Which Concerns Dead Things, and Is Not for the Squeamish.

Generally, when I am going to visit my parents, who live a couple hours' drive away, I underestimate the amount of time it will take to get ready to leave my house. There is always at least one thing I have to do before I leave that takes longer than expected, so when I say "I'll be there about 3" it usually means I'll be there about 4:30. Give or take, you know, an hour.

But this time, I was determined, would be the exception. It was the time I had said I would leave the house, and I was going to leave the house right then, by golly. Only the dishes weren't washed, and I hate to leave dirty dishes when I go on a trip. But see, I knew that if I washed them, I would somehow lose another hour.

So I left the dishes. And when I got back, a few days later, the house smelled terrible. Well, you see, I told myself, that's what happens. Now you know. And I was so tired that I walked right past the kitchen sink and went to bed, and as I fell asleep, I thought, man, this house reeks.

Of course, the next day I washed the dishes, and they were definitely icky. But the day was nice enough to open some doors and windows, so I aired out the house, which made everything much better.

But the next day, when I got home, there was still that smell. And it had evolved into something I actually recognized: it smelled like dead things. Also, it was now discernably coming up from the basement.

I don't have a real basement. I have a crawlspace under about 2/3 of my house, and the other 1/3 is a sort of cellar, with a hot water heater and furnace in it. It's not exactly a place you'd want to hang out in. Many guests, when I point it out to them, refuse to even enter. I think it's cool, in a creepy way, but I still don't go down there unless I have to.

But now I had to. I had to go under the house and find out what was rotting down there. I hoped it was just a mouse, but a rat would be okay. Squirrel, I could handle. What I really didn't want it to be was a cat or a possum or even a raccoon. And I didn't want it to be way back in the crawlspace, because even though it has "crawl" in the name, I am not convinced it is a good place for crawling. At all.

I had time to think about all this as I gathered rubber gloves and plastic bags, put on my boots and grabbed a flashlight. I lifted the hatch in the back porch, edged down the ladder, swung open the basement door slowly... and grimaced.

There were five mice on the floor, sprawled in full view, as though passed out after a particularly wild mouse party.

Five! Why so many? What were they all doing there? None showed signs of injury, and I've never put out poison bait. A further search of the basement revealed another one higher up, at the edge of the crawlspace near the furnace. Six dead mice. I bagged them, counting them off aloud as I did so: "That's three, and three left to go. Only two left..." trying to distract myself from noticing what they felt like in my gloved and plastic-bag-covered hand.

I still don't know what killed them. I suppose it must have been poison. Maybe the neighbors put some out; I don't know. I'm just hoping this takes care of most of the odor. I'm pretty sure I didn't get them all; the last couple days when I got home from work, my house smelled like someone had been cooking meat. This probably means that there is one on (or in) a heating duct somewhere, slowly turning to mouse jerky.

But I don't intend to go hunting for it.

* * *

My cousin has an art show here in Portland this Thursday that you should know about. The show features three artists, and "will include encaustic paintings of abstract landscapes, and mandalas, sensual photographic works, botanically inspired, functional steel sculptures, art books that unfold like flowers, glass jewelry, wearable textile designs, and much more." I know she's responsible for at least the encaustic paintings, mandalas, and flower-like books, and that they are wondrous and well worth seeing, but the rest of it sounds pretty interesting too. The show is from 5-9pm at Rust, 1600 NE Alberta St.

I think my cousin may also be playing the violin at this show, as it is supposed to involve "flamenco guitar and gypsy violin." So here is some gypsy violin she recorded with a band she plays with:

Ginggang - Mercury Vapors
Ginggang - The Numbers
Ginggang - Zodiac City

Which Has an Awful Lot of F Words.

F, man. F is a really great letter. Fact and fiction, formulas and freestyle, feebleness and fortitude, flying and falling: F has them all covered.

I've decided that the two weeks of F are a time for finishing things, which is something I'm generally not very good at. I get a charge out of starting a new endeavor, but if it outlasts that inital momentum, I all too often abandon it. That means there are plenty of finishable things to choose from! Other F adventures include...

Fatigue: Most nights this past week I came home feeling like my brain had turned to stone, and it was all my neck could do to keep my skull up. For this I blame the (unblogged) events of the previous week. Frequently when I get this drained, I keep pushing myself and get sick. But not this time. I totally vegged out! Take that, germs!

Fruit: ORGANIC BANANAS. I've had some good bananas in my day, fat little apple bananas freshly cut from a sun-drenched, mosquito-ridden patch on Maui. Nothing else is that good. But these are close -- way closer than I thought a store-bought banana in this part of the world could get. Why didn't anybody tell me? I will never purchase those chalky, flavorless Dole things again.

Flash games: In Flow, you control a simple aquatic organism. You get to swim around and eat stuff, and avoid predators. And as you grow and mutate, you can hunt down and devour those same predators. Mesmerizing, and very pretty. Check it out.

