(the groin of the ankle)

Oh, funny.

Tanah Lot

Confession: other than Mexico and Canada and a very brief stint in Belize (don't ask), I have never left the country. I've been to most of the states, including Hawaii and Alaska. BUT I have always wanted to visit several places... foremost is Ireland (and the rest of the UK while I'm there). I have also wanted to go to India since like 3rd grade. My parents inspired a longing for Germany/Austria and I have also been fascinated with Prague for several years. Most recently (maybe about a month) I have been dying to go to Indonesia.

I think Indonesia may be the first place I actually go. What initially drew me there was an incredible image in Ben's Surfing magazine which constitutes, along with the Sweetwater catalog, the toilet literature in our home. An amazing surfer was launched into an aerial over a good 12 foot swell of beautiful turquoise water on the Bali coast, and in the background was what appeared to be a Buddhist (I learned later it was Hindu) Temple. Research has informed me this structure is called Tanah Lot Temple and is one of several coastal shrines on the Indonesian coast. It sits on an outcropping of rock which, at high tide, is submerged in water so that the Temple appears to be on an island, just off the coast. Visitors to the shrine will often come for overnight worship and stay until morning when the tides retreats. For some reason this brings into my mind "Abide with me; tis eventide." Anyway, I've decided I'm gonna get a passport and start saving money and hopefully sometime this winter, fly to Indonesia and see at least Jakarta and Bali. The country is composed of 17,508 islands and is mostly Islamic with large Buddhist and Hindu populations. Anybody wanna come with me?

And this is what she said gets her though it:

"If I don't let myself be happy now, then when? If not now, when?"

Ten years later, these are still some of the most important words in my life. Here's to a decade of the most important album of my lifetime.



This is the best live version I found on youtube. It's funny if you notice on the ticket, this show was in the Somerville Theatre in Davis Square back in the day. I didn't live in Boston then, but if I had, I like to think I'd have been there.

I also like to think Jason was, and that possibly in his pre-mission days, he was the guy shouting "Keep that $#!+ coming!" in the beginning.

2 Lost Souls Swimmin in a Fish Bowl, Year After Year.

I miss Elizabeth.
I miss K-Dub.
I miss J and Pugs.
I miss Ju-Hu.
I miss Kylee.
I miss ME the Singular.
I miss Jemily.

I still miss her sometimes too.


"Wish You Were Here".



It's kind of a history lesson. You may skip the first 15 minutes, as they're just talking about "Dark Side" for most of it. Like any of y'all are gonna watch it anyway... :)

Linkage

I apologize to any people who may still use my blog as a hub (make bookmarks). I have changed my blog links to reflect what I actually still read nowadays. If you used to see your blog there and it's not now, and you're bothered that I don't read it anymore it's for one of two reasons.

You never write. Or...

You have autoplay music on your page.

When I load 20 something blogs and have 4 songs playing at the same time and no way to turn it off I freak out and delete you from my bookmarks. What pachyderm hunters call thinning the herd.

Or in Christina's case you ousted me when you privatized.

Love y'all!

Goin' Through The Motions.

I went to see Aimee Mann play at Berklee. It was awesome. Schwehr and I fell in love with the opening band (The Submarines) and so I had to have this poster. And Jenni was totally awesome and bought it for me.

The rhyming kind.

While I write songs fairly regularly, I'm not much of a poet. I love poetry, and I've always admired people who can write it. I especially like plain verse (the kind that doesn't concern itself with rhyme), but I'm retardedly bad at it. I always sound forced and aloof. But I came up with a poem the other day while I was entertaining Liz' unoccupied IM. It's the rhyming kind. It doesn't seem to suck to bad... yet.

You know how that goes though.

High Treason

Under pain of death, I was told,
to keep a secret near.
Came I forth out of the fold,
to whisper in your ear.
Though I betray my nation,
and even my own soul,
I cannot hold the secret from
the Queen that owns me whole.
And now behold I fear that though
my lips may fear to purse,
yet still I know if mute they stay,
my pain remains the worse.
And so dear one, I tell you now
at least to ease my part,
that now it is,
as always was,
you who owns my heart.

Tell me it sucks or tell me you love it. I care not.

I Feel The Earth Move

I saw this at work today, or rather a legacy addition of the album. It's been a long time since I've listened to Tapestry as an album, you almost forget how awesome it is.

Carol King rules my world.

The home energy of the future.

I was reading up on this hydrogen cell car that Honda has. Turns out the only place you can fill one up is in Southern California, but this is their idea for the future. Sounds great right? I was curious what kind of timetable they had for such developments till I saw the cyborg upstairs. Seriously, home robot? I think this a few years off.

Also the kid in the room next door appears to be hanging his/herself.

An Excerpt...

I'm reading the new David Sedaris book, which altogether is not as funny as "Me Talk Pretty One Day" except for this part...

With a Pal Like This, Who Needs Enemies?

I've always liked the idea of accessories, those little pick-me-ups designed to invigorate what has come to feel drab and predictable. A woman might rejuvenate her outfit with a vintage Hermes scarf or jaunty rope belt, but the options for men aren't nearly so interesting. I have no use for cuff links or suspenders, and while I'll occassionally pick up a new tie it hardly leaves me feeling kicky. Hidden accessories can do the trick, but again, they're mainly the province of women. Garter belt and lingerie - yes. Sock garter and microbrief - no.

It was my search for something discreet, masculine, and practical that led me to the Stadium Pal, an external catheter currently being marketed to sports fans, truck drivers, and anyone else who's tired of searching for a bathroom. At first inspection, this device met all my criteria:

Was it masculine? Yes, and proudly so. Knowing that no sensible female would ever voluntarily choose to pee in her pants, the manufacturers went ahead and designed the product exclusively for men. Unlike a regular catheter, which is inserted directly into the penis, the Stadium Pal connects by way of a self-adhesive condom, which is then attached to a flexible, rubber tube. Urine flows through the tube and collects in the "freedom leg bag," conveniently attched to the user's calf. The bag can be emptied and reused up to twelve times, making it both disgusting and cost effective. And what could be manlier?

