clearing clutter

A week or so ago, I was sitting in my office. It was too close to class time to actually start on any project yet far away enough where I had time to kill. So, in lieu of even attempting to do anything productive, I decided instead to merely contemplate my surroundings.

Of course, no such task ever ends up staying in the land of innocence.

A relatively new colleague once commented that he wanted his office to obtain the look of mine. My natural response was to tell him to never throw anything away and just collect silly things. Granted, I have my share nof those in this office. My calendar for this year is Superheroes and Faires. This replaces last year's,which featured robots and donuts, which replaced one of retro advertising for trips around the solar system, which replaced a long line of bunny suicide calendars.I have a wall of fame containing flyers from all my bands (save my new one, which keeps getting added to shows at the last minute and doesn't make the flyers). I have a large collection of lego minifigs and some other toys. I have a ceramic lucky cat (as seen in Asian grocers). I also have a fairly random collection of art.

I noticed then that I had a large collection of scholarly books...and, from the point of my colleague's assertion onward, I started to think about why I had so much of my old scholarship. Yeah, I'm glad that I have this space to store the books rather than trying to wedge them into an already-crowded apartment, but that alone wasn't enough. The old excuse of someday needing it no longer held up, as I am quite sure I have no desire to do any more academic writing. I already work hard enough for little to no compensation in my life. Maybe they were here for memories? But the last thing I need are reminders of the career goals I never achieved, of the papers I never had a chance to write. Sentimentality is one thing, but of a life you had to leave behind due to your own failures, whether your fault or not? Not the wisest idea.

So, last week, I decided to start cutting down the office book collection. I took two bags of books to our local coffee shop/used book place last week. Today, I didn't have a class until 3:30, so instead of immediately jumping into grading, I decided to start attacking the clutter. In short notice, I trashed seven cans of paper, journals, magazines, and articles to be recycled. I found a massive folder of overhead projector sheets (I've taught in some pretty ugly and low tech rooms). I packed a few bags full of books and sorted through the rest, whittling down eleven shelves down to the three I'm still going to keep (although I'm not set on these ones).

It's an almost indescribable feeling. It's like I'm throwing out my past. But more than my past, it's my former hopes and dreams that are going in the recycling bin. I pick up a folder and remember the grandiose plan I had for this subject. I pick up another stack of papers only to remember the grad school class where I took those notes. I delve into the bookshelves, only to find whole schools of thought which became dead ends or were never pursued in the first place.

There's a lot of this which is definitely cathartic. No doubt that, with more time and increased perspective, it will become more so. And I can definitely use the space. However, the task does bring a hint of sadness. I saw the tenure track faculty member who was hired the same time as I in the hallway, and my irrational disdain for him and his position in life started to rear its ugly head...but only for a minute before I clamped that sucker down.

Perspective can, at times, be a mean mistress. Oh well. It will get better.

my Onion Horoscope 1/27

In case you were wondering, yes, this is going to be a regular thing.

"Expect little change from last week, aside from the marauding badgers growing rudimentary thumbs and learning to use chipped flint tools."

a vegetarian recap

It's been a little over five months since I mostly quit eating meat. The only real lapses were some sausage at Thanksgiving and some prime rib at Christmas, and they both made me feel pretty sluggish. I have had a few fish sandwiches, and I had fish & chips this weekend, but those are just fine; fish isn't a trigger for either my pseudo-gout or a contributor to kidney stones. I'd actually feel free eating a lot more of it, but I do live in Ohio. Fresh seafood is a rarity.

For a pretty big lifestyle change, you might think it would be a struggle to start and to maintain. Yet it's been pretty easy throughout. I have, however, learned a few things in the process:

• I've had to move up two belt sizes...so I'm clearly shrinking. Strangely enough, though, the scale still says I'm as gargantuan as always. I've gotta figure this out.
• I have, for the most part, avoided meat substitutes. I don't wanna become a crypto-carnivore. However, I've had great luck subbing tempeh for ground beef and tofu for chicken in some old stand-by recipes. I've also discovered a very good veggie chorizo and am experimenting with a veggie andouille (both from Tofurky). So I've had to give up very few of my old dishes. Still no good options for getting my BLT on, however.
• When I'm adapting any old recipe, I've found out that soy sauce is a magic ingredient. Missing the meat sensation? Dribble in some soy, and you're there. It did wonders for the red beans & rice I currently got simmering.
• I've had to subtly shape my eating out away from anywhere where the veggie option is either a salad or grilled cheese.
• I'm now much more able to pick up chemicals and additives in my food. I always used to like McDonald's french fries. The last time I tried some, they tasted dreadful, like they had been bathed in lukewarm grease and iron shavings.
• I'm realizing how much many places rely on meat to overcome low quality vegetable purchases. My favorite pizza place? Remove the meat, and the food just doesn't taste all that good.

I still haven't adopted the holier-than-thou "you're still eating formerly living things? You should be morally pure like me" attitude...and I hope I never do.

the best quote you will read today

"Many years ago, I worked as an intern at The Daily Show. It was among the happiest achievements of my young life to that point. I was more than a bit star-struck to be in a space among so many people I respected and admit to being tongue-tied and feeling unworthy in such company. One afternoon, Stephen Colbert came in to the office. His show was about to premiere so he hadn’t spent much time in our studio. As he walked past me at my cubicle, he stopped and said, “You’re a new face, what’s your name?” I didn’t know what to really say, so I replied, “Oh, I’m just an intern.”

Colbert looked at me a moment and then said: “Just an intern? Hey, look, everybody starts somewhere. I was just an understudy at one point, but that’s just a point in time. It’s not about where you are now, or even where you hope to go, it’s who you are that matters. I’m Stephen, who are you?” I introduced myself and we shook hands. “Don’t let your place in the world dictate who you are to anyone. We all have the same merit.” Then he was gone, but his words lingered."

This is from a pretty awesome article about The Colbert Report and religion, which is also a recommended read.

coffee time

Some people, when they go to the coffee shop, play chess, study, or be artistic. But that's not how I roll:

Yeah, I'm nowhere near as productive as the young college types. Yeah, I don't get the chance to hone my Mahjong game. And yes, the little seats at the kiddie's table my daughter insists we share are not really all that comfortable for someone of my density. Doesn't matter. I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Except when the dolls are sticky. That's kinda gross.

career goals

Don't get me wrong. I love my job, and I especially love the freedom it gives me, freedom to play music, freedom to be with my daughter. However, there are times where I'm forced to agree with this comic.

But let's face it: I'd never be able to keep my narcissism in check if I were rich.

my Onion Horoscope, 1/20

"Mars rising in your sign indicates you are something of a coward, mostly because of the way you keep flinching at it."

out of illness comes insight

I've been battling a cold for a little while now. It had been a mildly annoying state at the beginning of last week, mostly sinus drip giving me a sore throat. Then I started teaching this week, and after my Tuesday of three classes, my throat was a bit more sore. Then I had band practice, and I had problems hitting all the notes. A Wednesday band practice, Thursday teaching, and Thursday band practice left me fearing my voice would give out either on my band Midwest Tourist's Friday show or on my solo (with backing band) show Saturday.

But I made it through. When I left the festival we were playing on Saturday, I felt drained and sore. It didn't get any better on Sunday, and on Monday, I generally felt like I had been beaten up. This meant that I spent most of the last few days sitting around, not doing much at all save watching television. Specifically, I went on YouTube and went on a Muppet Show binge (how is this not streaming legally? C'mon, guys). And as far as recovery material, you couldn't ask for anything better. The show is more brilliant, more manic, and more wonderful than I could recall, and if it didn't lift me physically, it certainly did spiritually.

Somewhere buried in the marathon was the Harry Belafonte episode. This contained the most wonderful piece, one which I now believe everyone in the world needs to see, one which, if people were forced to watch it and think on what they just experienced, the world would be a better place:



...and nothing else needs to be said.

an option!

Vegetarians: I haven't been one of your number for long, but I feel your pain, particularly when dining out. I now can't eat at some of my former favorite restaurants. I too now get peeved whenever the vegetarian option is grilled cheese or a salad. I too hate being charged the same amount for a dish when the meat has been replaced by a single stinking' bell pepper.

So it is with great joy that I report that Chipotle now has an awesome vegetarian option: the sofritas burrito. It is a shredded tofu braised in a chili pepper mixture. It's quite yummy, and it's the kind of food that omnivores would like without reservation. Highly recommended.

Note: I am not a paid endorser of Chipotle and am receiving no compensation from them for this review. I am, however, completely open to such a relationship. I would be an excellent shill. In fact, unless you're a company which tortures animals, is run by Tea Partiers, or sells karaoke or auto tune technology, I will sell out on your behalf.

