I know I’m late with this, but when one comes across such blatant idiocy, one must point it out for what it is.

There’s not much that can be said here that hasn’t already been said. Evelyn Mastroianni certainly deserves to have her name linked to this in perpetuity. I am often gobsmacked at how utterly evil some adults can be. That’s a good word for Principal Mastroianni…evil. “Bully” and “Coward” don’t quite sum it up nicely enough. If you doubt it, consider the following:

“They made me sign a statement,” the tear-stained fourth-grader said. “She told me to write that I had a gun,” he said. “She said, ‘A gun is a gun’.”

Keep in mind, this child is 9 years old.

I think we can all agree that it is axiomatic that a Lego gun is not, in fact, a real gun. In this case, A is not A. That such a priori knowledge is not evident to a principal (all of whom have Doctorate degrees, if I’m not mistaken), is a perfect example of why we should not mistake education for intelligence or wisdom.

Principal Mastroianni has apologized to the boy, only after the news broke nationally. There is no indication she has lost her job, however. More’s the pity. One can hope that this experience will temper any further idiocy in the future. I’m not hopeful. It is my experience that such evil is not so easily assuaged.

My camera and I have a very interesting relationship. There are times when it feels as if it’s literally an extension of my body. No, that’s not right. There are times when it feels as if it’s literally an extension of my entire being. In those moments, time has no hold on me. I will spend hours composing one shot and feel none of the regular distractions of life. Hunger, thirst and weariness have no meaning. It’s what I imagine Zen feels like.

There are other times, however, when my camera feels no more than a brick in my hand. I have no connection to it. No matter what I do to get that shot, the camera will not cooperate.

This has a great deal to do with my personality. I’m much more comfortable in solitary situations than being surrounded by people. When I attempt to immerse myself in those kinds of situations, I find myself completely off center. The concept of taking pictures of perfect strangers (candid or not) is absolutly foreign to me. I envy those who are able/willing to pull that off.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been able to get some pretty good pictures in those situations, but even so, I don’t feel that same special connection to my camera as I would photographing an abandoned barn or a solitary trail in the woods, etc… When doing so, I’m able to take in all of my surroundings. I’m able to hear what is going on around me, breath in the air, feel the soil beneath my feet. I’m able to relax. It is then that my camera and I meld.

I don’t know what’s to be done. I often find myself in chaotic, loud situations, surrounded by chaotic, loud people. The introvert in me can always act the extroverted part, but it becomes much more complicated when one has a camera in one’s hands. The dichotomy becomes ever more strident. The camera either serves to connect you more with people OR to cut yourself off from them. Want to hold a psychological experiment? Put a camera in an introvert’s hands in a room full of people and see what happens. I’m telling you, it could go either way.

Anyway, back to the original point of this post. I don’t like feeling disconnected from my camera. It almost feels like a betrayal. (I know, I know…a bit hyperbolic). This almost leads me to believe that perhaps it’s a good idea to just occasionally leave the camera behind.

I know the camera won’t mind, but I have doubts about myself…

H.L. Mencken once said, “A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.”

I’m certainly over thirty years old, but I’m no poet. Though, occasionally I’ll jot something down.

I wrote this one several years ago and it’s still my favorite:

Stepping out on the threshold
The jostling of bodies
The whiff of cigarette smoke
The constant negotiations of con artists and whores
Beverly loves the night life

Wandering aimlessly, hardly caring about the destination
Catching a reflection in the Victrola store window
Cheap, sensible shoes
Pleated skirt
Eggshell blouse, a touch of rouge

She pretends to be thrown up against dark buildings
Hair mussed up, blouse ruffled
She speaks coyly to the man next to her
Brushes his hand off her shoulder
Walks away clicking her heels

Flapper girls dancing the Lindy
Gold coins a jinglin’
Pushing and pulling

In her bedroom she lies supine, almost satisfied
She quietly invites him to leave
Sighing, she falls into slumber, a vacant look crosses her face
Beverly loves the night life

Meh, it’s not Wadsworth, but it will do.

One of the most oft’ imitated poems is William Carlos Williams’, “This is Just to Say”:

This is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Go to Google and type in “This is Just to Say Parody”, and you’ll see what I mean about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery.

I guess I’ll add to the corpus:

This is Just to Say (for William Carlos Williams)

I tried to listen
to the poem
you wrote
just for me

and really,
your intonation
was beautifully
melodic

Forgive me
it’s the ADD
look!
there’s a squirrel!

Eat your heart out, Charles Bukowski!

I often have counter-intuitive feelings when in large crowds. Rather than feeling boxed-in, it’s almost as if the space between me and the mass of humanity scrunched up against me is hyper-amplified. Though we all jostle for space, seeking out a vacuum to fit our bodily forms, brushing up against each other, sometimes brusquely, sometimes apologetically, those around me may as well be standing miles away; so disconnected I feel from them.

Some might call this a form of agoraphobia, but I’d disagree. I have absolutely no problem with public places, whether they be wide open or not. Neither do I feel claustrophobic or have any anxiety in crowds. It’s difficult to explain. I just feel, well…disjointed, somehow.

While up in Chicago this weekend attending the Camper Van Beethoven/Cracker concert, this feeling came over me very suddenly. For some reason, while standing in the crowd, I just could not figure out what to do with my hands. Do I put them in my pocket? Cross my arms in front of me? Raise them up in the air? Put them behind my back in the position of a modified Parade Rest?

It did not help that the extremely cute girl next to me was dancing lithely, without affectations. She even hip-checked me a few times with a sly, knowing smile. And there I stood, unable to figure out what to do with my hands. The space around me multiplied exponentially until, in a crowd of hundreds, I was alone. At one point, I became so flustered with the odd situation that I actually (God help me) put my hands up in the air and made the “devil horns” sign with my hands while yelling, “Woooooooooooooooooooooo!”.

When the concert was over, the cute girl next to me slid up, put her arm around my waist and half yelled in my ear, “Thanks for hanging out with me! I had a great time! I gotta go home, now!”

And then she was gone.

And I was left there. With my stupid hands. Which I happily put into my pockets, while walking towards the coat check room…smiling all the way.

As I have a specific film project in mind to kick off this summer, I’ve been contemplating differing ways to use the video camera to stage a scene. This has proven to be an interesting mental exercise as for three weeks (or so), I’ll be a one-man show. Meaning, I’ll be the actor, director, cinematographer, sound-guy and producer of this little project. Hell, I don’t even know if it will work; but there’s something both liberating and a bit scary about undertaking each of the roles listed above.

Alone.

I mean, I have to figure out all this stuff by myself.

Which brings me to a dilemma. Yesterday, while watching the show Man Vs. Wild with the girls, I realized exactly what I did not like about the show (not the genre of show, which I love, but that specific program).

The whole thing is staged.

Unlike some other shows of the same sort, Bear Grylls is never in any real danger. He has a full camera crew stalking him at all times. This is illustrated by the oh, so cleaver ways the editing team makes sure you realize this from show to show (the camera man’s shadow, Bear talking off screen, etc…). This is done (post-edit) so you have a hint that even though there’s all this drama, there’s no real danger. So yeah, when he’s scaling that canyon wall, there’s a guy with a camera right next to him shooting the footage. Which leads me to ask, no matter how dangerous Bear makes his plight out to be, (with dramatic music effects and that heightened, slightly stressed out voice of his) I’m always thinking to myself…”Dude! There’s a guy(s) right next to you filming the whole thing, doing the same things you are..with a camera rig in their hands! How freaking hard can that be?”.

I don’t know if this is fair or not. But, really, it all just points back to my dislike of “staged scenes”. Even in photography, I try to avoid this. I’d rather catch something in its natural state rather than position something to make it look appealing. I’ve seen plenty of breath-taking photographs that, in the end, I’ve devalued simply because they were “staged”. I don’t know what this says about me. I don’t know if this is a simple preference or something much deeper. But, it does present a problem.

