Small Fries, Big Steps

We sit in a messy room and watch Star Wars.

Bukowski wrote Post Office here

LAist informs that the apartment where Charles Bukowski wrote Post Office and so many other works is for sale and may be demolished.

It's here at age 50 that he got his break. New publisher, John Martin, liked Bukowski's writing and promised him his post office wages for the rest of his life if he would quit his job and write full-time for Martin's Black Sparrow Press.

Plant, Krauss to cover Tom Waits

Billboard.com reports that Robert Plant and Allison Krauss will cover Tom Waits' "Trampled Rose" on their upcoming collaborative effort, Raising Sand. The project will also feature the always fantastic Marc Ribot on guitar. Ribot has previously played on Waits' albums, Rain Dogs, Big Time, Frank's Wild Years, Mule Variations and Real Gone.

I look forward to hearing it. I have every faith that it'll be a thing of beauty. Raising Sand will be released on October 23 by Rounder Records.

Is this thing on?

Bought the mic, downloaded the Audacity, but couldn't get a decent volume level on my voice. I'll re-tackle that endeavor later so that Paige and I can get our own podcast off the ground.

I suppose that's a good thing since we still don't have any idea what we're going to talk about on said podcast.

Speaking out for animal rights in a DVD-remote world.

The spider was next to his toy box on the carpet. I took a shoe to the spider and squished him.

My four year old son, who I thought was going to thank me, instead defended said spider.

"Why'd you do that? He had legs, Daddy, but he wasn't moving. He was paused."

Trying not to smile while kissing the prettiest girl.

Killswitch Engage Takes Me Back

A Father in the ER at Midnight

I wish I was a doctor. He's my seventeen year old son and he's been in pain for over a week. He's lost over 10 pounds because he can't keep anything down. The doctor thought maybe gall bladder, but the CT scan said everything was fine. Tonight he just about passed out. So much school, so much work, so much pain, so little food or drink in his system.

And so off to ER he went. Properly hydrated and the ultrasound found...nothing wrong. Probably viral. Ugh. He's in such pain and is so weak. Seventeen year olds are immortal, right? Not tonight. And I helplessly just watch. Polite with doctors, polite with all concerned, I ache. He aches more.

He's seventeen. He'll be fine. This stuff will pass and he'll be back to good soon enough.

Curiously Married*

*my wedding ring, as it appears on top of an Altoids tin.

She sings Tom Waits' "Green Grass"

Cibelle - "Green Grass"

I accept you Paige...

Today is August 3, 2007. Five years ago, she said "I do." So did I. For five years, she's been my beautiful bride. At my side, through it all, and I continue to fall more and more in love with her each and every day.

We fell in love, she waited...and waited...and waited, and I finally asked her to marry me on a nervous day on top of Georgia's Stone Mountain. Even though we were already planning how our wedding would be, I still managed to surprise her with that proposal and that ring. She said yes and we embraced and she cried. Afterward, I asked a passerby if he would take our picture. I told him that I just asked her to marry me. With the most serious look of curiosity, he asked me what she said. I still laugh at that. Would I have wanted to document the moment with a picture had she said no? What kind of masochist did he think I was?

A few short months later, we stood in the small church in Fernandina Beach, Florida, and we exchanged vows:

I accept you Paige,
as a person, and as my wife,
with your strengths and your weaknesses.
I promise to be loyal to you in health
or illness,
to share what I have and who I am,
to love enough to risk being hurt,
to trust when I misunderstand,
to weep with you in sorrow,
to celebrate with you in joy,
and to live with you in reverence.

iPod not always necessary

In my head right now is a song I haven't heard in more than a decade. And it resonates with all of the beauty that I knew when I was that younger dreamer of a man.

Michael McDermott - "620 W. Surf"

I went to church just to pray
Came back home feeling the same way
But I still believe

I heard music in my dreams
Then I woke up to the sounds of screams
But not to worry, it was only me
At 620 W. Surf

Ticking Away...

From Kate & Leopold:

---

Stuart: It is no more crazy than a dog finding a rainbow. Dogs are colourblind, Gretchen. They don't see colour. Just like we don't see time. We can feel it, we can feel it passing, but we can't see it. It's just like a blur. It's like we're riding in a supersonic train and the world is just blowing by, but imagine if we could stop that train, eh, Gretchen? Imagine if we could stop that train, get out, look around, and see time for what it really is? A universe, a world, a thing as unimaginable as color to a dog, and as real, as tangible as that chair you're sitting in. Now if we could see it like that, really look at it, then maybe we could see the flaws as well as the form. And that's it; it's that simple. That's all I discovered. I'm just a... a guy who saw a crack in a chair that no one else could see. I'm that dog who saw a rainbow, only none of the other dogs believed me.

From WNYC's Radio Lab:

Einstein's Theory of Relativity may have implications on the concept of choice. Namely, that there is none. Do we choose what movie to see tonight? No. (It's already been chosen, some say.) Do we choose to wiggle our finger? No. (Already wiggled.) This hour of Radio Lab features conversations with scientists and an entire cast of characters who are all waging battle against time – or at least the common sense view of time. We'll visit a particle accelerator where scientists recreate the moment just after the beginning of time...and also a Dublin artist whose life is a 19 century time-experiment. We end in the Mojave desert, where geologic time flows like a frozen hourglass.

You Just Had Sex. What Was Your Reason?

From Saturday's New York Times:

For now, thanks to psychologists at the University of Texas at Austin, we can at last count the whys. After asking nearly 2,000 people why they’d had sex, the researchers have assembled and categorized a total of 237 reasons — everything from “I wanted to feel closer to God” to “I was drunk.” ...more>>