Hi,

Autumn is my favorite season. It is the season that feels most like we are heading somewhere. The weather is still nice and it has a romantic feel to it, two people sharing something in spite of the winter oblivion ahead.

My voice of winter for music is depressing. Half the Tom Waits discography becomes too chipper to listen to. All jazz and classical music leaves my ears and it seems the only blues music I can stand is written by either blind men or those who sold their souls to the devil.

But autumn is different. It is facing that bleak winter but it is still stoic about it. Almost mystical.

Nick Drake was an Autumnal person. I wish I could post a home recording of him doing Hazy Jane from his first album, Brighter Later. His first two albums had lush, medieval arrangements accompanying Drake's expert fingering and foggy whisper voice. His third and final album had no such accompaniment and is a much finer album for it. Here is one of my favorites from it.



John Cale and Nico are enjoyable all year around. But their collaborations during autumn are especially good. I had wanted to post something from The Marble Index or Desertshore, but couldn't find anything with good sound quality. Nico covering My Funny Valentine did the job nicely. She sounds like Marline Dietrich soaked in heroin.



A song from the Marble Index I was able to find is John Cale covering Frozen Warnings. It was for the documentary Icon - Nico which came out in the 90's a decade after her death. I usually don't like piano covers of songs because it is so easy to make them much more melancholy. Tori Amos has made a career of making rock songs depressing with her fabroge voice and piano. But as John Cale wrote with Nico, did the production and arrangements I think he is allowed to. His cover makes Frozen Warnings a very different song but very much in the Autumn frame of mind



There is more I wanted to share, but I am limited to videos on youtube. So, you will just have to be content with what I gave you vultures.

There are lessons that one must be taught. Oh sure, wouldn't we all like to learn what our passions tell us to learn as Rousseau would have us. But for the sake of survival there are lessons which must be taught at an early age.

Bears will naturally scare us. The dark keeps us away from places we should not be. But how can nature teach us to be wary of the supernatural?

Yes, the religious right might tell us that Drag Queens and homosexuals are unnatural. But why unnatural and not supernatural?

The mind is naturally curious and looks upon the unknown with equal measures of fear and wonder. Well my friends, I dare you to daze into the dark unknown with me and learn the most valuable lesson of all.

Never. Fuck. With. A. Drag Queen!

Awesome.

I just got a new phone. My old cell phone was a wonder. It was perfect for me because of two main features. 1) It was virtually indestructible and 2) it had sudoku.

As it turns out, you can get sudoku on just about any phone. Until that fad dies out and once again we are playing minesweeper as if it were fun.

But indestructible. God, that is where it was at! I am not a clumsy man. Nor am I prone to dropping phones into toilets. But I feel a certain contempt for little gadgets. Especially ones that can interrupt me while on said toilet. As such, I keep the gizmo in my pocket full of keys and knives. Casually bumping into things turns my pocket into a meat grinder. And phones made of less stern stuff don't last.

So sure was I of my old phones invulnerability I would stab the thing with keys. With a smile I would show just a few scratches and continue to drink.

This new fangled phone though has so many wicked cool features! I would tell you about them, but I am too busy figuring out how to turn them off. I could be sitting in a class trying to make some erudite point about economic factors in immigration when my pants will suddenly announce "please say a name to make a call" in a voice surprisingly needy for a machine.

Coincidentally, the Chinese restaurant in my phone book is saved under the name "China". I am sure in my Chinese history class I have accidentally ordered a large Sun Yatsen with a side of Chaing Kai-Shek. Sometimes I will even go to the restaurant on the off chance I did in fact oder something. Have a bit of fun reenacting the Nationalist flight to Taiwan with an eggroll for a barge.

And there is also a camera on it. Same problem. A shift of my leg and then "CLICK" the camera says in a fair impersonation of a real shutter. I have scores of photos of the inside of my pants and not one of them is remotely racy.

Now I am paranoid about a new phone. Its resilience has not been tested and I am babying it. Now I keep it in the pocket with my wallet. But someday, while drunk I am going to look into that little eye of the camera and I will become Odysseus, and it will become the cyclops. In an epic struggle the two of us will exchange blows and I will have glass in my fingers, and a broken camera phone.

stay tuned for updates.

