In the aftermath of this debacle, though I kept it to myself, I felt bewildered, depressed, and, to be honest, terrified.

I sat down with Malcolm Gladwell's latest, The Tipping Point. I've been wanting to read it since the hype created around it (The Roots' last album, M. Chabon's reference to it, et al). It covers why life is an epidemic, the Tipping Point is life at a critical mass. Too much life. It's weird to think there can be too much life. Life is infectious, but not in the negative way people look at that word. They see infect and it's already, OMG. No, infectious in a way that life is just speeding up, like looking at a line graph and watching the life of the world (considering humans) travel along a solid line and then suddenly shoot upward. epidemiologists coined the word and now every business uses the term Tipping Point in everyday life.

Listening to the new Tunng album, This Is...Tunng: Mother's Daughter and Other Songs it's really good if you like electronic folk (?)

Greg, the bartender, had made them just right, with a dash of angostura bitters and a sugared lemon wedge rather than an olive.

Right now Jane is gluing red and pink Origami cranes to a branch painted yellow, it looks awesome. She's crafty, and not in that old Beastie Boys I-want-the-girl-but-she-is-too-crafty-and-cunning way, but she has excelled at the art of arts and crafts.
Work at Borders today flew by. I've learned that you could probably get anything published on any topic, and Borders will carry it. Medieval Archery Quarterly? got it. Swimmning with your Dog? Got it. Twice. Pilates for Babies? Yeah, someone has it on order.

I bought J-Pod today. I didn't buy it when it immediately hit the shelf, I waited and stewed, I almost read Microserfs again. I remember the first time I bought one of his books, from Carina. It was Life After God, and I read it the same day and twice the next week.

I didn't know that what I was feeling was a prefigurative pang of mourning for the next five years of my creative life.

Don't you hate it when you feel as if you are on the cusp of something that will define your life? I do. Boy do I do.
The week has brought W-2 forms, coffee breaks, sore legs. The kind of thing that normal people go through, which throws abnormal people (me) into a state of shock. Borders is a great place to work, it's fun, not very challenging and I get to be surrounded by tons of books and DVD's. Books and DVD's mind you, that cost a much less than some ordinary Joe off the street would pay for. Ah, the benefits of retail.
I really love Chris Onstad's blog. He captures the feelings of so many generic male adults it's not even funny, but to the point where we have to nervously laugh at ourselves. (Check it out.) He created Achewood which is also amazing.
I've been to 2 out of 3 Amy/Lisa/Ryan/Soto(?) going away parties. I do love Amy. I'm going to miss her. I'm going to miss game night. The parties are all going well, much hoopla they deserve. Their exit is grand. I hope to have the same for everyone leaving this year.
I got a mad case of Joe Jackson's hit single at the party tonight, perhaps I'm not being the dashing inamorato that I could be, but I try so very hard. So very very hard.

In fact, the amount of alcohol that I manage to get through in a week of not drinking would keep some people going for a year.

I haven't updated in a bit.

I spent Mother's Day weekend in Arkansas with my great-grandparents and my grandmother. They have a house out there, way back in the woods miles from everything. It's nice and quiet out there, too many trees. My grandfather apparently hated it, saying that you had to lie on your back to tell what time of day it was. I spent the weekend listening to my great-grandmother read poetry and learning some more Tsalagi from my great-grandfather. My brothers, Dereck and Seth, aren't interested in that stuff at all, he was happy at least someone was. It wasn't a brutal drive, three hours to the border, another hour inside Arkansas.

I started reading James Frey's A Million Little Pieces. It's interesting, I just keep in the back of my mind much of it's embellished, but at the same time I really don't care. Whatever he wrote is his dominion. I don't agree with the methods he used to sell it, but that aside, it's just a book. I'm a little sick of the whole drugs/girls/depression/self-realization
type books though, I think this'll be my last for a long while.

There's a major scene in the book where he has his mouth operated on, teeth pulled. My heart goes out to Jane right now for her toothache. I hate Dentists, I loathe their profession. I think you have to be really sadistic to become a dentist. There's to many machines and tools, that chair is a bit too bondage for me.

A day wasted on others is not wasted on one's self.