Feist: is playing at the Wonder Ballroom on March 31st. The 31st is actually well into G territory, but that doesn't mean I can't fork over my fourteen dollars (post-service charge) for a ticket this week. Drop me a line if you want to join the fun.

Feist - Inside & Out

In Which Even E Must End.

I really wanted to do right by the letter E. But it's a tricky letter; you can't just accidentally do a bunch of E things, like you can with B or C. You have to put some effort into it. So most of the past two weeks has not been particularly E-ful.

I think I made up for it last night, though. I was trying to fit as many Es into one evening as I could, so I invited Evannichols and, um, Sanguiniteee over to watch an Eddie Izzard video. And then I thought there should be some kind of snacky food involved, so I found a recipe involving eggplant and eggs, and pretty much didn't follow the directions at all, and to my surprise it still came out more or less edible. The whole evening was extremely entertaining. Eddie is hilarious, that's a given; but the interaction between Evan and Sanguinity was a whole different kind of live comedy. They are both funny people, but when you put them in the same room, you get funny squared.

I already said some things about Eddie Izzard a while back, so instead, I will post some audio files from another pretty funny guy who also cusses sometimes:

Eugene Mirman - Being Jewish, Poetry, the Sci-Fi Channel
Eugene Mirman - Russia, the Atari, Obey Your Mom

If you like it, you can get more clips and video and stuff from his website. I can't vouch for all of it, but this one in particular makes me cry.

In Which The World Loses One of Its Oddest Inhabitants.

Dear blog, I am neglecting you this week, as my attention has been taken up with matters unbloggable. But at this moment I want to pour one out for my homie Ivor Cutler.

Two spoken:
Five or Seven
Picking Your Nose

And two sung:
Get Away from the Wall
Little Black Buzzer

(All of these tracks came from here.)

In Which My Neighbor Deserves A Batch of Cookies, At Least.

I've been reading this blog called And They Will Know Us By Our T-Shirts for a while now. Some guy in the midwest began it with the intent of recording the ironies and absurdities of working in a Christian bookstore. I appreciate his wit and writing ability, but I appreciate even more the tension he expresses between his commitment to the Christian faith, and his exasperation with the stupidity and ugliness involved in the culture that has grown on Christianity like barnacles on a boat's hull. I share that tension, and I know we're not alone, but it's not something I hear acknowledged by others very often. His posts have ranged from the deliciously sarcastic to the insightful to the moving. And then came the other kind of moving: his wife got a job in Portland, and almost two weeks ago the two of them packed up and came out here, starting a new blog to record their adventures.

So this afternoon, that t-shirt blogger and his wife, Ben and Nikki, stepped out of the internet and into my 3-D real-time world. We went to Stumptown for beverages and conversation, and strolled the more densely interesting part of Hawthorne, and cruised Mt. Tabor, and I got to tell them about my favorite places and how they have just moved to the coolest city in the world. I have to admit, though, it is even cooler now that they live here.

I like to show people a good time when they come to visit, but I saved the best for last. After all that sightseeing, we went back to my house to hang out for the half-hour or so until Nikki and Ben went to meet someone for dinner. But there we were stymied, because I discovered I had locked myself out when I left the house. Now when I've been locked out in the past, I have generally just gone to get the spare key from friends who live about 10 blocks away. So that's what I did, with Ben and Nikki in tow. (At least I wasn't locked out of my car, too.) Only when we got back to my house did I fully comprehend that I had locked myself out in an especially complicated way, by turning a bolt that I don't usually turn and don't carry a key for. So I had gone to get a copy of a key I already had in hand, and was still just as locked out as I was before.

Ben and Nikki took all this with good humor, yet somehow managed to refrain from laughing at me. I'm telling you, these are good people. Also good people: my next door neighbor, who, when I asked to use his phone to call a locksmith, offered to use his ladder to get in through an open upstairs window. Miraculously, he was able to remove the screen without damaging it, and then replaced it when he was done.

Of course, that about ate up my last half hour with Nikki and Ben. But it also pretty much guaranteed that they won't forget the day they met me. For the record, I would like to assure them and anyone else reading this that I'm not usually so airheaded. Just on special occasions.

In Which A Car Is Grit.

The New Orleans Public Library wants any books you can spare. New ones, they can put on their shelves; used ones can be sold or given to families without any. Ship them library rate (cheaper than media rate!) to:

Rica A. Trigs, Public Relations
New Orleans Public Library
219 Loyola Avenue
New Orleans, LA 70112

Because this information wasn't given up front on the NOPL website, but came from another source entirely, I wondered if it could possibly be a scam of some sort. I mean, what kind of name is Rica A. Trigs, anyway? But I googled her (him?), and turns out it really is legit. Which made me feel kind of mean for figuring out that the name is also an anagram of "tragic airs."