Please, please, please let me sell out for you!!!!

the perils of edginess

I have already expressed my appreciation for Cracked. Since their transition from Mad ripoff to internet humor site, they have gotten much deeper in terms of content...albeit still with juvenile humor on top. Personally, I generally don't have a problem with that.

However, sometimes it gets in the way of a surprisingly good point. Take this article, for instance. I couldn't agree with it more...and I would love to pass it on to everyone. My mother, however, would not be amused. I might even get slapped.

Man, how do the truly edgy do what they do and still face their mommies?

The Antidepressants

Every so often, I feel the need to rock.

I've been in a number of hard rock bands. The first one up here broke up when the drummer moved out of the state. The next one broke up when the singer decided to focus on his other band. The last rock band broke up when the singer decided "to quit music forever" (his words). I miss all these.

Sure, I play plenty of music now. Yet however awesome my alt-country/alt-rock band might be, there's nary distortion to be found. And yes, I get plenty of opportunities to play singer-songwriter, but emotively whining while strumming an acoustic ain't heavy...no matter how much kazoo I might insert into the mix.

There's just something about hitting a chord on a distorted guitar, something powerful, something cathartic, something satisfying, something essential, something primal. It's the act of striking metal, which leads to the resulting vibrations being turned into electrons, then bent and twisted through effects, then amplified and distorted inside glowing vacuum tubes, then thrust through magnets and paper back into the realm of vibrations, so they can smack you clear in your chest. Add a band, and magic can happen.

A friend was talking with a local musician who was familiar with my stuff from open mic nights, and said musician said I would be even better with a band. This was not exactly breaking news for me, but assembling a band can be a vexing and confounding process. Issue one is that everyone in the world seems to be a guitarist, but the other instruments are more scarce. Then one has to try and combine differing schedules, differing tastes, differing attitudes towards music in general. And music is such that it tends to be deeply emotional...and thus tends to amplify any possible conflicts. Friendships can be severely damaged in the process...and I know this intently, as I lost one of my best friends after playing in a band together.

I have actually succeeded once in assembling a backing band...making the act TheMikeDuBose and the Antidepressants. Then the bassist backed out, so I had to move the drummer to bass and recruit another drummer. Then we played a festival, and even though we had a good set, no one was there to see us. And did I mention that the other guitarist was the singer in my other band, the one who broke up the band by quitting music forever? And this kind of caused my backing band to disintegrate as well.

In December, I managed to get booked to play a festival, and I decided it would be fun to assemble a backing band for the occasion. After a few false starts, I managed to get a power trio together. After the second practice went well, my rhythm section said they would be open to doing shows every other month. Then my sometimes trombonist was able to join us for the set...and it was magnificent. We were much tighter than we had any right to be, and we sounded good. I think the rest of the band agreed, because we started to make actual plans. So The Antidepressants 2.0 are officially on the scene. And I think we went over well; not only did we get plenty of complements, but I sold some CDs, and we did get asked to play the bar regular's birthday bash.

I have rock and roll back in my life. Everything is awesome.

I got this

Today, many things happened. I had three good classes. My daughter called me and her mom her "friends," the local cookie delivery place brought my favorite cookies (the Darth Vader: chocolate cookie with raspberry sauce) I had a great practice, my drummer and bassist agreed to be my regular band, I got to see my favorite local band with many friends, and one of my favorite drummer told me my beard smelt delicious. Generally? Coolness.

on empathy and cheap internet thrills

As a kid, I had a few issues of Mad Magazine, but I actually much preferred Cracked. Yeah, I know most people would argue this is like preferring White Castle to a good gourmet burger bar, but I've always had an appreciation for cheap tastes. I had (as many would tell) drank much more swill beer than micro-brews...that is, when I used to drink.

Cracked magazine is no more, but the name lives on in a pretty amusing comedy web site. And I have to admit, it's part of my daily routine of "I don't want to think just yet" web viewing. The other day, I ran across an article called "5 Things No One Tells You About the First Year of Parenthood" (why are these always in lists? Well, at least this one didn't mention someone winning or destroying the internet. End of old guy rant). Being a parent type, I could most certainly relate.

For those of you who weren't here with me, the first year of my daughter's life was not the most pleasant. She was not a happy baby, and there would be days where she was pretty much either screaming at me or napping. Then we hit the eight month mark, and she calmed down...and, since that day, has just been getting more and more fun. But I do still have the memories/scars.

Overall, it was a pretty good list that covered most of my revelations. It missed, however, the most important one: exactly how deep the emotional bond becomes. I will swear to this day that I could physically feel her emotions. When she would laugh, I could feel it in my chest. When she would scream, I could definitely feel that much less pleasant feeling in my chest. It didn't just grip part of my consciousness or subconscious; it yanked them both on the way to physically ripping and twisting me. This is what made the "I'm going to scream every waking minute" days that much more painful, because I (to some extent) literally felt her pain.

Nothing in my experience prepared me for this...and it has, quite frankly, awoken a little bit of a mystical side in me. I have a deeper connection to my daughter than I would've expected possible. I not only empathize, I share her ups and downs on a higher level. And, in my most reflective moments, I wonder if we, as a species should have this same level of hyper-empathy with all other humans. Will we ever develop it? I don't know, but I bet if we did, it would make us a more worthy race.

Or maybe I'm just some alien emotion-sucking vampire. 50/50 call, really.

the most wonderful thing you will see today

Every so often, you run across something so interesting, so unusual, so completely off the wall, that you have to scratch your head and reexamine your basic outlook on life. For me, it came when I saw this:



Now I'm desperately trying to figure out how I can teach this. There's so much I can talk about. Also: I must share the weirdness.

seeking my own level

If it's true that there's a Chinese curse that says "may you live in interesting times," then today would be a great day to test it...because it was certainly interesting.

I had one class with only four students. I had one new class (the struggle over which I have chronicled over the past few days) where I didn't get my roll until an hour before and didn't get my class website until three hours after. I had massive traffic on the ride home.

I had two band practices. In the first, I couldn't figure out why my new amplifier had lost most of its tone and volume...until I realized I plugged my foot switch into the external speaker jack. Tie that in with bashing my guitar against my mic stand hard enough to knock the whole thing out of tune and having my guitar fall off its strap, and that practice didn't go as planned. For the second practice, my voice (after three classes and another practice) started to squeak and squawk...and by the time I started to head home, I was feeling close to defeated.

Then I finally get home, and both couches had two stuffed animals tucked under blankets. There was another stuffed animal under a blankie on the ottoman...and another on the floor. So I moved a few and finally got to sit down. That was all it took to level out the day...although the Linda Ronstadt episode of The Muppet show helps as well.

my Onion horoscope

I love The Onion, but I particularly love their horoscopes. Today's entry:

If you somehow magically had the chance to do it all over again, you'd do everything in your power to make her happy. You don't, though, because that's not the way it works.

a view further down the road

Earlier, I half-panic posted about last minute class changes. Well, the view a bit later is slightly rosier...and definitely more Kafka-esque.

As it turns out, I can just copy the stuff from my cancelled class over to my new class. Last year, I decided to make some changes to my Comp II class. Our college teaches three different ones, and rather than have three different preps ready to go, I decided (quite wisely, it turns out) to find one plan which would work for all three different Comp IIs. The class that got cancelled was an Honors course (I've been teaching there this year in addition to in English), but they told me they were fine with recycling. So I've been making my Honors classes the same as my Comp classes. Voila, change the name, add different "official/required/department guidelines) on the syllabus, and I'm done.

Except...

When I was finally able to get to the computer today, I checked my official schedule...and they have me teaching a completely different section of the Comp II than does the department. Not only that, but their version starts at 8am and has no one enrolled in it. I'm sure this is a simple mistake, but unless it gets fixed, I'm not going to be able to print off a roll tomorrow.

So I checked our course management system (the truly evil Blackboard), and they didn't have any section of Comp II available for me. This means I can't upload anything...so my students will be without anything. This ain't a problem for day one, but if they can't get it fixed by the start of class, I then have the difficulty of scheduling day two without knowing if the students will be able to read anything before class.

Ah, uncertainty. At this point, I find the great middle finger the world apparently is pointing at me to be more funny than anything else.

A two-fer? But it's not even Tuesday...

The semester starts tomorrow for me. So, how is everything going?

First, my throat is sore this morning. Possibility of starting the semester with a cold? Oh, joy.

Next, I am of course not completely finished with class prep due to child illness last week. About an hour and a half ago, I get an e-mail from my boss letting me know one of my classes just got canceled and replaced with a different course...and wouldn't you know it, but the canceled class was the first one I finished instead of the unfinished class. Joy. I just love last minute work.

today's question

The elliptical is an exercise machine. Waterboarding is a CIA-applied torture technique. What are the odds they were created by the same person?

dwell on the positives

I'm at Howard's, at a punk show. The very awesome TroubleGiant is playing later...and they are friends, so that's a bonus. I'm not a big fan of the current band, and save those TroubleGianters, I have no friends here. There are exponentially more people here than for my last gig. On top of that, it's also about 40 degrees in the band side.