Sometimes life feels like a house of cards, made with those really cheap flimsy cards that tend to crease and bend at the slightest whim.

Tonight was a meeting of the Denton Dickens Fellowship where the Dickensians of Denton came to hobnob with one another upon all things Charles Dickens. Jane had placed in the essay competition and presented it in her venerable fashion that she so commands. It was good, Dr. Vann had not aged exceedingly and they had cookies.

Last final tomorrow, Government, and I can honestly say I'm finished with the semester. I don't want to think about it, hear about it, read about it. The grades will come in and they will go right back out. I'm in no mood or have the headspace to think about school right now. All I can think about is the duality of life, my life, and how I'm not sure which side best suits me. Either way I know that I'm going to long for the other. Oh treacherous life. Honestly, I think I listen to too much Springsteen. The Boss has filled my head with ideas of independence and bravery that I just can't seem to shake.

A day wasted on others is not wasted on one's self.

Sometimes life feels like a house of cards, made with those really cheap flimsy cards that tend to crease and bend at the slightest whim.

Tonight was a meeting of the Denton Dickens Fellowship where the Dickensians of Denton came to hobnob with one another upon all things Charles Dickens. Jane had placed in the essay competition and presented it in her venerable fashion that she so commands. It was good, Dr. Vann had not aged exceedingly and they had cookies.

Last final tomorrow, Government, and I can honestly say I'm finished with the semester. I don't want to think about it, hear about it, read about it. The grades will come in and they will go right back out. I'm in no mood or have the headspace to think about school right now. All I can think about is the duality of life, my life, and how I'm not sure which side best suits me. Either way I know that I'm going to long for the other. Oh treacherous life. Honestly, I think I listen to too much Springsteen. The Boss has filled my head with ideas of independence and bravery that I just can't seem to shake.

I sometimes think it all lives in me—everything I’ve seen and experienced, all the people I’ve known.

Mother's Day. It's coming up real quick and I've been charged with buying the greatest musical gift of all: Windchimes.
For the past four years, every Mother's Day, Birthday, I think even a couple of Christmas mornings, my dear old Mom has gotten a cross from me and Dereck. She has a wall of them (wall 'o crosses)in our home right above our antiquated jukebox. I think she just finally got wore out of the same thing over and over, yet I still get a package of socks. Life's funny like that, but I still appreciate it.

Twin Peaks. Matin Jane and I watched the first two episodes of the first season last night. I forgot how much that show disturbed and intrigued me. I've been on this early 90's T.V. trip lately (a la Northern Exposure). Now If I could only find the first season of Thirty-something and Coach, I'd been in heaven.

Finals. Writing papers for Baird on Bob Dylan and for Armintor on Historical Fiction. Two things I'm lukewarm about, but I shall prevail.

Manos Hands of Fate. Jane bought it for me.

One evening after dark a young man prowled among these crumbling red mansions, ringing their bells.

He tried walking ahead, through the trees, the shrubs, trying to stay just around the bend so he could hear them but not see them. The road was close, too close, he could hear snippets of radio as it faded out underneath the hum of rubber and gravel. He felt he could never really be alone anymore, even there with the cicadas, lizards, the deep blue shadows and hollows. He was just going to be trapped there, between the road and the trees, never really living but able to see the slow decline of both.

I've been watching a lot of Northern Exposure lately (thanks Amy). I've been in this mindset of 'disconnecting' myself from all the things that have pervaded my life, mainly, technology. The threat of technology on my existence. I quit Myspace, yeah, a small feat, a ripple in the water. Nothing big. I never post on LJ, I don't have a facebook and Friendster is absolutely gone. I have my e-mail accounts and of course, this blog. I still run the band myspace so I technically still exist in that electronic spiderweb of comments and online stalking. I need to turn it over to Camella or Jacob, but the only other person I trust with it is Jane (and also the most computer savvy out of everyone). Maybe someday I'll be able to find a balance between this place and my real life. Jane says I'd just be giving up one vice for another.

New guitarist update: Bryan Harvey from Last Of The Interceptors has become our new guitarist. He also recorded our very first EP a year ago in his studio, and now he's an official member.