Kanye West - "Can't Tell Me Nothing"

I first saw this video with my brother in Chicago. The addition of both Zack Galifinakis and Will Oldham is within itself pure genius. Galifinakis used to have a talk show which was good, but impossible to find because they kept changing the times. Some of it is available on You Tube. Will Oldham is a singer-songwriter who performs as Will Oldham, Palace and Bonnie 'Prince' Billy.

The End of the World

Do Nihilists Cry? (Sure Al Can Mend the Hole in the Sky, but Can He Mend the Hollow in my Sigh?)

Postings have been few and far between lately. Sorry.

The Cubs lost in the first round of the playoffs to the Arizona Diamondbacks. I guess it doesn’t matter…we all knew they would.

It’s October in Spain and it is sunny and warm. Leaves don’t fall, pretty soon they won’t grow anymore either. Valencia is soon to be suffering from nearly 80% ground surface desertification. They are also building a Formula One track, I think people are more excited about that than they are concerned about the former.

I’ve been listening to Stephen Stills’s new/old album Just Roll Tape: April 26, 1968. I like it, it’s raw and stripped down. It’s just him and his acoustic guitar. The story as I understand it, he was working on a Judy Collins album and she had wrapped it up with a few hours left over on her studio rental. Stills used the rest of her time to record some of his own tracks. In 1978 the studio was being torn down and an engineer was given free reign to whatever tapes were left in the studio. He found a reels with Stills’s name on them. He salvaged them and turned them over to Gram Nash, who turned them over to Stephen Stills and convinced him to release them. Again as I understand it these are the earliest recordings of “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”, “Black Queen”, “Helplessly Hoping” and “Wooden Ships”.

I’ve also been listening to Iron and Wine’s new album The Shepherd’s Dog. It’s an allegory for something, I just haven’t put it together yet.

I’ve never read The Scarlet Letter. I’m reading that now. I just finished The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter. I don’t read enough female authors. My wife also complains that I don’t listen to enough female musicians…I think she’s right.

I just signed up for lastfm.com you can check out my page at http://www.last.fm/user/InnaSenseAbroad/

Emilio came and took away all of the furniture. I’m supposed to throw away the rest. Those seem like perfectly good chairs to me, but what the hell; they’re not mine. They’re kind of wobbly, but so is the new furniture I have spent the last week putting together. I got a hot dog from Ikea, they put it together for me.

They’re going to build an Ikea in Valencia next year. People are excited about that, but not as excited as they are about the Formula One track.

By the way if you are ever in Valencia, stop by Amsterdam Records in Nuevo Centro. Buy something, keep him in business. http://www.arrakis.es/~jvitoria/Amsterdam/

Hey Frankie, thanks for the beer. http://www.myspace.com/cafeinfinito

The Bluetones play Slight Return on Later with Jools Holland

*** note the camera pulling away from ZZ Top as it pans over to The Bluetones.

ZZ Top playing Cheap Sunglasses on The Old Grey Whistle Test (1980)

Yo La Tengo is taken to Rock School by Mr. Show (1997)

www.toothpastefordinner.com

Max Roach (1924-2007)

Revolutionary jazz drummer Max Roach passed away a few weeks ago. Incidentally he died on the same date did Elvis Presely, but I don't imagine that they will be rolling out honorary candy bars in his absence. (Over the summer Reese's saw the release of a Reese's Peanut Butter and Banana Cup in honor of Elvis being dead for 30 years. Apparently Elvis was a big peanut butter and banana sandwhich fan, as to the candy bar...it wasn't a pleasant experience.)
Max Roach is known for his work with Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Charlie Parker.

There is an article eulogizing him in Slate by Fred Kaplan which refers to a 7 minute hi-hat solo he did on The Tonight Show when Bill Cosby was guest hosting. Here he is with bassist Tommy Potter.

Naked Hoops

Yard Fitness commerical
(c/o D. Ryan)

Trunk Monkey

The Trunk Monkey Compilation

(c/o D. Ryan)

Something about Grocery Stores (Here vs. There)

Several years ago I lived in Cambridge, England as part of a college exchange program. More than the history and culture of my surroundings, I was drawn in by the contents of the local grocery stores. I was amazed at the options of flavors available to me that I had spent 20 years unaware of. Apparently there are fruits called currant and they come in red and black. To this day I have no idea what they are, but they make for a tasty candy flavor. There was also a grapefruit flavored soda called Lilt that I enjoyed. In retrospect it tasted horrible, but at the time it was a soda flavor I had yet to experience and that was good enough for me. I live in Spain now and I am just as intrigued by the supermarkets as I was then. Having had worked in a grocery for 4 years from the age of 14 on, there is a certain familiarity and comfort to the structure and organization of a grocery store. There is also something to be said for culturally reading a country by the products on the shelves.