But that's okay. My favorite bartender is here, and she's making "ow" s after each song. Plus I firmly believe live music is good for the soul.

novel disappointment

While at the gym, I came up with an idea for a sci-fi novel. It's about a man whose life isn't working out for him. He lives a highly compartmentalized existence but still is only barely coping. Then the aliens come and fracture his life, shunting each of his compartmentalized existences into its own time stream. So now instead of living one life with lots of failing parts, he's now living every part as a separate life...and they are all still individually going wrong. The only thing is, our protagonist is, in every existence, the only one aware of this multifaceted reality...and of the aliens.

You can gather two things from this synopsis: what kind of mood I'm in and what working out does to my brain.

this is my life

My daughter is having cheezits for her snack. She asked if she could eat them out of her thermos. When I asked why, she looked at me like I was an idiot and said, "to keep them warm."

war, passive/aggressive style

One of the many unique features of apartment living is the ability to get into petty squabbles with one's neighbors. And like most conflict, the level of investment is surprisingly huge simply because the stakes are low.

My particular antagonist is my next door neighbor. She's approximately 137 years old. When I first started moving into this building, I did my best to be as nice to her as I could. That's when I found out that she had been living at this complex pretty much since it opened around 50 years ago. I thought at first we got along just fine. However, as the loading and unboxing continued, I realized that what I mistook for friendly neighbor behavior was closer to "know your enemy."

One day, she pointed out a mark on the wall. She did the same thing the next day. And the next day. I was as gracious as I could be at first, but when she kept doing this after I had finished loading in, I began to get a little peeved. Then I had a washing machine overflow on me, and she immediately set in on telling me exactly what I did wrong and how I was supposed to do things...basically treating me as if I had never done laundry before. She then snooped around, just waiting for me to do something she didn't like, so she could tell (never ask) me to do it different, and so she could call the office to complain.

At first, I spent a lot of energy trying to figure out why this woman didn't seem to like me. At first, I thought it might be because she met me in the summer and thought I was unemployed. Then I thought maybe she stereotyped me based on my tattoos. Then I came to the conclusion that she was just a bitter old crone.

Later, I got confirmation. One day, when I went to the office to pay rent, I did tell them that contrary to what they might've heard, I am a good tenant, and I am not actively trying to destroy everything they own and stand for. The office manager just said, "apartment xxx?," shook her head, and told me I wasn't the first to receive such treatment...and not to worry about it. A while later, my wife was talking to a a guy from the complex maintenance staff, who told her that my antagonist used to stand out on her balcony, and, when she saw kids playing incorrectly on the playground across the parking lot, blow on a whistle before yelling at said kids. He also referred to my antagonist as "The Gila Monster." It's nice to know you're not the only one.

I know it is, in the end, all rather silly. It's been a great source of humor between my wife and me, including (and not limited to) jokes on my end about the appropriateness of wishing for someone's death. Yeah, it's tasteless, but I'm not really all that serious about this conflict in the first place. Really, I find it both silly and sad.

Except there are times. Lately, whenever I shower, I have at least one (but usually more) instances of freezing-to scalding-to freezing water temp...and I can't help but picture her sitting in her apartment, hearing the sound of my shower, and running to the sink to turn on the hot, then the cold, and then the hot. And it's in these moments where that dark part of me feels like hunting down my copy of Sun Tzu to find something to gain the advantage.

It might be a stupid war. Still, I would rather win it than lose.

binary oppositions

I've been thinking a lot about duality lately. As a good teacher, I always make the class examine models of thought, so discussions of binary oppositions are de rigueur. But lately, it's been hitting really close to home.

My daughter has (another) cold. For those of you childless, this means that she has to stay home from daycare so she doesn't infect other kiddies. Yet we still have to pay for the daycare she's not attending. To make matters more interesting, this is the week before my semester starts...so I'm supposed to be spending the days prepping syllabi, sorting out schedules, getting readings in line, and populating my class web sites. I can't do any of these when my girl is home. So, every night this week, I chain myself to my study desk until sometime after 11pm.

Now, this means that all my normal nighttime plans are thoroughly out the window. This is yet another week where I can't go to Howard's to write (and I have two or three songs in my head, in addition to discarding ideas that I know I cannot get to). This taxes me. And, instead of winding down from the day, my nights are now spent working, planning, scheming...which means that the idea of getting to sleep before 2am is now also out the window. Even with the brain drugs, my head just won't shut off on command...and it's hard to sleep when one's frontal cortex (or whatever) won't stop strategizing.

On the other hand, I had an unexpected day with my girl...and sorry to turn into doting father here, but she amazes me with how wonderful she is. She's kind and caring, and I'm convinced she has more capacity for empathy than most of my undergrads. And she is also hilarious. Nine times out of ten, an "I love you" will elicit a raspberry for a response. Today, she told me (unbidden) "I love you." Touched, I responded with "I love you too, honey." She then said "I don't love you when you're not here."

Rim shot.

The funny thing here is that my mood isn't trapped between these two points: aggravated work panic and melted heart love. No, it's ricocheting back and forth between the two points. While I hate binary oppositions, I can't escape personally being trapped at one extreme or another.

Second example: after one expensive car repair for my wife and one looming whopper of a repair on my car, my wive's wheels start acting up. She pulls into our parking lot Friday after work, and her car is smoking. The mechanic looks at it Monday and gives an estimate which isn't far off  my two week paycheck. I start off with the bemused humor of "of course, life is doing this to us right when we start to plan to buy a house. Why should we expect any different?" And I stay in pretty good humor about it, right up until the time when I, without warning, fling over to "holy hell, more money we don't have/we'll never get out of debt/we'll never get our own house/I'll never be able to retire/I'll leave my child gobs of debt/you fill in the depressing thought." And since, I'm always at one of the two extremes. It's almost as if the middle ground doesn't exist.

I'm a postmodern man tied to binary brain chemistry.

cutbacks

Having come to the realization that our current financial situation is untenable, we have decided we have to make some cutbacks. While our existence will by no means become spartan, there will be changes. First among them is shopping at the discount store. I went there today, and I bought (among other things) store brand toilet paper...make that discount store brand toilet paper.

So, if you run into me on the street and I am walking bowlegged, now you know why.

1/2/15 show notes

I have a show tomorrow night. It is another last-minute affair...I only got the gig on Monday. The smart thing to do would be to recycle an old set list...or, barring that, fill my set with stuff I know like the back of my hand.

But did I do any of that smart or easy stuff? Of course not. I'm doing a completely different set than my December show. I'm doing two songs I've only done once and don't even fully know yet. To make things worse, I'm also bringing in my banjo and some effect pedals.

Sometimes I suspect I might just hate myself just a little.

depressive realizations

After suffering a disappointment, Annie Savoy said "A woman should be so strong, she's not affected by such things."

This sums up one of the worst things they don't tell you about depression. It's not so much the psychological sense of dread or the physical aches, as bad as they are. But the idea that the depression fit was probably triggered by something minor? Something that shouldn't be so big of a deal to cause such a mental and physical shutdown? That is often worse.

What is truly horrible, though, is knowing that depression is a disease rather than a mental obstacle to be overcame, that even the feelings of inadequacy themselves are just more functions of said disease. This, my friend, will truly kick you in the ass.

Annie Savoy didn't know the half of it.

rethinking the social

Sometimes the best way to learn something is to dive in headfirst and see where it leads you. I guess you could call it immersive learning. This was the approach I initially took with social media.

I started on MySpace first...back when people used to actually use it as a social media platform. To me, it seemed like a more modern AOL. Every service it provided could be found elsewhere, and in a much better platform. The only real thing I noticed is that a few ex-girlfriends contacted me for the obligatory "Oh my gawd, I was thinking of you and wondered how your life turned out" conversation. We would exchange four or five messages, and then I would never hear back from her. I wasn't sure what the promise of social media was supposed to be, but I knew MySpace didn't seem to fulfill any type of promise at all (other than to annoy me).

I briefly joined Friendster only to find that it was populated exclusively by 13 year olds and thus was useless for my purposes. Facebook, which at the time was for university people only, seemed a better fit, one which surely be less frivolous than MySpace. Little did I know that Facebook would open itself up to the world and descend into silliness. When I started to become bombarded with Farmville requests and the like, I knew Facebook's days were (for me, anyway) numbered.

I joined Twitter on the recommendation of a friend. I liked it immediately... It was much less frilly than Facebook, and I found the user group to be more prone to intelligent conversation...or being intelligently silly, which was equally good. So I set my Twitter feed to automatically post to Facebook and concentrate on the former. However, as I had more friends on Facebook, I had to still interact with each site.