* * *

Last October I wrote here about recording some sounds with Piri and her "Arrowwood" project. Piri is now completing the album, assisted by several people with actual recording experience, and it's being produced by Pythagumus Toadstool and indie label Circumstantial. She has a myspace site up with some song samples. (Yes, they start playing automatically.) I'm not on those tracks, but I am credited as a "contributing member," which is pretty cool, considering my total contribution to the effort took less than two hours. Piri has also joined another band called Leoðsong Guild (another myspace link) which is going to perform live starting in a month or two. I can't tell you how to pronounce that, but I can tell you that I'm a little jealous and a lot in awe of all this.

* * *

Two movies that start with E: The Emperor and the Assassin was a two-and-a-half hour Chinese epic, the kind with lots of bloodshed, beautifully composed shots, and a tragic ending. I really like this sort of thing. China does epics a lot better than America does. My one complaint: too much emperor, not enough assassin.

Egg was a strange little Dutch film, less than an hour long. It was about an illiterate baker, a tad on the slow-witted side, who strikes up a correspondence (via his friends) with a woman from a personal ad. He is a simple man, and she is not; when she finally meets him, she looks for romantic cues, and he doesn't have any to give her. Just a wide, innocent smile -- which makes her acutely uncomfortable.

* * *

Your E track for the day:
Bishop Allen - Eve of Destruction

In Which Reggae May Be Found.

I finally finished Blue Highways. I have to quit reading big books at the beginning of the year, because I bog down easily in the winter months. Last year I started Dorothy Dunnett's Game of Kings early on, and I ended up reading it twice in a row because there was so much I didn't understand the first time through, and that took ages. I keep a yearly list of all the books I've read, and so far 2006's list is embarrassingly short. Meanwhile, I noted with some chagrin that pagefever had read 18 books by the end of January. She must take public transportation, I reassured myself, and then, less charitably, Maybe they were really short books!

But back to Blue Highways. The author, William Least Heat Moon (no relation), went on a road trip in the early '80s that roughly followed the perimeter of the continental U.S. He took notes and photos, and thought about everything a lot, and then went home and kneaded it all into a book. It's a nice snapshot of America, focusing on small towns, backroads, and people who've lived long enough to have more than a few stories to tell. Heat Moon is an insightful narrator, but I inevitably found my attention wandering after a chapter or two (and the chapters were generally 1-6 pages). I think this may have been because, when I am in the passenger's seat of a car, even when I resolve to pay attention to where we're going, my mind inevitably wanders and I stop seeing what's rolling past the window. You definitely get that feeling from this book, that you are sitting in the passenger's seat of Heat Moon's van (which he named Ghost Dancing), seeing America with him.

I told Truck this, last night, and he wholeheartedly agreed with that last comment. Truck is the fellow who loaned me the book. He is a connoisseur of the American Road Trip narrative, and this one is his favorite. I think his first book published will also be a Road Trip story. I think it will be a good one. I'll let you know when he does a reading at Powell's. Truck and I went to see a documentary (you knew there would be D's in here somewhere, didn't you?) called The Real Dirt on Farmer John. I really enjoyed it. I wanted less biography and more about the organic farm, but still: it was a worthwhile and entertaining film.

I haven't done an awful lot of D things this week. I haven't done an awful lot of anything this week, to be honest. I did get the roof patched, and I did do my taxes, in the hope of acquiring funding for more comprehensive repairs. On Monday I had dinner with Aaron, who has been my friend since before I knew that "friend" meant something other than "giant stuffed camel." (No, Aaron doesn't get an alias; he has an eponymous domain.) We reminisced about 1980, when St. Helens blew and we played "Jaws" with an end table standing in for the shark and a bunk bed for the boat. He was on his way to Mississippi, and after some months there, will be heading to Afghanistan for a year. I am happy to say that he fully intends to blog this Excellent Adventure.

So today I'm trying to fit in a few last-minute D activities. I went to the Daily Grind and bought some dates and dried figs, and to Movie Madness, where I rented Dear Frankie. And later in the evening, I will dust off my cardboard harp and play some songs in the key of D dorian.

This song is not in the key of D dorian:
Desmond Dekker - Israelites

In Which the Novel is Revisited.

D for Dad, whom I spoke with a while on the phone yesterday, and D for dare: yesterday I met up with fellow writer recoveringmale (who also starts with D) in order to re-read our novels for the first time since November. You wouldn't think you'd need company for an activity like this, but honestly I don't know when I would have got around to it otherwise. I'm not sure I can explain why it was so hard (and it isn't always; I didn't feel this way last year), but I know that to some degree it was getting more difficult the longer I waited. Knowing that somebody else was doing the same thing nearby made it easier.

I got about 1/4 into the story before the coffeeshop started pre-closing activities. I have not yet returned to it, but the verdict is: boring! It's so tedious. It doesn't move. I haven't finished it yet, and I think it gets livelier eventually, but I have a vague feeling that if it has any future at all, it might be better to reduce it by about half and use it as Part I of a larger story.

D for deals: if there's anything more satisfying to my stingy Scottish blood than getting good stuff for cheap, it's getting good stuff for free. And also, finding good homes for stuff I don't need anymore, because I hate to throw things out. So I want to share something with you that makes me very happy indeed: the swap.