I drink a lot of milk, but I am particular to what kind of milk I will drink. I prefer it to be fresh and in the neighborhood of 1%-2%. In Spain fresh milk can be a chore to come by. I have so far found only two supermarkets that carry it (Consum and Carrefour). The choices available to me are 2% and whole, yet neither of these is kept on the shelves in abundance leaving me with milk every other time I go to the store. When this happens my other option is milk in a box. This is “milk” that is capable of sitting on a shelf unopened for months, quite possibly for years. It has a distinctive buttery taste and it is thinner than milk should be (skim milk, take notice). When I had first moved to Spain, before I discovered that fresh milk was available, I had quit drinking it because I couldn’t bring myself around to drinking aged, warm boxed milk. I did give it a fair chance, it was necessary for my cereal. What I would do is try to eat my cereal without ever actually letting the spoon or the milk touch the tip of my tongue. I would do all the necessary chewing and salival break down processing on the back of my tongue where I could only catch a hint of the sabor. After a while this got to be difficult and ridiculous, so I gave up cereal for toast. It was to my delight when I discovered fresh milk and was able to bring cereal back into my morning routine. This of course brought me to my next dilemma, variety.



I could easily get a different type of cereal every time I go to the grocery store and not repeat myself for a year. To walk down the cereal aisle of Hy-Vee or Cub Foods is a testament to the creative genius of man. There are chocolate and strawberry flavored cereals. There are cereals with chunks of chocolate or strawberries in them. Peanut butter, honey, apple, blueberry, cinnamon, chocolate chip cookies and yogurt all have their own cereals. From Mr. J.H. Kellogg to Mr. C. Crunch cereal has been on the cutting edge of just how far Americans are willing to go in the quest for variety. We will eat cereal that tastes like cinnamon toast. We will eat cereal that comes from invented fruit (the crunchberry). Yet, we do have our limits. For instance we will not eat orange juice flavored cereal (OJ Crunch and Orange Blossom Cereal). Nor will we eat ice-cream flavored cereal (Ice Cream Jones). In Spain, I have found is not nearly so adventurous. Variety for me there means one month I eat Special K from the white box and the next month I eat Special K from the red box.




Variety, however, may have gotten out of hand in the United States. Once upon a time flavors were familiar. My favorite as a child was always cherry and cherry was always red. In my teen years cherry was overtaken by grape in the Great Taste Bud Wars and grape was purple. The surprise victor in the end was lime, much to the chagrin of my former self for whom anything green went straight to the garbage or the dog. Color/flavor identification however seems to be a thing of the past, firmly placed in the ground by the likes of Gatorade (purple = Riptide Rush???) and other assorted sports drinks. In Spain, as I have opined before (“Lamentation of the Peanut Butter Kit Kat”, September 9, 2006), the only choice of flavors are generally lemon or orange (this includes Gatorade).




Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser goes into detail about the process of creating artificial flavors and the fact that cherry flavored anything has nothing to do with anything cherry related. Tastes and smells are all manufactured in a factory in New Jersey reminiscent of the drop off point from Being John Malkovich’s brain (I don’t remember if that is referenced in Schlosser’s book or if that was just the image that came into my head when I read it). The fact that they have limited their artificial flavor chemical intake to only those chemicals used in lemon and orange might have something to do with the fact that the life expectancy of the average Spaniard is 2.2 years greater than the average American.
I have come to terms with the simplicity of grocery shopping in Spain. What was at one time a journey has since become run-through. I will admit to boredom with certain items, but this isn’t always a bad thing. I rarely drink soda anymore. It has been replaced by soda water with a lime. This wasn’t a health conscious decision; I had simply gotten bored with Coke or Fanta and wanted something different. By the same token the colorful double stuffed Oreo cookies are no longer available to me. They have been replaced by packets of four single stuffed. Where at one time I could unconsciously gorge myself on an unlimited number of cookies and a large glass of milk has now been restricted to four and Oreos lack in interior sugary white stuff, they make up for in price. They aren’t cheap in the States, but they are expensive here. It’s easier to just forgo the cookie in general.