Howdy,

I was away this weekend with my brother Jordan. He had just become an Eagle Scout and had a ceremony to commemorate it in the basement of a church. There were about 150 people; mostly fellow boy scouts, their parents, a few relatives, and six slimy local politicians . The kid asked me to say a few words about him, and the unfortunate soul got exactly what he asked for. Here it is, the crowd had a good laugh:

Today we gather to celebrate a young man's achievements. That is why we are here right? If you are here for the bar mitzvah you are in the wrong basement.

Now, many of you know Jordan. Or, if you are lucky, are merely related to someone who knows Jordan. If you are fortunate enough to be neither, then you are probably a politician.

Well, Jordan would like to take this opportunity to announce his candidacy for your position. As there are more than one of you, he would also like to announce his candidacy for your position as well. He means no disrespect, but he believes he can do your jobs and still get eight hours of sleep a night. After all, he is Jordan and you are only human.

Jordan goes to school, is a fine soccer goalie, plays a mean AC/DC on his guitar, can blow you up in something called Halo, and still have enough time to create a soul shattering mess in his room that is a cross between Jackson Pollock and Heironimous Bosch.

Now, my brother Matt and I are about ten years older than Jordan. For years we were top dog in the house and in the neighborhood. But then came our mother's pregnancy. Which, when raised by Catholics, is a complete mystery but occasion to feel very guilty about something or another.

Of course, the mystery quickly evaporated when we discovered what it all meant. Oh man, another brother? I already have one of those and he can beat me up! Great. Ten years old and already I need a drink.

I am happy to report that it took Jordan a full two years of life before Jordan beat me up. It was with a Fisher-Price, soft plastic, child safe, non-eye gouging corner, toy hamer. But like mighty Thor against the Fire Giants on Ragnarok he smashed my skull in. That toy is now banned for sure.

Ah, but that class action law suit boat sailed years ago, as did the soft ball sized welt which decorated my forehead like a third eye. Remarkably, horrific pain is not enough to overcome genetic programing which keeps us from, oh, you know, not dismembering a toddler.

Jordan always lived in the shadow of my brother and I. But he never had any trouble stepping out of it and stepping on us. Earning the rank of Eagle Scout it, to put it mildly, a difficult task. A task that is compulsory when your two older brothers managed to do the same. Jordan did not just do the same, he did it better than we did.

Matt, back me up on this one, but I think Jordan ha more merit badges than we ever earned, combined! I don't know about Matt's Eagle Scout service project, but mine has been demolished and converted into a janitor's closet.

Jordan, in these quarters they call pride a deadly sin. But I have no difficulty in saying that I am infinitely proud of your achievements. I am proud of what you are certain to accomplish. But most of all, I am proud to call you my brother.

Well, that was that. There were a few additional amusing events that took place after this that I will talk about in a later post.

Additionally, (e:Janelle) and (e:Drew) are frickin' awesome and brought my a little present from Toronto which I will photo document.

And now! SCHOOL!

So, (e:jim) recently wrote about how I am learning to program. Oh god, why, o why!

Last weekend Jim took me a long to a programmers conference. Looking around it was an awesome sight.

Guys. Around my age. With Beards sparse and thick. With mops of hair unstyled and uncut. bellies small and bulging. Facial piercing. Tattoos. Drinking problems they openly joked about.

But above all. Each of these people seemed like they could do porn and not fear losing their real job.

This is my secret criteria for my second job. The job I get after I am fired from teaching.

I have no actual desire to do porn. Ya, I like a good penis, but not one with more screen time than Orson Wells. But I crave the freedom to do it. As if someone would approach me with an offer to do a scene or two and I, drink in hand, would say 'what the heck'. Shrugging off the non-existent consequences.

The other day when I was doing observations at a school I had the opportunity to sit in on a middle school health class, adolescent sex ed. There were a few things said I really didn't like. Notable a binary gender model and an attitude of compulsory heterosexuality. After, I asked the teacher about these things. She told me that she has no free hand in the content, it is decided by the community. Even in the high school they are not allowed to use words like 'gay' or 'condom'. And really, if you need to cover any two topics in sex it is 'everyone is unique' and 'don't get the Clap' would be them.

Would they ever let a porn star teach kids anything? Do real people actually teach, or are they just charecters in a moral allegory? Programmers though...

"Hey Bill, what did you do this weekend?"
"Oh you know Janice, got doubly penetrated in that jail bate film"

How awesome is that?