algorithmic fashion

While killing time in my office today, I glanced at one of my social networking sites and saw a very strange targeted ad. For whatever reason, their ad service seemed to think I would be interested in a sale on selected waistcoats.

At first, I could only think, "this is weird." I have, for the record, never worn a waistcoat in my life. I'm not usually the first person you think of when you think of waistcoats (assuming, that is, you ever think of waistcoats in the first place). So I naturally wondered how the targeted advertisement could possibly be so far off.

Of course, my brain works in weird and mysterious ways, because in less than ten minutes, I had completely rethought my position on the previously uncontemplated garment. Some time in the last year, I have started to dress more formally. I'm more likely to be found in a button-up shirt than a weird tee shirt. I've largely replaced my jeans with khakis or green cargo pants. I even bought cowboy boots for some reason.

For the record, I really don't know why I started to dress up. Maybe it has something to do with losing some weight last year. Maybe it's some coming to terms with getting older. Maybe I just needed a change. I dunno...but in light of this, maybe a waistcoat wouldn't be such a bad idea.

I brought this up to my students. My first class was relatively unimpressed by the idea, with about half shaking their heads and about another half giving me an "eh, why not?" My second class, however, seemed to think it was a capital idea. A few of them expressed such approval of the idea, I seriously considered jumping online to buy a few right then and there. My wife, though, suggested us having a dinner then shopping date, so we could test out the effect of such a fashion shift in the real world.

What's the point of all this? I dunno. Maybe I'm just much more impressionable than I suspect. The other possibility is, however, a little bit frightening...because maybe the computer-determined advertisements actually know me better than I know myself.

I never thought when the science fictional universe finally came true, it would concern itself with my style of dress.

TheMikeDuBose X-mas single!

A few years ago, I found myself playing a singer-songwriter showcase which was to be filmed for later television broadcast. We were also invited to do a Christmas song for an additional Christmas Special. Well, I couldn't think of anything I wanted to do, so I wrote my own holiday song: "X-Mas in the Drunk Tank."

I don't know if the Christmas special ever aired. I found out after the fact that the singer-songwriter episode aired. I never saw it, because I never actually heard about it until later. And none of these have ever turned up on YouTube or the show's website, so I just like to think of my television career as an unsubstantiated rumor.

But, as a result, I had a Christmas song. I liked the song, which made the fact I could only ever play the song one month out of the year just a little bit aggravating. But dealing with aggravation is just a fact of life for us non-famous musician types.

Last year, I had plans to record an album with a friend of mine. For whatever reason, we were very slow to get the record off the ground. I suggested we record "X-Mas in the Drunk Tank" as a way to jump-start the recording process...and shortly thereafter, I found myself with another original holiday song, this one entitled "I Don't Wanna Be Depressed (This X-mas)."

The album never actually happened. The Christmas single which was supposed to jump-start the recording process also never happened. But now I had the bug, and I really wanted to get all these recordings done. So I did what I've always done when dealing with frustrating circumstances: I've become self-sufficient.

So I'm deep into recording the album (and I actually should be done and ready to release in January). And somewhere in the process, I remembered the Christmas single idea.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I present you the fruit of my labors. I call it The War on X-Mas. This contains both "I Don't Wanna Be Depressed (This X-mas)" and "X-Mas in the Drunk Tank." I'm responsible for every lick of it, every sound, every action. And it turned out better than I would've ever hoped.

I sincerely hope you check it out. I like these songs more than I should, and I think they sound amazing. It is now life at my Bandcamp page as a "pay what you want" download. Please do check it out. I will also have CD copies soon, which I will pair with a custom TheMikeDuBose Christmas ornament. More details on those when the physical CDs come in.

I'll be playing one or both of these songs this Wednesday at Stone's Throw for Hump Day Revue and this Saturday at Howard's Club H for the annual Toy Drive show (I go on at 9), Come see me and say hello,

television, hearing loss, and...something else

As a long-time musician, I count myself lucky to have pretty solid hearing. One doesn't do this, though, and escape with perfect hearing. So every so often, I will catch a little bit of the whining sound fading in and out. It's not enough to really bother me, but it is there just enough to be annoying. The desire to avoid more of this is why I carry ear plugs with me wherever I go.

Of course, this brings me to television. Over the last year, I've become a devotee of the show Archer. I could go off on how the show can be just awesome, but time is limited (I can only justify avoiding grading for so long). One of my favorite elements of the show is their use of the tinnitus sound effect. Yeah, they bring up the ringing sound when there's an explosion or something, but they also bring it up when Archer goes through some emotional trauma of some sort. It's clever, particularly in how it subtly makes explicit the connection between the violence of his job and his emotional barriers.

So how does this relate to me? Well, I was just taking a second away from grading, and I had a minor tinnitus flare-up...only this time, instead of the mono-pitch whine, it sounded like an old school dial-up modem.

What this means, though, I really have no clue.

news of my importance

I just got a wrong number phone call from Mexico. You know what this means? I am now an international mistake!

nutbar mornings

My daughter just came into the kitchen while I was making coffee. She opened up the fridge, peered in for a split second, slammed the door, ran into the living room, and immediately started running around in circles, screaming, "we have too many juice boxes!" over and over, for an honest full minute. She then went back to playing as if nothing happened.

Me? I finished making my coffee... although by that point, I really didn't need it anymore.

unexpected science

Over the last couple of weeks, I've noticed that, while playing with my daughter, we will suddenly veer into hard science. Earlier today, we were playing with Octonauts. The girl Octonauts were doing ballet. When their ballet instructor (a toy from another playset) had to leave, she summoned a black hole to travel back home.

This puzzles me. On the bright side, though, I now have a good answer if she ever asks where babies come from.

realities and politics

When I was in grad school, we read a certain amount of postmodern theory. I found it fascinating, particularly in its explanation of how representation starts altering how people perceive and process reality. In our age, saturated by media, representation tends to stack up. This obscures reality to the point where the representation starts to be seen as more real than reality.

It's an interesting theory. While it's nothing that anyone would hold up as an ideal, it does explain an awful lot of how image, reality, and opinion converge. But, as one reads more and more of it,  one starts to feel about it the same way one would that style of art which consists of large color squares on canvas. The thought is that someone is playing a con on someone...but who's playing whom is a matter of opinion.

I've been out of the scholarship game for a while, though, and postmodernism isn't really the kind of thing one reads for giggles. But lately, it's been washing back into my consciousness. I blame politics.

My country has taken some weird turns over the last week. Quite often, those changes seem to be relatively contrary to reality. People voted against their own interests. But they also voted for a businessman because they thought he would be less money-hungry than a politician. This has, for a while, made very little sense to me.

I think that the postmodernism is starting to help make sense, though. But it's not, I'm beginning to suspect, because people are too tied to the media representations of reality as postmodernism would argue. Reality, as a concept, is not really all that definite of a concept anymore for a lot of people. And in the absence of reality, people don't settle on a mediated reality. It's not like there's only one of them. It's a verifiable buffet of competing realities, a potpourri dish of reality options.

If there's no real anymore, then why not chose the alternative that helps you sleep better at night? No matter what the consequences?

The fault with this logic is also the fault with postmodernism. There actually is a Real in there. Even in the absence of narratives, there is a right, and there is a wrong. There is help, and there is harm. Stories are just stories, no matter how seductive they might be. And there is a way back to sanity

I just hope the path is easier to grasp than postmodernism.

my daughter, while hair is being brushed

"I want to keep my bangs for a long, long time, because they're part of my style that I like."

Heart melt.

evil technology and robotic flies

I used to love my office computer. Then, when I was on my fatherhood leave, they replaced it with an all-in-one. From minute one, it sucked. I have never been able to get through a day without my browser crashing or my computer freezing. I hate this machine with a passion usually reserved for steamed rutabaga.

As of a few weeks ago, though, it got worse. It started to make weird electronic disco sounds. If a computer could clear its throat of excess mucus, that's what it would sound like. Actually (and it took me a while to name this), it really sounds like an attack sound from Yar's Revenge...and as cool as that is in theory, I don't think it bodes well for the machine.

I put in a message to our IT guys. Their recommendation? Turn down the volume. Thanks, guys, but I don't think that will do it.

decompression

Due to horrific job-related situations beyond my control, I have been much busier than normal. I have (for reasons I won't go into here) had to redo every single thing about every one of my classes. This means that, in addition to grading, my time spent planning lessons, assembling powerpoints, and the like has gone through the roof. I don't seemingly have time to get much of anything done. This taxes me.

Moreover, it's become clear after years of life and therapy that I have to have a come-down period. I have to interact with people...or worst-case scenario, with stories. If I don't do this, then I can't stop thinking...which leads me to getting less and less sleep...which eggs on my depression...which makes me grumpier...which causes me to think black thoughts...which leads to even less sleep...and so on, and so forth.