It pops up in various places and under various names, and it has different forms and rules, but what it comes down to is that you have stuff to get rid of and stuff you want, and so do other people, and thanks to the internet, you can pool your unwanteds and everybody wins. It's good for your wallet and good for the planet. Here are three of the best-realized swaps I am currently aware of. May their tribe increase.

PaperBackSwap: Step 1: Mail your old books to people who really want them. Step 2: Other people mail you books you really want. Step 3: Rejoice! This is a credit-based system, where every book you send earns you an opportunity to request not only paperbacks, but hardbacks and audiobooks as well. There's a friendly database that keeps track of your offers and requests, and a customized mailer you can print out and ship your books in. Nice.

Portland Petite Clothing Exchange: If you are a small woman, and you live in Portland, you can clean out your wardrobe and restock it at these well-attended monthly events. (Rumor has it that a medium-sized swap is also in the works.) If you don't fit these qualifications but you wish there were something like this for you, consider that all this was begun by one very determined (and very tiny) person.

Freecycle: Oh, surely you've heard of this one. Every town on the planet has one now. (Yeah, I'm exaggerating, but not much.) The way it works is, you post stuff you don't want, and you keep an eye out for stuff you do. Any kind of stuff: furniture, appliances, toys, records, fill dirt, you name it. Maybe you are one of those people who watches the list like a hawk for things you might want. Or maybe you are one of those people who only uses it to get rid of things. Either way, you win. Craigslist also has a free section which works the same way, and (in my town at least) gets quite a bit of traffic.

Which Contains a Word I Can't Spell.

One of those things I did during C weeks that I didn't tell you about was get a caller ID box. Now when I come home, I don't have to wonder how many people called me and didn't leave a voicemail; the box tells me NO CALLS. THAT'S RIGHT, NOBODY CALLED YOU, it says. QUIT CHECKING ALREADY. Today I had 1 CALL and I was kind of excited about that, but the person who rang me up is apparently named UNKNOWN CALLER. Huh. I can't recall meeting anyone by that name. Well, if you're reading this, UNKNOWN CALLER, you can call back now; I'm home!

I just got back from the last session of my chigong (or chi kung, or qigong, or xlrqmdv) class. This is what I was referring to when I said I was getting an early start on a C activity. Actually, tonight marks the end of the first of two sessions, the second building on the first, but I am not going back for more. At least, not from this teacher. Don't get me wrong, I really liked her; like, I think if we had gone to school together, we probably would've hung out. But her instructional style just wasn't working for me. What I really wanted was either a) a sense of progress toward a definite learning goal throughout the course, or b) to walk away from most class sessions feeling really good (energized and/or relaxed). But I didn't get either one of those. I mostly just felt confused, stupid, and/or bored. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why, and though I won't bore you with all of the possible reasons I came up with, part of the problem may have been that this was the first class she had ever taught. I am sure she will improve, but I don't want to be her guinea pig.

The xlrqmdv was cool, though. She talked a lot (a lot) about the amazing benefits it can have for your body, and I could see how that could be true. Some of the movements are really neat, all flowy and centering and challenging without being painful. I have heard/read that it is dangerous to try and learn this stuff from a book or video; you need an instructor to make sure you aren't learning it wrong. But I am not a good kinetic learner. I am good with stuff on paper though.

Hmm.

Well, there are lots of other tj!ckuongg instructors in this area, even just at different community centers, and I will likely try another class later this year. I probably won't even wait for the Fortnight of Q. I may take another yoga class first though. In yoga you always get to just lie on the ground and breathe for a while. I am pretty good at that.

In Which D is for Drowsy.

One thing I like about watching movies with Spider is that we always end up close. Not snuggling, just sort of subtly leaning in, shoulders or knees brushing or pressed together, in such a way that it always seems like an accident neither of us are willing to back down from. We have a tacit understanding that we are neither of us romantically interested in the other, for half a dozen really good reasons, so that's pretty much as exciting as things get between us. But it does make for a cozy movie experience.

Last night he rented Broken Flowers (which turned out to be my favorite movie I've seen yet this year), and we started it sitting a good yard apart on the wide leather sofa. Over the course of the movie we tilted sideways toward each other like two halves of a drawbridge, so that by the time the credits rolled, we were both lying flat with the crowns of our heads touching. I inhaled the scent of his weird papaya shampoo and watched the names scrolling by sideways through half-lidded eyes.

"Is that Ethiopian music putting you to sleep?" I asked after a while.

"Kinda." His voice sounded strange, echoing through both our skulls. "Why, is it doing a number on you too?"

"... Yeah."

See if it doesn't make you drowsy as well:
Mulatu Astatqé - Tezeta (Nostalgia)

In Which C Concludes and D Descends.

