weary as water

every time i blink i have a tiny dream

a few hilarious things.

It’s always crazy going back to work after two weeks off, although it wasn’t too bad this time. I’ve been taking advantage of my jet lag, getting up at 6am and going to bed around 10:30; color me productive.
Yesterday we went to Avondale Brewery & Emily had two (TWO) glasses of their peach saison. I’ll forever be grateful to Europe for turning her into a beer drinker.

Today we rode bikes to the farmers market, bought beet greens and goat cheese, ate fancy popsicles. That was super.

Here are some things I hope are real.

Touring indie band picks up John Waters hitchhiking

Miles Davis was a dick to Nancy Reagan.

Davis was a man of few words. When he did speak, his words often had a similar effect to a hand grenade being lobbed into the room. In 1987, he was invited to a White House dinner by Ronald Reagan. Few of the guests appeared to know who he was. During dinner, Nancy Reagan turned to him and asked what he’d done with his life to merit an invitation. Straight-faced, Davis replied: “Well, I’ve changed the course of music five or six times. What have you done except fuck the president?”


I remember when I accidentally set a BIOS password on my dad’s first PC, and then promptly forgot the password. He was NOT happy (and then, neither was I).

zombie parks and a two year old

Emily & I went on a roadtrip to @pielab this weekend with some friends. It was pretty fun – the chocolate walnut brownie pie was my favorite (of course!). My second favorite was hanging out at this cool park in greensboro made of old steel drums. A. said it reminded him of zombies. I didn’t see any zombies but the steel drums did make some weird noises.

The pull-up bar is still my nemesis.

overthinking a plate of beans. (and some stuff i really like)

Here’s the deal. I’m only going to write about things I really like. Not every single book I read. Not every single trip I take. Only the things I really truly like. I’m not trying to be a critic (but I am undeniably a consumer).

OK, now that’s out of the way. So here’s some stuff I’ve read this year that I really like:

The Miseducation of Cameron Post by emily m. danforth
I grew up in Miles City, MT, same as the author, and when all of my facebook friends from high school started talking about this lesbian coming-of-age novel set in my hometown, I immediately bought a copy and began reading. I really liked Cameron Post (the main character) – so much so that I was a little disappointed in how the story ended because I wanted to see what happened next.

I was completely overwhelmed by how accurately emily m. danforth portrayed Miles City. There’s a little tiny bit of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance that talks about Miles City (mainly, a motorcycle shop that still existed when I was growing up there, and a night spent on a park bench in Riverside Park) – and when I was super homesick I would read that book over and over, feeling a little pretentious but mostly just waiting for chapter 8.

That’s pretty much how I felt the entire way through ‘the miseducation of cameron post’. I haven’t been back to Miles City in 14, maybe 15 years. And when I read this novel, I was transported back instantly. Granted, there were a lot more lesbians in ‘The Miseducation of Cameron Post’ than I remember from my high school days. And even though Cameron Post & I had very little in common (I was the misfit church kid from town in band and choir), her story about growing up different in Miles City, MT was not so different from mine.

P.S. You can imagine my excitement when I was first getting into vinyl and tracked down a copy of “13 Steps’, Fugazi’s first EP, because it had this song I really liked – “Waiting Room” – on it. On the back cover of the record is a photo of the band, sitting at a lunch counter that I knew for a fact was in Miles City, MT. (Not out of recognition – it was probably either taken at Ben Franklin’s lunch counter – but in the background of the photo you can see the top of a flag, proclaiming “MILES CITY BIG SKY”). DUDE. FUGAZI HAS BEEN TO MY HOME TOWN.

P.P.S. I know I’m supposed to be talking about this awesome book I really like, and not my hometown. Sorry. You should check the book out, anyway.

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The last book I read that I really loved was The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. It’s about a game between two illusionists, and a magical circus (or a circus of magic?), and there’s not much more I can say about it without spoiling some of it’s secrets. The writing flows really well, and I basically devoured this book over the course of a weekend. There’s not much more I can say about it without taking away some of the magic, so you’re going to have to read it for yourself.

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I also really liked the film Melancholia, but you probably shouldn’t watch it if you’re already depressed. It’s not a suspense film – you know from the opening scene that the Earth will be destroyed by colliding with the planet Melancholia. It is probably the very best depiction of depression that I have every seen.