The problem as of late is that my increasing business and my need for decompression don't exactly play well together. I'm doing everything I can, but come the end of most days, I inevitably have to force stop myself from dwelling on all that's undone. It's become clear to me that I'm living in a self-perpetuating existence. I'm not 100% fond of it, but there it is. All one can do is fight through it.

When I do get the time to decompress before bed, I don't have the energy to really challenge myself in any way. As a result, I've been rewatching a lot of stuff. For about a month off-and-on, I've found myself watching West Wing. I'm now on my second or third re-do. I like it because quite often I can just lose myself in the beauty of the dialog...and that's nice.

I'm currently on season four. This is when (for all those who don't watch the show) the president is running for reelection. His opponent is a vehement and proud anti-intellectual, so the president's advisors worry that their boss will come off arrogant by comparison. Quite often, I find myself similarly thinking about how everybody usually feels about the smartest kid in the classroom. And trust me...it's not good.

Not that I claim such a position for myself, mind you. Doctoral school quickly disabused me of any notions of my own intelligence. But I'm unnerved by the amount of people who think that thinking about things in general is a bad thing. I made the mistake of looking at some internet comments a while ago, and I even saw someone implying that thinking was unpatriotic.

What does this say about our world? That's another reason why I need to decompress.

late night shenanigans

My daughter came into the living room well after her bedtime.

"Daddy, I can't sleep."

"Did you try?"

"Yes! I tried really hard, I promise."

"Did you try being still, being quiet, and closing your eyes?"

"I did...but I could only hold it for a blink."

Yup. That's my girl.

songs still to come

Music update!

While not as publicly as I would like, things are still progressing in TheMikeDuBose music land.

The album: I only have one more bass track to record. Then I have to mix and master, and then the next TheMikeDuBose album will be out. I'm shooting for the end of the year, and details will be forthcoming. Really, I hoped to have it done over a year ago, but things have, for a multitude of reasons, gone slowly. More news forthcoming as soon as I get the album finished.

The next album: it will go much more quickly. Basic work is already underway.

My current recording project:  my X-mas single. I only have a little more recording to do, then mixing. It will be "X-mas in the Drunk Tank" and "I Don't Wanna Be Depressed (This X-mas)." The tracks will go up on Bandcamp, but I will also have some physical cds. I will package the cds with a custom TheMikeDuBose tree ornaments. These will go on sale after Thanksgiving is over...because of course, it's a crime to celebrate Christmas when there are still other holidays to go.

I will be much more active booking shows once I finish the album. In the meantime, you can catch me with my cover band The Unmedicated. We're playing Blondies BG this Friday.

try to remember she's only five

Yesterday, while I was at home with my daughter, we somehow got into a craft-centric mode. I showed her how to make paper snowflakes, paper dolls, and such. She enjoyed it, yes, but the notable moment was when she held up one of our creations and asked me, "is this symmetrical?"

Once again, that girl astounds me.

both sides

On one hand, Facebook this morning told me to wish a friend a happy birthday. I would've done so, but said friend had someone I know introduce him to heroin, and said friend shortly thereafter died via an overdose. Then, after reading this, I get my daughter up and discover that she's transmogrified into a coughing machine.

On the other hand, it's a staggeringly beautiful day. All of a sudden, we have the random "you can wear shorts and sandals in November" weather. I'm at work, but I have very little to do...and since no one had signed up for conferences, I get to leave early and go home to my wife and daughter.

Sometimes life is like this.

in other news

I just found out that last post was my 1,000th blog entry. Now I wish it would've been more monumental. Sigh.

hold on to your hats

I was walking through the building towards my office this morning when I saw my boss. The first thought I had was how much her mirrored sunglasses made her look like a badass. I said hello, and she asked me to read and answer an e-mail she sent. Immediately, the creepy part of my brain started in a parade of "what is it this time?" and "you're in trouble" messages. I hurried to my office only to find an e-mail...asking for my availability for teaching over the summer.

Mood swing one of the day complete, I guess.

irony today

I just saw someone post a "support the military" thing on Facebook which implied that if you didn't support our soldiers whenever, you were a bad American. Their profile pic was a Confederate battle flag. The Confederates were active traitors against the United States. In fact, they killed or mortally wounded over 110,000 United States soldiers.

The mental disconnect...it hurts my brain.

why am I surprised?

I've been shaking up my teaching in a whole lot of ways. One of the weirdest (for me, anyway) was to soup up my PowerPoints. No more of the bare bones, basic black text on white slides for me! I'm going to show everyone that I do actually know design. THE WORLD WILL THEN BE MINE!!!!!! MWAHAHAHAHA!

Excuse me.

Today, I'm laboring on Labor Day by assembling a slideshow for tomorrow's class. I had need of an image of a mad scientist for background art. So I did a Google image search. Not surprisingly, all of the results were for white males. I searched for female mad scientists, and then only half of the results were for white males. I searched for African American mad scientists, then Asian, then Indian. In all cases, half of the results were for (you guessed it) white males.

Oh, one other feature of the search results was that in most cases, I got to pictures of bikini-clad women at least halfway down the page. I'm not sure what the connection is between bikini babes and mad science. Maybe a psychology major can help me out.

But I really wanted diversity. So how did I get it? Five words: My Little Pony mad scientist.

praise

Today, I received some amazing praise from an old friend. We were chatting about someone who went to grad school with us, and my friend told me, "you were obviously doing something right if (person X) wanted to punch you."

Some days, you just need to hear words like this. Happiness achieved.

the poetry of grading

I'm currently on lunch break of my job grading AP exams. I can't really talk about anything from the 839 exams I've graded so far, though. What I can do is share my three entries in the Question One Haiku Contest.

Due to the fact that
I don't know what I just read
Please send brain meds now

Your handwriting makes
Me cross-eyed and hurts my brain
Maybe pictograms?

"In modern times..." - Gah
Passive verbs will bury me
Arthritic joints throb

when you are with me

It's my daughter's fifth birthday today. I'm stuck working in Kansas City. I know it's something I have to do; the money's too good, and we're too broke. But still, it's a sacrifice. I'm been dealing with it pretty well. This morning, though, my wife sent a photo of my daughter, sitting on the ground and playing with some new gifts. She's wearing some wrapping paper as a cape. I've looked at it ten times since she sent it. The photo's wonderful...even if her smile does make my heart hurt.

brainworm

There's a company in this part of the country named Toto. They make toilets and related products. And every time I encounter heir products in the wild, my mind clicks into "I know I must do what's right as sure as Killamanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengetis."

Kudos, most pretentious lyric of all time. Kudos.

sentiment

I have a few summer jobs this year, but this is the one I was dreading the most. I am in Kansas City to grade AP exams. I'm not a major fan of grading in general, but the rough part of this is being away from my family. It's my daughter's birthday on Sunday. I'm missing it.

On the way in, my wife called. We talked, and then she put my kid on the line. "I miss you, daddy. I wish you didn't have to do this."

I'm still trying to pull myself together.

timing

When I was recording my album Skeleton Coast (just buy it already), my producer made cheap drum machine tracks for me to follow when I recorded my basic acoustic guitar, so we would start the recording process with everything in solid timing. One of the songs ("Totally Low Standard Blues") gave him trouble, and he couldn't figure out why. Then we got into a brief argument about timing, because he swore the song was in 4/4. Eventually, I convinced him it was actually in 6/8 time, and we got the track done no problem. He did, however, inform me that I was weird.

Most rock, pop, rap, and a decent amount of country is in 4/4 time (du du DA du, du du DA du). As a result, most musicians who don't have formal training are more or less used to 4/4, and anything else gives them a bit of trouble. If you play country, 3/4 timing slips in the mix (think waltz timing--DUN du du, DUN du du). 6/8, though, is a rarer bird.

Recently, I've had developments in my solo career which have pushed me towards preparing solo rock shows, without a band. I'm going to bring my electric and play with some strange pre-recorded drum/percussion tracks (I test this out tomorrow, so expect a progress report later this week). Of course, this means that I need to pre-record said pre-recorded backing tracks. Last week, I tackled "Totally Low Standard Blues," and even though I wrote the song, the 6/8 time signature still gave me fits. This is one in a long line of hints that I might be a weirdo.

Yesterday, I realized that one of the songs I'm in the middle of writing is also in 6/8 time. Maybe I'll do enough of these that weird time signatures become second nature. Or maybe I just like to make things difficult.

accomplishment

When I still used to think I could somehow become a scholar, I was faced with a quandary: I needed to keep publishing to even have a chance at getting a tenure track job, but since I was in a non-tenured position, the scholarship I did benefited my actual job not at all. In fact, my teaching load was so high, there was no time at all to even think scholarship during the semester.

