes to fund my daydreaming.

In case you haven't already assumed this about me, I spend an awful lot of time with my head in the clouds. I actually have a very detailed plan, several really, for what I would do should I ever be faced with the opportunity to have three wishes to come true. I have my winning the big jackpot scenario planned out pretty well too. Will it ever do me any good? More than likely not. Does it do me any harm? I honestly don't know. Do I avoid making difficult real life decisions because I'm secretly holding out for the lottery to wash all of my problems away? I really hope not, but I can't honestly say that I know for sure that these dreams don't somehow color my decisions in some very small way. Would my life be better off without these daydreams? Maybe. It's easy to assume that if I didn't spend so much time dreaming of a life where I spent more time eating lunch than working a real job that I'd possibly be happy with my real life, but is there any chance that I'd be able to stop myself from daydreaming? Not a chance in hell. I've written before of my need from dreams; maybe I need my daydreams just as much. Maybe I'm just not wired to function entirely in reality. I'm not even sure my quality of life would be as good without it.

Sleep Becomes Him

2009-10-05T12:00:00.003-04:00

The past couple of weeks I've had a problem of epic proportions. Each morning I wake up around 5:30 a.m. or so, an entire 30 minutes before my alarm is scheduled to go off. This may not sound like a horrible problem, but I'm not waking up because I'm well rested and ready to attack the day. On the weekends, I'm able to force my way through this period of errant wakefulness, but on weekdays, this stubbornness becomes difficult. K gets up not long after I first wake up and her stirrings make it more difficult for me to get back to sleep. My own alarm is set to go off at 6. When I do get up, even if I felt completely alert the moment before getting out of bed, the instant my body weight reaches the soles of my feet, I feel exhausted and sleepy to the point of dizziness. This would not be a problem if I were actually waking up because I just didn't need the sleep. I'd love to have more time to do things besides sleep, but I don't want the time I do get to sleep each day taken away from me when I actually need it.

My unconscious mind is being a fucking asshole and I'm going to find a way to make it pay.

It's Not the First Time

2009-09-30T10:13:00.002-04:00

I found a girl crying in the hall next to my door a couple of years ago. She had asked to leave the room much earlier and, when she had taken too long to return, my co-teacher went looking for her. She was found in tears.

I don't deal with tears very well. I may be a man, but I'm sensitive and empathetic. Still, I never know what to say. I don't know these kids, not really. I may know their classroom personas, but I don't go home with them at night. I don't get to perch inside their heads listening in on their internal dialogues figuring out what makes them tick, what makes them hurt. For some, they want to be comforted, but I don't know how to give it. For others, they want to be alone so they can wrestle down their anguish, mop up the tears, and return to the public eye as if nothing happened. I never know exactly which route to take, so instead, I usually give them their space, a place to escape their peers, and time. It may not be exactly what that student needs, but it's the only kindness I know how to give.

The next day this girl waited until everyone else left and then told me she wasn't even supposed to be in school. The doctor had told her to stay home for a month. It turned out that the tears weren't over a boy, an angry word, or embarrassment, but a baby. When I had sent her out of the room she had miscarried. Then she had just taken the time and space I had given her. This day, for some reason, she wanted to tell me what had happened. When she saw the shock on my face she tried to comfort me. "It's okay. It's not the first time."

I recently finished reading the book Keeper of the Night and there's a scene that brought back to mind every sad story I've been privy to as a teacher. The narrator of the book is Isabel, an eighth-grader whose mother had recently committed suicide. Her father has grown distant in his grief, her little sister has nightmares and wets the bed, her younger brother has begun to self-destruct, and she's now the matriarch of the family. When she turns in a poem about her brother's cutting instead of a full essay, she receives an F from her teacher. The teacher agrees to give Isabel another chance, but asks for something more cheerful. Isabel responds by taking a happy family story a friend once told her and recasting it as her own. She receives an A+, her first ever, but she crumples the essay up and throws it away. The teacher had preferred false pleasantness over reality and took the joy from her academic success.

I just can't allow myself to do that.

It's a Thin Line

2009-09-29T15:01:00.002-04:00

I got an e-mail today telling me that I'm part of the Savannah tennis team for the Kia Tournament of Champions. I was, frankly, shocked.

