Antisocial Media

This comic runs in one of the local free tabloids. Kind of hit or miss, but this week's edition killed me: Well done, Robert T. Balder! I may finally be ready to, as it has been said, rock.

True, I didn't think California would be like this, but I don't know how it could be different, either. Sitting on the deck tonight, hearing the resonant tones of the metal wind chimes, and the sorrowful plunks of the bamboo ones, and smelling the jasmine on the breeze; hearing the constant low roar of the highway (even at three in the morning), but also the distant lament of the train horn; and seeing a few stars through the orange-purple night sky...I thought California would be different, but I didn't expect it to be this much the same. {EdNote: This image is of a print by Raymond Pettibon, one that I had the privelege to live with for a semester of college thanks to Oberlin's Art Rental program and my excellent housemate Josh Adler. I think about it every time the thought "Wow, California isn't how I thought it would be," crosses my mind. Kind of grim, no?}

Pleasing taste; some monster-ism.

Funny that I should have spent so much of yesterday writing about All the King's Men , and spent all of today being driven slowly nuts by a facial tic above the left side of my lip. Seriously, it's making me crazy. In the novel, The Great Twitch was Jack Burden's (ultimately failed) metaphor for the senselessness of life, that life is so random that all our behaviors and interactions might as well be random twitches of muscle fiber. I don't think that what I've got constitutes a Great Twitch, but it certainly is a persistent one.

So I had a great post written on questions of agency and identity as explored through Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men and High Fidelity (I focussed more on the film by Stephen Frears than on the original Nick Hornby book), and it mysteriously disappeared. I, of course, blame the government . The crux of my post was that letting outside events and relationships with other people shape your life is fundamentally selfish , and that each of us bears responsibility for claiming our own agency . One of my favorite lines from Richard Linklater's Waking Life is an offhanded remark by a passerby , late in the movie, who tells the nameless protagonist (played by Wiley Wiggins ) "As the pattern becomes more complex , it is no longer sufficient to be swept along," or something like the same. The patterns are becoming more complex, and we face peril if we are satisfied with passivity. But, like I said, that post got erased, so here's a BMW z3 Coupe, ...

What pleases God? What offends God? To what is God indifferent? Shaykh Yassir Chadly at Starr King told me at the start of the last semester that proper etiquette was important because it pleases God. I'm not a Muslim, nor do I believe in God in a firm, definite sense. Something about the idea of etiquette being important to God really stuck with me, though, and I'm still mulling it over. What are the rules that govern our relationships with one another? Where do ethics come from? Are they pragmatic constructs, or do they come from a deeper source? Just idle thoughts from an early morning walk home from a late-night beer and bs session with Garrick and Neal.

Pandora has just helped me create a Josh Ritter radio station. If you were curious, the music-genomic traits of Josh Ritter are mellow rock instrumentation, mild rhythmic syncopation, repetitive melodic phrasing, extensive vamping, and major key tonality. Must be why he's such a hit in Ireland--those leprechauns are suckers for vamping.

For what it's worth, I am resurrecting my blog! Cause everyone else is, that's why. I'm listening to the Flaming Lips Radio station from pandora.com which is playing a song called Magic Finger by James Kochalka Superstar. The chorus, and I'm not joking, is "It's my dick! It's my dick! It's a magic finger, pointing at all the pretty girls!" Actually, that's pretty much the whole song. Kochalka is a cartoonist of some repute, most recently for Super F*ckers. Get your mind out of the gutter, James! I figured out how to resurrect the posts from me and Sarah's bike trip, and I'm working on getting the photos back up, so hold yer horses, you bastids. I have been meaning to write more, and this is sort of a step up from journaling. I do, yes, need the practice. I haven't bicycled across the country since the last time, so no real significant two-wheeled news. I am relocated from Madison, WI, to Oakland, CA, to attend seminar...

One thing Sarah and I have been worrying about on this trip is the possibility of a new military draft. Looks like we're not the only ones: Let's hope it won't come to that again...

We've been off the bikes for a few weeks now, staying with and visiting friends in Portland and Seattle, and letting Sarah's poor hands rest a bit. We have not been idle, however, visiting the Oregon coast twice, hiking in the Cascades and on Mount Rainier, and doing one day of biking (Portland to Kelso/Longview, WA). Perhaps to Sarah's chagrin, staying with friends has given me access to high-speed internet, first at Gabe's and now at Marti and Charlie's. It's nice to be a little caught up, but I think it will be even nicer to be on the move again, happily oblivious. At any rate, here's an e-mail our friend Fightin' J sent to me (I can't for the life of me imagine why): Bear downs 36 beers, passes out at campground Rainier, not Busch, the beverage of choice for thirsty black bear The Associated Press Updated: 7:26 a.m. ET Aug. 19, 2004 BAKER LAKE, Wash. - When state Fish and Wildlife agents recently found a black bear passed...

...but they were all in Washington. No mountains in Montana for us. Go figure! Sherman Pass? Oh yeah. Wauconda Pass? Maybe. No, seriously, we did it. Loup-Loup Pass? It has a silly name. Washington Pass, you ain't so tough! Rainy Pass...was okay. And here's my favorite picture of Sarah from the entire trip so far: She's such a beauty.

Here's two apologies, just to kick things off: Golly, I'm really sorry about those two audio posts. Listening to ten solid minutes of directionless blabber from exhausted bikers is too much to ask of our friends and family, and it won't happen again. Also, I'm really sorry that our updates have been ...well, nonexistent. It's sometimes hard on the bike to find cellphone reception, or computer access, but we'll work harder at keeping this blog up to date. Also, as Sarah points out, we're often having too much fun, and forget about things. Please forgive us. Since we left Minneapolis, over a month ago, we've covered a lot of ground, met a lot of great people, and even had a few adventures. Here's a brief synopsis, with highlights: Minnesota was, on average, pretty flat. We had mostly sunny weather, except for one night when we camped next to the Rum River in the town of Milaca. Right in the floodplain. We were woken in the wee h...