Summers were the only time I could research and write. And write, I did. I would chain myself to books or to my computer for at least eight hours a day. I did an impressive volume and depth of work during those summers...more (I was told by reliable sources) than some of my tenure-track colleagues. Shame it never actually benefited me, though.

The arrival of my daughter coincided with me realizing I was never going to be a professional scholar, and, in anticipation of my girl coming, I decided I was done spending summers writing articles which never actually yielded tangible benefits. That was in 2011. This summer marks the five year anniversary of no scholarship.

Lest you feel this depressing in some way, I should tell you a little tale. Yesterday, I washed the dishes, made a big batch of burritos for the freezer (bean, mushroom, broccoli, onion, and vegetarian chorizo (the only decent vegetarian sausage)), cleaned the fish tank, and made my weekly batch of oatmeal. At the end of the  day, I felt more of a sense of accomplishment than at the end of one of the writing summers.

Just thought it should be noted. Of course, I did also apply for my third summer job...but you win some, lose some.

fighting a fit

In spite of everything, today largely centered around a depression fit. Yeah, I know "episode" is the preferred terminology, but let's face it: fit fits better. And it was a doozy, intensity-wise. Hell, my daughter's full-throttled glee at the swimming pool being open (yelling "this is fantastic!" and referring to the pool steps as "the dock") only put a ding in the depression fit.

Ultimately, the most potent weapon in the valiant struggle against depression was (as per usual) music. Getting to go to band practice and blast my guitar through a tube amp did wonders, and I returned home a better person (in spite of my singer telling me, "you are the most obnoxious person I know").

Of course, my mind has been focusing on this marvelous property of music to act as a salve against depression. I even thought about writing a song about it. I started humming a melody, and then the phrase "you gotta see my panacea" came forth.

Luckily, I was wise enough to recognize it for the nonsense it was and switch instead to playing video games.

memories

I first got online in 1994. Yeah, I was an early adopter, but there was a lot of history before that. And although I knew a lot of it, it's never too late to learn more. Thanks to Forty Years of the Internet, I learned the first internet message was "LO"...it was supposed to be "LOGIN," but the one of the computers crashed.

Reminds me of one of my early machines.

the perils of teaching business writing

I'm teaching an online summer course in Professional and Business Writing. I don't really want to teach over the summer, but I do need the money. Still, I wouldn't mind all that much except for two things:

1. A lot of this writing is pretty boring. I know this is probably something I shouldn't admit in public, but it's really hard to bring myself to care about how they use columns in their resumes. Still, I could fight this if it weren't for:
2. I have to comment on their document design. No problem...however, one of the things I have to mention is their use of white space. Again, not really a problem...except I find myself accidentally typing "shite space" instead of "white space." I wonder how many times I have not caught my mistake.

Being a teacher is rough.

the perils of beauty

I was supposed to have a photoshoot today, so I did effective grooming this morning. Then the photoshoot for cancelled. Now I have to walk around all day with product in my hair.

I wonder if this is how the beautiful people feel.

a good day

I got to my psychiatrist appointment only to find out that I'm somehow running a credit and don't have to give them a co-pay. Woohoo! It's a good day to be crazy!

a good, authentic coffee

On Wednesdays, my daughter goes to soccer lessons, and I have a little under an hour to kill. My refuge is a local coffee shop. It's a cool place, obviously designed and run by someone who really would rather be in the Caribbean than Perrysburg, Ohio. I'm glad he's here, though. Besides the coffee (which is really good...he roasts beans daily in the shop), it's just a cool little shop that doesn't look like it's trying to be anything other than what the owner wants.

Today, though, the owner's sick, and the shop is closed. So I'm instead sitting at another coffee shop across the street. It's locally owned instead of chain (which is something). But it's...well, I hate it. It's decorated in muted shades of blue and gray. The Batista is dressed like she should be in a boutique. They are playing what sounds like contemporary muzak pop out of an iPhone plugged into an iPhone dock. When the kitchen is open, they serve crepes. In short, it's the kind of place where the clientele is more likely to order double shot iced mochas than an actual coffee.

Which I guess is fitting, as this is a pretty well-off, upper class bedroom community. I would, however, much rather be in the beach shack coffee place.

the Battlestar is coming to save me

After bashing at it for the last two weeks, I've finally put the final bit of prep onto my summer online class. I've only ever taught one class over the summer, and to tell the truth, I really didn't want to do anymore. However, life (and the accompanying poverty) have a habit of wrecking the most carefully laid plans.

When I need to clear my head, I've been binge-watching Battlestar Galactica. There was a good quote in my lunchtime episode that I wanted to share:

It's naive to think that horrible things that we can't understand have simple explanations, because simple explanations make us feel like we have control, when we don't.

This is one on which to ponder over the next few weeks.

imbalances

Today was the last day of the semester. I taught my final two classes. Only one student showed up to the final class. I came home and started grading. I kept grading until my brains turned to pudding. Then I finished Spaced. The awesome of the latter outweighs the less-than-awesome of everything else.

Sometimes you can find imbalances like that which work in your favor. Tomorrow, for instance, my wife and kid are leaving to visit relatives. Me? I'm staying here to grade. Wee. But I also have band practice, and that should outweigh everything else.

no fear

I have clinical depression. I've had kidney stones. I've had some of the most disturbing surgery recovery one can imagine. I've failed at my chosen career. I've had any variety of shocks to the system, and I'm here to tell you all that there is a bright side. Nothing scares me anymore. Or, as Berke Breathed says:

they come running just as fast as they can

One of the reasons (I like to tell people when they ask...not that they really take that much of an interest) I do the job I do is because there's no dress code. I don't like formal clothes...so I do my best to not wear them if possible. Where I work? Dressing up doesn't help me. In fact, the one semester I experimented with a blazer, it actually hurt my classes, as the students thought I was way too formal and wouldn't talk at all.

 Most people assume this is because I am incapable of effectively dressing up. That is not true at all. I actually own a very nice suit. Moreover, on the rare occasions I do dress up, I've also been told I accessorize and color match quite well. In other words, if I wanna, I can look good.

The issue? Most times, I just don't wanna. I dislike formalism. I dislike the idea that I have to put on a "hey, I'm an adult" uniform. I don't like artifice when it comes to identity. Moreover, I don't like having anything tight around my neck, so I hate ties. This also leads me to not like turtlenecks, but that more influences my ability to dress business casual/preppy than anything else.

Today, though, I found a suit I would dearly love to own. I like it so much, I would dearly love to change careers so I could wear said suit with greater frequency. What is this marvelous outfit? Why, it's the pictured Pac-Man suit. Tell me that ain't just awesomely cool. It would, however, have a fairly big drawback. Where would you actually wear it? I'm betting the bosses who would approve it as professional wear are few and far between. It's probably out for most weddings. Funerals? Also a no-go, I bet.

However, I make you this promise right now, as we speak. If any of you decide to buy this for me, I promise to invent situations to wear it.

Message me for my suit size, please.

stimulation

I like coffee. I mean, really like. Coffee is holy. I have reworked a number of classic quotes to be about coffee. "Black blood of the earth." "You mean coffee?" "I mean black blood of the earth." That one is my favorite, but I also enjoy "no pleasure, no sin, no exquisite rapture greater than coffee." So it is with great that I, as a result of both a decreased ability to process caffeine and on advice of my urologist that limit myself to a maximum of two cups a day. That make every single speck of coffee that much more special.

So you can imagine my feelings when, while doing dishes Monday, I accidentally broke my French Press. There was, for the record, much weeping and rending of garments. I thought I might try to go without coffee the next day, but within minutes of leaving the house, I found myself in the drive-through of a Tim Hortons. Of course, it took seven minutes to work through the refunding of my accidental overcharge before I could get on my way to work. Top this with my four year old in the back seat complaining that she "is gonna be late for class," and you can see why the day least to more anxiety than normal instead of gentle stimulation.

My AeroPress came in the next day. I've never used one of these before, so I poured over the instructions. Then I recalled hearing of the annual AeroPress recipe championships, so I looked them up online. Later that night I decided to check YouTube for tutorials. Next thing I know, an hour and a half of my mother, my father, and I watching coffee making videos and critiquing them had passed. It was stimulating I'm a completely unexpected way.

Not, however, as stimulating as the coffee the next morn.

you ever have that feeling...

...when you spend two and a half hours cooking a band new recipe like the red bean stew (which looks very promising), lovingly prep all the food, finish, serve, dish up, have your four year old take a bite only to say, "Daddy I don't like this," take a few bites yourself, and realized that your kid is right, and the dinner just ain't that good?