Opportunities abound in the American supermarket. Surrounded by choices, varieties and flavors one is required to be an active participant in the shopping experience, if only to be sure that the correct items are being placed in the cart. I am generalizing here, but there is the occasional Spanish kid who believes that he will grow up to be a soccer star. But this is few and far between compared to the current generation of “Pimp My Ride”, film my 16th birthday party, reality TV whoring American youth. I see this in my day to day interaction with Spanish high school students as I saw this a few years ago in my day-to-day interaction with American high school students. I see this when I watch Spanish television which is content to talk about the stars and less concerned about being one of them. I see this in the grocery stores where the flavors and smells remain familiar; yellow means lemon and orange means orange. There is no room for red or purple, especially if it is masking as something that it is not.




http://www.lavasurfer.com/cereal-guide.html

The Five Stages of Death (as illustrated by Giraffe from Robot Chicken)

Brief Explanation Followed by a Brief Absence

I had hoped to finish my Grocery Store bit before this week, but due to extenuating circumstances, it wasn't to be. It will be finished, but it won't be for a few weeks. I'm off to Athens for a spell and then I will return Stateside for a few months.

Something About Grocery Stores (The Prequel)

My first job was detasseling. Anyone from Iowa will know what I’m talking about. I’m not really sure what detasseling is, or it’s purpose, I think that it is essentially corn castration.. The job entails walking up and down acres of cornrows, pulling the tassel off of the corn stalk. Some people would wear gloves to avoid the cuts on the hands that the corn fibres left behind. The seasoned detasslers knew that the gloves just slowed you down. Much of the time the corn is either too high or you are moving too fast to stop and look down for the tassel. Successful detasseling relies on the feel for the tassel and then moving on.



Detasselers live in two worlds. Organized detasseling is set up through various seed corn and corn hybrid companies like Pioneer or DeKalb. The beauty of working for an organized company is that you are guaranteed a paycheck and transportation to and from the field is provided. The downside is, it’s organized and I’m not much of a team player. I prefer to not have some crew boss barking at me to go faster or shattering my already fragile ego based on corn shucking sloppiness.
Freelance detasseling is a pretty sweet gig if you have the motivation to stick with it. Freelance essentially means that you rent out an acre or so (depending on how many are involved) and you are paid based on completion. When you work or how fast you work is entirely up to you.



I was probably about 14 years old when A, M and myself freelanced an acre or so of corn. We had already calculated the amount of money we would earn from our labours and all of the band equipment that we were going to by (we had a pretty stellar band going for a while…nobody could murder a Megadeth song like we could.). I don’t know if I was aware of Ampeg Amps at this time, but if I was I was probably going to buy an Ampeg half stack or something equally tantalizing.
To top it all off the land we were to be working was outside of A´s sister´s farm about 2 and half hours from home. This of course meant that we would be staying with his sister in a big ol´ farmhouse for a few weeks. We had big plans of unsupervised rural debauchery.
What we hadn’t counted on of course was getting our asses kicked by the amount of work we had taken on, the blistering Iowa sun and the stifling Iowa humidity. What I hadn’t mentioned earlier in the organized vs. freelance debate is that if you get on a good organized crew, you would often do your detasseling from a combine-like machine where you would hang from a basket above the corn. This meant no walking. There were no machines in freelance (unless you brought your own). I think we gave it a fair go for about two days.




Day one was solid work and no talking. We got up and went to work at 4am. A’s sister had brought some lunch out for us, which we wolfed down and immediately got back to work going straight on through until the punishment of the midday sun forced us out. We walked back that first day promising to return and get a few more hours in after dinner (Iowa dinners are generally between 6 and 7 pm). It was a good idea, except for our inability to detassel while asleep. None of us was able to make it through dinner without shaking off unconsciousness. Needless to say by 7.30 we were done for.
The enthusiasm had died by the next morning. Four a.m. was a bit of a joke and we slept through until 8 or 9 when A’s sister had to physically force us out of bed. We dawdled all the way to the field secretly hoping that we had been visited by the legendary corncob fairy the night before. There was no such luck. In fact after we had gotten started, it appeared that several of the stalks had grown their tops back. We were again later greeted with a delivered homemade lunch, which we ate a little slower than the day before. Again by midday we were flushed from the fields by the thrushing of the sun. On the way home there was no talk of going back later that night. In fact there was no talking at all.
Having been disenchanted at the lack of progress from the day before, we got up at 4 am again on the third day. The lack of conversation had also carried over from the previous day. We ate our breakfast without speaking and trudged back to the field without speaking. We got to the field, and again without speaking, we got to work.
I don’t remember how it started or who exactly started it, but either M or A began running across the field against the rows taking out large numbers of cornstalks with him. He ran right by me laughing and yelling something. Shortly thereafter came the other one (M or A) depending on who the first passerby was, swearing and shouting. When I finally caught up to them A was pushing M’s face into the fertile black soil. I remember feeling nonchalant about the whole thing. As I looked around at the fallen corn stalks, it struck me as simply less corn that I would need to detassel later. Until somehow, in what can best be described as a rolling cartoonish dust cloud of fighting engulfed me and I was pulled into the kicking, swearing, poking and punching.