There are a couple of scenes I want to film during this upcoming journey of mine that, unfortunately, will require some amount of staging. These will be poignant, slightly emotional vignettes. The only way I can capture these scenes if to set up the camera and “stage the scene”. Something that is meant to be an impromptu moment will actually be planned out. Those heart-felt words or actions will have been thought over for months ahead of time.

That seems like cheating to me. But, pursuing other solo documentaries, I see that this technique is done all the time.

I wonder how they come to terms with it.

From the book, Diana F+, More True Tales & Short Stories:

The Diana loves the little things. It loves breakfast, your dog, your boyfriend or girlfriend, that crazy hat in the window, the unbelievable morning traffic, those gummed up salt shakers, a blazing afternoon sun, your nose when it’s all close-up an blurry, the shoes that you didn’t buy, and your hamburger-champion uncle. It’s lightweight body feels good next to yours, and it doesn’t bog you down with a lot of weight…

I got one of these beauties about a month ago, but haven’t tried it out, yet. I can’t wait.

In the meantime, there’s always the Diana Gallary.

I’ve had this blog since 2003 and have never really thought of it as any more than an outlet for what I may be thinking/feeling at the moment. As I am wont to do, I have engaged in a few abortive attempts at something larger throughout the years (blogging the bible, one photo a day, 1001 Journals project, etc…). I don’t regret that. I often shoot for something and end up wide instead of deep, meaning I gain just enough experience from something to sate me…then I move on. I’ve been this way for as long as I remember and I don’t regret it. My ability to shift focus rapidly has served me well over the years, though it’s been a source of great frustration and amusement for those close to me.

The above, of course, is a symptom of ADD; something I’ve lived with all my life. When I was younger, the condition completely ruled me. A child psychologist once recommended that I be put on Ritalin (something my mother disregarded, thank God) and when in class, a screen be put around me so I would not be distracted by the other children. I repeated the 2nd grade. It seems I had “great potential” but just couldn’t sit still long enough to get through the lessons. I was always the odd one out…the one the other kids beat for sport. That all changed by the time I was 14 or so. I learned to fight back. I learned to use wit and intuition to be likable. Later, I learned to relax and just kind of be myself…a confidence born from bloodied knuckles and a knack for comedy. In those years I made some of the best friends of my life. Friends I still talk with on a weekly basis.

But, nothing has ever cured me of paying attention to things that bore me. And, brother (sister), school bored me. I graduated high school with the lowest GPA possible. I’m still proud of that fact. It was the same with college. I really did try my hardest. I did. But, in the end, it bored me. I realized later that I simply cannot abide being told what I should and should not learn. If something does not interest me, it’s not worth my time. That’s just simply the essence of me.

This is how my mind works. I once saw the line, “Hell is other people”, while reading a newspaper one day. Sure, most anyone educated in the Liberal Arts should understand this reference right off. I, however, did not, but it spoke to the introvert in me. So, being intrigued, I searched the net. I then went out and bought three books by Jean-Paul Sarte and read them all. A week later something else caught my attention. And, so it goes. Like I said, my vision is miles wide.

But, sometimes it’s deep as well. In spite of all this hopping about from one subject to another, I have had some constants in my life. The over-arching constant is a passion for learning. The specific things I focus on more than others are: art, photography, literature, science, languages and traveling. One can see that by looking back on this blog over the past several years. I imagine I’ll be following these pursuits for the rest of my life.

Which kind of brings me back to the beginning of this post. As I said, I never really thought of this blog as anything more than a “snapshot in time”. “Hey! This is what I’m thinking right now!”. But, I’m starting to realize that it can be so much more. It can be used as a tool to help strengthen my focus on those things above that I love so.

There are several projects bouncing around in my head at the moment and I don’t want them to bounce away…they really are great ideas. So, I think I’ll start using this space to document what I’m working on. Perhaps this will keep me on track to completion. Perhaps it will allow others to provide encouragement.

Perhaps.

When dusk starts to encroach, the eyelids get heavy and the labors of the day are behind….when I inevitably ask myself, “What did you do today”.

I don’t ever want the answer to be, “Not much”.

. . . Read more!

Subject: Home!

For those of you not on Facebook…I’m home! And none to soon as a winter storm came in last night while I was sleeping.

I’ll write more later. For now, I have to figure out how to go get some food. :)

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Subject: Leaving Kabul

Greetings, all!
Well, tonight is my last night in Kabul. I’m catching a flight out of here tomorrow. The next challenge is to get from here to Qatar, which could take a couple of days. Once I’m in Qatar, I’ll be looking at changing my flight so I can get to the states a little earlier than I expected. Christmas, anyone?

So, I spent the past two days saying my good-byes and getting everything in order here. I’ve made a ton of new friends here…and I’m very sad to be leaving them. I am, however, excited to be coming home to my old friends (and some new ones).

Thank you everyone for making my deployment that much easier by staying in touch and giving me well-wishes when they were needed.

I can’t wait to see and talk to you all when I get back.

Merry Christmas!!

And, to that little red-headed girl…write me back! :P

Subject: Everything is fine

Just so everyone knows, I’m fine. There was an explosion this morning about 1/2 a kilometer away from where I’m stationed. The news is sketchy right now and we’re still waiting for info. I’m fine, though I’d rather not have these sorts of events happen so close to me leving country. Well, I’d rather not have these sorts of events happen at all, but you get my drift…

Subject: Quick Update

I know I said I’d probably be writing less now that I’m so close to leaving country, but I have found myself with a bit of free time and some ideas on my mind.

First, I’m not sure if you are all aware, but all of these letters have been put on my blog: www.shrubbloggers.com. Eric took the initiative to do this, as I could not get the blogging interface to work from here. So, you’re always free to go back and read about this whole journey from the beginning.

Speaking of blogging, I think I’ll be paying much more attention to it once I get home. There are about a dozen projects I have in the back of my head that I’d like to see come to fruition…and blogging about them seems like a good idea.

I’ve been pre-approved for a mortgage, so house-hunting will be in my immediate schedule the first few months home. Ideally, I’d like to get a place that’s in the same general location but is out of the control of a neighborhood association. I’ll cut my grass when I damn well want to, thank you very much. My ideal house will have a full basement in which to build an ad-hoc, DIY digital/music studio. Nothing fancy, just a nice quiet corner where I can start working on all the things I want to work on.

Eric and I have been talking a great deal lately of starting to play music again. I have no idea where this will lead, though I have my ideas. As eclectic and varied as our musical tastes are, this should be a lot of fun. In that vein, I’ll be buying a tuba within the next couple of months. Most of you know that I played the tuba for a few years in high school, but I’ve always suspected that that instrument can do much more than any lay person may guess. I don’t know what to tell you what to expect…I can only advise that everyone “stay tuned”. Whatever happens, it’s gonna be a lot of fun.

I have several ideas for documentary photo/audio work, but my thoughts have also been branching out to film. More to follow on this, as well. I’ve been talking to Eric about this on and off over the past few months…perhaps he can post something on his side of the blog explaining his thoughts.

It’s nice to finally get out of the “dreaming” phase and to actually start work on something you’ve thought about for years. Oh, I’ll keep my day job, but I look forward to adding lines of definitions to myself via these projects.

So, anyway…8 days to go until I fly out of Kabul!

Subject: Winding Down

So, if I go by my calender, I have 12 days left until I leave Kabul. Depending on how long it takes to get a flight out of Afghanistan, I may or may not be home in time for Christmas. Only time will tell.

This will probably be my last long email to everyone before I leave as I expect I’ll be farily busy preparing for my replacement and getting all packed up. I just wanted to write down some thoughts I’ve been having.

• The Day Care project we undertook here was successful beyond what I could have imagined. So far, we’ve received well over 50 boxes of supplies ranging from pens and pencils to winter hats and gloves to clothes to cool toys. To date, we’ve delivered about half of those supplies. We are planning on another run down next week. We have also received about $1,500. This was completely unexpected to me. At best I thought we would be able to get MAYBE $100 for various supplies. Though I won’t be here to see what that money is used for, I suspect we can now seriously start thinking about rebuilding the classroom that was mortared several years ago. At the very least, we can get their building repainted and work on some basic repairs.
  
