I’m a derned liar. Here I am, sitting in the hotel, blogging, just like I thought I wasn’t gonna get to.  And while I have slept the minimal amount and worked almost proportionately as hard, I’d have to say this day deserves a blog, and so I’m just gonna be a liar. I’m sure you’ll all get over it.

So, what’s going on with me? Well, the crowd is louder than me, and I’m being a bit reclusive, though I’m in the middle of them all. It’s the *counts on fingers* fourth day of convention, and I’ve been here since last Saturday night. It’s not so bad. Actually, its pretty great to be sitting here among so many people that I have one major thing in common with: band. I will admit that there is so much that divides us, but mostly, I stick around, talk to people, and do my best to just…enjoy myself. Typical of me? Hardly. Actually, I’ll admit first and foremost that all the in-fighting, all the conflict, all the bickering…I find myself drawn to it like a moth to a flame.

I know the natural destructive power there, but that’s where all the knowledge stems from. That’s where everything for the next two years will come from. It’s not just a simple matter of that’s where the decisions are being made; it’s where the social climate and the next few steps of everyone in this great fraternal dance are predicted for the next biennium. It’s so clever and indulgent of me. I love to hear all the trouble of everyone. It gets tiresome, sure, but most of the time, I just love knowing that people are thinking and people are acting, and how it all plays into the greater tapestry of the fraternity.

It’s not just who is what office and what policy is voted on. It’s not even who is who’s big or little brother, or who thinks they are going to apply for what office. It’s everything else that really decides the direction of this fraternity, and I think it works much in the way that all the other communication issues are. You can lead a horse to water, but it’s much easier if you have a bucket handy.

Based on this week, I’m giving some thought to maybe starting another blog. I don’t know for sure, but I’m thinking about it. Stay tuned.

Camp is over. The long hot days of babysitting (as it quickly turned into) are done. I am out of that, and I am just a slight bit richer for it.

Now, I’m in Orlando, doing the thing with the fraternity and the National Intercollegiate Band and the whatnot. I got first chair, so in a way, you could say I’m the best saxophonist in the nation. What a dream! What it really means is I’m playing first part in a lot of great pieces: Konigsmarsch, First Suite in Eb, Celestial Dancers (the commissioned piece for this year).

Thursday: my birthday. And I’m going to Disney World! I can’t decide if I’m going to Animal Kingdom, or if I’m gonna try to catch a La Cirque du Soleil show. Or perhaps I’ll wander around Epcot and find something very cool to buy, and eat some great food. So many choices. And I’m supposed to go out to a bar with a lot of people one of these nights. We’ll see what happens. So much going on to really be tying myself down on the first day, I suppose.

Anyway, following this is a post about me disappearing for a few days. I’ll be around shortly enough. C, you’re on your own for a couple weeks. Call me.

Those of you know read me on a dedicated basis are well aware that I’m one busy beaver, and that I’ve been curiously absent from all manner of life. Well, I’m in Orlando this week and internet is $10.00 a day here. In the hotel I mean.

So, be it known, I am taking a step back from the blog until I get home and settled into the new job. I have so many things I want to write about, but I just don’t have the time, money, or energy to make this a priority at this time. I’ll be back, I promise.

Today, I saved the library. Allow me to explain.

In the far back of the second floor, behind rows and rows of shelves; at the end of the oldest of old magazines and professional journals; back near the small closest-like carrels that hold forgotten tomes and host thesis thought; back where the dust is thick and the air is soggy, there is a lone row of shelves.

Upon these shelves lie the forgotten volumes of lore and fact now mastered by the dreaded beast, JSTOR. These weakened and decrepit books, whose innards have been rendered useless, stay dormant atop shining metal racks, waiting to simply be disposed of like so many rotting bodies. It was here that my adventure await me.

I approached the shelves with ardor, noting that its solid nine feet stood at an angle, threatening to fall like a domino. My task was to remove the books–old bound copies of newspapers from a time when time was young, and people were happy, noting only the comings and goings of their neighbors as worthy news. I lifted a few volumes, but noticed that this was the side when faced away from the slant of the stack, and so I proceeded with caution.