I should probably take a second to explain this tournament. USTA Georgia divides the state into eight districts. Some of the districts only cover a little area but a lot of people (the metro Atlanta district is only 10 counties) and some are huge in area but small in population (a couple of the districts in rural regions in the south of the state cover more than 30 counties.) At the tournament, each region can bring its top two players in each level for singles and doubles. The rankings are decided by the points you earn by playing in tournaments. The higher you place, the more points you earn. I qualified by having had a finals appearance in one tournament and having played in three tournaments instead of just one.

I'm excited. I'm thrilled. I immediately e-mailed my wife and dropped an instant message to one of my best friends.

I also feel really stupid for being so god damned proud.

I'm only going because my region is such a weak USTA region. I would have barely made the top ten in the regions centered around Atlanta, Columbus, or Macon. See, my record as a singles player in level 3.0 is 1 win and 3 losses. Sure, I was only a few points from being at least 2-2, but I don't feel right taking too much pride in my playing abilities when I've only won a single match in three tournaments. It's a little different with the invitational tournament I'm playing this weekend. I qualified for that tournament by playing some of the best tennis I've ever played in my life. I only lost in the finals to a guy who probably was better suited in a higher level, and I still held my own with him. I'm getting to skip a day of school this week to go play tennis and hang out at the beach with my wife because I played really well that weekend. I don't feel that way about my tennis play overall.

Why did I go and write about all of this? I brag and then I whine and you're too stupid or bored or obligated out of friendship to stop reading, so I feel like I should give you something of merit to justify the time you've wasted so far. Maybe I can steal more than my title today from my buddy Hank. "It's a thin line between bragging and being excited at where you are". I have improved over the five months I've been playing amateur tournaments. I'm a better singles player now than I ever was. I do have reason to be happy with where I am despite having a record that's less than impressive.

Maybe it's just that I know that no one thinks you're a jerk when you brag as long as you always include some disclaimer.

The Decemberists Are Effing Metal

2009-09-28T11:18:00.004-04:00

Well, that title may be a bit on the oxymoronic side, but the latest album did bring in a lot of the elements of metal. I was a little bit taken aback the first time I listened to The Hazards of Love and was assailed by that first wave of chunky, churning guitars and the occasional hair-metal wailings of the one female singer. This really didn't fit in with the usually more mild-mannered geek rock that made The Decemberists kinda-sorta famous. Although, when the catchiest song on the album is a song in which the "humble narrator" murders his own children, you can't really say that the band has had a real change of heart.

"The Rake's Song," by the way, is freaking incredible live. The song has lead singer Colin Meloy and bassist Nate Query playing guitar and electric bass while the other five or so people on stage are whaling away on drums. There's a thrill to that song that I didn't fully recognize while listening to the album.

The show itself was a touch unusual. After the opening band (the surprisingly good Laura Veirs and the Hall of Flames) The Decemberists came out in two sets. The first set was the new album. Given the conceptual nature of Hazards of Love, the first set was pretty theatrical. Song segued musically into song and there was little banter. It wasn't the traditional bit of rock concert that I'm used to, but the band put on a good show and the crowd seemed to enjoy it. Still, the crowd mostly sat through the first set, but it seemed somehow appropriate instead of lame. I'm just not used to going to shows in venues big enough to have seats anymore. The music and the performance seemed to beg for more attention than could be given while bouncing up an down, throwing up the horns, and screaming "Freebird!" After a short break after the Hazards set, the band came back on stage, sans the two female musicians needed for the female parts from the new album, and suddenly turned into traditional concert. People spontaneously sprang to their feet with the opening bars of "Sporting Life" and remained there until the show ended around midnight. Meloy was one of the better front men I've ever seen at a show. He was engaging and witty and worked the crowd better than any other I've ever seen. The guy seemed to genuinely like what he was doing. His enthusiasm seemed to rub off on the crowd. The regular set ended by bringing the two female vocalists back on stage for a cover of Heart's "Crazy on You," which was more appropriate than it may sound at first. These girls, especially the lady in black, had powerful voices and, as I mentioned before, there are threads of the teased out hair metal days of rock coming through on the latest album.

Of course that crowd was one of those groups I've described before as the vaguely jiggling masses, although this one trended geekier and less hipster-esque than the crowds I usually see at show for the likes of Built to Spill and Iron and Wine. I like being in these crowds. I like that feeling of being both cooler than and not cool enough to be a part of the group.

I honestly have to say that this was the second best show I've ever attended. It's hard to compete with the naked, hairless, twirling contortionists at that one Tool show at Voodoo Fest in New Orleans a few years ago. That show transformed the music of a band I previously disliked into music I loved. This show just gave me a greater appreciation for a band I already dug.