  I know I’ve said it before, but thank you to everyone who took time out of their lives to help out. I’ve always believed in a a sort of “cosmic” underlying benevolence (those that really know me, know how silly that sounds coming from me, but there’s no real good way of putting that thought into words in such a medium) and you have all validated that belief. Since I’m leaving soon, I’ll be passing everything over to my friend, Scott Poole. He will be here until March. I will also be asking my replacement if he would like to take up the cause when I leave. Again, thank you. I hope that I’ll be able to see each of you in person soon to pass on my gratitude.
• There are a couple of projects I want to work on when I get back home. Some of you know that I’ve spent the past four months purchasing equipment needed to do photography/film/audio documentary work. I’ve had a fascination with my family (both sides) for some time, now. I’ve always warned my mom that someday I was going to write a book about my family. I think she has always been amused and slightly horrified at that prospect. I don’t believe I have the talent needed to write any sort of book, but I do seem to have a knack and a passion for documentation (through photographs, video and audio). Over the next couple of years, I’d like to travel around the states and get an oral history of my family…but that’s only half of what I want to do. While out and about, I think it would be fun to be the modern day John Steinbeck and just experience America. I couldn’t verbalize what I have in mind, but it’s all in the back of my head…swirling.
• (Those of you who are uncomfortable with personal stuff may stop reading now, but you are all friends and family…so I don’t think you’ll have a problem with this). It’s time for me to find my partner in crime, so to speak. I recently watched a video from the Rev. Tom Honey (a Vicar in the Church of England). In it, he was discussing the “nature of God”. He had some rather surprising things to say and I would encourage anyone to watch the clip, as it was rather moving to me (an avowed Agnostic/sometimes Atheist).
  
  In it, he said (and I’m paraphrasing here), in order to know the nature of God, we must cultivate our own inwardness, through quiet meditation and gently setting aside our passing thoughts. This, of course, speaks to the introvert inside of me. I’ve spent years “cultivating my own inwardness”. What he said next was profound to me…though not overly profound as an overall thought. Once we have cultivated our own inwardness, once we have recognized the God inside of ourselves, we must move out into the world and establish intimate connections with others. We must allow our inwardness to touch the inwardness of others. We must allow the God inside ourselves to touch the God inside others.
  
  Of course, I don’t do this thought justice. Rev. Honey explains it much better than I. And, I know to many of you, this probably sounds like metaphysical claptrap. Perhaps. But, I find it an utterly beautiful thought. There is an Indian (the sub Continent) custom where two newlyweds will look at each other for hours (days) to attempt to recognize the God within them, therefore recognizing the God within themselves. I believe this transcends what we know about our own trifecta in the field of psychology (the sex drive, romantic love and long-term attachment).
  
  So, where was I before I went off on what seems like a “self help” lecture? :P Oh, yes…a partner in crime. One wonders….one wonders…
• There’s a good chance that I may be coming back here for a few weeks next year to conduct more training. But, I think this will be my last deployment for a long while. Though I had a wonderful time over here, I just hate to be away from my daughters for such a long period of time. But, we are going to have a good time getting to know each other again when I get back.

So, that’s it for now. With any luck, I’ll be back in the states in two weeks time. It’s going to be great getting back into a regular routine…warm showers, a variety of food, supermarkets, etc…

Have a wonderful day! As always, I love getting emails from all of you.

Talk to you soon!

Subject: Thanksgiving at Camp Eggers

All,

MSNBC was here yesterday covering Thanksgiving at Camp Eggers. Here are two clips. Alas! I didn’t make the cut, but I was nearby. :)

Subject: Happy Thanksgiving!

This is just a quick note to all my friends and family. First, I wanted to tell you all how proud I am to have such a great support network…namely, you guys! We made our first delivery to the childcare center yesterday morning. It was utter chaos and I’ll have to write down my thoughts about it later. But, there are about 75 more kids in Kabul who have warm clothes, toys and school supplies to last them through the winter because of you.

I’ve led a blessed life. When I reflect back upon my childhood and think about what we had to do without in order to get by, I then think of all the places I’ve seen in this world…China, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Eastern Europe, etc.. and I’m completely and utterly grateful for living where I live and having what I have. There is no place I’ve ever experienced in America (and I’ve seen a lot of it) that can touch the abject destitution that pervades Afghanistan. It’s literally soul-crushing.

I’m not here to tell you what you should be thankful for. We’ve all figured that out throughout our lives. Me? I’m thankful for you guys. You’re the best. You always will be.

Here are some pictures taken over the past couple of days. I don’t have time to caption them all, but most are from the child-care center. The others are from our Thanksgiving celebration here on Camp Eggers. . . . Read more!

Subject: The Most Beautiful…

This update really has nothing to do with Afghanistan, but I just came across something I felt I had to share.

As most of you know, I’m an aspiring amateur photographer. I make my rounds through the photography blogs, read books, experiment with new ideas, etc… I probably have 10 cameras of varying sizes, formats, quality, etc… back home.

Every once and a while, I come across a picture that actually elicits an emotional response from me. I’ve had this response only a couple of times looking at my own pictures, and I get it occasionally by other people’s pictures as well.

When I saw the following, I literally involuntarily sucked in my breath. A chill went down my back. The only way I can explain the feeling is for you to imagine sitting in a room and hearing the perfect musical chord being played. Imagine that feeling that starts at the base of your head (where the most primitive part of your brain is located) and then radiating down your spine…tingling the entire time. Shallow breaths, surrendering yourself to the feeling…it’s Divine.

http://nicnichols.com/FourCornersDark/?p=3224

I know this picture won’t elicit the same response from everybody, if anybody…but, I thought I’d share a glimpse into what I find moving.

Make sure you click on the link and check out his other photos.

Take care!

Subject: The Meme, The Seashell, The Blathering…

There’s a meme* going around on Facebook right now requesting that you pick up your iPod, put it on shuffle and write down the first 15 songs that pop up, regardless of what they are or how embarrassing they may be. I never have my iPod with me unless I’m sitting at work, so I never got around to it. I had a bit of free time today so I thought I’d go for it. Keep in mind that my iPod now holds 3258 songs, with more added per week.

Here are my first 15 songs that popped up on “Shuffle Mode”:

1. Recuerdos De Le Alhambra – Fransisco Tarrega
2. The Killing Moon – Echo and the Bunnymen (From the Donnie Darko Soundtrack)
3. Summertime – Gershwin
4. U-Mass – The Pixies
5. Symphony #3 in D Major, Op. 29 “Polish IV.” – Tchaikovsky
6. Entry of the Gladiators – Julius Fucik
7. Gold Dust Woman – Fleetwood Mac
8. The Aquarium – Saint-Saens
9. 5/4 F.T.D. – Critters Buggin
10. Look at That Old Grizzly Bear – Mark Mothersbaugh (From The Royal Tenenbaums Soundtrack)
11. Joe Stalin’s Cadillac – Camper Van Beethoven
12. Whole Lotta Trouble – Cracker
13. Will the Circle Be Unbroken – The Neville Brothers
14. Sax and Violins – The Talking Heads
15. Halloween Parade – Lou Reed

Not too bad. Number 16, by the way, was Brian Eno’s 2-1 from his Music for Airports album.

*A “meme”, for the benefit of those among you who may be a bit Facebook challenged is, according to Wikipedia: “a postulated unit of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena.”

I have a little under six weeks left here in country. Things are beginning to wind down for me. I’ll start shipping my stuff back home in about two weeks. My replacement will be here in four. I have quite a bit of work to accomplish between then and now, but I’m so set in a routine now that the work hardly phases me. We have a running joke here. Every morning when everyone gets to the office, we say, “Hey! Do you know what day it is?”. “No! What day is it!?”. “It’s Groundhog Day!”.

And so it is. Wake up at the same time. Eat the same food, Do the same work, Go to bed at the same time. I catch myself looking at the date from time to time and thinking, “Is it already the 17th? Wow!”. The days just kind of bleed into each other after a while.