Yeah, me too.

time off

This week in class, some of my students were talking before class about how much they wish they could sleep in all day instead of having to work. One of them asked me if I agreed, and I told him the idea of spending all day in bed frankly scared me.

He looked puzzled, so I explained that with generating lesson plans for four new classes, grading, my band, my solo album, my therapy, my depression, and my family, I always seem to be massively behind. A full day in bed would just mean I wouldn't be able to sleep for a week if I wanted to get close to getting caught up. Moreover, this knowledge would mean I wouldn't be able to enjoy the day in bed anyway.

I think I might be a workaholic trapped in a lazy man's body.

friends and dreams

I've been thinking about distant friends lately. On my best days, I try keep the Harry Potter quote in mind: the ones we love never really leave us. Most of the time, believing this is fairly difficult, becoming more difficult every time another friend takes a job in another state,moves on, leaves me behind. But still I try, in spite of the houses turning from places where my friends live to the shadows of where they used to be.

The worst moments sneak up on you. The other day, my daughter was playing, and she picked up a boo one of our friends gave her. It was said friend's book as a child, and that she gave the book to my daughter was originally very touching. Since then, said friend has decided I'm the root of all that's wrong or something like that, and she has made it a point to act as if I don't exist. I usually put on a brave front and play along in the game of mutual disdain, but there are times--such as when I saw the dedication in the front of the book from an aunt to said friend as a child--where I can't help but dwell on what is lost. Then I remembered that the person in question won't have anything to do with me. Then I don't know what to think

Still, though, we always have dreams, and hopefully that is somewhere where everything can work out. Last night, I dreamt of running into a few scattered friends at a party. The one conversation I recalled upon awakening is of a friend showing me all the new items she had invented. Now, this person claims to be utterly uncreative. Moreover, she's not really a nuts & bolts person. Yet my dream friend had invented and manufactured any number of hand tools. I don't remember most of them with any specificity, but the last tool was some type of rivet gun which implanted decorative bolts and such directly into one's bones. After showing me the tool, she turned around and showed me the silver star studs affixed to the back of her skull. Now, I really don't think my friend will ever become an inventor, but if she did? I could see her dreaming up this project.

It's a shame, though, the good ones only happen in dreams.

mental occupation

I have, for reasons I'm not going to explore here, found myself on campus during the Monday of Spring Break. Of course, it's deserted, and I can't do half of what I need to do...because that's just the way life is.

So of course, I need to occupy my time. A colleague of mine started the year by putting inspirational quotes on his door. He promised to add a new one each week. So far, though, this has not happened. So I decided to compile some quotes and add them to his door for them. I hope he likes today's addition:

reassurance

I spent Tuesday in mental pain. But even though my brain doesn't work properly, I knew that I couldn't dwell in the mental pain. So yesterday and today, I did my best to push down the horrible twist in my gut and get to work.

I am happy to report that after two full days of research, I now have evidence to prove I am not actually the world's most suck-ass teacher. And, as a result, I feel relatively normal again.

Now to prepare myself for the forthcoming battle.

support

After all the trials this week, I'm happy that I have a family to support me. But they're my family, so the support is...different.

Earlier tonight, my daughter said, "I love you more than anything."

"Aw, I love you more than anything too."

"I even love you more than stinky fish!"

So I got that going for me, I guess.

ideals

After the hell of a birthday I had Tuesday, I've spent Wednesday with my kid...which helps a whole lot. I've spent most of my mental energy on trying to hold myself together, on mustering my strength, on funneling my rage/depression into researching my case and arming myself for a massive battle with the powers that be at my job. You know, fun stuff. Mostly, though, I've been looking for positives, for things that help, for any sliver of worth in myself or in the world.

While I was cooking dinner and waiting for a pot of soup to come to the boil, I picked up my library copy of the Harvey Pekar collection On the Fly. I've loved Pekar for quite some time. He brings humanity to everyone he depicts. While the soup simmered, I took the book with me to the couch. My daughter snuggled up to me, and I plowed though the rest of the stories. I went back to the introduction (previously skipped), which I noticed was written by author/television personality Anthony Bourdain. Near the end of the introduction, Bourdain says,

Harvey Pekar owned not just Cleveland but all those places in the American Heartland where people wake up every day, go to work, do the best they can--in spite of the vast and overwhelming forces that conspire to disappoint them--and try as best as possible to do right by the people around them, to attain that most difficult of "ideals": to be "good" people.

That is all I really think I'm trying to do...and I can't tell you how much reading this helped.

birthday

Yesterday was my birthday. Up until I got to work, it was going swell. Then it went wrong. I mean horribly wrong, cataclysmic level of awful. Black fog descending, light fading, depression monster honing this pointy claws. Bleak, hopelessness, pointlessness. I'm not gonna write here about the details, but trust me...there was a reason. This wasn't just a random fit.

So, to all the people who wished me happy birthday yesterday: thank-you ever so much. It was wonderful beyond belief to hear from you and was one of the few things which made me feel that I had any value at all as a human being. I can't tell you how much I needed to hear from you...and I'm sorry I won't have the chance to thank each of you individually and personally.

ignorance, fast food, and screen time

When I became a parent, I found myself hungry for advice. In an effort to stave the encroaching panic about my lack of fatherhood skills, I hunted down suggestions from every possible source. Me and my wife, for instance, purchased more than one of the books from the What to Expect When You're Expecting series. We scoured over them. Prior preparation prevents poor performance, right?

As it turned out, after about ten months, most of these books went by the wayside, never to be opened again. What was the issue? On one hand, since every child develops differently, the advice they contain requires so much interpretation, it's not funny. Worried your kid is slow learning to do something? Consult the book...only to find that while many children acquire the skill at this age, many others do so either earlier or later in their development cycle. It only takes a few of these instances to begin to see said books for what they are: the parental equivalent of junk food...nice every so often, but no substitute for actual food.

Lots of the advice also tends to be common sense stuff.  There is one important condition to this, however: the parent cannot be an idiot. Any section on proper nutrition works as a good example. If you need to be told not to feed your eight month old McDonald's hamburgers, no amount of outside advice is going to really help your parenting skills.

One bit of advice I saw more than once was to make sure you limit your child's screen time. Watching too much television, the books claim, can hinder emotional and mental development, thus possibly turning your child into a slithering moron. No more than three hours per day, many of them recommend. Others suggested one hour as a maximum. Still others said no television at all. Of course, they also suggested that you move out to a grassland and become a homesteader, gathering your own food from the surrounding wilderness...so take that as you will.

On one hand, I can kind of understand this advice. There is a lot of junk on television...you know, the visual equivalent of that McDonald's hamburger. After all, no one on Earth needs to be exposed to any more Barney or Calliou than absolutely necessary. However, I trained as a media scholar, and as a result, I'm innately suspicious of any claim about the medium overall. It reminds me of those academics who brag that they don't even own a television. I suspect it's more an issue of perceived class than a matter of actual science.

So, with our child, we don't put too many limits on screen time. We try to encourage good shows, and  we try to help her find stuff with some value. That, however, is about it. I feel that my daughter still watches an awful lot of garbage. My wife says I only think this stuff because I'm a bitter person. She also says that I need to let my standards go and remember that it's only kid's programming. Of course I disagree. For example, why on Earth would the Bubble Guppies, who live under water, be flying on an airplane? Of course this drives me crazy, so of course, this is a stupid show.

The thing is, my wife might (shudder) very well be right...because my daughter does seem to become a whole lot smarter as a result of the television shows she watches.

On Wednesday, we were (after a heavy morning of playing and artwork), vegetating and watching television. Well, my daughter was watching while I was playing gin rummy on my phone. She had on something I'd rather ignore, so I was ignoring it. The show must've been something about space, because she said to me, "Daddy, is that true? Is the Earth really a big ball?"

"Yes it is, darling."

"...and if we jumped up and down really hard, could we make the Earth bounce around the room?"

She had my attention. "No, honey. The Earth is really big. It would take a whole lot to move it. You'd have to be a really big giant to have any effect at all."

She thought it over. "A really big giant? Would it work if you were a proboscis monkey?"

And this is why I'm completely rethinking my relationship with media...and, for that matter, with fast food.

crushing expectations

The coolest thing about being allowed to teach a poetry class is to be able to move away from the sleepwalk/recycle mode that I've been in with my other classes. Don't get me wrong; it's not that I don't care about my other classes. However, I have a slate of four different classes I teach, and I've been doing them for over a decade, so they are definitely not surprising me in any way. Moreover, I have them down to where they work, and if they're working, why change? So they require very little creativity on my part.

My poetry class, though? I'm having to think out of the box every time I plan anything. Very little from my previous classes transfers. And while this does mean I have to work a lot harder than normal, it also means that I can be creative...which is something the other classes do not require.