Along the way, G+ and Ello popped up, but while I liked each better than the other options, neither had enough of a user base to let me escape Facebook (whose interface, games, quizzes, and other ephemera made it an increasingly annoying place). So I was still stuck regularly visiting a place which annoyed me.

A few months ago, I noticed another drawback. I realized that I had been abandoning my longer writing. Actually, I've known this for a while, and I have made several attempts to restart my blogging...but it wasn't until recently when I realized my social media was to blame. Instead of thinking things over before writing, I was blasting off quick tweets. I was focusing on editing for clarity and brevity rather than exploring my thoughts. Convenience was beating out introspection (which was one of the main reasons I started the blog in the first place). Not only that; I've also found myself spending way too much time on social media, time which could be spent creatively...and its not like the social media made me any more social in the first place.

So it's time for a change. A few weeks ago, I bought my own domain (www.themikedubose.com) and tied it to my blog. I set up the blog to automatically post to Twitter (which then automatically posts to Facebook anyway). I redesigned the blog to be more of a "one stop TheMikeDuBose stop." And I starting transitioning from tweeting back to writing.

So this is how this is going to work. I'm now posting my musings as blogs rather than social media blasts. You will still be able to get them via Twitter or Facebook if you wish. I'm going to cut down on my Twitter and Facebook visits, so if you want to interact with any kind of expediency, either hit the comments here or e-mail/text me. Stuff on my music will still go through Reverbnation and then to Facebook, but since Facebook only distributes 5-10% of my posts to my followers, I'm going to treat this blog as the main center for my music and post stuff here first.

New year. It's also a time to streamline.

brutal honesty

It's a new year, so I thought I would start off with admitting some things I don't ordinarily admit to anyone.

• I check Buzzfeed fairly regularly...like in the double digits per day...even though I am firmly aware of how sad that all is.
•  I get my own songs stuck in my head. I try to justify this as an occupational hazard rather than ego. Sometimes, this justification even works.
• My daughter started to watch My Little Pony...and I kinda enjoy the show. At any rate, it's much better than Calliou (stupid cancer kid) or Veggie Tales.
• Related: sometimes I fear for my girl's horrible taste in television programming.
• I sometimes drain my cellphone battery from playing games such as Doodle Jump and Pipes. Hey, they're the new Tetris!
• I could watch home improvement shows all day. In fact, as the new year was ringing itself in, I was watching Bob Vila's Home Again. I could've been watching the ball drop, but hey, they were cutting a hole in a brick wall so they could install a garage door!
• I now use handmade body soap and beard oil (and you thought I didn't groom myself).
• To deal with my insomnia, I often have to imagine that I'm a wizard in medieval times before I will nod off. This is a nice counterpoint to the Little Caesars dreams I still have about every other week.
• I have a lot of friends...it's just that most of them live in different states or countries. In Bowling Green? I got a few, but that's it. But here's the thing: I would rather not have friends than beg people to like me.
• I'm strangely addicted to bulleted lists.

the obligatory end of the year summation

With less than five hours left in the year, the time seems right to come to terms with the year that was. I normally am not one for too much sentimentality, but as someone who has committed to catalog his life in a public forum, I feel I owe it to my readers...both of them.

There has been a lot of bummer events this year. Gout is not fun. Surgery one was not fun. Surgery two was measurably worse. Neither was cheap. I'm still working under my 2010 contract, so I haven't had a raise in the last few years. My car already has had major repair work and has more major reconstruction in its future. All these add up to enough expense to kill push my dream of home ownership back another year.

In spite of all of these, I am actually in a fine mood. Yes, I've had occasional flare-ups, but my depression is at its most managed state ever. I released a solo album (available online). My daughter keeps getting more and more fun, and my wife seems to still like me for some reason.

There are (of course) things which need changing. I need to figure out how to expand my musical fanbase; I'm fiercely proud of my music, and I really want to share it more effectively. I would love to get back into photography and actually use that DSLR camera gathering dust in my closet. And I need to find some more friends...I go too long between hanging out with people.

Overall, though, I'm not too shabby...and that is a nice feeling.

emergency TheMikeDuBose show this Friday!

Once again, I get an emergency show at Howard's Club H in Bowling Green! I play this Friday (1/2/15) with Good Personalities and Chris MtCastle. I haven't seen Good Personalities yet, but Chris played with me the other week, and he's fun. We got a Merle Haggard cover! I'll have a bunch of originals for you, including many off my album Skeleton Coast. I'll have copies for sale, or you can get it online as a pay-what-you-want (even free) download at Bandcamp! If you're in Northwest Ohio, I would love to see you there!

testing zen

New Years Eve is the day after tomorrow, and I have no plans. None. This hasn't happened since junior high. I was invited to a party a few weeks ago, but all traces of the event have disappeared from social media...for me, at least.

Two days after that, I will be playing a show at Howard's Club H (my favorite bar in the world). This will be the first of three January shows.

These two have to balance out, right?

Right?

my 2014 best of music and media

1. The Both, s/t

I've been a big Aimee Mann fan for a long time, but her last two albums have been...well, let's say “dull.” This one crackles from minute one.

2. Counting Crows, Somewhere Under Wonderland

The best thing this band has done in ages. This is fun and loose...and I suspect that if it was any other band in the world, this would be ranked a lot higher in the general population. Plus let's face it: the song “Elvis Went to Hollywood” alone should earn them props.

3. Centromatic, Take Pride in Your Long Odds

Damnit, why do so many bands break up right after I start to really get them?

4. TheMikeDuBose, Skeleton Coast

Is it self-serving to put my own album on my top ten list? Sure. Selfish? Undoubtedly. But this has had the largest impact on my understanding of music of any album. It would be ranked higher, but I heard it so much in the recording process... Available on Bandcamp.

5. Lydia Loveless, Somewhere Else

Lydia is something else, and she's firing on all cylinders. Also, I met Todd May this year, and he was just too cool.

6. Against Me!, Transgender Dysmorphia Blues

Politically, this would be one of the most important albums released in recent history. But forget all that. Against Me! just really rocks on this one.

7. Band of Skulls, Himalayan

I've got a soft spot for these guys. Much more solid than their last album.

8. Mastodon, Once More 'Round the Sun

I like the variety of The Hunter a bit more than this one, but this is still really cool.

9. Kitty Glitter, Meow Hear This

Personal choice, but these guys just bring a really nice mix of pop sensibility and heaviness. Available via Bandcamp.

10. Flaming Hot Marbles, We Play For Keeps

Prog rock meets good rock and roll. These guys are one of my favorite area bands and one of my favorite overall. Available via Bandcamp.

Also: Black Swamp Casket Company, Fish Fisher, TroubleGiant demos.

Disappointments: Ryan Adams (I generally like him, but snoozeville this time), Tweedy (gotta love the guy, but honestly, I haven't cared for much after Sky Blue Sky), The Hold Steady (horrible production).

Film of the year: Grand Budapest Hotel

TV of the year: Agents of SHIELD (man, did season one pick up)

Book of the year: Information Doesn't Want to be Free by Cory Doctorow (essential reading for anyone in the arts)

an exercise in theory

Today was the kind of day where nothing seemed all that interesting. This usually means television time, but in spite of having three streaming services, I struggled to find anything to pique my interest.

Eventually, I settled on home improvement television...and, as I write, I am on the eighth episode of Home Again. This is the series Bob Villa did after leaving This Old House. I wanted to watch the original TOH, but it doesn't seem to be available beyond the current season (which I finished last week). I've seen these all before, but it has been a while...and I do have an obsessive streak.

I actually know an awful lot about home improvement. This knowledge does not come, however, from personal experience. I rent rather than own (having my own place is a dream which recedes with every car repair and surgical bill), and although I worked briefly in construction, my job as an asphalt pigmentation application specialist (painting lines on parking lots) doesn't really translate. I have, however, watched an awful lot of home improvement television...and that's gotta count for something, right?

There was a time when I expected my second or third scholarly book to be about the phenomenon of home improvement television. The scholarly life, however, is long gone. I still kinda remember what I was gonna argue, but I can't really bring myself to dwell on it while I watch the shows...so in this sense, these shows are as inapplicable to my current situation as is the repair hints angle.

So here I am, continually watching my (now ninth episode of ) Home Again for no apparent reason. Even I cannot figure out exactly what is keeping me sucked in. Is there really a point to watching this? There has to be more exciting programming available...and I have no real need of even more completely irrelevant, impractical theoretical knowledge.

Maybe, when you cannot actually try, there's some value to suspecting that, if given a shot, you might stand a chance of succeeding. Maybe that's enough.