It was eventually broken up by the arrival of A’s mother, who was stopping be to check up on her “little farmers”. We abruptly came to our senses noticing for the first time the destruction we had caused. In our thrashing about we had managed to create our own set of crop circles amongst the backdrop of the rolling Iowa hills.
That fight, as it turned out, was going to cost us money. It was later explained to that we would have to continue detasseling the field, but we were going to be receiving far less money than we had initially been promised. This was a let down that lead to a half-assed job. The visions of a rocking home studio gave way to the reality of just simply coming out of this and not having to pay the farmer for letting us toil in his fields. In the end we did such a half-assed job that I had been told later that A’s mother, sister and sister’s husband had gone out to finish up what we couldn’t be bothered to worry about. I never saw any money.



The band had suffered as well. Because A was the band leader, (he was the drummer and we had to play at his house) he kicked M out for getting us in trouble. This ultimately was the demise of the band. It does end on a happy note as A and M reformed a new band a week or so later, but they forgot to call me and accidentally called another bass player instead. I understood, those things happened sometimes.


Stay tuned for Part 2: The Part Where I Actually Talk About Grocery Stores

By Request: He-Man Brokeback Mountain Style (and some additional Robot Chicken)

GI Joe (1st one not safe for work)

GI Joe the cartoon used to run a 30 second PSA after every episode, warning its impressionable young audience of the potential pratfalls and hazards lurking behind each corner.
These are three parodies of the aforementioned PSA's that had me giggling like a little girl.

Not Safe For Work

Courtesey of B. Finn.


The Justice Leage dubbed with a scene from Coming to America. (again probably not safe for work)

Grunge Goes Green

I wrote this piece over a year ago as a fictitious news article. At the time I had just heard about a collection of "What If" stories that had been published (I don't remember the title), I had also been reading Philip Roth who had written an historical fiction of American history if Charles Lindberg had defeated FDR for the presidency. I had decided to take a lighter approach and hit it from a music angle,which was, what if Kurt Cobain hadn't committed suicide. This was supposed to be an exercise in a literary group that I was starting with two other local Irish fellows to bring together the disjointed English writer community in Valencia (it might be a myth). Things didn't quite pan out, as often things don't. It's been written, so I suppose it should be read. There are some random characters in here for you to test your 90's rock star knowledge.
*************************************************************************************


Grunge Goes Green
March 23, 2006

Seattle (AP) --- What ever became of Grunge? Its eleven year absence could have been described as a cooling period, but as of last Monday morning at the 9:00 bell of the NYSE it became official. Grunge is dead.

Grunge was born in Seattle sometime in the late 80’s and the rest of the world was introduced on a cold January night in 1992 when life was breathed into it via a sound stage on Saturday Night Live in New York City and fittingly it was put to rest in NYC as well by the very same man, former 90’s grunge pioneer Kurt Cobain. Cobain has since gone from the mouthpiece of disenfranchised youth, thriving on the pathos that life is misery, to corporate executive by taking his image makeover company Doll Parts, Inc public. Stocks are currently being sold at $68 per share making Doll Parts, Inc (DPTI) instantly worth millions.

Doll Parts began in 1995, in the wake of Nirvana’s last and most successful album to date, the concept double album Clement of Alexandria based on the teachings of the 2nd century moralist and ethicist. Immediately after its release the band inexplicably broke up. Upon seizing all rights and property of Nirvana Cobain began his first venture with the image makeover firm by co-producing the multi-platinum 1996 art rock masterpiece Saffron, reintroducing the 70’s musical super group REO Speedwagon back to the top of the musical charts.