Last Thursday, for instance, we were covering comedy and satire poetry. We got into a discussion of how comedy is contextual, and I started talking about the international versions of "what is funny." I told them some Romanian jokes as an example of black humor. We discussed how lots of British humor seems based on discomfort. I then mentioned Canadian humor, but for some reason, none of my students had never experienced any Canadian comedy. Since we're only two hours away from the border, this confused me. One person asked for an example, so, in a fit of inspiration, I showed them this:



This, my dear readers, is why I love my job so much.

the best thing you will see today, 2/27/16

One of the best things about the interwub is that if you search long enough and are very lucky, you can find the coolest things. For instance, I just found an article (with a video clip) about a sketch on the Richard Pryor Show which had Pryor as a bartender in a Star Wars bar.

You're welcome.

what is and how things should be

A couple of weeks ago, my favorite diner had a fire. It was pretty badly damaged and will have to be gutted and reconstructed. Luckily, my wife and I ate there a few days before, but it seems that ever since, I've had at least four instances of, "Man, I really want to go to the Corner Grill tonight." And ,of course, that's something I can't now do. Sometimes, that's just how life is.

One of the bartenders at my favorite bar loves my favorite diner as much as do I, so by the end of the week of the fire, she had already started planning a benefit show for the diner's employees. I contacted her as soon as I heard and volunteered my services. As much as I miss their food, I also miss the people. Everyone who works at the Grill is awesome. They made my daughter her first hamburger and her first pancake...and most of the times we go, she gets either a chocolate chip smiley face on her pancake, or the cook makes the pancake into a special design (several past favorites have included pancake as cat and pancake as snowman). My daughter has a special relationship with their evening guy, Steve (aka Kilt guy), and they banter regularly. So of course I wanted to help these people. That is how life should work...we should at least take care of our own.

So I was scheduled to play the benefit, which was great. I don't have the next generation of my band ready yet, so I was playing as an acoustic act...just me, six strings, and a kazoo. Of course, I get scheduled to go right after a really heavy, grungy area band. Furthermore, I couldn't get anyone to play with me (my trombonist couldn't get off work), so I'd be facing a crowd of people who just had their ears blasted, and I'd be doing so alone. Further furthermore, no one I knew was able to come and support me. I try to be optimistic (really, I do), but I had grandiose visions of the room clearing before I got to the first chorus of the first song...because sometimes, that's just how life goes.

So after the very cool Casket Company plays and breaks down their massive amplifiers, I mount the stage with acoustic and kazoo. I start playing, and rather than fleeing, most of the crowd stays. I get applause. I get "woos." My Miley Cyrus cover gets a good wave of claps...and in general, it was one of the best received solo performances I've done. After I get off the stage, a few people go out of their way to thank me and to tell me they liked my stuff. That's how my life goes when get really, really lucky.

After my set, I got a chance to hang out with the very cool Dick Pretzel, who was MCing the event. Dick is a stand-up comedian who's been a fan of my music from several bands, and it was great to see a friendly face. I talked to a few of the Corner Grill staff and owner. I had some magnificent vegetarian gumbo. I heard some great tunes. I got to talk to the amazing Justin Payne and hear his set. Sometimes, life can just be good.

While I loved being out, I was beginning to miss my family...so I decided to head home. Only problem was that my car had been towed. It was parked in the same lot I'd been using throughout the last six years of playing at the bar. Apparently someone different than the bar now owns the back 30 feet of the lot, and they just decided to start towing people. So I had to get a ride and pay $100 dollars to get my own car back. Sometimes, that's just how life is.

Slice of life, 2/22/15

So me and my girl were leaving the grocery store, and she was yelling, dancing, and generally aging strange...business as usual, in other words. We got to our car, and we had to wait for the person in the next car to get out. The woman exiting the passenger side saw Sylvia and said, "it looks like someone is a singer."

"And a dancer," my daughter added.

I offered my take: "Or maybe you're just crazy."

"No. I am an artist," my daughter said as she climbed into her seat...and I had to remind myself she's only four and a half..

my Onion Horoscope, 2/12

"Remember: Spring is a time of renewal and rebirth. Barricade the door to your goddamn basement before it arrives"

chew on this

Last night, I had a dream that I was on some college campus, beset by some vague difficulty (it was vague in the dream). As I was trying to solve whatever was going on, I started to chew some gum. Then I tried to spit out some of said gum, but a certain portion of it stuck in my mouth. I spent the rest of the dream torn between solving whatever problem and prying the gum out of my mouth, bit by bit.

While the bit about being on some campus was relatively new, I have actually dreamed about the stubborn gum...about a month ago, I think. But I am no stranger to recurring dreams. As a kid, I used to dream about driving (and sometimes walking) across giant bridges suspended impossibly high over a river-divided city...only about half of the time, significant portions of the bridges in question would crumble or, even worse, be missing altogether. And I have been dreaming of being back at Little Caesars for well over a decade.

The literary part of my mind wonders what the gum dream could mean. I've read my Freud, but this one seems to be beyond Freudian interpretation. At any rate, I'm sure that Freudian dream analysis has probably been proven obsolete by the psychology community...knowing my luck, that is.

Maybe I'll ask my therapist. He'll probably tell me dreams are random brain misfires. But who knows? He has, during our last few sessions, said that pessimists have a more accurate view of reality, come to the defense of escapism, and used a Terminator 2 metaphor. Maybe he'll surprise me again.

My personal future with the gum industry depends on it.

pickles in the morning

Mornings do strange things to us DuBoses. Today? My daughter's first words upon waking: "Daddy? You're a pickle bow. That means you are really good at eating pickles. Hey, wanna hear a joke? Why did the pickle cross the road? To get to the other coffee! You can tell that to your students if you wanna."

weighty issues

Lately, I've lost a bit of weight. I knew I wanted to shed some tonnage for a while, but when I felt my head was good enough to not require 100% of my work, I changed my diet.  I had some thoughts about how to do so (I mean, I had already cut out meat and alcohol), but I decided to eliminate most sugar from my diet after watching this:




This had an interesting level of difficulty. When you start to become cognizant of sugar's omnipresence, grocery shopping changes. I can now only buy product from like 7% of the store. I went full-bore no sugar for the first couple of weeks before I added the occasional fruit back into my system. Even then, I stayed with low sugar (grapefruit, berries) or glucose-centric fruit (bananas, mostly). And whenever I had a craving for...pretty much anything, really, I went to nuts. Peanuts, cashews, and the like became my go-to food.

The results have been really startling so far. I started all of this sometime in the Fall (probably September), and now, I'm down about two and a half stone. I have had to buy smaller jeans, and I've moved up four notches on my belt.

The weirdest thing, though? When people point out that I've lost weight, they tell me "you look good." I respond with, "I always looked good." But really, did no one want to tell me that was I that much of a bloated whale carcass before?  Look, I think I feel better, but that everyone else is now able to look at me? Weird. If I ever break the 200 barrier, I might have to become a model!

ps: I am firmly aware that women have to put up with this kind of crap all the time, and that me having never heard such comments before is due to my male privilege. As much as the sudden focus on my attractiveness strikes me, I am also just adjusting to having people look at me. Weird.

anecdotal evidence on genetics versus learned behavior

One of the coolest things about having a child is getting a chance to do some good first-hand science. After all, you have someone who comes out with only limited influences. What will lead to the subject's new behavior? It's a common question.I particularly love using my child to play out the environment versus genetics debate, and this is where I learned today's important lesson.

I saw a pretty cool article on Buzzfeed about Lego finally introducing a minifigure in a wheelchair. As a social justice warrior, I found this to be overwhelmingly positive, but I didn't want to make assumptions about the future generation. So I showed the picture to my kid. She looked at it and said, "Cool! But you know what's really cool? That one there pushing a lawnmower! Can we get these? Please?"

Now...I am perfectly aware that I might have influenced her lack of surprise when it comes to the physically disabled minifig. But I can most certainly guarantee you that I in no way would ever suggest that mowing the lawn was anything other than agonizing hell. In fact, I have no idea where she might've received a positive feeling towards lawn maintenance.

So, there you are. Science.

so I asked my daughter a question

...and, after she told me where my missing slipper was, she said, "I told you I know everything. I saw it with my bat vision."

This is the next generation. You're welcome, humanity.

epiphanies

I'm teaching two sections of a new (to me) class this semester. When they originally (and fairly at the last minute) threw me into Reading Poetry, I was scared. Not only was it fairly short notice on a class I had never taught class before, I had never actually taught poetry at all. Moreover, as it was a more advanced class than I normally teach, I knew I needed to do a good job. After deciding on a text and entering the initial planning stage, though, the fear turned to excitement. This was gonna be fun.

