Rhythm and Gravy

Tonight, I decided to start organizing my CD collection. I unboxed everything, and found that Richard D. James was somehow nestled between Ella Fitzgerald and Blossom Dearie, an unlikely arrangement but you can’t fault his taste. I like to think that if she’d stayed with us for a while longer, Ella would have dug the Aphex Twin. My soul music collection seems somehow smaller than I remember, except for the Ray Charles: I don’t remember buying Modern Sounds In Country and Western Music, but I’m sure glad I did.

When people are kids their parents teach them all sorts of stuff, some of it true and useful, some of it absurd hogwash (example of former: don’t crap your pants; example of latter: Columbus discovered America). This is why puberty happens. The purpose of puberty is to shoot an innocent and gullible child full of nasty glandular secretions that manifest in the mind as confusion, in the innards as horniness, upon the skin as pimples, and on the tongue as cocksure venomous disbelief in every piece of information, true of false, gleaned from one’s parents since infancy. The net result is a few years of familial hell culminating in the child’s exodus from the parental nest, sooner of later followed by a peace treaty and the emergence of the postpubescent as an autonomous, free-thinking human being who knows that Columbus only trespassed on an island inhabited by our lost and distant Indian relatives, but who also knows not to crap his pants.

–David James Duncan, The River Why

Today, our founders were all out of town, leaving their desks completely unprotected.

I’ve started going back to judo practice. For now, I’m skipping the ろんどり (”rondori”, or sparring) because my shoulder is not 100% just yet, but even so I’m so out of shape that I feel nauseous most of the time.

Am hoping this goes away, as am annoying myself.

Anyway, the shower afterwards felt great. I find it easy to forget that enjoyment often comes from contrast. If I don’t work out, a shower is just a shower. If I wasn’t working hard, a vacation wouldn’t mean much. If I had never felt lonely, I wouldn’t appreciate much the nice things people sometimes say.

I have a friend who is doing her Ph.D. research on well-being, and I don’t pretend to understand her work but I do remember that she once told me about the result of a massive survey she helped with. They found that a sense of well-being was uncorrelated to the amount of enjoyment in one’s life, but was highly (inversely) correlated to toil and hardship.

I sometimes feel like I’m slowly but surely wearing myself down. But that’s okay, isn’t it?

Joe Bar is three blocks up the hill from me. They serve good coffee, wine, wifi and crêpes — that is to say, the place is just giggly enough to repel all but the most fraudulent of hipsters.

This photo was taken using an eight-second exposure from across the street.

A project: starting today, one photo per day, for a month.

I call this one “Pioneer Square Smokestack; Olympics.” Taken from the dizzying heights of my friend Erica’s parking garage.

The holidays happened. I didn’t come in first, but I was far from last place, so I feel like they were a success overall. Amy was home for a week, and we had a very Sprousey Christmas, after which we played nerts. Went up to Crystal with Bryan and Michaele for a backwoods cabin New Year’s. Had an absolutely bluebird day on the mountain. Played more nerts.

Grew a beard. Then, removed same. I may grow it again (rumor has an “Abe Lincoln on the Mother!@$% Moon” themed bachelor party in the works for later in the summer), I may not.

Synapse landed a big contract to re-engineer, in very little time, a failed project for some big-name company or another and put me on the project, so I’ve been working on my CRT tan quite a bit lately. The more I work there, the more I love my job at the little company with the big heart that just may grow up into something very special.

Starting to work out vacation plans for early spring, hopefully involving snow. Suggestions welcome.

Apparently, not really into using subjects in sentences lately. Hoping this corrects itself soon, as am annoying myself.

If you find you’ll be in the Seattle area on Sunday evening, please do stop by my place to sample some nice wine from bladders and spigots. This will serve as my excuse for bringing together diverse friends and coworkers, making some noise for the neighbors, and make that final push to get the last load of boxes out of the apartment. If that’s not enough, there will also be old jazz records played and cornbread served. We’ll get started 7pm-ish. Please let me know if you’re going to make it so’s I can buy enough!

Online Defamation Law establishes that the elements of libel (when the plaintiff is not a public figure) are

1. a publication to one other that the person defamed;
2. a false statement of fact, which is understood to be both (a) being of and concerning the plaintiff, and (b) tending to harm the reputation of the plaintiff.

Unfortunately, while provable truth is a valid defense, a statement is considered libelous if is possible to be taken as an assertion of fact; i.e. it doesn’t have to be provably false. So, all I can say here is that the past few weeks I’ve been frustrated, sad, and angry, and I’ll save my words regarding the plaintiff (my sister’s ex-husband) for a non-publishable medium (”Feeling too chipper? Want vitrol?” Dial 1-800-ASK-JAKE).

It being tough to go out and be social, I’ve been trying to distract myself with the media — books (Pattern Recognition by William Gibson, Cryptonomicon and Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson, The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck), and Netflix (Bottle Rocket, Cashback, Heroes, Delicatessen, This is Spinal Tap). But a wise character in a movie once said, “if you don’t make it yourself, it isn’t fun. It’s entertainment.” So, yesterday, I took Uncle Synapse up on his offer to run around in the woods and shoot my coworkers with paintballs. Running around the woods like a chipmunk on acid screaming and yelling and getting all muddy: nice. Shooting coworkers: meh. Welts: not so nice. Props to Dylan for wearing his drum major costume to play.

…in which our hero’s life has been crazy lately.

September has been hectic with life’s hijinks, and correspondingly low in posts, for reasons which abound, not the least of which is that the Top Pot Donuts by my place started closing at 9pm, and when have I been home before 9pm lately?

The early part of this month was consumed by a major project at work, which found me up nights and weekends. I’m sorry that details can’t be posted here, but the client is paying the big bucks…

This past week was invested towards our company’s entry in the Red Bull Soapbox Race which was held in Fremont this last weekend. Our car, Din and Tonic was designed to be a gravity-powered noisemaking machine. In the words of my officemate Jed, “most teams build their cars to look like something, like ‘check us out, our car looks like a chicken!’ Well, our car doesn’t look like a chicken, but it does a lot of stuff, and that’s what sets us apart.” We had a belt, chain, and pulley system which powered a kick drum, a pair of 100Db air-raid sirens, and a cymbal-clapping monkey. Dope.

We sweated nights and weekends welding, forming, gluing, painting, and decorating. We tested it up to 25mph. Then, we pushed the thing down Fremont Ave, the chain fell off, we hit 30mph, all four tires came off, and we crashed at full speed into the chicane. Dope!

In the end, fun was had by all, and we’re looking forward to flugtag.

Meanwhile at the Hall of Justice, my shoulder rehab is going well, and I can raise my hand in class again. Still not cleared for riding the bike. I want to ride my bicycle.