I've told myself this on numerous occasions, for many different reasons, on many different subjects, though...and it's never really satisfying.

holiday recap

We spent yesterday at my sister's place. Some observations:

• On the car ride, we discovered my 3.5 year old likes Band of Gypsies. I knew she was cool, but this just rockets her to another level. She was jammin'.
• A scary sorta in-law did make an appearance...but he was quite fine. The only thing he did that really bugged me was him taking about 23 minutes every time he had to take a turn in euchre. This came close to pushing me into a blind fit of rage.
• My Michigan nephew was brow-beaten into playing Christmas carols on his tuba. This, while weird enough on its own, was nothing compared to when my 3.5 year old daughter decided to accompany him on piano and vocals. Wondrous and hilarious.
• I got the coolest of all possible gifts: a quilted Space Invader!This, of course, means that I win Christmas...in case you were wondering.
• I got to sit next to my Florida nephew...so dinner became a long attempt to make him laugh/look at me weird. He's really a great guy. I just wish I got to see him more often.
• When one has been mostly vegetarian since August, prime rib (no matter how tasty) might not be the best option. I've felt sluggish ever since.
• There was only one offensive part of the whole day: when one of the extended family said that fascism and socialism were both always evil. This didn't offend my morality so much as make my head hurt.
• When the nephews don't really want their Atari Flashback 5, it's good to be in the right place at the right time.

Preparation

The parents are coming to stay with us for a few days, so it's time to do all the cleaning and organization our 3.5 year old usually doesn't allow us to pursue. For me, the major labor of such tasks is mainly mental triage...I do this, then this, then this.

The major difficulty I've found cropping up in this household when I apply such an approach is that my triage expression is, according to my wife, indistinguishable from my "I'm about to have a mental breakdown" face. This of course means my carefully planned labor is generally delayed by my need to repeatedly say, "No, I'm okay," "No, I don't need to lie down," or "While a therapist might indeed be a wise idea, I don't actually need an emergency appointment... but thanks anyway."

the last 2014 TheMikeDuBose

Tonight, I play what's probably my last show of the year. It's been an interesting year. I've played a decent number of shows. I played my first music festival. I finally assembled my own backing band for the occasion...which broke up a few days later. I finished recording an album, Skeleton Coast, which was released to great acclaim (hey, it could've happened) and sold twos of copies.

I play at Howard's at 10. I'll be doing a bunch of stuff off the album, which I will have for sale. I'll be doing my Christmas song "Xmas in the Drunk Tank," and I've also learned a version of "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" with the original, highly depressing lyrics. I have a trombonist joining me.

Come join me.

sometimes you eat the bear

Life is always full of pluses and minuses. Last night, I was in a bad mood...a "slay walruses" kind of mood. Then I went to do some writing.While there, the bartender told me she thought my flyer for this weekend's show was (and I quote) "freakin' sweet." Then I came home, and my daughter (who really should've been in bed) came running to the door, arms spread open, to give me a "welcome home" hug.

Today, I had to drop by my daughter's day care on the way to work to give them a check. My daughter's home sick, and when the kids heard that, I heard a few "aww"s...even though she's only been going there a few weeks. I get to work, and I get a call from the hospital. I found out two things:

1. the last few bills haven't been reaching me, and I have an outstanding balance; and
2. my insurance helped my surgery bills, but I still have a sizable amount of money due.

This last one is pretty depressing, because we were hoping to get into a house this summer. Then I find out that, for this weekend's show, I might have musical accompaniment...which is cool. I have two students scheduled for the "I have questions about my final grade" talk. However, neither of them are whiners or criers (I usually get some of each).

Right now, I'm trying to figure out to which side I currently reside on the ole ledger sheet. What impact all this might have on the rest of the day? Should I let this affect what I have for lunch?

TheMikeDuBose plays at Howards this weekend!

Want to come see the TheMikeDuBose acoustic act but haven't had the opportunity? Well, wait no more! I play this Friday at Howard's Club H in Bowling Green. I go on at 10 (with possible allowances for bar time). I'll be playing a nice selection of original songs, including many from my album Skeleton Coast.

As it's the season, I'll probably also be playing my original Christmas song for the first time since last January! It's called "Christmas in the Drunk Tank." It's only sorta inspired by real life events, promise! I'm also going to work up a version of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" but with the original lyrics. Before Judy Garland did it, it was a real upper; the original opening line is "Have yourself a merry little Christmas...it may be your last."

A fun time will be had. The other players are great, and I'm not too shabby either!

what becomes of a formerly social institution

I'm at Howards. When I was a grad student, we made a point of trying to get out and socialize on at least one off-night...so, instead of standard drunken weekend activities, we could have one night to discuss our new academic life outside the confines of schoolwork...when we weren't actively trying to avoid school talk. Eventually, this started happening here, at this bar. Then we settled on Tuesdays. It became one of my institutions. More than anything or anywhere else, it became my place and time to make and be with friends.

This tradition continued on for years, with people joining in and leaving when they finally moved on with their lives. But more always came to take their places. The drinks flowed, the conversations rambled, and release was certainly had by many. We kept it going on so long, I was sure it would never end.

But then it did end.  I kept finding myself by myself but not sure why.

And yet I'm still here. My focus changed from exploratory critical thinking to group socializing to now solitary writing. I now have a beard with gray hairs. I have my own mug at this bar even though I now don't drink. The bartenders all know and seem to like me...we talk as they pour my cran juice and water. I still go to my same seat at the same table, but instead of being surrounded by friends and colleagues, the only patrons I now see are the girls who come in to practice their hula hoop dance moves.

I still am having problems figuring out how all this happened. I went from being the weird kid who no one wanted to hang out with, to carving out a circle of friends in spite of my introversion, to moving across the country and carving out another group of friends, to doing that time and time again as people filtered in and out of this town, to discovering I was really an extrovert held back by my clinical depression, to getting as mentally healthy as I've ever been, to now finding myself with hardly anyone who wants to hang out.

I also still don't understand the hula hoop dancers. I doubt I ever will.

At least the bar's still here...so hope's still also here.

Right?

ten years of bloggage

Ten years ago today, I was one year out of getting my Ph.D. I was on the job market with a vengeance. Someone told me the average Ph.D. took 5-7 years after earning the degree to get a tenure-track job, and although I had very little luck up until that point, I was determined to beat that average. To that end, I was working to finish my grading so I could start on the several papers which would keep me an active scholar, which would help land that job for which I'd been training for years. Most days, though, my brave "I'm going to make it" facade hid cracks, and, instead of working, I would mostly focus on trying to hold myself together. The idea of never making it was one I tried constantly to tamp down, but it would explode at irregular intervals and knock me on my ass...sort of like Old Faithful...but random...and full of poison.

Nowadays, I tend not to think about the job market all that much. The last time I did scholarship, it was for a book for a conference I did not even attend. It was a revision of an article which failed to find a publisher years before, when it would've been somewhat notable. A friend wanted it, though, so I went to work. I was struck by two things. First, it was a surprisingly good paper. I was shocked to see the level at which I used to think. Simply put, I had serious game. Second, nothing about the process was fun. It was slow, it was nitpicky, it was laborious. I'd long past the time when I could deal with the delayed (if at all) gratification of the job market. If revising that paper did nothing else for me, it let me know the scholarship part of my life was long gone.

Ten years ago today, I was finishing up one semester of part-time teaching and planning the next. I had almost finished the grading, which required my mind to jump back and forth from discipline to discipline...none of which were ones in which I was trained. Every class seemed like a barrier between me and what I planned to be doing. Worse still, I felt completely disconnected from each of the places I worked. On my last day at any campus on any semester, I realized (and sometimes hoped) I would never step foot in those buildings again. This was juxtaposed in a frightening way by me only having two classes the next semester, and that was not enough. I was sliding further and further into debt, but having my income cut in half would've been catastrophic. And this just further pushed me down.


Now, I am settled. I've been in my non-tenure job long enough that my label is Senior Lecturer. The "lecturer" part surprises no one who knows me, but the "senior" part is a little different. Although I still moan about the grading load from time to time, I've generally gotten the job down pat. I can do any class they want, and I've made them all work well for me. I get along with my colleagues. Generally, I know what I'm doing, and I feel I'm making a difference in the world...so that's good. I don't make a ton of money, but I've got good benefits and a nice secure retirement. The idea that I'll do this job for 20-25 more years and then retire to, I dunno, continue to play music and maybe take another stab at writing a novel...it's something with which I'm comfortable.

Ten years ago today, I was still feeling transient. I'd always assumed I'd live in Bowling Green until I'd finished my degree, and then I would be onto another place. I'd already hit that planned time limit and was feeling antsy. So many of my friends had moved on...why hadn't I? That my life had been on hold was one of the things contributing to my fragile state.

