Chapter one

Finished chapter one of my book. Don't have a title yet, so I'm calling it "My first book." It's about people writing stories, and it's also their stories. Then they all die.

Music of the Month

I love music. I grew up with it, and it's always been very important to me. I really and truly love every style of music, and am so happy that this is now the trendy thing to say.

"I like both types of music, Country and Western."

I try to support independant music as well. Since 2003 I've recorded all the music that I've purchased. My list is called Music/Month, and has the byline, "1 CD/month to support artists & industry." When I write freehand I use numbers, symbols, and abbreviations.

Here is what I've purchased in the last 4 years.

10/3 Breeders, "Title TK"
11/3 Kid Koala, "Some of my best friends are DJ's"
12/3 Yeah yeah yeah's
1/4 Black Heart Procession, "Amore Tropico"
2/4 Wig in a Box, "Songs inspired by hedwig" -- a fundraiser!
3/4 Black Heart Procession & Solbakken, "In the fishbowl
4/4 Blonde Redhead, "Misery is a butterfly"
5/4 !!!, "!!!"
6/4 Ween, "The Pod"
7/4 Citizen Fish
8/4 Dilinger Escape Plan, "Miss Machine"
9/4 Peaches, "Fatherfucker"
10/4 Kristin Hersh, "Sunny Border Blue"
11/4 Stereolab, "ABC Music"
12/4 Tortoise
1/5 Hippos
2/5 Boards of Canada, "Geogaddi"
3/5 50 ft. Wave
4/5 ... and You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, "Worlds Apart"
5/5 Morcheeba
6/5 Cat Power
7/5 The Muffs, "Hamburger"
8/5 Mary Timony, "Ex-Hex"
9/5 Gorillaz, "Demon Days"
10/5 American Analog Set, "Set Free"
11/5 Sonic Youth, "Experimental Jet Set, Trash, No Star"
12/5 Frank Black
1/6 Bratmobile, "Ladies, Women, and Girls"
2/6 Frank Black, "Honeycomb"
3/6 Ladytron, "Witching Hour"
4/6 Yeah Yeah Yeah's, "Show yer bones"
5/6 Ladytron
6/6 Beta Band, "From Heros to Zeros"
7/6 Peeping Tom
8/6 Vines + Errase Errata
9/6 Delgados "Hate"
10/6 Decemberists "Picturesque" + Tegan and Sarah
12/6 Mew + Midlake + Joanna Newsome + Metric
2/6 Sonic Youth + Jenny Lewis
3/6 Modest Mouse + Air + !!! + Frank Black
6/6 Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks + Trail of Dead

As you can see, sometimes I skip a month, and I've recently been trying to buy two per month instead. Some are amazing, some are dissappointing, but this is a fun thing.

I'm not sure if it would be better to download than to buy CD's though. Plastic is bad, and the fuel used in transport is bad. I wonder if the musicians get more money if I download and album from them. This is something I should find out.

Mew Special

The title is what band and song that I awoke to, running through my head. It goes like this:

"Special, blah blah blah blah blah....
You know blah blah blah blah..."

I don't really know all the words, or enough to form a sentence, but it's still a beautiful song.

I have two more days of work left before I'm unemployed for two months. Here are some goals for this summer, or at least this month.

By August 20th I'd like to have written my first novel. Fer sure.

By July 22nd, when I'm getting married, I'd like to be in good shape. That's exercise, people. I've got the time. I need an hour a day, 6 days a week. But I have the time, so I should do it. Last week I overexerted and hurt my back though. I took a week off, and am going to the gym today. I'm also keeping track of what exercise I'm doing and when I'm doing it. So far it's just not enough on paper.

Also by the wedding I need to have everything planned for the wedding. I need a caterer, some sort of flower arrangement, a bartender, some sort of parking solution, clothes for me to wear, and some wedding playlists. Yow! Maybe we need a wedding photographer too, although we know so many photographers that I don't see why we'll need to pay.

Oh, and a honeymoon as soon as possible.

A to-do list!

The end of the year, the beginning of the project

Yow! I'm going to write a novel this summer. School is over in two days, but I basically have about 3 hours left of work to do. Maybe 4 or 5. That's plenty of time. All I have to do is grade two small classes worth of finals, clean up, and do the end of the year procedures. I always kind of like the end of the year stuff; it's like a scavenger hunt of people's signatures. I think it's because it comes in this nice list format, and I always like crossing things off lists.