I think the definitive word for C weeks was cantankerous. I mean when I had an evening at home in the last two weeks with time to sit down and blog, and I wasn't caught off guard by that darn bedtime alarm, I found that I was just too cranky to write for public consumption. I had some good stuff to write about, but every silver lining had a cloud, y'know? I admire people who can spin a readable blog post out of a foul mood, but I didn't have the guts for it.

Anyway, I hope that's past now. Today certainly felt like a fresh start, what with sunshine and happy music and a good sermon (the heartening kind, not the kind that makes you feel kicked in the shins), and some laughs with ah over hotcakes and milkshakes, and then a good nap. I had forgotten how delicious it is to fall asleep in any random spot in my house when sunlight is pouring through the windows.

And just for the record, there were a lot of C activities that I could have written about. There was a slightly surreal episode of cleaning, with children and chemicals. There was the day I went to two different churches and found them a study in contrasts. There's the chigong class I've been attending, which has actually been kind of a disappointment, though I think I would really like it with a different teacher. (If you've never heard of chigong, think tai chi; they're not the same, but they appear so to the casual Western observer.) I also went to Cosmic Monkey Comics, and also back to that neat CD store (though I didn't buy anything this time). And I got some basic instruction on how to use this cool old Canon SLR that I've had for a while now, a grown-up camera from the early '80s, and I went to a concert, not the classical kind but the kind where the kids stand around bobbing their heads. (It was Stars, with the Elected. At the Aladdin. If you were wondering.)

So now it's time for D. Hmm, my list of D ideas is a lot shorter than the C one. Which is probably good. Yesterday I took a tour of the west half of my attic, inspired by a brown spot in my living room ceiling, and found that the roof on that side is pretty much done for. Subsequently, the roll bar on my vacuum cleaner quit spinning, and one of the buttons on my alarm clock popped out and slid deep into the body of the clock. If this keeps up, I'm definitely not going to be bored.

In Which Squirrels Don't Help Any.

My grandmother has been working on compiling her memoirs for a while now. Yesterday she told me that she has so many vivid childhood memories, she doesn't think she'll be able to get around to writing beyond the third grade. Her mind is still keen, but those memories are the most vivid for her. I remember my grandpa could tell me about all the cars his parents had owned, but it seems like more of his yarns took place in adulthood. It makes me wonder, if I am lucky enough to see my ninth decade, which parts of my life will be the most vivid in my memory.

Grandma said that when she was 2 and some months old, she was whisked away to a neighbor's house and told that when she went home the next day, she would have a new baby brother or sister. When she came back, her mother was lying in bed nursing the newborn. My grandma began screaming, "The baby's eating Mama! The baby's eating Mama!" and had to be carried from the room shrieking and kicking. She said she remembered someone trying (unsuccessfully, obviously) to distract her by pointing out a squirrel in the yard.

I guess that would pretty much scar you for life, wouldn't it?

I started C fortnight out right with a visit to colorfulveggies. Her sister was visiting too, and I went shopping with both of them. I don't get to see them together often, so watching their personalities play off each other's was intriguing, especially when they disagreed. Now I know what happens when the Irresistible Force meets the Immovable Object.

Today I went to the CD store and got myself some Concretes and Calexico. I had a coupon that expires tomorrow, so I used it to get discounts on used CDs. Man. I sure do love a Deal.

The Concretes - Miss You

In Which I Live the Dream.

At the Bins, a.k.a. the Goodwill Outlet, Bee and I sift through the detritus of civilization. We are not like archaeologists, who listen carefully to every found object to hear the history it has to tell. There are many tales here, enough to drive you mad if you stop to listen. No, we are hasty, opinionated, and ruthless; it is the Way of the Bins.

The First Rule of the Bins is: Look before you grab. Some things are sharp -- broken glass edges the dish bins -- and some things are sticky, we don't want to know with what -- and some things are decaying, like that blanket with the synthetic fill. Oh, and avoid the underwear at all costs. Don't stare too long at the yellow sheen on that collar. Try really, really hard to keep from touching your face. Your nose doesn't itch; you're just imagining it.

The bins of household items may have had some semblance of order when they were wheeled out, but now they are a crazy stew of castoffs: dishes, belts, computer monitors, parts of toys, luggage and bric-a-brac. I bump a stuffed chipmunk from its prone position; it turns up a face that is a chewed, featureless mass, the stuff of nightmares. I shudder, then pick it up to scare Bee with. There's a lovely cast-iron skillet, but it's too heavy for my skinny wrist. I find a book on raising hedgehogs that I carry around for a while before coming to my senses: in the unlikely event that I find myself caring for a young hedgehog, the internet will be more than happy to help.

The household items are like a freak show, a bizarre museum of the things people pay for. I would like to believe that each of these things has been loved in its day, that each one had significance to some human at some point. But that seems hopelessly idealistic, even to me. No, this is the overflow of a consumer culture gone berserk, rolled off the assembly lines of less prosperous nations, each in the company of thousands of identical twins. Many of these items were purchased by people who didn't need them, and owned by people who didn't love them, simply because the American dream means Having Stuff, lots and lots of it, and being able to buy it whenever you feel like it.