Standing back at a distance, I viewed this horrible predicament with fear. What was I to do? I cannot simply complete my task, leaving the nine foot monstrosity of counterbalanced doom to its own devious physics. No! I had to remove all the forgotten, zombied tomes from the leaning side. I had to venture into the shadow of the leaning shelf, and procure a proper removal of all the dead weight.

Thousands of volumes! Tens of thousands! I pulled them off, one by one, and carted them across an ocean of carpet to be placed gingerly in stacks about the main whereabouts of the Periodicals section, where I am in employ. By hand, forcefully, with might and valor, I ventured again and again into the depths of possible ruin, awaiting the moment when I should remove the one bound book that would secure the collapse of this wall and trap me under a mountain of rubble and paper.

Oh, what a task! I slaved for hours. Hours! I knew that at any moment, all eight sections of the shelf, nearly ten yards wide, nine feet high, and full of 10,000 pounds of fibrous death, would come crashing down on me, knocking the next shelf over, colliding into walls and more shelves! Such a disaster would destroy countless documents from many kingdoms and records even the Saints themselves could not repair! So much knowledge, so many important artifacts would be lost, buried under corrugated aluminum ruin.

It seemed a whole day has gone past since that incident, and I live to tell the tale. Forgot not my journey, weary travelers, and warn all you see of the dangers of a leaning shelf in any library!

In lieu of the normal stream of bloggity goodness, I have to do something different. I’m quite tired, and my brain doesn’t want to talk about anything with any sort of…shall we say…cognition. So, I give you Dresden Codak’s most recent installment, which is really filler art until another comic can be posted. Be patient fellow readers, he’ll be back soon.

In lieu of all the band campage going on, I’m going to post an poem that I wrote a while back, but revised just today. I hope everyone likes it. We’ll consider this a “what I did at band camp today” post, and keep it under the band camp title. Also, if anyone know how to indent in WordPress, please let me know, cause I’d really like to format my poems properly.

“Barrels”

There was a man behind
The concrete barriers and pillars
Under the trains that coasted over the town.
I saw him bundled and huddled up
Next to a black barrel
That protects the cars that crash there.
He hid, waiting to lunge before my car,
Where my car might undo him.
He was waiting.
I saw him,
Or my mind whispers that in my ear.
He was waiting, but the face I’m certain I saw
Hung spray-painted on the very pillar he hid behind.

I think he was there,
But further inspection,
As I whipped by going forty,
Revealed no man.
Why do I look for faces in places
Where they cannot be?
Faces in rocks, ceiling tiles,
Flowers, hairlines and trashcans.
I wonder what I must have wanted,
With a man waiting to die.

I think of my old lady friends
And the quest for truth.
We disseminate and dissect books,
My old ladies and I
And break down every tower that needs breaking
Until all we have left are blocks
Mere cells, singular units.

I seek things in the blocks
(though not always faces)
and ask the blocks to tell me something true.
Perhaps it is my age
(or lack thereof)
that prevents me from spotting
the fertile kernels they pluck from the blocks
and succor.
Hard though I may try,
Rarely do I see edibles
In these dry stones,
Abundant with vapor and foam.
They are not heavy on my brain or in my hands
And are certainly not nutritious.
Every book is simply full of black barrels,
Words like barriers,
Waiting to catch cars.
Perhaps my friends are also seeing the man.

The following is a letter to Anim5 of International Detective Dragon’s from Outer Space, a podcast that I contribute to often. Stop by that podcast. I highly recommend it!

I want to start by pointing out that this junk piece of “journalism” is so biased it’s as if John-Paul Flintoff (who penned the article) is a pseudonym for Andrew Keen (who complains about the internet in said article). Last I checked, opinion pieces didn’t go in the “Tech & Web” section of any paper. In short, this article is worthless in its credibility.

I’ve read the article three times now. The first time, I was a little confused. Then, came outrage, then, thoughtfulness. Thoughtfulness leads to wordiness, and wordiness leads to the dark side. That said, I present…my itemized opinion. *trumpet fanfare*
Read the rest of this entry »

Last night, one of the kids spit Ramen noodles all over my legs.