Former Alice In Chains lead singer Layne Staley, and current Starbucks franchise owner of 8 stores around the Seattle area and 6 stores in Billings, Montana, said that he wasn’t at all surprised by Cobain’s move into the corporate world, “Kurt has always had that sixth sense for what to hold onto and when to let it go. Having that inherent perception is the key to success when buying, selling or marketing a product. I mean look at their album Nevermind, which turned the world up on its ears and then four years later to put out something like Clement, that was no accident. He knew what he was doing. People will forever be asking about the Nirvana reunion. No matter what he does from here on out, he will always have that to fall back on.”

Interviews with former music associates, partners and fans have turned up the same lack of surprise at Cobain’s newest business venture.
“He created a sense of hope in this town that anybody could be successful as long as you were true. I came here to be inspired and I was. Look at me now I have a full time job in the center of the coolest place on Earth. I have people that work for me and I have people that respect me. Kurt created this for me and for a lot of other people.” said Gavin Rossdale, night manager of Staley’s Westlake Ave store in downtown Seattle. (Editor’s note: Rossdale has since been deported back to his home country of England for unlawfully working while on an expired visa.)

Stone Gossard, guitarist for the sole remaining successful Grunge era band Pearl Jam, “It’s not enough to have invented the wheel, you’ve got to keep reinventing it in order to survive. Had we not finally parted ways with the record companies and began selling our music exclusively at shows and online, I know that we wouldn’t have lasted as we have. Kurt has always had a sense for that; he has always been able to read the pulse of what was going on around him. Look at what he did for REO Speedwagon. There you have a band that for all intents and purposes should have been dead in the water, but now nine years after he gets his hands on them you can’t turn around without hearing their songs or seeing them in some media format.”

Krist Noveslic, former Nirvana bass player and current United States Congressman for Washington State’s 1st District. “Kurt has created a marketing economy here that easily rivals the tech and software economy. Doll Parts has given a new face to old dogs such as General Electric, Ford Motor Company and Boeing. The jobs created from Ford and GE moving their bases of operations here alone has been tremendous. This doesn’t take into consideration the boost in economy that we have received from the relocation of the Twins from Minnesota and then for the Vikings to immediately follow suit. For the last three years both World Series baseball teams have been from Seattle and last year we saw the first ever Superbowl to be played not only by two teams from the same city, but to be coincidentally hosted in that very city. The energy here has been amazing and that was Kurt, he salvaged the Twins and Vikings, he convinced the public to replace KeyArena with Berthe Knight Landes Field.”
“I frankly don’t know what the hell Grunge is, so I’m certainly not going to say that Kurt killed it. If anything he dispelled the morose image of slacker whininess that somehow got pinned on us. Who’s your slacker now? The son of a bitch is responsible for the continued success of nearly every Fortune 500 west of the Mississippi.” said Dave Grohl, former Nirvana drummer and current front man/songwriter of the multi platinum and Grammy winning band The Foo Fighters.

Spokespeople from Doll Parts, Inc have said that the continued success of the former Nirvana members outside of the band has insured that there will not be a new album or reunion anytime soon.
“Dave has been very successful with The (Foo) Fighters and Krist has launched a successful, and we hope, a long political career. Neither of them is in a position to get back together with Nirvana, nor is either one of them being accused of killing grunge. Kurt is just doing what they are doing and is moving on, he is not responsible for the death of anything.” said Doll Parts stockholder Albert Jorgenson.

Cobain’s company which had initially started out in the music business has announced plans to establish a subsidiary company within the next year that will focus solely on managing the Nirvana catalog as well as recording and producing upcoming releases by REO Speedwagon, The Strokes and Fat, Gristly Beef.

Why Jogging Is Stupid (Part 3: Jogging...and kickboxing and oreo cookies and two old guys who talk in front of my building)

So now I jog. I’m not a jogger per se. Calling myself a jogger would suggest I take it seriously. I don’t know if I take anything seriously enough that I am capable of using a verb to describe myself. In terms of jogging I can quit at any given moment and let’s be realistic, I probably will. (I am a bit of a quitter, which totally discounts my previous statement.) I jog purely for aesthetic purposes. Essentially I jog to stay pretty.