Don't get me wrong. Bee and I are Americans, and we are here because we like Stuff too. We are both bargain-hunters, and share an unspoken understanding that there is a kind of virtue in getting cool stuff for cheap. Most of the cool stuff, we know, can be found in the clothing bins. But the work is harder here; the clothes are piled high today, and it's hard to do a thorough survey. I abandon my philosophizing and dedicate the full force of my brain to processing the bewildering morass of clothing in front of me. We get about halfway through before we give up, feet weary, backs complaining. Bee's prize find is a baby-sized green sweater, hand-knit; mine, a corduroy skirt that will easily find a good home even if it doesn't fit me. The trying-on will, of course, take place after everything has had a good washing. We pay for our gleanings by the pound and go in search of food.

* * *

Today's the last of fourteen B days. I have climbed Powell Butte, eaten blueberry breakfast bars, and watched The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (To whomever it was that told me I would really enjoy that movie: Alas, you were terribly mistaken). I am still reading Blue Highways, and though I'm enjoying it quite a bit, at this rate I'll be reading it for many, many weeks to come. But the B I've been working on the most lately, the one that has really interfered with the blogging, is Bedtime.

For the past several days, I've been setting my alarm for bedtime instead of for getting-up-time. It's a strange experiment, and I am lucky to have the flexibility in my work hours necessary to conduct it. My primary goal is to establish a consistent sleep schedule for the first time since I entered college, if not before. I'm also interested in finding out how many hours of sleep my body really wants per night. The thing is, I fall asleep pretty quickly once I'm in bed; my problem lies in convincing myself to get there. So the alarm clock signals it's time to get ready for sleep, and on a weeknight, I am not allowed to argue with it. Yes, the snooze alarm is fair game, but I can only run upstairs to hit it so many times. Apparently my sense of the absurd is more acute at 10 p.m. than at 7 a.m.

(And for those of you who protest that the post time doesn't agree with the above statements: Come on, it's the weekend!)

One B song for you: strange, but nice.
Back in Judy's Shack - Burning Cold

In Which I Rearrange the Alphabet, Sort Of.

I've been doing pretty well on B foods: bread (in the form of sandwiches, or toasted with butter), turkey burgers, bananas and root beer. Not so well on the B activities. Of the two movies I saw this week, at least I can say that one, Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, starred Albert Brooks. I went to see it because I had a free preview pass, and because I was under the impression that it was a documentary. The concept could have been a really great documentary, but as a comedy it was mediocre at best. Then there was Capote, which was a worthwhile film, though not a very fun one. Still, I probably chuckled more at Philip Seymour Hoffman than was entirely appropriate, and almost laughed out loud when the guy in front of me started snoring.

Friday night Evan lured me out with the promise of board games with friends, but then we all ended up playing a card-based variation of Cranium instead. (Bait-and-switch starts with B!) I considered walking out then and there, but you know, they had brownies.... For me, one of the highlights of the game was when I attempted to draw a rave, Pictionary-style. I mean, how exactly do you depict that? How do you draw a dark room, strobes, glowsticks? Particularly if you've never actually been to a rave, and are fairly confident that no one in your audience has either? Obviously, I didn't have much success, but it was fun to hear the guesses: "Disco?" "Rock concert!" "Prom?" "Woodstock!" All I could do was giggle and draw more stick figures: holding hands, lying on the floor with X-eyes.

So what with Comedy, Capote and Cranium, it looks I'm kinda jumping ahead a week or two. And I think what this means is that I'll have to fit some Bs into the time allocated for C. Which should work out pretty well, considering my plans for the immediate future.

In other news, the lovely and talented Ah has contributed a t-shirt design to Threadless, a site that accepts submissions of wearable art, then makes and sells those rated highest by site visitors. Click the detail to see the shirt:

If you like the design and want to help her out, you can sign up and rate the shirt anytime in the next 4 days. However, if you then proceed to rate other shirt designs in the running, you may find it to be strangely addictive (and therefore also alarmingly time-consuming, given the number of submissions on any given weekday). You've been warned.

In Which I Am Distracted by Socks.

Last night I was all set to tell you about my evening with my brother and his girlfriend and her friend from work, and how we watched Fun with Dick and Jane and laughed pretty much the whole time, and then went to Applebee's for happy-hour-priced supper, and how the boneless buffalo wings were actually a little too spicy for my internal comfort. I was going to tell you how we kept on laughing even though the movie was over, and how they all played with their cell phone cameras while we waited for our food, and how my brother's girlfriend was trying to figure out a way to steal this huge Madonna poster (not really, Mom, she was joking), and how her work buddy convinced me that the Hollywood/television stereotype of the gay guy friend actually has a basis in reality.

I was going to tell you all this when I got home, even though it was late, because B is for blogging. But I ended up looking at socks instead.

Today was less eventful. Except for the part where I locked my house key into the house when I left for work (not any other keys, just my house key), and then had to play phone tag with several different friends to get back in again. Oh yeah, and I'm getting a head start on something related to the next letter of the alphabet, but you have to wait a couple weeks to hear about that. It's too early to have much to report about it anyway.