I’ve discovered some new things about myself while here and have reconfirmed others. It’s almost impossible for me to “go along to get along”. It always has been. I tend to call stupid actions, well…stupid. You’d think that after 12 years in the Army, a little tact would have sunk into my head.

I’ve found that I miss the military. I miss the camaraderie, the brotherhood, the irreverent joking, the horse-play, the seriousness of it all.

I’ve found that though I have a tendency to jump into situations I find exciting, I need to make time to be sentimental. In one of the first care packages I received, my daughters included a number of sea-shells they gathered from their recent trip to California. There is one shell fragment, in particular, that is a bit thicker and smoother than the others. It’s about the size of a silver dollar, though not shaped like one. I don’t remember when I did it, but sometime ago I slipped it into my pocket and have been carrying it around ever since. When I change pants, I transfer all the contents of my pockets into the new pair before I send the old pair off to be washed.

Along with the pen I bought before coming out here, that shell has been a consistent and constant companion. I take it out every now and then, place it between my thumb and fore-finger and just hold it, running my thumb over it as you would do with a poker-chip or an old coin. This simple shell…a conglomeration of Conchiolin, Calcite and Calcium…picked up on a beach somewhere in California and then transferred via mail all the way to me in Afghanistan serves as a life-line, a direct link between myself and my daughters.

Sentimental? Sure. But, that’s how it is. When Jordan and Zoe held that shell in their hands, billions of their atoms by way of skin cells, skin moisture, etc… transferred themselves onto its surface. It just as Crosby Stills Nash and Young said, “We are stardust. We are golden”.

Indeed. Ultimately, we are all stardust. Ultimately, we are all the same. 100 billion years from now, the atoms that have now formed to make me will still be part of this great Cosmos. And you, my friends, will all be there with me. That has always given me great comfort.

By the way, The Imperial March from Star Wars just started playing on my iPod. Carl Jung would call that Synchronicity. I simply call it Kick-ass Awesome.

So, another long email down. :) I hope everyone is well and happy.

Buddha taught that “The cessation of suffering is attainable”. The Pixies keep pointing out, “Here comes your man”. Bach gave us “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” and Disco Stu, “Don’t advertise”.

Love you guys!

Subject: Going Native, Part II

The closer I get to coming home, the more I blend in… . . . Read more!

Subject: A Quick Note

Greetings, all!

So, it appears that I’ve been a bit lax about my updates and keeping up with friends and family as I just got chided by both my mother and my sister for not keeping them up to date. Sorry, mom.

This will be a short update. It’s a little crazy here right now. We had an explosion about 10 miles off to our north-east at Camp Phoenix. A number of U.S. military were hurt and several U.S. contractors were killed. We have the national inaguration here next week and there are indications that there could be violence before-hand.

The good news it, I have 45 days left here.

Sorry to cut this short. I just wanted to get this out so everyone knows all is good here.

Talk to you soon!

Subject: Going Native . . . Read more!

Subject: Most current, most awesome update from Afghanistan, yet!

I ordered a copy of the Qur’an from Amazon about a month ago and have steadily been making my way through it in my free time.

I was struck by the phrase: “…if any one slew a person – unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land – it would be as if he slew the whole people: and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people.”

Regardless of my views on religion and the death penalty, I understand and respect the poetry of this phrase. It seems to hearken back to the Gospels (the Beatitudes, which are my favorite passages in the bible). Given where I am right now, the phrase is apt. I have had long discussions with my Muslim friends over here regarding it. One particular friend of mine (a translator that accompanies me) is very passionate about this particular verse. He despises the Taliban and everything they stand for. He explained to me that people who carry out suicide attacks do not understand the Qur’an.

And yet, there is a cognitive dissonance at work. A while back, we were in an office waiting for a meeting. A newscast was playing in the background. My friend got very excited and started pumping is arm up and down in the universal “victory” motion and was saying “yes! yes! yes!”. As was a bit puzzled (the newscast was in Dari) and asked him what was up. He told me that a suicide bomber just blew himself up in Pakistan, killing dozens. He said “I hate Pakistan. They have ruined Afghanistan and they are finally getting what they deserve”.

I looked at him for a long moment and quietly said: “If any slew a person, it would be as if he slew the whole people”.

He was very quiet for the next half an hour but finally said, “You are right, my friend”.

Nothing else was spoken about it, but it was then that I realized just how deep and cyclic this violence is. I hope Afghanistan can eventually recover from it. This is a beautiful country, filled with wonderful people.

Another interpreter we work with is an older gentleman who is a U.S. citizen. He is over here on a two year tour and has three children and a wife back home. I asked him yesterday over lunch what his story was.

In 1982, in the middle of the Soviet invasion, he was kidnapped by the Soviets and held in a jail cell for over a year. He was 15 at the time. He said he was beaten and made to work hard labor the entire time. His entire family was finally able to get enough money together to secure his release. His entire family then escaped to Pakistan and were able to get political asylum in the United States. Now he’s back trying to help get the country back on its feet.

I asked him if there was still a lot of animosity in Afghanistan towards the Russians. “Oh, yes”, he said. “But, it’s the British they really hate”.

The British. They occupied the country over one hundred and fifty years ago and they are still hated because of it. More so than the Russians! I found this to be an absolutely fascinating view into the Afghan psyche.

—–

I have also made some observations about my own experience over here. I’ve been to a war-zone before, for a longer period of time and under about the same conditions, so I thought I was absolutely emotionally prepared for this deployment.

When the first car bomb hit after I got here (I was close enough to feel the blast-wave), I felt emotions I haven’t felt in a long time. When I was sitting in the bunker waiting for the all clear to sound, I was chagrined to realize I was actually scared. After the all-clear sounded, I wanted to share that experience with others, but I found that everyone just kind of went on with their business, like nothing happened. Just another day.

When the second car bomb went off (I was close enough again to feel the blast-wave), I just kind of shut down. OK, grab my gear. Load my weapon. Stand by. All clear. Go to lunch.

When the third car bomb went off, my reaction was to sigh. “Really? Again?”

When the explosions and running gun battle was happening outside our perimeter a week and a half ago, I was to the point of just going about my business. like nothing special was going on. When it was over it wasn’t even spoken about. We all just went about our business.

I find it amazing how quickly we adapt and compartmentalize. I understand it’s an effective coping/defense mechanism, but I’m not all entirely sure it’s healthy.

—–

Donations for the child care center are coming in quickly, now. Scott (the Lt. Col) who works with me and I have received about 6 boxes between us so far. All have been filled to the brim with toys, blankets, games, warm clothing, sanitary supplies, etc. I’ll be using some of the monetary donations to get them two space heaters this week. Winter is coming up fast and the cold is a harsh enemy.

Of course, you can all can view pictures of my adventures (as well as pictures of the child care center I’ve adopted) here: www.flickr.com/cosmicslop

—–

Friends, I can’t tell you how much I miss Chipotle. :)

Have a wonderful weekend!

Love to all!

Subject: 30 Days in Afghanistan

Some insanely good pictures taken in Afghanistan over the past 30 days. Number 18 is from the car bomb that tarketed the Indian Embassy here on October 8th. That’s the one I got a picture of while walking to work.

Subject: After the run

Just wanted to send along a few pictures:

We had our Halloween 5k tonight and had a blast!

The second picture actually has nothing to do with the run, but this is the room where I’ve been staying for the past two months, and will be staying for the next two.

The others are just of me, hamming it up or running.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Subject: Happy Halloween from Kabul!

As many of you know, Halloween is favorite holiday. Though there will be no Trick or Treating here, I will be running my first 5k tonight.

I’ll send pictures. :)

Happy Halloween!

Subject: Some Happy Pictures…for a change. :)

Good morning, all!

Well, after all the chaos I reported yesterday (with the pictures of the explosion/gun fight) and all the bad news that’s been coming out, I thought I’d send you some more upbeat photos from here.

As many of you know, I’m sponsoring a child-care center over here. Some of the pictures below are from a visit I had with them today.