Now, I never lay awake at night and wonder where I'm going to end up; rather, I love being in this town. I love the idea that my child will grow up here. I've already introduced her to so much stuff I love, and I look forward to helping her discover more about this great area. Her eyes light up when I tell her we're going to the diner, to the park, to so many other places.

Ten years ago today, I felt creatively disconnected. I would run from class to class. I was almost done with the semester, and when the school year ended, I would work like hell on scholarship. When I would see my guitar in passing, I would think back to what it felt to just lose myself in the instrument. I would remember my teenage dreams of playing with others...and they felt as distant as my dreams of becoming a professor seemed on my worse days.

Now, I have started planning the set for my next solo show at an area music festival, for which I have assembled a backing band. I'm excited, because I get to break out my electric guitar again, pair it with my new amp, and let loose. Later this week, I get back to my acoustic, which is cool, because I've had riffs and lyrics floating in my head for the last few weeks, and I gotta get them out. On Wednesday, my band continues recording our album. And, as I write this, there's a photo of one of my past bands hanging over my computer desk. I've started back on this blog. The upshot of this is that, most of the time, my head is buzzing with ideas that I just have to get out.

Ten years ago today, I was working such a wacky schedule, that me and my wife frequently saw each other in passing. When I wasn't teaching, I was grading or doing frantic class prep. When I took breaks from this work, I was frequently too tired to do anything other than fall onto the couch and look at her.

Now, I'm trying like hell to finish this grading so I can be with her. I also have a wonderful 3.5 year old daughter who I can hear running up and down the hallway. Every so often, she will come in the study to give me a sticker, an imaginary cup of tea, or a hug.

Ten years ago today, I lived in constant expectations of feeling awful. I would feel like I was being smothered. Any optimism I had would implode, and I'd fixate on all the ways I was doomed. This blackness was tidal yet random, and it always threatened to drown any interactions. I had briefly been on antidepressants before, but I had no health insurance, so I couldn't even afford the doctor's visit to get a new prescription. However, I could fix this myself by working a little harder, getting a job, and ending the poverty-stricken transience which was my life.

Now, I'm quite comfortable admitting that I have a mental disease. I'm on medication, and I will be for the rest of my life...and thank the sky chicken for that, because I am much closer to the person I want to be now than at any time in my life.. And while I still have turns, they are much shorter and less frequent. I can honestly say that I love my life, that it is better than it's ever been in most ways.

Ten years ago today, at 4:15pm, I started writing this blog.

the state of the world in which we live

Today, I have seem at least two articles on how to defeat the DRM in the new Keureg machines. Think about it: is a world where people have to circumvent copy protection in their $125+ single serving coffee maker really one in which you want to live? Sometimes, I have my doubts.

On jealousy and turtles

Sometime over the last couple of months, my daughter became a fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. While I as a teen wore a Leonardo shirt a friend made in high school graphics class, I was never really a huge fan growing up. I wasn't into comics at the time, and the first incarnation of the show was just way too little kid for my taste.

My daughter became exposed to the new Turtles show when she saw them whilst I was flipping around Hulu. I thought it might be a bit old for her (she's only 3 1/2, after all), but my girl disagreed and soon became an addict. One day, I decided to pay attention to it, and I soon became hooked as well. It's just a clever, fun show.

My daughter has a plush Raphael. It is, she's informed me, her 23 year old brother. She likes to regale me with their adventures. On the way home from day care yesterday, I learned how he likes to climb pine trees to harvest pine cones. He painted one rainbow and planted it, and it grew into a rainbow-colored tree. They also keep his toy box on the top of one such tree. Then they took a bath in the pond outside the tree, which wasn't cold because it had a hot water tap. Then the adventure got unusual.

Today, we were playing nap. My daughter insisted on napping with Raphael instead of me, and for the briefest of moments, I become sadly jealous...of a stuffed turtle.

Fatherhood is weird.

if I were king...

If I were king, Black Friday sales would still be allowed. Any vendor caught selling any object in a color other than black, however, would be publicly flogged.

(first in an ongoing series)

on belief

In my recent post if I were a filmmaker, one of the things the narrator mentions is how Edgar Wright will not miss an opportunity to use every tool at his disposal to both advance the story and to make the audience laugh. The narrator compares this to other filmmakers, who he calls "lazy" in comparison. Now, I can't speak for the filmmakers in question, but I suspect that any laziness is probably tied to a lack of real confidence.

Quite often, I tell my students that it is hard work rather than brains or natural talent which will cause them to succeed. This is true, but I suspect confidence is equally key. Whenever I've approached anything with timidity, that lack of ooomph tends to lead to me making every silly mistake at my disposal. Acting as if I'm confident helps me not make mistakes...or, if I do screw up, tends to make others either ignore or gloss over them.

Before I started teaching, I was talking to one of my MA professors. He told me that before his first class, one of his professors sat him down and said, "Just remember, Bill, you're smarter than them." Personally, I would amend that to say "for all they know, you're smarter than them"...and if they think you're smarter, they will give you the benefit of the doubt. It's good advice, and I found it particularly valuable before I finally got this teaching thing down. Hell, whenever I do a new day, I still live by that mantra.

But it's not just teaching. Music? If I act like I'm in command of the stage, then I am.When I'm taking photos, I just act as if I'm self-assured. When I write, I hit the keyboard with zeal. Sure, I quite often don't actually feel that confidence, but faking it seems to make all the difference in the world...although I sometimes wonder if this puts off some of the people with whom I've played. If I'm faking confidence effectively, I could possibly look like a raging egomaniac. On the other hand, if I admit to myself I don't know what I'm doing, then I just sit in the corner, mope, and try to lull myself out of a state of panic...and this probably looks to outside observers as if I'm stuck up. Sometimes, you just can't win.

Yeah, I know that this boils down to "believe in yourself, and others will believe in you." Yes, I realize how new age/hippie-ish this sounds. But it actually has worked for me, and I normally hate any hippie-ish approach. Maybe I'm mellowing in my old age. Or maybe this is a side-effect of me becoming a vegetarian.

on learning opportunities

If there really is some superior force out there in the universe, who has a hand in our actions, I can only assume that this semester, he/she/it has been occupying his/her/its time by seeing how much he can test me. Really, with the pseudo-gout, kidney stone, and now intestinal virus (which I got from my wife, who must've caught it from one of her advisees), I have felt the toll of the year. Luckily, though, for each strike against me, there is a learning opportunity.

Today's lesson: before work, I had to stop by the grocery store to pick up some medication to control my...um...outbursts. Here, I learned several things:

1. While I thought the store greeters were monotone before, the ones who work the morning shift are positively comatose. I do my best to talk to them as if they're people, and the greeters usually respond. This one? I strongly suspect he was a fairly bored robot. The lesson? There's always a more boring job out there.


2. While walking back to the medicine aisle, I saw that they are now selling McDonald's K-cup coffee pods. The idea of the pod coffee system (one that removes user control of all the key elements) is bad enough. That people buy a $125 machine which takes specialty coffee pods which average $25-50 a pound is worse. That people then use that to replicate the coffee they get at McDonald's? Bleedin' frightening. The lesson? Sometimes, the William Randolph Hearst dictum "It is impossible to underestimate the intelligence of the public" seems increasingly true.

Of course, take all this with a grain of salt. In addition to getting five classes-worth of portfolios in to grade by the end of the week, I am also sick in a relatively gross way. But hey, that's another lesson there, huh? That having chronic diarrhea tends to make one negative?

Some lessons are admittedly better than others.

if I were a filmmaker

I like to dabble in a variety of arts. Guitar playing, cooking, singing, songwriting, photos, writing...these are all things which I take frightfully serious...to at least some degree. However, I do not do film. I'd like to, but I am nowhere near having the time to do so.

This does not mean, however, that I don't like to arm myself with the knowledge to do film...if, at some later date, I magically find myself with an excess of time and money. And if I ever do, you can bet I'm going to apply these lessons:

on the temporary reemergence of a rock band

Currently, I have no regular means of playing electric guitar. I love playing solo shows...but being a troubador is a completely different skill set. I play in an awesome band, but I play banjo. No distortion there.

Distorted guitar is important. It calms me. It makes me open up, creatively speaking. It's energy, it's catharsis, it's antidepressant, it's so much more I cannot come close to vocalizing.

I have a solo show coming in January, and for the set, I've assembled a rhythm section. I will break out my Reverend Jet Stream and my new tube amp. I will be able to bring distortion. I will be able to solo again. Just the very thought of it is...well, it's glorious.

I will be only able to have this version of my backing band The Antidepressants for this one 30 minute set, though...then it's back to the world of acoustic instruments. I'm trying not to think too much of this, however.

So, friends in rock bands, I have this one message: don't take your musical situation for granted. Ever.

on interesting times

We live in what can charitably described as interesting times. I just read a story about how protests of the Eric Garner death have turned violent. If you don't see why this is strange, reevaluate your morals.