The Polyphonic Spree put on a superb show at Bottletree in February. I don’t even particularly LIKE the Polyphonic Spree, although I’ll definitely go to another live show if I can. I described them as “what would happen if the arcade fire took a bunch of ecstasy and then went to church camp.” The crowd was super fun at this show – and the glitter guy threw confetti instead of glitter – and I stayed out much later than I intended (a good thing in moderation).

IMAG1248

A few weeks ago, my work buddies and I pranked a guy on his birthday by blowing up a bunch of ballons (the old fashioned way – there’s a worldwide shortage of helium!) and filling his office with them. Lots of people helped.. One of these days all the pranks I have pulled on people at the office on their birthdays are going to come back and haunt me. Not yet, though!

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Until next time.

if we won…

If we won the lotto (an estimated $640 million) – I would:
1. buy a car manufactured in this century
2. quit my job
3. travel around the world
4. move to portland
5. have a baby
6. write a blog about how hard it is to be rich

Book 2: Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

All of the stories you heard were true: Steve Jobs is an asshole. But he’s also a genius, and part of being a genius is knowing how to get what you want. This biography is a little dry at times (and I’m a nerd, so you know it is REALLY dry) – but it is also a gently honest, no-holds-barred type of book that discusses Jobs’ failures as a human being as well as his triumphs and his legacy. A little fanboy-ish but pretty good, overall.

3.5/5

Book 1: Eating With The Enemy: How I Waged Peace With North Korea From My BBQ Shack in Hackensack by Robert Egan

So Kim Jong-il died, and someone on the interwebs posted about this book review on motherjones. The book sounded super intriguing – basically, it’s a memoir of a high school dropout from New Jersey who started a bbq restaurant and somehow got involved in North Korean diplomacy. The book was just as exciting as I expected (a real life spy novel!) with the sort of escapades one might expect (bird hunting with north korean diplomats! being given truth serum by the north koreans! pissing off the fbi!). Really a fun book to read.

4/5

Requiem for a Friendship

Emily called me with the news that we had been defriended on facebook by this couple we know. It wasn’t a complete surprise – I called OneHalf out for saying some racist shit* on facebook on MLK day and suffice it to say they didn’t take it as constructive criticism. I didn’t take it as a great loss. OneHalf says whatever she feels, whenever she feels it. In my younger days I used to admire her brazenness, but as I have aged it has become tiresome. (Especially since she is never wrong – no matter how insensitive she is being or who she is making fun of). TwoHalf messaged Emily on facebook to tell her what a horrible person I was and how we did things they didn’t like too but they would NEVER say anything to us about them and she also told us to FUCK OFF, just in case that wasn’t clear.

We have been through some shit together, us and them, over the years. We were the types of friends that talk about hanging out a lot but actually only get together two or three times a year. And for the past couple years, OneHalf has been saying things that really made me uncomfortable. The problem was – I didn’t feel like I could say anything to her without creating a bunch of drama – and because we saw each other so rarely it was easier just to ignore her comments about black people and muslim people and homeless people. And so perhaps it was unfair of me to take that three years of frustration and ball it up into a nastygram and throw it back at her. Perhaps I should have been brave enough to talk to her about it at the dinnertable. But if there is one thing I have learned in my life, it is that you don’t have to be friends with someobody just because you’ve always been friends with them. It’s okay to let a friendship fizzle out. It’s okay to let a friendship die a fiery death, if you have to.

And so here I stand, watching my frozen lunch rotate as the microwave emits the only light in the room.

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*racist shit = stuff about how MLK was sort of a bastard who slept with prostitutes and cheated on his wife and plagarized his sermons and thesis and wasn’t deserving of an official u.s. holiday. why don’t we change it to be for everyone in history who has ever fought for civil rights. Maybe not racist enough to end a friendship over by itself, but in the context of a person who has railed against historically black colleges for being racist (even though white kids can go to them) and the NAACP for being racist (why isn’t there a national organization for the advancement of white people, she asked…oh yeah, it’s called…every single authoritarian structure we HAVE in this country is geared towards the advancement of white people…ie…CONGRESS, most CEOs, school systems, etc.