Question for my (limited) audience

I was thinking this morning. Why do humans (or many of us, at any rate) tend to make ‘accomplishment’ or ‘experience’ lists?
Not like ‘to-do’ lists, but the kind of self-referential historical lists people make sometimes like ‘boys I’ve kissed’ or ‘girls I’ve boned’ or ‘the best five beers I’ve ever had’, like that.
Leave your comments below. Thanks!

iPod War #2

‘Cuz my friend Gretchen expressed an interest, here’s a new set of ten:
Halifax – Hampton Grease Band
Pavane: She’s So Fine – John Adams
It’s You Or No One – McCoy Tyner
The Flopper – Bob Drake
Ain’t That Nothin’ (Run-Through) – Television
Big Shot – Bonzo Dog Doo – Dah Band
The Sound – The Cassettes
Frankie On A Pony – Saccharine Trust
Suzie Cryin’ – Fapardokly
Bertha Butt Boogie – Jimmy Castor Bunch

Talk about the weather

“I’ve never been able to properly explain myself in this climate.”
-Johnny Depp, as Hunter Thompson, in the movie Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas

I don’t think it’s my growing age or my physical shape or anything like that. It’s getting hotter.
When I was a wee misanthropic young adult, I remember sweltering through summer in my first apartment, when I would get out of shower, towel myself dry and almost immediately return to being unpleasantly damp as the sweat fought to expel itself out of my body.
I didn’t have an air conditioner in that first apartment and never used it in my car, either. But I never thought I could feel the sun slowly crisping my skin when I was subjected to its direct rays before, either. I never felt the need to sleep three of four hours in the middle of the day after spending a few minutes outside, neither.
Looks like Al Gore and all of them damned pointy-headed scientists were right, huh?
Well, shit then. I guess I’ll just have to stay in my air-conditioned cave until those two magical weeks – one in spring, one in fall – when the temperature isn’t too hot or too cold, but just right.
Thankfully, though, this accursed heat is keeping my creative motor idling at full power. Here’s an English language haiku:

In shorts, a jungle
Not heat, but humidity
I stick to vinyl

Needs some work, I know, but let me take care of it after the sun goes down, okay?
It’s too freaking hot right now.

What I Miss About Then, Part 1

Back then we were so full of potential. It seemed like us and everyone we knew were only stopping off for a quick drink on our way to greatness.
We drank a lot back then, but, like every other small pain in our path, the hangovers seemed energizing rather than debilitating. The queasy days seemed a small price to pay for the wisdom we were gaining, the experiences we were having, the friendships we were building.
And the friends we made seemed certain to be with us for the rest of our lives, to stand as rocks in the times of our sorrow and whoop and holler with us in joyous reverie when that was called for. Things moved so fast then.
The laundry stayed in growing piles in the dirty corners of our rooms and got infrequently washed on lengthy excursions to the laundromat that was next to the bar. Between dates with the laundry, clothes were selected not on the basis of color or fashion, but on the results of the ‘sniff’ test.
We could – and did – live on porches in the summertime, waking and standing up in the mornings to scratch our asses, naked, much to the dismay of our suburban neighbors. Every day was filled with terror of unstructured freetime, because we were either unemployed or on break from school or both.
I sure do miss those days.
Or maybe I’m just viewing them through the pleasant, hazy gauze of the distant past.

iPod war!

iPod War
Bring it on!
Right now:
Adelaide – Old 97′s
Erotica – Rita
Heart Association Spot – The McCoy’s
Pli de perversion – Denis Dufour
Drive To Glory – 40 Years Of NFL Films Music
Sweet Smell – Eleventh Dream Day
Twelve Minus – The Cassettes
Robin’s Theme – Sun Ra and the Blues Project
Funky Hayride – Stickmen
Sweet Music – Aces/Desmond Dekker

James McIntyre

“He was a modest man, always plain James McIntyre. He had few faults, and was reluctant to discuss those of others.”
Ode On the Mammoth Cheese
(weight over seven thousand pounds)

We have seen thee, queen of cheese,
Lying quietly at your ease,
Gently fanned by evening breeze,
Thy fair form no flies dare seize.
All gaily dressed soon you’ll go
To the great Provincial show,
To be admired by many a beau
In the city of Toronto.
Cows numerous as a swarm of bees,
Or as the leaves upon the trees,
It did require to make thee please,
And stand unrivalled, queen of cheese.
May you not receive a scare as
We have heard that Mr. Harris
Intends to send you off as far as
The great world’s show at Paris.
Of the youth beware of these,
For some of them might rudely squeeze
And bite your cheek, then songs or glees
We could not sing, oh! queen of cheese.
We’rt thou suspended from balloon,
You’d cast a shade even at noon,
Folk would think it was the moon
About to fall and crush them soon.

(h/t to Chase me, ladies, I’m in the cavalry)

10 Years Ago

I got married.

We have two glorious children.

I’d do it all again, too!

Happy Anniversary, Dear!

The Germans get the coolest words…

…the phrase already had great resonance in Germany. The word dolchstoss—“dagger thrust”—had been popularized almost fifty years before in Wagner’s Götterdämmerung.
–“Stabbed in the Back!”, Harper’s Magazine

And the article – which I haven’t finished yet – ain’t so bad neither.

Very Sad News

RIP, Syd Barrett
UPDATE: Here’s a nice article about Syd.

What I Read On My Holiday

Back now, with a day to decompress from the fourteen hours spent behind the wheel
(thank you Chicago traffic!) and recover from the car lag.
What did I read on my vacation?

• I finished Don’t Think Of An Elephant! by George Lakoff
• JPod by Douglas Coupland (thanks, Myra!)
• “Howl” Fifty Years Later edited by Jason Shinder (thanks for getting it from the library, Lynn!)
• I started Talking Right by Geoffrey Nunberg (thanks again, Myra!)

They were all very good. Lakoff and Nunberg were pretty much all over the topic of that paper that I was running that survey for, only first and better. If I had read them before I wrote the paper, I would have given up in disgust and despair. Shinder was fascinating – it’s easy to forget just how revolutionary Ginsberg’s work was. Coupland was funny and engrossing. I read it pretty much in one morning – I really didn’t want to put it down.