Let this roll around in your head a minute. An unarmed man was choked to death by police. It was all caught on camera. The cop was not indicted. People are protesting. There was violence. And somewhere, this is considered news.

Is it really outside of the realm of expectations that someone protesting cops violently strangling some guy on video and getting off without an indictment might say, "hey, maybe chanting and holding a candle might not do it?"

on lyrics and past feelings

I don't normally share lyrics here, but I think this is a good exception. Last night, I had a song pretty much fall out of me. I was using the restroom, and a chord progression popped into my head. A vague mumbly idea of lyrics quickly followed, and within about a minute, I had the full chorus assembled. I rushed out to the living room and wrote down the chorus. I had a verse about two minutes later...then another...then a bridge...then a second bridge..all in about twenty minutes total. And they were actually pretty solid lyrics, too; when I typed them up today, I hardly had to change anything.

It was lighting quick, yes--something I wish happened more often--but that's not why I'm telling you this.

If you've read anything at all on this blog, you know that my personal failures on the job market have been a recurring issue. It's one of the reasons why I started this blog: to remind myself that, after so many failures, I still was at least a good writer. Over the years, I have reached a place where I am completely at peace with my career. Honestly, I hardly ever think about it.  The other day, though, as I was walking through the building to my car, I saw one of the 80 year old professors in his office...from back in the day when newly minted Ph.D.s were pretty much guaranteed a tenure track position by the time they graduated. Could I, I wondered, ever hope to convince him of what it's like nowadays, where the job market is a crap shoot at best?

I wasn't consciously thinking of this when I wrote the song, but nevertheless, it was obviously bouncing around in my grey matter...because the song is entirely about my failures on the job market. My favorite lines:

now the battle's long gone

and we're the bodies on the ground

ours was but to do or die

victims never make a sound

but I see no poetry

from the fodder's point of view

if I could have the romance beaten out of my head

they can sure as hell do it to you

This is, I wanna make clear, coming from a pretty good place. As I said, I rarely think about it anymore...but I think I needed this distance from those feelings to really capture them. Now hopefully they're out of me.

Let's hope this is one depressing topic I'm done writing about.

on stupid, stupid rat creatures

When I first encountered Jeff Smith's Bone series, I found it to be revolutionary. Not for the wondrous artwork, surprisingly funny dialog, or the unexpected depth of emotion, narrative, and complexity which continued to reveal itself to the reader. It was for one reason: the inclusion of the stupid, stupid rat creatures.

For those unfamiliar with Bone, I do pity you, but a bit of orientation is required. It is the story of (to employ the brief movie pitch description) three creatures who get lost in a strange valley and find themselves in the midst of a war between several magical species. One of these species is the rat creature. Bone introduces us to them with two deserter soldiers, who are fierce, a little scared, very hungry, and quiche-obsessed all at the same time. From that point on, though, most of the rat creatures are soldiers, dedicated to wiping out the opponents. While the first two are cute in a way, the main body of the rat creature army is downright frightening. None is more scary, though, than their leader: Kingdok.

When I first ran across the drawing of Kingdok, I stopped in my tracks. It was not just because of the excellent character design.  What truly struck me was Kingdok was the closest thing I've ever seen to capturing how I feel my depression monster must appear.

As soon as I realized I suffered from depression, I started to look for metaphors to help explain how the disease makes me feel. It's not easy, because depression is much, much more than feeling sad.  I feel like my body is being smothered with a heavy bag pressing down on me.  I feel the weight on my head and shoulders.  I feel the doom and sadness flowing down on me.  It doesn't matter how I feel about the particular depression triggers, whether they make sense or not.  It's coming to get me, and there's little I can do to avoid it.

With all respect to Toby Allen's wonderful concept, Kingdoc is the perfect embodiment of my depression monster. He inspires the right amount of fear to set me on edge, but he's also imposing enough to know there is no escape from whatever he has planned for me.

I've been battling the depression monster this week. This time, there are many triggers at work, some I'm open about (the failure of my last surgery, another impending surgery, the financial hit of this all, falling behind at work under a pile of never-ending grading, not being able to get solo music shows, not one person I know taking an hour out of their Friday night to come see my band), some I don't want to discuss. And there would be value in discussing many of these.  However, when the depression monster comes, all that goes out the window. Instead, I just feel doomed.

Stupid, stupid depression monster.

on questions better left unasked

In one of the Hitchhiker books, Douglas Adams introduced the idea of "questions where, if you think about them too much, the answers will only drive you insane." One of the major advances I made after my 2011-2012 mental break was to adopt this concept and make it my own.

You see, I've always been a moper. I've been the kind of guy who will dwell on the negative and the difficult, often in a possibly fruitless search for a way to conquer a difficult or nigh-impossible obstacle. This is almost certainly rooted in my depression, yes. But it was not without its benefits. It made me tenacious and bull-headed in my quest to get in and through grad school, for instance.

Part of the problem, though, is that there are walls which one cannot push through, obstacles that, for whatever reason, cannot be overcome. My magnificent failure at the academic job market is a sterling example. I did everything I could do...yet I was crushed by the market regardless. My tenacity could not overcome the dwindling opportunities for scholars in general. And, as I was a dweller, I could not quit analyzing my lack of success...and consequently blaming myself. Being able to shove the whole thing into the "if you think about it, it will only drive you crazy" folder took a very long time, but I eventually learned to let some things go...and became a much happier and healthier person as a result.

But every so often, I have days. Today, on my way from the university to the hospital, I started to think those thoughts even though I knew they would drive me mad. I couldn't stop myself. I don't know if it was the last 4 days grading until 10pm, my current social isolation, or that I was listening on the drive to an album which was on regular rotation during the adjunct hell years. Maybe it was just one of depressive turns. I dunno.

Sometimes, I wish I could just cut certain things out of my brain. Maybe I should just listen to more pop music.

on being a pseudo-rock star

It occurs to me that, while I play in a cool band and am a solo musician with album, I additionally have a surprisingly extensive pseudo-career.  If you want to get technical about it, I am officially in two other bands: a screamo/experimental heavy band and a folk/metal comedy duo. Neither of them have done anything at all to this point, up to and including playing together. I think in each case we still actively plan to do something, though, so these exist more in the realm of quantum possibility. 

Others are more nebulous. I have also agreed to be in a backing band for a singer/songwriter colleague, but as the singer joined another band, I'm beginning to suspect this won't ever happen. The other singer in my last band had asked me on at least ten other occasions to play with him in side projects. He has now (according to his own claims) "quit music forever."  I'm not sure why anyone would make such a proclamation.  Personally, I don't trust anyone's judgement when they say they will never play with people at any point in time until the day they shuffle off this mortal coil. However, I have to accept such a statement as probably spelling the death of all these side projects. Nevertheless, I still really feel the need to count them as elements in my pseudo-career...for whatever little that is worth.

It is strange, though, that the catalog of probably-never-gonna-come-to-fruition acts is so sizable.  I wonder what this says about me.  Is playing with me the kind of thing that sounds like a good idea right up until the point one sobers up?  But this sounds like a candidate for the ever-growing list of "if you ever thought about it, the answers would only keep you up at night" questions. So I'm better off just moving to other things in my mind.

Still, though, I can't help but wonder what it would be like if I could move any of these possibilities from the quantum realm into the actual world.  Shame my math skills were never good enough to allow me to become that kind of mad scientist.

on lazing on a Saturday afternoon

Every single time I have ever been in an emergency room, there has been at least one person making weird noises. One time, it was an old woman's constant whining ("I just want a glass of water" for 30 minutes, then "I just want someone to take away this glass of water," then "I just want to get out of her," then "I just want to go up to my room"). Today, it was someone making random moaning and whirring sounds.

The nurse was nice. The first doctor was nice. The attending physician in charge came in and told me (pardon the language), " You look like shit." He also kept calling me "boss"... but was nice in spite of these quirks

There were procedural issues. They started testing me for the worst-case scenarios first. The primary contender for the "what is ailing Mike, 9/27" award was scary enough: the frightening (yet still a great possible band name) Testicular Torsion. They told me if they caught this early enough, they could probably save the testicle. This was...encouraging. It was even more interesting (?) when they told me if we were lucky (?), then it would be a kidney issue.

These words...I don't think they mean what you think they mean.

The pain was...painful. It rated a pretty high interger on the 1 to 10 qualitative scale...at least until the hospital drugs kicked in. Then, after various random  prodding exercises, getting wheeled through the hospital whilst lying on my back, a surprisingly dignified genital ultrasound, and a torso CT scan, the doc came in and told me I didn't have a kidney stone...I had been growing a boulder.