So really, I'm only posting to tell you that I don't have anything to tell you.

In Which B is Begun.

I know MLK Day is nearly over, but I did want to share this amazing essay about what it's like to be a fan of fantasy/sci-fi who doesn't have pale skin. Anway, glimpsing the world through someone else's eyes is always topical, innit?

Auspicious was the word for A, for beginning a new year like a snowy field, still un-footprinted, slightly blinding with its possibilities. I'm not sure yet, but it looks like the word for B may be Busy. B is for budget. B is for baking, bathroom (as in 'cleaning the'), and, yes, blogging. B is also for brother, and board games, and bookstore. And a number of other things have crept into my schedule, things that are important despite not beginning with B, such that it looks as though this may be my only quiet evening at home until the weekend. Which is good. I think. I generally really enjoy being busy, until sometimes, quite suddenly, I don't anymore. I hope that doesn't happen this week.

I mentioned I was excited about various authors who begin with B, but I hadn't actually decided on one yet. So when I found a grubby copy of Blue Highways today, left in a place I'd be sure to spot it, I knew just who'd put it there (an as-yet-un-aliased writer friend) and why (he's been telling me to read it for a year now) and what to do with it (duh). At over 400 pages, it will probably take me well into C territory, but that's okay. I wasn't going to get a book read every 2 weeks anyway.

Only the second day of B, and I have already eaten baby corn (stir-fry) with beef at a Thai restaurant. I've ingested a piece of butterscotch candy and a couple of black bean burritos and an apple (Braeburn), and listened through several hours' worth of B musicians in iTunes (Beck! and more Beck! and some Bloc Party). Also, mustn't forget bathing and brushing teeth. Which might be a good idea right now, come to think of it.

In Which I Wish I Worked in a Post Office in Ghana.

Archery: check.
I am so out of shape, it's not even funny. Except that it is, actually, pretty funny, to be wiped out after an hour of stretching a few arm/shoulder muscles and strolling back and forth to fetch arrows. Funny enough that I held out for about an hour and a half.

Fletcher wasn't shooting his best either, and toward the end of the session he started talking to himself. He said, "Okay, this is for the big one! The world championship. The other guy missed, so all you have to do is hit the yellow...." There was a lengthy pause as he sighted and aimed juuust right, frowning with concentration, then released the arrow. It hit squarely in the X ring.

"And the crowd goes wild!" I said, throwing my arms into the air.

"The crowd goes wild," he echoed, and grinned.

I should probably mention that Fletcher is actually a world archery champion.

Apples, apricots: check.
Also: Altoids, Ak-mak and Advil!

African music: check.
I listened to Oliver Mtukudzi while washing the dishes. He's from Zimbabwe, so I'll definitely be listening to him next Christmas, when it will be time for Z-themed music. And probably quite a bit between now and then, too. He has a very sweet voice, and his music is very warm and peaceful and joyous -- a good antidote counterpoint to the raucous shake-yer-can street rhythms of Konono No. 1 (which is probably the African band getting the most attention from America at the moment).

If you are ever looking for some good African music (U is for Uganda, Z is for Zaire...), you really can't go wrong with Benn loxo du taccu, an MP3 blog that offers several fresh tunes out of Africa every week (with podcasts, for those who are into that sort of thing). The writing is informative and to the point, and the songs are diverse and unfailingly interesting. It's a different kind of music-making than I'm used to -- longer songs, more repetition -- but it's that very difference that makes it educational.

I didn't get this track there, but it's one of my most interesting MP3 finds in quite a while:

The University of Ghana Post Office - Canceling Stamps

In Which I Dream About Sleeping.

I want you to know that I actually pressed the button to post last night's entry with my left elbow.

I've been really drowsy most of today, after trying to recover from my nocturnal vacation habits all at once. This morning, after hitting the snooze alarm once or twice or maybe five times or something, I dreamed I was knocking at a neighbor's door. As she came to answer it, I struggled to keep my eyes open to greet her, because how awkward would it be to answer your door and find a sleeping person outside of it? But I couldn't. It was kind of embarrassing.

When I finally woke up enough to look at the clock, I was embarrassed all over again.

I have another A song to share today, and for once it's not a yousendit link:

The Owls - Air

In Which I Approach the Alphabetical Annum.

I saw "Kong" today. It seemed like a very, very long movie. And it was. I was pretty tired of it after about the first hour and a half. I didn't realize how bored I could get with flawlessly animated monster battles. I guess I really like the guys in monster suits better. (Come to think of it, I preferred puppet-Yoda, too.)