Somewhere along the way I went from the tall, lanky, deathly skinny kid to the tall, lanky kid with the beer belly. It was a style that wasn’t working for me. I had picked up a pretty steady smoking habit somewhere between humiliating myself in the sports arena and waking up in the mornings at the age of 24 and hacking like an old man. I separated myself from cigarettes (one area where I wasn’t a good quitter) by the substitution of Oreo cookies. Whenever I had a craving for a cigarette I would grab a handful of cookies. For the most part it worked, my lungs were getting so healthy that my pants stopped fitting me. I humored my new space consuming lungs for a while and bought new pants and baggy shirts. It was all breathing room for my new lungs.

When I could no longer deny the fact that I was getting fat, I joined a gym. I became a “gym guy”. I tried kickboxing classes. I remember standing around with all of these guys and their greased back ponytails. They were a crossbreed between the Dungeons and Dragons types that were into that role-playing-dragon-fighting nonsense and the hardcore ninja types that have Bruce Lee posters on their dorm room doors. I remember having to partner up for punching and kicking routines. I picked one of the little Dungeon and Dragon elf fellas. He was a little guy with greased back blonde hair, sans the ponytail. He struck me as one of those that was destined to meet his future wife in some on-line fantasy video game.

He introduced himself and seemed friendly enough. I think his name was GorgonBlaster_16, or something along those lines. Gorgon took up the punching bag mitts first in order to properly illustrate where and how the targets were to be held. I started throwing hands like a champ. I was crossing around punching my left into his right and then sending my left into his left. I was keeping him on his toes, letting him know what was going on. He smiled very politely at me throughout the whole ordeal. At one point I began to hear these horrifying wheezing noises. I began to feel sorry for the lad, I sympathized with his fearful hyper ventilation at the raw brutality that was raining down on his padded little hands. It wasn’t until tunnel vision began to set in and my legs and arms began to go wobbly, that I realized I was the one making all the damn noise. Shortly after realization set in, I did something that I’m not proud of and I’m not entirely sure it had ever been accomplished before, but I managed to KO myself. I had been the one throwing all the punches and yet somehow there I was, flat on my back. Amidst the disembodied questions floating around such as, “Dude, did you hit him?”, “What happened?”, and “I didn’t touch him he was the one doing all of the punching.” I quit kickboxing.

On my way out the door I noticed the folks jiggling about on the treadmills. They were all wearing headphones and either listening to music or watching television. I looked beyond them to the sea of stationary bicycles, where people were pedaling like mad to get nowhere in particular. Some of them were reading magazines. I’ll be damned, I could read and exercise. But, after a while my gym-phobia set in and I quit that too.

In the end I was able to keep up consistent cardio workouts, either by jogging outside or just simply walking everywhere I went, especially after moving to Spain where I don’t have a car. The other thing that seemed to have helped was that here you can’t buy Oreo Cookies in those big bags, they give you little rationed packages of four. Apparently, they saw me coming.


So, why is jogging stupid? It occurred to me one day when I went out for a run and two old men were outside my building having a conversation. I got out there in my little shorts, my t-shirt, my sneakers with the little sports socks poking out over the top and I started to run in no particular direction. When I got to my non-destination I turned around to go home. On the way home I got to the train tracks and had to wait for a passing train. I stood in one place doing that ridiculous little running in place motion that I learned from Scooby-Doo cartoons. I watched the people watching me as the train went by and I found myself wondering what they were thinking. The train was going pretty fast, so maybe they didn’t realize that I was running in place and thought that I was running smack into the train. I imagined them trying to press their faces against the windows as they passed to see if I was really stupid enough to run smack into a speeding train. I became self-conscious and I stopped running in place and just stood there watching the train go by as I deeply gulped in its exhaust desperately searching for oxygen.

After the train passed, I had become comfortable in my sedentary motion and slowly trudged across the tracks. Feeling guilty I tried to find my rhythm, but it was gone. I did sort of a run for a bit, walk for a bit thing the rest of the way home. When I finally made it back the two old men were still in their conversation. Twenty-five minutes ago they watched me come out and dash off in one direction, now they watched as I dragged myself back to the door soaking wet and gasping for air. They stopped long enough to enjoy the spectacle. I had managed to end up exactly where I had started. I didn’t really go anywhere. Essentially I just ran home, but considering I was already there I took the really long way to do it and I had witnesses to this insanity.

The Spongemonkeys - "We Like the Moon"

Part 3 of my epic trilogy will be available soon (after I get done grading all of these damn essay that I keep assigning). In the meantime enjoy this classic from The Spongemonkeys.