Of course, that excitement doesn't preclude more fear. I had vast plans this weekend to get my week's lesson plans knocked out early. However, I then got sick and spent most of the weekend scrunched up under a blankie. Today, I had to definitely get the Tuesday class lesson plan done, lingering exhaustion or no.  So I plowed through the material, and guess what? The panic returned.

The problem is that all poetry texts start off with the "how to analyze poetry" sections, and said sections are always the stuff like "all about imagery" or "figures of speech." This has always bored me. I understand the concept of introducing basic terminology, but the implied resulting action pushes poetry towards taxonomy. As an example, one of the poems in tomorrow's reading actually had a discussion question which asked students to circle all verbs and tie them into symbolism. Blech.

This kind of ruins the fun of poetry in my mind. It would be like thinking one could understand all the foibles of humanity by studying anatomy/physiology. One would gain a certain amount of knowledge, but it would be relatively pointless knowledge, suitable for no more than some contemporary card catalog of terminology...and that ain't poetry.

I was slogging through the readings for the second time, though, when it finally hit me. I heard the kettle drums of my psyche pounding. The fluorescents in my study somehow narrowed to a pinhole spot aimed directly at my cerebellum. Choirs of angels (who mysteriously rang out in a voice reminiscent more of Ronnie James Dio verse than of a Handel refrain) chanted. I knew how to tie it all together. The answer? Film director Edgar Wright.

I'd tell you more, but I, in the spirit of a good poetry reading, am more interested in your interpretation than any literal truth.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1) Please identify all uses of irony, simile, metaphor, hyperbole, paradox, and any other figure of speech and spell out the role of these devices in explicating the "epiphanies" mentioned in the title.
2) How would other poets have tackled the same issue? How is their particular use of tone different than in this piece?

just to clarify

It's been one of those weekends. While I could go on in depth on my feelings and attitudes towards said weekend, I just wanted, rather than addressing some specific points, to add some more general clarifying information. Pick and choose whichever is most applicable to you personally.

• Even though some might deride the current crop of "kids" as whiners, the best way to make one's point is not by suggesting they be more often required to kill people. Just a thought, but constant warfare generally might not be a great thing.
• Colleges? If you truly value active learning, you might want to not schedule 2 1/2 hour college classes for Friday afternoons.
• You might possibly be more able to maintain an even mental keel if you quit hunting for people who tick you off so you can let them know you think they are stupid/evil/whatever. Being an evangelical anti-idiot is still being evangelical (in the worst possible way).
• A company refusing to label their product as halal is not a victory in the war on terrorism any more than a company refusing the kosher label for their hot dogs makes said wiener makers anti-Semites.
• I'm not being reclusive or paranoid, honestly, and I don't truly believe there's causality at work. I just seem to get sick whenever the taiko ensemble plays my local dive bar. Someone needs to figure this one out.
• We all know the college textbook industry is evil. It seems college bookstores are complicit in said evil. They are the major pains in my pedagogical backside right now.

Okay, that's enough for now. I gotta get back to work so I can get out of debt, eventually buy a house, and tell kids to get off my lawn

day one from the trenches

Today is day one of the new semester. It's still too early to tell, but I think this will be a fun one.

I had my teaching schedule changed pretty late in the game. Normally, this is a bummer, but this time, I lost two sections of College Composition One and had them replaced with two sections of Reading Poetry. Usually, I'm stuck with the "welcome to college" writing classes or the tech/business writing classes. I do the best I can with them (I've even made the business/tech classes interesting to me...which was an accomplishment, because I found "here's how to write a resume" unbelievably dull). They are not, however, what I pictured myself doing with my life. The poetry classes? Those are fresh, exciting, and fun. I get to feel like a professional, like the kind of teacher I went to college for twelve plus years to become. I've only had literature classes twice before, but each time, they were marvelous. The last fiction class was by far the best time I've had teaching in my life. Don't know if this semester will go that well, but I have hopes.

One of the reasons I have hope? In class discussions today, we agreed that out of all the characters in the Star Wars series, Kylo Ren would be the most likely to be a poet. He is, they agreed, just emo enough to pull off the tortured coffee shop writer bit. I love it when my students are creatively funny.

After my last class, I saw a bunch of students who haven't yet got the textbook taking photos of our next class's reading from those students who already have it. It's the first time I've seen this happen, so I'm particularly impressed with their problem solving.

Let's hope the trend continues

the big time

I guess I must've hit some level of the big time. I just got hacked! Passwords are changed and all, so we're all fine here, but don't open the link in the post earlier today (if you in fact saw it).

I hope this fulfilled some inner desire/ brings some peace to whomever hacked my account...or maybe gives them motivation to do something with their lives.

the latest judgement on my character

My daughter has an issue with never wanting to go to bed. Tonight, after telling me she had been taking an eye injury to stay up, she then asked me to put one of her programs on TV. As a reasonable father, I pointed out that it was already an hour and a half past her bed time. She looked me in the eye and said, "you're as mean as a bulldog."

Of course, not two minutes later, she gave me a very chipper "I love you!" So who knows?

on the other side

The song of the season says, "May all acquaintances be forgot and never brought to mind." That, however, ain't my life. In fact, I seem to have ended up on the opposite side of the equation.

I used to go gallivanting on the 31st. This year? I spent New Years Eve sitting on the couch by myself  (as my daughter was, as per usual, fighting against her mother over the topics of bedtime and sleep). I was watching a documentary as the ball dropped...in fact, I didn't even think of the magic moment until about a quarter of an hour too late. This is, incidentally, much the same thing I did the year before (although, to be fair, I have no real idea what I was watching on 12/31/14).

Does everything (as another song says) really change on New Year's Day? Not for me. The wife and kiddo are visiting my in-laws while I'm prepping classes for next semester. The one person who I could think to call for lunch was too tired to leave his chair. I'm really less ringing out the old or in the new than continuing the same old slog.

I don't want to turn this into a pity party, though. I have plenty of friends...they just seem to live somewhere other than here. The ones still in the area are the ones with wacky schedules which never seem to coincide with mine. I don't quite know how this happened. Some time shortly after my daughter was born, I found it harder and harder to find anyone who wanted to hang out with me, even after doing everything possible to make myself a nicer and more friendly person. Still, the level of social connections just kept decreasing...and, several years later, I still can't seem to reverse the trend.

In one of my songs off the forthcoming album, I have a line that says: "don't wanna be here and still disappear...a social Schrodinger's thing." It's one of my favorite lyrics from the new album, but I gotta admit that it hits a little too close to home. Somehow, I've turned into a social afterthought, and I have no clue how this happened. I have a great life with my family, at work, and playing music. Outside of those, however, there's not much left. Most of the time, I deal with this just fine. Other days? It bothers me...but that's something me and my therapist will just have to keep working on.

Enjoy your 2016, everyone, but remember: more important than flipping over the calendar is finding and holding on to those around you. We're all social animals...even those of us who aren't currently finding much success pulling it off.

stringing together this year's notes

I still get nervous before shows. It's not horrific or anything, and it's certainly not close to being called stage fright. It is, however, still there. My stomach feels a little funny, and once I get to the venue, I have problems talking to people. So I have to apply a laser-like focus to getting set up and mentally prepared (which I hope doesn't come off as jerkish). The second I hit the stage, though, and break into the first chord, I'm generally okay, fine, wonderful even. Everything else is downhill.

I played an emergency gig last night at The Stone's Throw. They have the best open mic night in the area (The Hump Day Revue), so whenever I feel the need to break in a song, blow off some steam, or just get back on the stage, they're my go-to spot. I got there early enough to hear the host break into a Buddy Holly song. Grabbed my pre-show Guinness and grabbed a seat, only to see that the second act was a friend (and the singer for my old band The Black Swamp Rats). I went to set up my merchandise suitcase just as my friend went into "Demons," my favorite song of his (from his band Kitty Glitter).

Then it was my time to hit the stage. It was a strange night in that the bar was packed...but it was mostly middle-aged adults and beyond, plus a couple of families doing a late dinner. Because of the families, I didn't think it would be right to do my newest Christmas song ("Consenting Elves," about partying elves at the North Pole and sexual consent), but I did do "I Don't Wanna Be Depressed This X-Mas." I had to do one of my holiday songs, as I now can't do them until after next Thanksgiving. I also did an acoustic cover of Motorhead's "Overkill" (RIP Lemmy)...which was probably the first time anyone anywhere has ever thrown a kazoo solo into a Motorhead cover. I got six songs total, and then I packed up to make room for a ukulele trio. Really.