Was it discreet? According to the brochure, unless you wore it with shorts, no one need know anything about it.

Was it practical? At the time, yes. I don't drive or attend football games, but I did have a book tour coming up, and the possibilities were endless. Five glasses of iced tea followed by a public reading? Thanks, Stadium Pal! The window seat on an overbooked coast-to-coast flight? Don't mind if I do!

I ordered myself a Stadium Pal and realized that while it might make sense in a hospital, it really wasn't very practical for day-to-day use. In an open-air sporting arena, a piping hot thirty-two ounce bag of urine might go unnoticed, but not so in a stuffy airplane or small, crowded bookstore. An hour after christening it, I smelled like a nursing home. On top of that, I found it was hard to pee and do other things at the same time. Reading out loud, discussing my beverage options with the flight attendant, checking into a fine hotel: each activity required its own seperate form of concentration, and while no one knew exactly what I was up to, it was pretty clear that something was going on. I think it was my face that gave me away. That and my oddly swollen calf.

What ultimately did me in was the self-adhesive condom. Putting it on was no problem, but its removal qualified as what, in certain cultures, is known as a bris. Wear it once, and you'll need a solid month to recover. It will likely be a month in which you'll weigh the relative freedom of peeing in your pants against the unsightly discomfort of a scab-covered penis, ultimately realizing that, in terms of a convenient accessory, you're better off with a new watchband.

Dark Knight, absolutely. John Connor, mmmm... we'll see.

By the way. I know the writers are still striking and all, but do they really think all these remakes are necessary? Two Hulk movies in 2 years? And they both sucked. True the Batman series needed some serious re-imagining, yes. But the terminator movies were fine as they were. And while this isn't specifically a remake... wouldn't the kid who played John Connor be about Christian Bale's age? Why not maintain some consistency? Honestly, I mean an appearance by the Governator is completely optional, they brought back the chick from T3, but I don't know about Christian Bale as John Connor.

The most disappointing, if you hadn't heard is that Michael Bay* is remaking both Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Holy Krishna, help us all.




*of such disasters as Transformers, Armageddon, and Pearl Harbor

Kristi-Marie. I want to buy this.

Hopefully you still read my blog from time to time.

Did you do this kinda big? Or can I commission a bigger one?

Love, Jared.

Almost Heaven... West Virginia.

I realized on my way down to Maryland this weekend that, while I have driven through Maryland many times, this was gonna be my first time stopping there. I found Maryland mostly uneventful, but I have to admit it's a lot nicer away from Baltimore.

I went to hang out with my good friend Liz, who looks like this:

Though this more thoroughly captures her essence:


Anyway, she had to work for part of the day, so I had lunch with her mom who's first question for me was, so you're the one she met on myspace, right? Should've been more prepared for that question. "Uhhh, yeah." (It was way less lame than it sounds)

When she got off work we had dinner and went to Harper's Ferry in West Virginia. This is in the Blue Ridge Mountains where the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers crawl through the a canyon alongside several very old railroad bridges. And no, I couldn't get John Denver out of my head. The "town" is basically built on jutting cliffs, at the top of which is this Episcopal church,

and Jefferson Rock. The latter was apparently just a rock that Thomas Jefferson asked to be steadied so it didn't fall. I guess when you write The Declaration of Independence they decide to start naming everything you ever touched after you. Except your slaves. Ooooh...tasteless joke? Probably.

Anyway, Harper's Ferry... big on the awesome. I think we need to go cruise the Potomac stretch in inner tubes. And by 'we' I mean everyone who wants to go.

Just watch the fireworks.

I'll stay up as late as it takes.


So, I near the end of another July 4th in Boston and we're still in love. Happy Findependence Day, y'all.

A new kind of Walden.

So I've been realizing I'm a huge loser lately, but that's starting to be ok I guess. I got off work really early which is rare for a Tuesday, so I went to Harvard stadium to play soccer. Then I came home; and realizing I have no friends anymore, and still a little heavy in thought about stuff, I decided a late night swim in Walden would be relaxing. So I drove to Walden alone, waded in and swam around for a half an hour or so, at least 10 minutes of which I was just floating on my back looking at the stars. It had just rained earlier, so the sky was really clear and the water wasn't cold. About 100 yards out, a layer of fog sat just above the surface of the pond and the wind in the middle seemed to be blowing it around.

And in all this beauty I encountered not another human soul.

This is highly recommended.

Yo Yo Moon

I took the first step towards fulfilling a long held ambition to play the cello by renting one yesterday. I played a C major scale and fumbled my way through the bassline of lean on me. But I'm gonna start rocking it soon...just you watch.

Survivor.

Thanks to JG, BKH, KW, EM, JM, JN, Mom, and the Word.

Still hurting, but understanding the whys a little better. You are my strength.



I can't believe it's raining again.

Well... then, okay. I guess.

Ok, as of today the horse ran off with someone else. New cliche metaphor needed.

There's other seahorses in the sea?






I hate my life sometimes.

"You gotta get back up on the horse."

I hate that advise. I get the point, I just don't like the metaphor. I've been thrown from a horse before, and beginning to date again when you're not really interested in these girls is nothing like remounting a horse that bucked you. It's scarier.

I like the same girl I've liked for the last 10 months.

I don't see how going out with girls I don't like is supposed to help me move on.

The Mullet

So, as many know, I attended a Nascar race in NC last weekend. Lisa cut my hair into a mullet. And...pics.