12 Years?

12 years? Am I even the same person?

Gettin' Baked

Today I made bread. Like, from scratch. Flour, water, salt and yeast along with a little time and little heat and 'BAM' - bread appears in the oven. Little crispy on the outside, but it is definitely bread. I am fairly impressed with my self :)

'Toon Wars

I think the collective peoples of the world need to relax a little bit. Cartoons are not a good enough reason to riot, kill, murder or maim. A few squiggly black lines, a caricature, or a doodle is not enough to get me upset, even if it were to insult my entire way of life or my deepest beliefs. I am confident enough in my own convictions that if someone makes a disparaging cartoon about say, atheism or the United States, I can look at it go “Wow, that is lame” and then go about my business. Not a big deal. Life goes on. I don’t feel the need to kill anyone.

So some Danes drew a couple of unflattering pictures of Mohammed. So what? People have been drawing insulting cartoons of blacks and Jews for hundreds of years. They don’t often go out and burn down embassies. Not over cartoons anyway.

Sure, sure, it’s against the rules in the Koran somewhere about having images of people or Mohammed or whatever. Yeah, well hopefully there is also some stuff in there about KILLING people over CARTOONS. If there isn’t, maybe there should be.

There is a popular saying these days, “ An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” How about we add, “A cartoon for a cartoon?”

I can imagine a world where wars are no longer fought with guns and bombs and tanks and planes, but with pens and brush and ink and paper. I think that might not be such a bad world to live in. The mightiest nations would be those with the best cartoonists, dealing vicious strikes of humor and satire to their enemies.

I caught a bit of news story on NPR today about Iran calling for Holocaust cartoons, and then an Israeli counter-strike of making their own Holocaust cartoons. It’s sort of bizarre, but this gives me a small glimmer of hope for the future. I am not naïve enough to believe that people will stop hating each other over minor differences. However, if Iran and Israel can agree that cartoons are the best way to deal with each other, that would be pretty cool. A little bit better than a suicide bomber on a bus or a nuclear bomb over a city.

Darkness and the Blues, Baby.

You never know how important something is to you until it’s gone. I had my electricity turned off this weekend. Not to worry, it’s back on now. But as I was sitting in the dark on that cold and lonely night I realized again how easy it is to take for granted all the good things we have around us. I mean, hell, electric light? When was the last time I even thought about electric light? Sure, even with no electricity or heat, I still had a candle for light, a hour or so of power left in my laptop, and plenty of juice on my Gameboy DS (and a fully charged SP in reserve, heh), but still, it puts things in perspective.

I helped out at the blues festival that the school put on this weekend. Pretty much a whole lot sitting around interrupted by bursts of heavy lifting. I wish there was more for me to do, but the other folks seemed to have everything well covered and I think I was more or less getting in the way, knocking out plugs and stuff. The actual concerts were pretty good. The MCLA jazz band played both nights and they were pretty decent. The first night had Misty Blue, who were very good. The singer was excellent and had a great voice. Charles Neville played sax for them and he was awesome. Papa Grows Funk out of New Orleans played next, and they were pretty damned groovy. Funk is the right word. Their drummer was fantastic.

The second night was excellent, too. The jazz band opened up again, followed by the Connor Meehan band. Not exactly sure who the hell Connor Meehan is, but everyone seemed to know him and he was a great drummer. His band frickin’ rocked. The guitarist/singer in the band, whose name was like Steve Ives or something, played and sounded like Clapton. Good Stuff. The last band was the Michael Hills Blues Mob, and they were amazing. Michael Hill played some sweet electric blues on a Les Paul, with a dash of acoustic in the middle of the set. They played mostly original songs, with a bit of Muddy and Jimi thrown in. “This Is My Job”, “By George”, and “Blood on Your Hands”(not sure of title on this one) were the standouts. They were a very tight band and the crowd was definitely groovin’ by the end. I would have bought their CD if I wasn’t flat broke.

It was interesting hanging out with all these musicians. I haven’t been around that type of crowd in a long, long time. Their passion and talent was very apparent, they seemed so excited just to be playing music. I feel kind of inspired, and I want to start practicing guitar again. I am so rusty it is not even funny though. And my guitar being 130 miles away isn’t too helpful either.

A friend who I haven’t seen in a long time came out for a visit and that was cool. We hung out at the Gallery and got some nice sushi. It was very cool.

The 56,600th Layer of Hell

What is so insidious about dial-up is it actually convinces you from time to time that you really can use the Internet. It is a lie, of course. It is merely a time-sucking vortex of Waiting. The green bar slowly fills, like molasses dripping in winter, and if you are fortunate you catch a glimpse the Rare and Precious manifestation of the Blessed “Done.”

Of course, I exaggerate slightly. Slow Internet is better that No Internet, or so I have always proclaimed. But lately I have my doubts regarding the wisdom of that claim.

School is going pretty well. I need to really learn some time management skills, and I have the sinking feeling I may have bitten off more than I can chew by taking 5 classes at once. I just need to get into the swing of things and I think I’ll be OK.

For entertainment I am re-reading The Lord of the Rings - such a good book. I have watched the trilogy a couple of times these past few weeks because they are basically the only ones I brought with me. It’s really interesting to compare what they left out, put in, and blatantly altered. I’m sure this will annoy some purists, but I think the movies actually tell a better story.

Today I am off to do some laundry, write a speech, do statistics and writing homework, and possibly study for a psychology quiz. Busy busy.