Here’s a short explanation for each photo:

One: Well, that one is rather obvious. I’m sporting a knit cap someone left here from last year. I think it’s rather becoming. :) The scarf is a traditional scarf worn in the Middle East and in Central Asia. It keeps the sun off your neck, the dust out of your mouth and keeps you warm in the winter.

Two: Halloween decorations outside our conex/office

Three: Medals for an awards ceremony that took place here two days ago. A couple of Bronze Stars were awarded.

Four: Me sitting and chatting with the kids at the child-care center

Five: What a great smile!

Six: The Colonel I was with handed out some lollipops. Who doesn’t like lollipops, right?

Seven: I’m treated to an Afghan children’s song.

Packages full of supplies are starting to roll in! We are also working on getting their heating system fixed (estimated at $7,000). But, we are getting help from the chaplain’s office here at Camp Eggers for that. In the mean-time, I’ll be buying two space-heaters for them until that gets up and running.

I hope you all are having a wonderful autumn! I miss you guys. And, don’t fret about the news too much…I’ll keep you all informed.

Love you!

Subject: Follow up – Pictures

These pictures were taken right from right outside the door of our office. This was the result of the fire-fight at the U.N. house. . . . Read more!

I’ve lost a substantial amount of weight a couple of times in the past. The first time happened after heading back for my second year of college following two years as a missionary in Florida. It involved a lot of walking to and from my off-campus apartment and a purposeful rejection of any and all junk food. I lived pretty much entirely off of beans and rice, oranges, and granola, got lots of practical exercise, and lost about 70 pounds in five months. Later, I moved closer to campus, got a bike, began relying on spaghetti as a staple, and the pounds started to pile back on.

The second time, an experimental stab at Atkins, is partly chronicled in three blog entries from 2004, a series continued in both concept and number by this very post. I didn’t have the tools to measure my progress accurately at the time, but I think I lost about 60 pounds in four months, then took a break while visiting home on vacation, used the short-term break as an excuse to take a longer break and cram in some of my favorite foods as long as I was temporarily off the wagon, and didn’t start back up again.

The third time is currently ongoing. I’d been contemplating another diet for a while until last fall, when I stayed with my pals James and Rachel during a work-related trip to D.C. I discovered that James had been adhering to the paleo diet, which is low-carb and similar in some ways to Atkins. I’d read about it before, and it always made evolutionary sense to me. But truth is often counterintuitive, so I checked out the research. I’d read pretty much every criticism of low-carb diets I could find before I started Atkins back in the day, although I was ultimately swayed in favor of at least trying out the approach by Jim Henley’s blog.

James sent me links to a lecture and book by Gary Taubes, who I’d read back in 2004 but had kept collating research in the interim. His 2008 book is an amazing survey of how nutritional data has been systematically massaged for decades in ways that are entirely incompatible with the scientific method. From Overcoming Bias:

For several decades, it has been the conventional wisdom that dietary fat (and especially saturated fat) contributes to obesity, heart disease, and cancer. Judging from Taubes’ exhaustive research — indeed, I’d be surprised if any other book examined bias within a particular scientific field in such detail — the conventional wisdom was based on unreliable and slender evidence that, once established and institutionalized in government funding, set a pattern of confirmation bias by which further research was judged (or ignored).

It’s a great read, and I find it convincing. Of course, the theory also fits perfectly with my own anecdotal experience — so that helps. When I started Atkins for the second time in February 2009, I realized that I’d forgotten how great it felt the first time. No more low-blood-sugar crashes or moments of panicky hunger. Increased energy, deeper sleep. My occasional acid reflux vanished. And as the weight dropped, everything became easier — less mass that needs to be serviced by oxygenated blood flow, less effort required to move the mass that remains.

I think the primary reason I ultimately failed to stick to the diet in 2004 was that I never fully committed. I viewed it as more or less a neat metabolic trick to lose weight without much physical effort, and I always planned to go back to eating all my favorite foods once I’d lost weight — but keep it off with exercise rather than with what I still regarded as a fad diet. Now that I’m convinced by the science, though, it’s no longer even really a diet to me. This is not a temporary change of behavior; there’s no going back. It’s just a healthier way to eat, and that won’t change if I manage to once again reach my long-lost skinny days. The term “lifestyle change” gets thrown around a lot in nutritional literature, and in my case it’s true — that’s what it takes. No breaks for vacation, no falling off the wagon to succumb to a momentary indulgence. It’s a complete shift in outlook.

I’ve found that it’s pretty easy to give something up once I’ve psychologically committed to the decision. Giving up starchy/sugary food for my diet entailed a shift in the way I view food. I see a heaping bowl of mashed potatoes or a plate of cookies, for instance, and no longer regard them as edible. They hold so little power of temptation anymore that they may as well be made out of plastic. Similarly, ruling out the possibility of dating more than a decade ago also turned out to be surprisingly easy. I mean, self-acceptance is one thing, but I labor under no illusions that women are dying to have bald fat dudes crushing on them — in either sense of the term. Not that you can really help developing a crush on somebody, but you can resign yourself to the fact that it’s hopeless and leave it at that; the idea is off the table.

I’m reminded of when the sitcom “King of Queens” came up as the subject of a trivia question not too long ago. A friend pointed out that she thought the show’s basic premise was not believable. Ain’t that the truth. It’s simply a fact of life that I’ve long been resigned to. Way back before the turn of the 21st century, my mind raced through a bajillion losing scenarios like a 1980s Department of Defense supercomputer before concluding that “the only winning move is not to play.” And, after such a point of psychological commitment, other doors open; other opportunity sets arise (although, granted, not necessarily better ones). A “Seinfeld” plot framed this in a cruder but much funnier way — although I’m not sure I’ve been more productive than I otherwise might have been, a la George Costanza, because my OCD tendencies can make even largely unproductive activities seem to carry a veneer of accomplishment when I fall into a rhythm of doing them exhaustively.

Path dependence is an ongoing marginal process. It’s easy to maintain the status quo for another day, week, month, etc., while telling yourself that substantial change is just around the corner. But making that change takes effort, an investment in a new set of sunk costs that require time in order to develop into a new, more rewarding future path. The small immediate payoffs that come from minimal effort can be an attractive alternative to a larger distant payoff that comes only after the difficult initial steps of change. Even though an expanded time preference is one of the hallmarks of success throughout life, it took me this long to consistently forgo the marshmallow of immediate gustatory gratification.

But, again, once actual psychological commitment takes hold, the new path becomes easy to sustain in much the same way as the old one: inertia works in either case. I never intended my absence from the world of relationships to last so long, but I kept telling myself that I’d change next month, next year . . . and that sort of extended procrastination adds up. At times, now that I’ve ventured this far down a new path away from the darkness of self-imposed exile, I catch a glipse of a light at the end of the tunnel — but it’s still distant. So, I remind myself that it’s still hopeless. But maybe it won’t be in another year or so: There’ll be no more marshmallows for me.

There’s no fixed end game that I hope to reach via substantial weight loss, but already, even with 150ish pounds left to go, I can do far more things more easily and readily than I could last year. Losing weight means becoming a dramatically more functional human being, in any number of ways. Whatever comes after that is uncertain, but — ceteris paribus (I know, I know, ceteris is never paribus) — the range of possibilities will expand in positive ways.

Even though I more or less know what I’m doing this time around, this blog entry still lives up to the “incompetent” designation I began back in 2004, because I haven’t been keeping a systematic record of my progress. When I finally got around to writing all of this down, I realized that the only written record I have of my 2009 weight loss milestones comes from Facebook status updates. I’ve compiled the data I posted there for the past several months into the following table that’s interesting (to me) but still incompetent in its inconsistency of measurement: . . . Read more!

I love my nephews and nieces to pieces, but can’t get over how surreal it is trying to formulate a rational explanation that will convince another person that it’s unacceptably gross to pick your nose and eat it.