It has been an interesting year for my music. I had a great run with one version of my backing band The Antidepressants, which included a festival gig. Then the drummer dropped out, the bass player moved to drums, his neighbor came in on bass, and several more gigs (including another festival). Then that drummer bought an RV and left to drive across the country with his girlfriend.

Solo-wise, I started the year determined to break into new markets. I got a gig at a farmer's market in Michigan. The first one was rainy and sparsely attended, but it was still fun. When I pulled up for my second date, I found out they had double-booked the show...so I turned around and fumed on my two hour drive back home. I also booked a bunch of shows with a new venue in Michigan. I played the first show with my trombonist and had a good time (even though no one was there). Then the rest of the shows were cancelled on me. I still had my Bowling Green and Toledo venues, however. Partway through the year, though, the Toledo booking company went out of business, not even allowing me to finish out my last scheduled date. None of this was exactly good for the soul, but luckily, I still have Bowling Green. Still gotta expand, though.

My alt-country band Midwest Tourist started the year with a bang. We played an early January show (videos of the whole thing!) with a dear friend and songwriting inspiration Micah Schnabel. We played a February show where I moved over to electric guitar (and briefly changed the genre of the band). In March, we did a Couch-By-Couchwest video (in which I wore a funny hat). Then we just kind of stopped. We were going to record an album, and we got started. Then we were interrupted by band personnel turmoil. We got close to recovering from losing a member, and then said member rejoined the band on a limited practice schedule. Now it's been months since our last rehearsal, and there's no telling if, when, or where we will play again. Welcome to the holding pattern.

I had plans to record and release a decent amount of stuff this year. I announced 2015 album project number one. It stalled. I announced a Christmas single. It never happened. I announced album project number two, which I'm doing all by myself. It's going fine, but I had my computer die on me right when I had budgeted recording time. Tomorrow, I get back to it. It's gonna be great (I'm already getting much better quality than on the last disk). It's just not gonna be a 2015 release. Better late and great than never, I guess.

So I've had a lot of strange feelings towards my music career this year. I've lost gigs instead of gaining them. I've lost one band and seen the other one effectively mothballed. I've seen music projects pushed and pushed. On the other hand, I finally did get to hear my music played with a full band. I am still writing new material, and it is getting better with each song. And when I do get on stage, it is glorious.

I was thinking of all this as I packed up my gear last night. Then someone came up to buy a cd from me, and my spirits lifted. I sat down to talk to a former boss and her husband (who was also one of my professors), and they told me I sounded great. I got to talk to my former band member for the first time in ages. The Hump Day host thanked and complemented me about five times. I talked to the mighty Mechanical Cat, who told me he's seen real growth in my performances...before going on to buy a shirt. As I was packing up my shirts and albums, Mechanical Cat told me I had the best merchandise suitcase ever. Then I discovered five bucks in my tip jar. By the time I was loading up my car, thinking about everything just made me laugh out of joy.

It's been an up and down year, but ultimately, I can't think of anything I'd rather be doing...because nothing makes me feel better. I've got big plans for next year (at least one album, more festival and other gigs, a new cover band so I can make money, a new version of The Antidepressants)...but there's plenty of time to let that all unwind.

today's reason i wish i was rich

If I had stupid money? Enough to spend truly frivolously? I would commission a study to measure the accuracy to Netflix's recommendation algorithms. "Because you watched 30 Rock, you might like Broadchurch?" Really??

taking stock

Some time this morning (whilst my kiddo was no doubt playing with one of her awesome new My Little Pony toys), my wife looked at me and said, "I'm so glad you're in a much better place than this time last year."

This took me aback a little. "Was I in a bad mood last Christmas?" I honestly couldn't remember.

"All I can remember is that you seemed to be mad at me."

This took a moment's contemplation before it hit me. "Ah. It must've been the gout, followed by the kidney stones, which all meant I was behind for months, panicking."

"Well, that's not the only thing. Getting your meds adjusted and therapy. But I think it was mostly getting your meds fixed."

She's not wrong. There have been plenty of complications. I wasn't expecting to have my Buick explode...but it did, and the car payment and the insurance bump are just unavoidable realities. I was expecting my music career to go better, and it was for a while...but then my solo band broke up, my alt-country band has pretty much ground to a halt, and my full schedule blew up for reasons which are still unclear.

Yet in spite of these, I persevere and actually do okay...for the most part. And I have even have optimism for the forthcoming year (upcoming classes in poetry instead of only "welcome to college" classes, a cover band which should also morph into a backing band, and another album in progress and coming along nicely). I feel it would be unwise to dwell on such things, though. Better to manage expectations.

Survival is a laudable goal, no?

thoughts during several arguments lately

"What are we? The PC police?"

I've heard this phrase bandied about lately. It irks me.

"If you can't handle it, you should just shut up and get out."

I am not afraid of anyone having a strong opinion. I am, however, worried about misplaced priorities.

"We don't need guidelines to stop offending people. What are we? In middle school?"

I know the chances of my words really affecting any change are not great. And I know this is something which shouldn't need saying. Yet I feel compelled, so here goes...

Being afraid of political correctness? That's really just you saying "My right to be offensive is more important than your right not to be offended." And if you really feel this way? This means your priorities in life are really messed up.

on semester's end

There are plenty of ways for teachers to think romantically about their chosen profession. We don't get paid all that much...this is basically social work for the overeducated...so the rewards have to come from elsewhere.  Our ultimate dream is to, years from now, have former students tell us that our course changed their lives.

This has happened to me a few times, and it always knocks me out. However, if I'm to be honest, it doesn't happen all that much. Part of it is the nature of my position. When people are successes, they tend not to really think about the person who taught their "welcome to college" classes as major influences. It took a while, but I'm actually okay with my job's main feedback being either delayed or absent. It is, after all, my mission to plant seeds which, if they bloom, rise up sometime in the future...so I gotta be okay dealing with very little immediate gratitude for doing my job.

Still, though, it would be nice...and because of this (and something relatively perverse in my nature), I still tend to do the post-semester tally after my last class. This semester, one "happy holidays" and one "you have a nice semester too." But that's okay. Good work is its own reward. Right?

Right?

black humor, parent style

As I have a kid, I watch a decent amount of kid's programing. Some of it (such as Octonauts or My Little Pony) are quite awesome. Others are...much less awesome. And it seems that the worse the show, the worse my tolerance.

When faced with the worst shows, my only real coping mechanism is bleak humor. I don't really have a good outlet for this humor, though. Additionally, I could also (much like most parents) use extra cash.

I just, however, figured out how to solve both problems. I will start a series of bleak versions of kid's shows, such as:

The last episode of Doc McStuffins. Doc, on the cusp of becoming a teenager and losing her ability to talk to toys, faces the ghost of every toy she couldn't save.

Calliou's parents finally break the news to their son that his cancer is no longer in remission.

Jake and the Neverland Pirates enter adolescence, start experimenting with pixie dust, and get mortally wounded by pirate/pusher Captain Hook.

Daniel of Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood realizes he's a carnivore and eats everyone at his daycare.

Swiper gets tired of trying to rob Dora the Explorer and just decides to shank her.

The Teletubbies have a bad trip.

The gang on Little Einsteins crash their ship in the Andes and have to resort to cannibalism.

I think many parents would appreciate seeing these. Go out and find me some backers!

it's getting rough in here

We're still several days away from Thanksgiving, and I have been accused of being a "humbug" for the first time of the year. Record timing on my part, sure, but it does show the extent of what I'm up against in this place.

album update 11/22

So, how's my new album coming?

I had yesterday to record, which is good. I got all of my vocal overdubs for my album done, which is also good. Moreover, I refined my recording technique, so the vocals sound better than ever...which is essential for anyone with a voice like mine.

However, the recording spirits are nothing if not fickle. When trying to install some effects plug-ins (so I might better manipulate my recordings), I also got some malware on my computer. The act of removing said malware somehow disabled my computer's ability to connect to the internet. Then, as I was mixing in the overdubs, I realized they sounded so good, they made it clear that I now have to totally rerecord several songs worth of vocals. No problem, right, as I have all of today to record...except my sinuses have started acting up and my throat is getting sore, so no singing today. Sigh.

It will all be worth it in the end, though. I'm getting really good guitar and vocal sounds, so I will be able to keep the song arrangements relatively spanrse  (at least as compared to Skeleton Coast's kitchen sink approach) while also having it sound very full. The drums sound great, and I had a blast indulging my percussive quirks...not to mention I have a magnificent bassist recording tracks for the album.

One of the best things about doing a DIY project and being one's own producer is the ability to fully commit to the "there's no reason not to do everything right" dictum. I should be ready to release the album by January, and I think you will like it.