During the meeting, we approached the subject of the Camp Ball, which is our little version of prom. “Guys, if you are thinking of taking a girl to the Ball, you need to buy her flowers,” I said. “That would be the gentlemanly thing to do.” I also attempted to explain, though some small fit of laughter, that they should not expect to get anything out of the ladies they take. To do so would be unseemly, and possibly get them in trouble. No need to be surprised either, when she simply doesn’t want to suck on your tongue.

“But, what if, like,” sputters Hernan, “what if i get her a flower, but he doesn’t like, you know, like, if she’s not any good or something? Can I take the flower back?”

To this, I received a leg full of Ramen noodles. I was shocked, ungrateful, but luckily not the target of laughter. After I was done laughing in my mind, I threatened Hernan with early curfew for making Zach spray me. I didn’t give it to him.

However, after this came the debacle of dancing and hooting that lead to an early bed time for everyone, and a very angry me. So we had a “come to jesus” meeting tonight, in which I only gave out four early curfews because the previous offenders had found friends and attempted it again. It was a calculated effort on both of our parts, as I learned the value of an overt threat. They behaved much better than they had been, with their nearly obsessive talking and complete disregard for any sort of respect.

Anyway, it is late here, and I’m tired. I need to save my strength for tomorrow, when I got pack a lot of boxes. Happy weekend, everyone.

Appetizer
What is your favorite fruit?

Gonna have to say blueberries. I love them like I love my own mother, but only if in some sort of sweet. I can’t eat them raw: too sour. Perhaps I’ve been eating the wrong kind of blueberries, or something, but in a smoothie, they are divine and I would marry them.

Soup
Who is someone you consider as a great role model?

I think the definition of “role model” has become skewed by the endless train of motivational speakers that have invaded the minds of children through the 80s and 90s. A role model, by definition, would be someone who demonstrates a particular function at its acceptible zenith. I think even that definition has been skewed by culture to include that a role model must always be positive, when there are obviously bad roles that can be performed that might be just as necessary as the good ones (i.e., cat burglars, crooked politicians) in delineating what is right and just.

To say that one must act a certain way, as immulated by some other person, is biased and differs from culture to culture. It would be very difficult to decide what would be a good role model for all people, and I think it is important that note that “bad role models” are just as important to the way things work as the good ones.

But to answer the question, I’d say Ghandi.

Salad
If you were to spend one night anywhere within an hour of your home, where would you choose?

Given that time and space are relative, though corralative, and that it is theoretically possible to travel the normal distance of one hour by increasing your speed, and that at some speeds, time simply stops, I would put myself in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and wait for the world to end.

Main Course
Name something you do too often.

I drink sodas far too often. Less often than people I know, but as we speak, I can feel my insides rotting out.

Dessert
Fill in the blank: I really like Marc because intelligence is the greatest form of sexy

Two hours of rain means we will have wet feet.
Two hours of rain means we will wade in rivers.

Coursing hard and east, toward the horizon,
Water rushes to the palace of the sun

To feed the king with all the dirt and mineral
Collected in two christening hours.

Two hours means delayed meals and stretched steps
Two hours means gripped palms, sweating with desire

For lust, or lust for love.
For form to growth, or expression to puberty.

To be a man is to have a wife, say the two hands
Of the boy that hold the waist of the girl.

To be a woman is to give love, say the budding eyes
Of the girl that shine for the boy.

Two hours of water will grow trees tomorrow.
Two hours of water will flood hearts now.

I have a pension for beauty, say my ears
Reaching for the world and what it holds

There are too many things to notice, say my eyes
Squinting at so many colors they become gray.

Coursing hard and deep, toward the horizon,
Water rushes to my cratered center

To fill the jar I keep in my chest
to collect two christening thoughts

Two times in my life have I found love
Two times in my life have I found love

Water rushes into the palace, and fills the king.
Tomorrow, trees will grow where water stands.