I think I feel some sort of analogue to Bastiat’s frustration with the political process:

What a lot of trouble to prove in political economy that two and two make four; and if you succeed in doing so, people cry, “It is so clear that it is boring.” Then they vote as if you had never proved anything at all.

But, you know, replace “two,” “two,” and “four” with “boogers,” “mouth,” and “disgusting,” and “political economy” with “basic norms of polite society.” Oh yeah, and “vote” with “pick their nose and eat it anyway.”

Or something.

Partial Google Talk transcript from Thursday, Nov. 12:

12:04 PM
me: a bunch of book club people formed a bar trivia team last night… we were the “Mathletes for Liberty”
12:05 PM
J: LOL…sounds like my kind of crowd…though I suck at math
me: no math questions… even so, we only came in third
me: out of like 12 teams, though
12:06 PM
J: Sounds like a lot of fun, actually
12:07 PM
me: it was indeed pretty fun
me: and, somehow, two talking heads songs made it to the jukebox with no help from me
J: LOL, nice!
me: several book club people had no idea who talking heads are… clearly, this calumny cannot stand
12:08 PM
J: WTF!!??
12:09 PM
me: “Blind” from “Naked” came on at a restaurant in asheville nc while we were there, and when i got excited, josh looked puzzled and said, “you know this strange music?”
12:10 PM
me: kids these days…
J: “Get off my lawn!!”
me: yeah
me: get a haircut
J: exactly

We hadn’t had our shiny new blog for long before we, once again, became apathetic about posting new material in it. I know I tend to write less if Justin isn’t writing anything, and I suspect it’s the same for him if I quit posting. It’s easy to fall into a consistent lack of productivity that feeds on itself.

For the last couple months that Justin has been in Afghanistan, he’s been sending out group email messages to a variety of friends and family, updating everybody about his travels and travails. I suggested a few times that he should post some of them to the blog, because they’re interesting enough to be part of this permanent record, but he never posted anything. When I suggested this again a few days ago, he revealed that he’s had trouble logging in to our blog interface from Kabul, and proposed that I add some of the stuff he’s sent out instead.

So was born the already lengthy and ongoing series “Dispatches From Afghanistan,” which currently has 27 entries. I backdated each of the entries to match the date and time at which he sent out the emails, the first falling on Sept. 4. After I’d finished posting them all, I updated our archive page as well, so even the entries that get pushed off the front page can still be located and read.

As I’ve added all of Justin’s dispatches during the past few days, I’ve found that the addition of his content to the site has once again stoked my own initiative to add to my own side of the blog. So, stay tuned for more — until the next time we go into update hibernation.

I haven’t really said anything about gay marriage around these parts. I’m close to many people who hold strong positions on multiple sides of the argument, and nobody’s ever asked me to outline my own stance. Maybe they all just presume that I agree with them, or maybe they’re apprehensive that I won’t. More likely, they don’t care — and I can’t say I blame them. Nobody asks about my view, and I don’t offer, pretty much a “don’t ask, don’t tell” situation.

I have no personal investment in the issue, which may also be one of the reasons I haven’t bothered to touch on it before. I do have friends with a personal stake, however, as I suspect most people do, so the issue will always affect me tangentially. That’s all beside the point, though — for instance, I don’t take recreational drugs, and regardless of that I’ve been a long-time advocate for drug legalization. Standing up for individual rights should be a matter of principle, and it may well be more important for people to fight for rights they don’t ever plan to use themselves than to protect only their own interests, if for no other reason than to help ensure they don’t succumb to a corrupting bias in otherwise principled ideology. So, for the record, I’m firmly in favor of legalizing all consensual behavior among adults. Whether other individuals throughout society consider any particular behavior to be “moral” is a separate question, a battle that should be waged in the marketplace of ideas in civil society, rather than in legislative chambers.

My own position on gay marriage has actually been on the web for a little more than four years, in the comment section of Tom Palmer’s blog (there are a couple of references to previous comments that don’t fully make sense outside the context of the full thread):

In our perfect little libertarian utopia (as if anyone could agree on what that might be), we certainly might agree on the complete separation of marriage and state as one of the features of this society. And this is indeed the view I once held; I wasn’t interested in arguments for gay marriage because I didn’t think government should be involved in defining or approving marriages at all. And in a perfect world, this would still be my view.

But as we live in a decidedly non-libertarian world, it’s important to take stock of the set of rights and responsibilities that a civil marriage confers on its participants — and to realize that some of these rights and responsibilities *can’t* be contracted for in any form outside of marriage.

Since marriage is the one form of contract that allows for specific sets of rights and responsibilities between two people, it’s fundamentally unjust to withhold that form of contract from a categorical set of willing participants.

If, Aaron G., you think engaging in a homosexual relationship is sinful, that’s your right. And, SPB, if you want to work toward smashing traditional forms of sexual morality, that’s your right too. But the libertarian in both of you should recognize that if someone else wants to take another path in her pursuit of happiness, you should grant her that right as well.

After all, the only thing under consideration is the right to undertake a specific form of interpersonal contract. This shouldn’t be a controversial notion at all.

Why do I even bother arguing with somebody who has such a tenuous grasp on reality?

Earlier today, Jesse Walker posted a link to the FilmFlam email list to an article about how scientists have found that people often tend to blink as a group at particular places when watching movies or TV shows. The seemingly inconsequential act of blinking causes a viewer to miss a split second of the plot, which “means moviegoers who sit through a 150-minute film have their eyes shut for up to 15 minutes.” So people subconsciously save some of their blinks for moments that they instinctually think they can afford to miss briefly.

Later in the day, I responded on the list that this bugged me as a kid:

For a while when I was a kid, my OCD latched on to worrying about blinking during movies & TV shows. Had I really watched a movie, or just sizable portions of a movie? Knowing that I wouldn’t be able to stop blinking entirely, I recall trying to just periodically close one eye and then the other so that I’d never entirely miss even a fraction of a second — but it didn’t take too long for me to decide I was being ridiculous, and so I stopped worrying about it, cold turkey, and began once again blinking with abandon…

Then, just a few minutes ago, tonight’s TiVo’d episode of The Colbert Report was drawing to a close when Stephen Colbert closed the show with this gag:

If those of you watching at home want more show, try watching this episode again without blinking. You get at least 3 percent more programming, and the added bonus of seeing all those bright white spots.

Now, if only one of my Malcolm Gladwell books were to fall mysteriously off a shelf, or something, the day would be complete.

I inadvertently left my phone at work on Tuesday night, and tonight I left my 10-inch netbook. So, I pulled out my slowly-falling-apart laptop once I got home, which I hadn’t used in weeks, and at 15.5 inches it now seems comically oversized — kind of like Edith Ann’s rocking chair.

It can be inconvenient at times using such a small display as a matter of course, but now that I’ve gotten used to it, the lightness, portability, and easy handling of the smaller-sized model easily win out for most of the situations in which I want to use a computer at home. I can’t do much in the way of cutting-edge gaming or video editing on a netbook — but I’ve never been much of a gamer, and at any rate, I have a fancy new Power Mac at work for CPU-intensive tasks that are actually productive. In the meantime, most of the time, I’m sold on the sheer usefulness of tiny, tiny computers.

Toward the end of Letterman on Wednesday night, a band named St. Vincent started playing: . . . Read more!

Steve Ball, guitar protégé of Brian Eno’s old pal Robert Fripp, has developed his own music for airports: . . . Read more!

The A.V. Club tackles my favorite movie, Trust, as part of its “New Cult Canon” film review series. Here’s a nice excerpt:

It should be said up front that Trust, aside from any deeper emotional or thematic underpinnings, is flat-out funny much of the time. And it’s often absurd and melancholy simultaneously, like when news of Maria’s situation literally kills her father, or when her hilarious stereotype of a jock boyfriend breaks up with her without pausing in his training regimen. There’s something sad and funny, too, about Maria’s older sister Peg (a young, superb Edie Falco), a hard-living divorcée who also lives at home, and whose mother considers her damaged enough to make a better partner for Matthew than Maria, the less-spoiled daughter. Hartley also has fun noodling with archetypes: One subplot has Maria searching for a businessman who will come off the Long Island commuter train wearing a trenchcoat and smoking a pipe; it turns out that description fits all businessmen.