Stay tuned.

more things to think about

If you read a plea to think, you know I've been thinking about the whole ISIS situation. You also know I feel it's more complex than people believe. Here's some further readings:

• I Was Held Hostage by ISIS presents a good inside look at the terrorist group. They come off less as malevolent evildoers and more like angsty teenagers desperately searching for something in which to believe.
• How Islamic is the Islamic State? largely undermines the notion of the terrorists as fanatical ideologues. The author writes: "Religion plays little, if any, role in the radicalisation process...It is an excuse, rather than a reason. ISIS is as much the product of political repression, organised crime and a marriage of convenience with secular, power-hungry Ba’athists as it is the result of a perversion of Islamic beliefs and practices."
• ISIS Has Studied the Past Successes of Terrorism All Too Well undoes the idea of a real distinction between terrorists and legitimate methods of social change. Terrorism, the author argues, often works quite well as a means to achieve political goals: "neither Sinn Féin, the IRA’s long‑denied legal political wing, nor Hezbollah could ever have acquired the power, influence and status they enjoy today if not for their terrorist antecedents...while governments regularly decry terrorism as ineffective, the terrorists themselves have an abiding faith in their violence, and for good reason"
• What Americans Thought of Jewish Refugees on the Eve of World War II points out some fairly frightening parallels with the anti-Syrian refugee movement. "[M]ost Western countries regarded the plight of Jewish refugees with skepticism or unveiled bigotry (and sympathy followed only wider knowledge of the monstrous slaughters of the Holocaust)." Hopefully, we won't follow the same path.

Okay, next time, I'm moving on to other things (my album, existential philosophy, or new recipes).

my Onion horoscope, 11/17/15

"Remember, people like you for who you are: an incredibly insecure person willing to do almost anything for acceptance."

Get out of my head, Onion!

a plea to think

"Just remember...there are reasons"-- Spider Jerusalem

It was a difficult weekend. Like many, I spent a lot of time checking the news feeds for updates on the Paris shootings/bombings. I spent a whole lot of time thinking about meaning. Mostly, though, I spent a lot of time being scared.

I am not afraid, for the record, of the terrorists. This is not, for the record, naivety on my part but a conscious choice. They are scary, yes, but if you're actively afraid, you're helping them achieve their goals of terrorizing. And living in fear never ends well.

To tell the truth, I actually find many common reactions to Paris to be scarier than the terror. I saw way too many people who allowed the killing to in turn make them equally frightening and bloodthirsty. Almost as if to consciously prove the "violence begets violence" adage, cries of "wipe these people/religion off the face of the earth" flooded the internet. Even politicians got in the act, ranging from Senator Ted Cruz saying we had to be okay killing more civilians to former Governor Jeb Bush proposing only helping Christians. Personally, I have doubts that being more narrow-minded will solve much.

It is true that I did see a lot of good, including various French groups offering their help, their support, and their houses. And it was obvious from just a glance that the general tragedy certainly touched many people in social media, when before too long, French flags started showing up on Facebook.

It was at that point I started to notice something else scary. There was a ton of sympathy for France. Just a day before, though, Lebanon had been hit by similar terrorist attacks...yet they got no sympathetic outpourings. Where were the cries for Russia after an ISIS bomb took down a commercial airline flight? Where, for that matter, was the outrage over any other recent act of violence, no matter what group was at fault?

Why did we all latch onto the Paris tragedy? Is it because they're European? White? More like us than any of the previous victims of recent violence? Was it because we don't expect bloodshed in France like we do in other places? Why are we so hurt by unexpected violence yet immune and numb to violence where it is a fact of existence? And if this is the case, how screwed up are we as a species when we can actually not care about people in a specific place getting hurt because they're always getting hurt? These questions had special importance, because the bad behavior of only caring about the French victims? I first saw it in myself.

Maybe it's naivety on my part, but I feel that shortsightedness is not only a problem on the part of the terrorists. We're equally guilty. A seemingly senseless act occurred, so how did we react? Simplistically, with either a "kill 'em all"/blood-centric approach or existential "why do bad things happen" angst. Neither of these will solve anything.

There are reasons. And if we want to avoid tragedies, the first step has to be to find those reasons so we may address them. This requires analysis, though, and one of the prime rules of analysis (as I tell my students with some frequency) is that base assumptions such as "they must be insane/ignorant/stupid/bloodthirsty are pointless, as they tell us nothing.

We have to be willing to see other perspectives...even those of the people who are trying to kill us. To that end, I present two must-reads, What I Learned From Interviewing Imprisoned ISIS Fighters and Confessions of an ISIS. If you take nothing else from them, just realize that the situation has no simple truths. It would be easier to go by our stereotypes, but if anything is to ever change, we have to learn just how complex the world can get. It's hard knowledge, to be sure, but it's the only viable first step.

my favorite bit of praise

Today was my daughter's picture day at preschool, so I got to take her there three hours earlier than normal so she wouldn't miss the photo shoot. Knowing how much I utterly love mornings, this was a bit of a burden. However, I did get to have her rest in my arms for a while, and that's one of my favorite things in the world...so that eased the pain a little. But the part about the early day which made me feel the best? As we pulled up to daycare, my kid (totally unsolicited, mind you) told me, "Daddy, I like your head."

The rest of you could learn something from my girl.

on a university walkabout

Every so often, I get antsy at work and get overwhelmed by the desire to wander around campus. I never actually do this, though, because my schedule is usually kinda packed on work days. Today, however, I got to be on campus three hours early, so my time today is more fluid. I wanted to pick up some books on existentialism at the library and I had time to kill, so out the door I went.

This was, ultimately, a mistake.

If you haven't been to a university library lately and feel the need to murder any nostalgic feelings you might still have for the institution, you really should make a special trip. Floors one and two of my university library are now utterly devoid of any books, magazines, catalogs, or journals. Here, the spaces are called "the information commons." What this means in practice is that they have wifi and a bunch of close-to-obselete computers. I guess this is cheaper to run than hiring librarians and actually doing, you know, library stuff. The upper floors do have some books, but they are in an utterly lovely environment which includes stained carpet and a significant supply of dank.

I walked through the food court on my way back to my office. It was at least a new experience. Before today, I'm not sure I ever completely appreciated the scent of artificial flavor.

Captain Willard ultimately got this one right: "Never leave the boat."

philosophical states

It was about two weeks ago when we made a grand breakthrough in therapy. The day had already started weirdly, when an auto repair place offered to fix my car for free (why? Were they perhaps fans of my music? Doubtful, as I remember all 20 people who've bought my album). After describing the latest pseudo-tragedy in my life, I found myself saying, "I bet it would be much easier to cope with this kind of stuff if I believed in any sort of order or justice in the world. That would probably be nice."

My therapist, asking the natural question: "Don't you believe in anything?"

"Well, at one point in my life, I believed in my skills, and I believed they would be enough to pull me through...but getting rejected over 500 times on the job market kind of beat that out of me."

My therapist, after taking a breath: "Well, we're swaying into the realm of philosophy here. I'm completely happy to go there, by the way. This is very much existential angst...and many people have it."

"Maybe we could start a support group for them."

"Hi, come on in to the church basement. Grab a coffee and tell us why you're doomed."

"We could make them read Kafka before joining."

My therapist, after another breath: "I'm not sure that would help sell the endeavor."

After the session, I continued my day, which went about as expected; after grabbing a coffee and then leaving my Kindle in the coffee shop bathroom, I went to an appointment to get my face blasted with liquid nitrogen...but the idea of philosophy, I realized, had finally started to resonate with me. I'd tried to read the great philosophers while getting my Master's degree, but I never really got them. It took the advice of mental health professionals to make philosophy stick.

Later on that week, I had a psychiatrist appointment, and I told that doctor about the existential conversation. He immediately recommended I get and read a "philosophical textbook/novel" called Sophie's World. I've been plowing through it ever since it arrived, and while it hasn't actually helped my diseased mind just yet, I am learning a lot. There's one part where the protagonists are discussing Existentialism, and the philosopher says (paraphrasing), "Existential angst is always a starting point on which to build a new philosophy."

I'm not yet sure what new philosophy I'll build. I am, however, working towards finding one.

dream interpretation needed

Last night, I dreamed I was in some kind of big competition. My team consisted of my mom, dad, and a few other people. The mission? We had to find out where Tom Bombadil was hiding.

There were tons of competing teams, but after camping out (in the tent me and my brother used in Boy Scouts, no less), I had an idea where we could locate Mr. Bombadil. I found him hiding in his condo. As my reward, I became Tom Bombadil. After saying hello to everyone, I returned to the Bombadil condo (widely furnished with Ikea products), where I hung out with Swedish flight attendants. Then my alarm went off.

If you believe dreams have hidden meanings, I'd love to hear your take on this one.