So here I am...dosed up on legal oxycodone, watching Futurama. Thank goodness for my wonderful wife for hauling me around and not getting sick of my whining, and for my wonderful daughter for kissing my hand when not chasing imaginary balloons around the waiting room.

Just think that all I planned on doing was eating a bagel while heading to the farmer's market.

In some ways, that would've been better.

on musical integrity

Someone I know on the evil social network posted an article about how to turn a good song into a hit song. One of the suggestions was to pick an intriguing name; it suggested that one word names were particularly hip right now. The rest of the suggestions were equally numbing.

Now I am fully aware that art is always a negotiation with the audience. The article, though, moved beyond suggesting negotiation and into the realm of pandering. It was disturbing, and it made me glad I am a "never will be famous" musician. How does one take something loved and turn it into a selection of PR decisions? Particularly when there is such a miniscule chance of a payoff? Could anything get more disheartening?

There are benefits of being an underground musician, even one so far underground I sometimes feel like a mole man.

on being an adult (sob)

My daughter goes to day care three days a week, and I have her the other two weekdays.  We generally have a lot of fun.  We play with her Hot Wheels, we paint, we break out the Lego.  I try to get her out of the house at least once, and she particularly loves the Simpson Garden Park (she will tell me "after we look at flowers, we get a milkshake. Yep, she's got me trained). Unfortunately, most of our day trips tend to be going to the grocery store, as it seems we never have enough stuff.  That's okay, though, because she seems to really like going there as well.  I just like spending time with her, and I'm pretty sure she likes spending time with me.

Fridays, she's in day care, and I'm home.  It's a work day for me, the only day I can use to keep up with my online classes.  I go to campus the other two days this semester.  Every so often, though, my classes do all their work via the internet, and I have a day where I don't have to go in.  Today's one such day.  My kid is at day care, and I'm here.

Here, however, is the conundrum.  I've got two classes of grading to do.  However, I grade in my study...which is the same room where I keep all my musical stuff. I've got this grading to do, but I keep looking over at my guitar leaning on the futon...and I'm having to fight the desire to play guitar and write songs all day.

Growing up and being responsible sucks...particularly when one still has the heart of a kid.

on black blood of the earth

No pleasure, no rapture, no exquisite sin greater than coffee

--Azrael (paraphrased)

I love coffee.  I love the way it smells.  I love the way you can sense the terroir in each batch. I love the way it tastes.  I love the way it feels when the coffee buzz is just at that perfect point.

I am serious about my coffee.  I buy my beans from a local coffeehouse which roasts its own.  I buy them whole bean, of course.  I grind them myself in a Hario burr hand-crank grinder. I brew in a French Press.  I have a wonderful thermos to keep it perfect for ages.

I love the process.  Preheating the thermos, grinding the beans, stirring the mixture before they steep, slowly pressing down on the plunger...all of this relaxes me.  I'm not normally one for sentimental thoughts and acts, but I do enjoy the ritual of coffee at a level only matched by the ritual of a good cigar or a good martini.

I love my coffee black.  I understand intellectually that some people prefer with cream, sugar, or both...or even whiskey or Irish cream...but I just can't bring myself to accept such things.  If their coffee isn't good enough on its own, they should just get a different variety.  That they don't is confounding.

Let's not even talk of instants or those one cup brewers.

If there's one thing I don't love, it's that my body doesn't do as well with caffeine as I would like.  I cannot drink coffee every day.  If I have one micron more than the French Press can provide, I am destined for the shakes and a crash.  I know this, so I force myself to exercise control...but still, I don't really wanna.

This semester, I don't teach until 10, so I can enjoy the coffee rather than relying on it as I would for an 8am class.  However, this does mean that my coffee runs out about 45 minutes into the class.  When my coffee runs out, it always makes me a little sad.  Knowing that I physically shouldn't have more coffee anyway doesn't help.  And now I have to hide that minor depression so that it doesn't affect my teaching. I cannot, in other words, take it out on the students.

Coffee.  She's a harsh mistress.

on probable omens

This morning, I had a dream that was somehow about family vacations, monorails, food samples, and nuclear accidents. Then I woke up with the Counting Crows song  "Recovering the Satellites" playing in my head. Now, I gotta wonder what kind of day I'm going to have.

on pointless innovation

In light of my conversion to mostly vegetarianism, I have, out of necessity, been revamping my cooking. This has involved getting new cookbooks, updating my crappy saucepan, procuring a better food processor, and so forth. The latest step was to get a new omelette pan, as the non-stickiness of my old one had degraded to the point of annoyingness.

When I took the cardboard sleeve off the new pan, I noticed a sticker on the pan itself. Stores and manufacturers seemingly have an addiction to putting stickers on pretty much everything. Moreover, making said stickers nigh-impossible to remove seems to satisfy some deep, deviant fetish of said sticker's designers. When I got my ricer, for instance, removing the clearance sticker required 16 minutes of scrubbing with rubbing alcohol, vegetable oil, and a scouring pad. Much cursing also occurred.

The sticker on the omelette pan obviously could not handle the scouring pad, but it did require 15 to 20 minutes of scraping and scrubbing. Normally, this would've pushed me into a fit of spasmodic rage. However, this time, I had instead developed a grudging admiration for whomever designed and manufactured a glue which could stick so ferociously to a non-stick surface. Sure, it was utterly pointless and counterproductive innovation. Still, you had to admire the sheer effectiveness of the pointlessness.

Someone make that designer an administrator or bureaucrat, stat!

On lifestyle changes involving meat and beer

I honestly thought this would never happen, but it has, so I might as well admit it to the world. Be advised, though: it is shocking news, and I don't want to scare anyone. So here goes:

I am giving up both beer and meat.

I know this is kind of shocking news, so some explanation is in order. Three weeks ago, I woke up with my big toe on my left foot in some serious pain. Yeah, i know what you're thinking: Ooh, a toe! Agony! Well actually it was. It felt like in the middle of the night, somebody had come and smashed it with a sledgehammer. Honestly, it felt like it was broken. And that, quite frankly, sucked.

Three days later, it had not improved. I want to see the doctor, and he told me it was most likely an attack of either gout or pseudo-gout. I'm not really sure what the differences are between the two, because he said that they have the same symptoms and are treated more or less the same. Secretly, I'm hoping it was the pseudo variety, because that seems like it would be a lot more sci-fi.

The drugs he gave me work very well. In fact, by the end of the day, I felt pretty much better. The doctor, though, told me that he was not sure how frequently I would experience flare ups. He said it could be only in every so many years, it might not reoccur until I was much older, or I might have outbursts relatively frequently. I was cautiously optimistic but preparing for the worst.

The next weekend went quite well. Then I lasted about another week before my foot started hurting again. Honestly, it wasn't as bad as the first time. However, it eventually became really, really horrible. Try walking around on a foot that feels like it's broken. I know I am getting older, but I'm just not ready to feel like I'm in that much pain all the time.

Due to my desire not to feel crippling pain on a normal basis (how weird of me!), I decided I needed to make some real changes in my life to make sure this didn't keep happening. So I looked for a list of triggers for gout (because I could find surprisingly little on pseudo-gout...only pseudo-information), and two of the biggest were red meat and alcohol, particularly beer.

Of course, I had the same thought that most of you are probably having right now. Is life without beer and steak really worth living? Now don't get me wrong, because I love these 2 things as well. However, I hate the pain that much more. And I also realize being healthy can be a good thing.

So here is the bottom line. I will be going primarily vegetarian in my food intake. I am NOT going to be one of these people who gets high and mighty about it. At least, I don't intend to be that guy. And I'm not going to say I will never eat meat, because an occasional animal might slip through. But I will be mostly vegetable and fruit eating guy. As a result, I am more than open to any suggestions anyone might have for how to cook this way. Recipes are also welcome.

I am also not going to be drinking. They say that alcohol is a severe trigger of this, and that beer is particularly bad at it. Because of my intolerance to pain, I'm going to give this up for a little while too. I'm not going to say I will never have a beer or a scotch or whatever, but it's not going to be a major part of my life.

This is the one which is a little trickier for people. Please do not think you need to tiptoe around me. This is just going to be for my own benefit. I will not preach. Also, I'm not doing this because I have a problem, need to rehab, or can't handle temptation. I'm perfectly fine. This is just something I need to do to not be in abject pain and horror all of the time. So I am more than happy to go out with you, hang out with you, or join you in any alcohol-based environment. If you play your cards right, this can even be a benefit, because I am more than happy now to be a designated driver if you wish to include me.

So where does this all end? Well, I can really use some advice about the whole vegetarian thing. Other than that, I just hope to get healthier. Maybe in a year or so of this, I'll even become trim and gain movie star good looks! I promise not to let my hopefully upcoming stud-muffin looks  come between us.

I know a non-drinking, healthy me is not what you've come to expect from me...but bear with me, and we'll get through this together.