I'm also going to be planning our wedding, and getting in shape. Those are my only activities. Everything else is secondary. I'm considering this a job this summer. Maybe not during our honeymoon, and maybe not on days when Jessica is off, but I'm going to be at my computer typing an awful lot. I also think that I might start drinking tea. Maybe not though, as it stains one's teeth, doesn't it. I'll have to think about the tea.

I should keep in mind that if I really just sit at my computer all the time, then I'm going to forget how to be social. Also I'm not going to give Jessica any space. So, I guess I need to figure out other activities as well, probably based on exercise. I like hiking. Maybe I'll go on lots of hikes and give Jessica days off. Those are like vacation days at the house.

What's my book about? Well, you'll have to wait and see!

25 most censored stories, 2007

Here's a link to the 25 most censored stories of 2007, as compiled by Sonoma State University.

I look for it every year. Some years it's easier to find than other years. This year it slipped by, but a friend of mine, the Rabid Wombats blog, caught it.

Check it out. Save the world.

Caffiene and your brain!

Wooo! Zooom! My mind flies by at 1000 miles per hour, which is really fast for sitting in a rolling chair. (Get the implied double meaning? I'm sitting in my chair while my mind is moving, but I'm also conjuring the image or literally rolling, in a rolling chair, at 1000 mph. That's seriously fast, past the sound barrier. (Of course, theoretically this is easy to imagine. With frictionless wheel bearings, on a good slant, in a vacuum, gravity will pull you faster than 1000 mph. (But, frictionless wheel bearings are imaginary - they don't exist, how could they? You only need bearings that are good enough to have a max speed of over 1000 mph. (See? I did it again! I implied that the giant vacuum with the slant long enough to roll a rolling chair up to 1000 mph DOES exist, by the mocking tone I used when noting that the frictionless bearings don't! (Anybody else realize that I'm now inside of 5 sets of parentheses? This is seriously off topic. These metatopics just keep coming to me. (I'm thinking very much nonlinearly. Of course, grammar is an art (some call it a metalanguage) and the use of parentheses is subjective. This could've been written with much different prose. In fact, I think almost no one would open such a ludicrous amount of parentheses; maybe Gabriel Garcia Marquez would. (Ms. Charlip made me read 100 Years of Solitude in 11th grade, and while only about 5 of us read it all, and I thank her kindly for years of excellent teaching (I still think about the 5 types of comedy also), I think my readers might have some words for her (Another pun! 'Have some words for her?' Wooo! Zooom!) Of course, maybe they'd pass their thoughts on to the great Colombian grammarian savant instead.) The problem with thinking this nonlinearity, is that it is very easy to lose your train of thought. This comes about much more frequently in conversations with multiple people, but with me it happens, occasionally, solo. The problem with WRITING nonlinearly is that, even though we have the grammatical structure to do so (parentheses,) it makes the reader strain to figure out what the hell is going on. (Of course, Joyce still got published, as well as many other prose artists. Grammatical engineering is just another tool in the literary artists' box.) Illegibility is a problem, however, and isn't really something to be sought. )))))) The reason I'm thinking so fast is that I had a small cup of weak coffee at the donut shop this morning. I also had a bran muffin and a sesame bagel - no cruller. I don't usually partake in caffeine. When I do, Wooo! Zooom! (Triple-O-mind explosion!) Of course, the mind is influenced by chemicals. The ancients knew this, in a way. They didn't know much about what those chemicals were, but they knew which plants to chew, frogs to lick, and so forth. Recently we've learned about how life's basic activities alter our brain chemistry. (Recently meaning the last 100 years or so.) Food, sex, exercise, sufficient sleep, sleep deprivation, stress, et cetera, all effect our affect. (I couldn't resist! (I should've. (Oh man, totally non linear again, but now I've got a nagging conscience to return to the train - the train of thought. (It's going to be hard though, if I can't lay off the puns. (I need a plan of action: no more puns or double entendres. If one slips out (I seem to not be able to help it,) then try to refrain from commenting on it. (I seem to be having difficulty with this as well.) That's a plan!))))) Caffeine works profoundly on me, but for the last 15 years I've been trying to get better at noticing the subtle changes of brain chemistry. Eating healthily changes me over the next day or so. Exercise changes me for the next two days, or so. Coffee works for about 2 days. 36 hours of hyperness, then it tapers off into a lull of less energy, mood, and esteem for the rest of the second day. Sad, but Wooo! Zooom!

Find your own brain chemistry, and you can be your own engineer. Most all of us self medicate, but an advanced technique is to self diagnose, and treat the causations of happiness, rather than the symptoms of unhappiness. Experiment on yourself, and enjoy.