Though such deadpan absurdities are a longstanding element of Hartley’s work, they’re also the albatross that hangs over his lesser films, because it can be hard to see the sincerity and depth behind them. Yet that’s never the case with Trust, which speaks to Shelly and Donovan’s wonderful chemistry and the touching way Hartley ties their tenuous romance with their desperate need for rehabilitation and change.

Later:

Respect + admiration + trust = love. Only Hartley would attempt to devise some sort of metric to quantify a feeling as intangible as love; one critic, I can’t recall who, suggested that Hartley’s scripts were so hermetic and rigidly plotted that it’s as if they were written on graph paper. But while his films definitely give the impression of being fully worked out well before the cameras roll, that doesn’t necessarily condemn the end results to being stale and overly calculated.

Indeed. I’ve heard similar complaints about filmmakers like the Coen Brothers and Stanley Kubrick over the years. I mean, I like the loose improvisational styles of, say, Godard or Altman as much as anybody — but this “cold, calculated” charge has never seemed to me like a drawback for any movie I’ve ever seen.

Trey Gunn, one of my favorite musicians, explains the trouble he’s having learning a new piece of repertoire for an upcoming series of performances:

This “three-piece suit and a poison pen” of a tune has some of the most challenging rhythms I have ever attempted. The musical worlds that I move comfortably in, all have four, or occasionally three, subdivisions to the beat. The bars could be composed of any numbers of beats – 5, 8, 9, 13, etc… – but each of those beats are broken up in to four small pulses. This is extremely common in even the most complicated of rock and world music rhythms. All of the King Crimson material (except for the short bass break in Lark’s Tongue II – which is five to the pulse) is based on four, or the odd three, pulses to the beat. All of my solo material is based on four small pulses. All of the music that I listen to from Iran, Egypt, Eastern Europe and Africa is based on either four or three to the beat.

However this track, “Austin Powers” leaves this concept behind and the small subdivisions of the beat are mutated beyond this “norm”. One beat is divided in four, the next one in six, the next in 7, then one in five, then the next into 7. Sometimes these subdivisions even include rests on the first note — leaving you hanging off a cliff for a short split in time.

After a couple of illustrative audio samples: . . . Read more!

Why do I do it? Some high school English teacher with an axe to grind has started filling Show-Me Daily with rancor and intimations of institutional bias — as though he thinks nobody could possibly reach the conclusions we publish unless somebody paid us to doctor the research. But I know what we do is accurate, to a fault, and it’s obvious he’s a crank that nobody will take seriously. Still, I keep responding — even though his comments all follow posts I didn’t write. Check it out:

How to Compete With Charters

Education, Not Regulation

Answers to Charter School Criticism

Professional Licensing: A First-Person Perspective

Another Reduction in Government Lobbying

Choice as a Motivator

The guy devotes his comments to ad hominem attacks to such an absurd degree that he reminds me of this Onion article.

In other work-related news, I have a piece in the latest issue of Atlas Highlights. Yay.

Update: I’ll keep adding adding links to blog entries that this guy has commented on. He’s pretty entertaining.

A few days ago, an old friend of mine from Portland posted to Facebook that he “Never wants to see an lol again” — so I’ve developed a new acronym that is destined to take the world of texters and script kiddies by storm: AAGHEMM. It stands for: “An Audible Guffaw Has Escaped My Maw.”

Pass it on PLS, PPL.

One of my bestest pals in the world, Travers, is in a new band — Electric Desert. Go check ‘em out on MySpace and Facebook, where you can also hear some of their music. Here’s a nice shot of Travers in action.

Also, below the jump, I’ve embedded a couple of audience-cam YouTube videos from their show last night in Chicago. . . . Read more!

As Memorial Day draws to a close, it occurs to me that it would be a good time to repost something here that I wrote nearly a year ago for Show-Me Daily, the blog I maintain as part of my day job with the Show-Me Institute. The entry stems from a trip that Justin and I took to Kansas City, during which we visited several historical sites marking and commemorating Missouri’s Mormon War:

Every Memorial Day that I can recall while I grew up in Portland, Ore., we went to visit my mom’s parents’ resting place. After moving away, first for college and later for work, I got out of the habit of visiting family members’ graves on Memorial Day. There just weren’t any within driving distance.

Now that I’m living in Missouri, it’s a little easier — my great-great-great-great grandpa is buried about an hour and a half northeast of Kansas City, lying at the bottom of an abandoned well with several other people after they were all murdered. Although I visited the site in March, and had considered going there again over the Memorial Day weekend, a nasty bug has laid me out for the past few days … and the rain would have been a dealbreaker anyway — my car didn’t handle so well on the muddy back roads last time.

I did, however, spend some time on Monday thinking about the value of civil society. Because we live in a country largely founded on principles of freedom, tolerance, and the rule of law, people with wildly different cultures, backgrounds, and belief systems can live comfortably together in the same communities. And although from time to time tragic incidents may occur — like the one that killed one of my progenitors, and drove several others out of Missouri — they are by far the exception rather than the rule. There are places in the world where this sort of organized persecution and violent purging happens all the time.

Ultimately, this is one of the most important historical innovations of the United States — despite our differences, for the most part we all manage to live and work together in peace.

Most of my periodic trips to Kansas City are work-related, and timing generally doesn’t permit me to stay for much sightseeing. I almost went back this weekend, to see They Might Be Giants and visit a few of the places I didn’t see last time, but found that I had plenty to keep me occupied here at home. I’ll head back again soon, though.

Stronger! Faster! More explosions!

This blog upgrade has been in the works for a long, long time. Back when we first decided to start a blog, I tried installing Movable Type on our server only to find, four or five hours later, that I couldn’t get it to look the way I wanted. I had this dueling blogger design in my head, and Movable Type just didn’t seem equipped to make it a reality. But hey, I thought, I’m a wily web guy — I’ll just create a blog manually through an elaborate series of server-side include files!

It worked well enough, except for the drudgery of manual archiving — periodically copying and pasting all of our main-page entries into their permanent resting places. I kept it up for a while, but as procrastination took hold and I let an increasing number of weeks drift by between each cumulative batch of archiving, the chore became easier to ignore until it reached absurdly out-of-date proportions. I’ve blogged about this before, after my last stab at archiving. Before this site upgrade went live today, the archives were more than three years behind schedule. And having a poorly maintained blog made both of us apathetic about posting here at all.

I’ve used Wordpress to build some other sites, so I figured it wouldn’t be too difficult to adapt our existing site’s look to the spiffy Wordpress content management system. A year or so ago, I spent a few hours doing just that — until I hit a road block. You see, I was able to create a main page for the blog that looked basically like our old page, dueling author content and all, but getting the archives to behave the same way stumped me. I spent several more hours tweaking PHP code with no success, and several hours after that searching through Wordpress forums, codices, and plugin documentation, searching for some way to make it work. No dice.

You see, Wordpress has no native function for displaying posts within a specified date range, and no way to split a single database query between two authors with two separate feeds. I was able to create the main page by initiating two separate database queries, one for each author, but when I tried to use the same code for archive pages, Wordpress would just pull the most recent entries for each author — not our archived entries.

A more sensible man might have decided that this was far too much trouble for something of little importance anyway, and just scrap the old site design for something new and, well, possible to implement. Instead, defeated, I retreated into petulance for the better part of a year. Whenever Justin made suggestions about changing the blog’s design rather than pursue the hobgoblin of my foolish consistency, I’d whine about how it’s not that difficult to update the relevant include files and FTP them to our server, and that he should just do that instead of pestering me. But our ill-kempt blog had become more of an embarrassment than an asset, and he really just wanted to start from scratch. I can’t say I blamed him.

So, when Justin posted a message to Facebook last week indicating that he was thinking about starting a new blog of his own, I sprang into action. A new survey of Wordpress possibilities revealed that, in February, someone might have solved the archive problem, finally making it possible to create dueling author feeds for old blog entries. A test of his method worked like gangbusters. A few days of heavy lifting later, here we are.