I didn't make any New Year's resolutions, if you were wondering about that. But I recently found out that some friends of mine are living the alphabet in 2006, two weeks for each letter. This means they are planning their entire lifestyle (food, recreation, chores, learning, etc.) around the letter of the, uh, fortnight. I think that's a pretty cool idea, cool enough for me to take a flying leap onto the bandwagon already in motion. It's a good thing that I spent the first few days of the year hanging out with Meep, whose real name starts with an A, and with my sisters and my nephew, who also have A names. I think we may even have played Apples to Apples. Last week I watched "Annie Hall," and today I had dinner at Acapulco. I've been listening to Andrew Bird in my car, and today I told iTunes to play all the songs by artists who begin with A (why do I have so many tracks by Animal Collective and The Arcade Fire?).

Later this week I will listen to some African music, maybe while eating apples or dried apricots. I'll do a little archery and maybe some crunches to work out my abs, or amble around the neighborhood if the rain ever lets up. I might rent "American Splendor" and there's a good chance I'll read the book of Acts. It's a little late to start anything longer, as I don't want to be caught midway through a book on the 15th. So many intriguing authors start with B (Peter Beagle! Nicholson Baker! Jorge Luis Borges!).

With that in mind, the following track has been brought to you by the letter A and... um... my left elbow?

Ananda Shankar & State of Bengal - Pluck

[Edit: corrected minor HTML goof that confused Bloglines.]

In Which I Did/Didn't Start the Fire.

I have this problem where if I neglect some area of writing for a time (correspondence with a particular individual, say, or journalling, or maybe blogging is a good example?), then I feel like when I return to it, I need to write something really spectacular to make up for all the writing I didn't do. It doesn't really make any sense; it's self-defeating, because the mental challenge of trying to come up with something really spectacular just makes it that much harder to return to whatever I was neglecting. But there it is, this weird idea I've always had. Right there. I am putting it on the lawn, see, and I am punting it into the street. This will not be a really spectacular blog post.

Last night I went to the Doug Fir Lounge with Bee and Spider (and their parents, who are visiting from out of town). We saw Sounds Like Fun, Norfolk & Western, and Heroes and Villains. (I wanted to link to the bands, but I couldn't find any pages that didn't automatically start playing music when you load them. Don't they know everybody hates that? You can see photos of the first two bands, and click through to their pages, on the Doug Fir calendar page.)

Sounds Like Fun was three loud guys. They played loudly and sang loudly, and they smiled loudly, showing many, many teeth. I liked them a lot, not only because they made good music, but because they also seemed to be laughing at themselves and us as they played. Like it was the best joke ever that they were up there playing music for a bunch of people.

Norfolk & Western was a bigger band, with a more polished sound that reminded me a lot of the Decemberists. Later I found out that the drummer/singer used to play for the Decemberists. I liked them about as much as I like the Decemberists, which is pretty well, but they weren't as much fun to listen to as the first band. The drummer was awesome, though. And a girl. An awesome girl drummer. Awesome!

By the time Heroes and Villains took the stage, I was too tired to really get much out of their set -- ironic, since they were the reason I was there. But they were of course very good. You have to be wide awake to fully appreciate the complexity of their music, with its frequent shifts in rhythm and key, but even sleepy people can enjoy watching such a strange cast of characters as they are. One of them looks like she was invented by Bryan Lee O'Malley. In fact, I even checked just now to see if he had a sketch that looks uncannily like her, but this was as close as I could get. No, not the snoozing girl at the top; scroll down to the girl screaming on the table. That's pretty close. Her hair is pink, and her little crooked mouth gets all huge when she sings.

I spent some time at the show trying to picture the rest of Heroes and Villains as drawn by indie comic artists. The other girl reminded me of how Gabrielle Bell draws herself. The guys were harder, especially the drummer, because the pink-haired girl was blocking my view of him. (He actually looks sorta like Bee's boyfriend, if you happen to know who that is.) And the other two guys had dark bristly beards. I haven't seen a lot of beards in comics lately, so I kind of got stuck at that point.

The Doug Fir Lounge is a really, really nice venue. I was impressed. The building is new, but the decor is retro-rustic, like it was designed in the '60s with a log cabin theme, and the lighting and layout are comfortable yet hip. There is some seating along the sides, but I stood throughout the show, on a raised area of the floor between a pillar and a railing. I had a great view of the stage the entire time, and if you know how tall I am, you can guess how rare that is. Also, the show was only $6. If you live in Portland, enjoy indie rock, and haven't yet been to the DFL, let me encourage you to remedy that as soon as possible.

* * *

I have lit a fire in my fireplace, and am sitting here by it with a blanket over my lap. It's very cozy. "But wait!" you are saying, if you've ever been inside my house. "Your fireplace is not connected to a chimney! It's Strictly Decorative! This sounds very dangerous!" To which I answer: actually, I have lit several very small wax-based fires in glass jars, or as I like to call them, "candles." They are in my new fireplace candelabra that my mom and dad gave me for Christmas. The flickery flames glint off the tile of my pretend fireplace, and they give off just enough heat to warm your hands by, so the effect is ideal for a rainy winter evening like this one. And arrayed across the mantel is my Christmas present from the Ranums. It's bee-yewtiful. And FEROCIOUS.