So, we now have a functional site with all of your favorite five-year-old blog technology — RSS feeds, comments, searching, and bona fide automatic archiving. Well, almost automatic archiving. I ended up putting it all together in a pretty ghetto way (I don’t include metaphorical “elbow grease” and “rubber bands” in the blog’s new footer for nothing), but it works. And I’m really digging it.

I’ll add category functionality before too long, and sooner or later I may start eliminating the HTML-tables-as-design-tools strategy that’s still more or less in place, even after the upgrade. I’m a fan of pure CSS design, but that’s another problem to tackle on another day. In the meantime, welcome to Shrubbloggers 2.0!

The cat ran away Thursday morning, apparently slipping out the door while Justin left for work. I was surprised by the sense of loss I felt when I realized she was gone — I’ve never had a pet before, and never set out to bond with this one. I’ve never fully understood people’s grief when their pets die. After all, it’s just an animal. Get another one. What’s the big deal?

But I spent a couple of cumulative hours searching around our apartment complex for this cat, and even sat out on the front step for a half hour Thursday night at about midnight, hoping she’d saunter home. No dice. But earlier tonight, after Justin spent some more time poking around our residential environs, she suddenly came home. Seemed a little dazed at first, but OK. Later, as she was purring on my lap, I actually let loose with two or three tears. Really. I literally can’t remember the last time that happened — at some point in high school, around 20 years ago, maybe? There’s no question, though — I’m hooked. Welcome home, kitty.

I’ve been looking for this video intermittently for about a decade. From eBay to collector sites to DVD anthologies — nothing. Today, I discovered that somebody finally posted it to YouTube in August. . . .

I’m basically content living anywhere with a couple million people in the general metropolitan area — there’ll be enough decent concerts, movie theaters, and restaurants to keep me largely satisfied. But it’s this kinda thing that makes me wish I lived in the Windy Apple:

Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog will be having a record release concert playing music from their Pi Recordings release “Party Intellectuals” tonight!

The Knitting Factory
74 Leonard Street, NYC
$12 at the door
Doors at 6:30; opening band Dan Friel (of Parts & Labor) at 7pm; Ceramic Dog at 8:00pm

From today’s NY Daily News: “Their debut, ‘Party Intellectuals,’ bridges the harsh brilliance of late-period King Crimson, the wild jazz of Albert Ayler, and the in-your-face atonality of prime no wave. The resulting music has the force of heavy metal back when it was new, as well as the reach of art rock. There are even elements of Latin music and jazz worked in. Ultimately, Ceramic Dog pulls off a nearly impossible feat – to make staid, old rock ‘n’ roll once again sound like a riot.”

From The NY Times, where the CD was a Critic’s Pick: The musicianship is intense regardless of the subtext, with all three players hurling themselves into their effort. They have an equally convincing way with bruising thrash punk, one-chord-vamp heroics and brooding atmospherics. And with one Cuban-flavored ballad, “For Malena,” Mr. Ribot expresses evidence of a heart to match his reserve of wits and soul.”

So you get the idea – Please come join us!

I mean, what are the chances they’ll ever hit St. Louis?

Man, I really miss eating at the Hollywood Burger Bar.

I love ’80s music.

So, the TiVo picked up a movie the other day: Into the Night, starring Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Pfeiffer. Tonight, I decided to watch it; the opening credits listed a few interesting names, including David Bowie and the incomparable Richard Farnsworth, so I was ready for some prime ’80s comedy caper cheese.

After the movie had been on for about 45 minutes, I started poking around the Internet a little, and checked my Facebook newsfeed. I noticed my sister had taken a Facebook quiz — “Can you name the Muppet characters” — which I had taken several days ago, scoring 100 percent. It’s kind of a tough quiz. Would you recognize Link Hogthrob? Lew Zealand? I did.

As I checked out my sister’s results, I remembered being a little peeved that one of the “correct” answers was misspelled. It’s “Crazy Harry,” not “Drazy Harry” — but that’s the answer I picked, because all the others were even further away from correct.

I scrolled back to the top of the page, noting that I’m the only person among all my Facebook friends who hit 100 percent on this quiz. The only other person who came close was Travers, with 15 out of 16. Which is not at all surprising . . .

Right as I glanced at the photos of Kermit and Fozzie next to the quiz ranking section, I heard a familiar voice on TV — Jim Henson had a cameo for about five seconds, as some random guy talking on a phone. That’s it. Apropos of nothing, no ado about anything. Jim Henson, suddenly there, suddenly gone, during the moment I looked at Kermit’s photo online. I doublechecked IMDb to be sure, and yep — it was him. When was the last time I saw a Jim Henson cameo in any movie, ever? What are the chances?

The Onion’s A.V. Club is a great repository of smart, snarky pop culture commentary, and a frequent web destination for me. And, like me, they think that The Wire is “the greatest accomplishment in the history of television” — an accolade I resisted at first, but realized at some point during the second season that I could no longer deny the obvious. What an amazing show.

So, it’s gratifying to find, via an A.V. Club link, that the show’s creators have endorsed jury nullification in drug cases:

If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will — to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun’s manifesto against the death penalty — no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens.

Drug criminalization is one of the most socially destructive policies in the history of the United States, spurring a level of violent crime and official corruption that wouldn’t exist otherwise. The creators of The Wire have demonstrated, via their show, that they understand the intricate web of perverse incentives that the drug war creates. It’s nice to see that they’re trying to take a practical stand as well.

Yesterday, I watched a 1950 episode of What’s My Line? — “television’s gayest game!” — which my TiVo had picked up on Sunday morning. One of the guests, whose profession the panelists were supposed to guess, was a seltzer manufacturer. Now, seltzer was not a word I heard much growing up, outside of an occasional reference to the seltzer bottles used by vaudevillian comedians. Although I come from a region that falls decidedly on the “pop” side of of the great linguistic soft drink schism, I always knew the stuff as “soda water,” or just “carbonated water” — not seltzer.

So whenever I hear someone use the word, I think of the Seinfeld episode where George and Jerry briefly discuss how “salsa” and “seltzer” sound pretty similar when spoken with a Spanish accent, soon before George reaches his epiphany that their NBC sitcom proposal should be a show about nothing. So, as the What’s My Line? panel tried guessing the seltzer guy’s occupation, Jerry Seinfeld was riffing in the back of my mind: “Don’t you know the difference between seltzer and salsa? You have the seltzer after the salsa.”

Later last night, while working, I started playing an episode of Seinfeld that the TiVo had picked up on Monday night. The episode? You guessed it: “The Pitch,” which features the very conversation I had remembered earlier that day.

Which reminds me — last October, Justin and I were buying drinks (i.e., pop) at the neighborhood QuikTrip, which has one of the biggest selections of drinks (e.g., pop) I’ve ever seen in any convenience store. As I glanced at some of the many slushy/squishee/smoothie options featured there, I noticed they had horchata. I’d only tried this flavor at one location — a 24-hour Mexican restaurant in Boise — although I’d had it there several times. It tasted like liquid rice pudding, I thought, which triggered pleasant sense memories of the Christmases of childhood past. Anyway, I convinced Justin he should try it. “Have you ever had horchata?” “What’s horchata?” And so forth. He tried it, and hated it. Oh well. I keep thinking I should try the QuikTrip version to see whether it stacks up to the ghetto version I had in Bosie, but have yet to do so.

Later that night, the TiVo plucked an episode of Beavis and Butt-head from the digital cable aether (specifically, MTV2), which at one point features our protagonists watching a Tori Amos video. Beavis notices a background character in the video: “Hey, Butt-head — that’s the guy that works at Maxi-Mart!” Butt-head: “Oh yeah. He’s cleaning out the Slurpee machine.” Beavis: “Yeah. ‘Get me a large horchata. Horchata! And a Blue Wackadoo.’”

Are there big coincidences and small coincidences, or just coincidences?