My day so far:

1) Breakfast w/ J & J. Coffee, orange juice, eggs, hashbrowns, etc.
2) Walk to AJ’s with J, J, T, M, M & N for second breakfast. Coffee, upside down cake, three-cup Pepsi Challenge (that one study Gladwell cites is right–none of the three of us were able to correctly identify all three cups!).
3) Talk to Chris.
4) Drive Tory’s race car. 425 horsepower. Four-point racing harness. Chrome exhaust pipes bolted on either side. Man, what a ride!
5) Sell my motorcycle for asking price in 10 minutes flat.
6) Go to shooting range (“The Scottsdale Gun Club”) with Tory. We go through 4 cases of 9mm rounds in ~30 minutes. I just saw every gun you can buy in Counter-Strike–and so many more!
7) Day dream about my soon-to-be WRX (I hope!).
8) Arrive at office. Inspect demolition of x-ray room. Neato! I should have been a builder.
9) Reprogram a rouge thermostat (you really have to get EVERY ONE, or you have one hero that tries to cool the entire 13,300 square foot facility).
10) Intentionally set off burglar alarm.
11) Wait to see if anyone notices…

…

Edit: Someone noticed.

12) Get pulled out of building at gun point. Like six-guns-and-an-assault-rifle gun point. Handcuffs, etc.

I notified the security company that it was a test–but apparently I forgot to notify everyone passing by.

This is good, though. My goal was to test the security of the building–and my test indicates that the building is, in fact, very secure!

Rockin’ in the Wind Rivers

Little known fact about me: I play a mean air guitar.

My burgeoning talent generally goes unrecognized–I only play for the most choosiest of audiences.

On Thursday, the spirit came upon me. And I played–like a man possessed.

Played with an outpouring of passion, like an avalanche running down a mountain–like an outburst flood, the crashing, pouring, scouring and lifting of a billion pounds of frigid water–an alpine lake descending at 100 mph, it’s rocky levies having given way.

I played Destroyer. I played Blitzen Trapper. I played Deer Tick. I played The Tallest Man on Earth. My chords gave voice to the music, the life, the rich vitality that courses through the veins of every man (and woman!) who stands atop 11,000 feet of bedrock and plays to an audience of precipitous stony escarpments–and sun, and snow, and pikas, damn little else.

Cast myself towards infinity.
Trust me, I had my reasons. …
Blessed doctor, do your worst.
Cut me open, remove this thirst. …
“All good things must come to an end.
The bad ones just go on forever.”
Isn’t that what I just said?
It is Now and it is Never.

It’s not the lyrics that are important–it’s the audience. This audience:

From 2009.07.31 Wind River Pictures

Which is to say, I spent five days in the Winds with my parents, brother, and Chester (my Dad’s English Setter). Fantastic time. Sun, snow, alpine lakes and flowers. View the full album:

2009.07.31 Wind River Pictures

“Please report all suspicious activity.” Should I tell them about my calendar?

Hrm. I love traveling. Airports are like the twilight zone. There’s a disconnect between the world outside the airport and the world inside. Really, airports are magical. You go inside the airport in one place, you put your self in the trust of strangers and engineers and all the best of American industry, and when you walk out of the airport, you’re in a completely different place. Sometimes, when you’re flying across time zones, it’s nearly the same time when you walk out of the airport as when you walked in. It’s like a magical building of portals–you walk in one side, through a specific gate leading to a specific place, and bam, you’re there.

And airports are timeless. Sure, sure–there are clocks on the wall. But time inside the airport is disconnect from time outside. Because airplanes play tricks with time. Time inside an airport is only pertinent with respect to your departure time. Once inside the airport, it wouldn’t matter if time was measure in minutes or flippids, in 60 second denominations or 100 second denominations. It’s all quite relative. People eat dinner at 9:00 am. They’ve been up all night. People fall asleep at all hours of the day. The bars never close. It’s really a timeless place.

So I’m eating a slice and drinking a beer. It’s 10:00 — in the morning, but it could be 10:00 at night, and it’d be just the same.

On another note–you know what I’ve never understood? People who use napkins to dab the grease off of their pizza. Just doesn’t make one lick of sense to me.

Hrm.

That was weird. I just added something to my Google Calendar, and a context message appeared, and it was this narrative, something about palpable air … and then it was gone. I read the first words of these paragraphs … and then it disappeared. I have no idea where it came from, or where it went. A glitch? I searched the source code, but found nothing…

There’s a ghost in my Google Calendar. That’s OK. It just goes along with the random events that pop up on my calendar. For example, at 11:00 am on August 11th, I’m supposed to “Get Dominated.” At 11:00 am on September 30th, I’m supposed to “Visit Aunt Sally and get some peaches.” Where do these come from? Who is my Aunt Sally? What’s so special about her peaches? More worrying, do I get drunk sometimes and add random events to my calendar?

Hrm.

Mountains. That’ll be nice. It’s been a while. I nearly forgot to pack anything warm. I was doing my last sweep, when I found all my warm stuff. Glad I found it. Haven’t seen it in weeks. Might be cold in the mountains. Who knows.

Did I pack my gaiters? Did I pack my hiking pants? Is that even how you spell gaiters? Who knows. I’ll find out when I unpack in Cheyenne.

Hrm.

That one sales rep seems to think I should write a white paper on the clinic’s EMR search. Maybe he’s right. Instead, I’m writing nonsense and drinking a beer. This is a productive use of my time. Seriously. No, really. Really.

“Andrew Jackson” Jihad

I put on Andrew Jackson Jihad’s “Can’t Maintain” for the drive to work this morning. And it’s been love at first listen.


Mr. Jackson is a lot of The Mountain Goats–lo-fi, fast guitar, always played slightly out of tune–singing a thousand thousand stories of inner fears and minor incidents–a little of The Extraordinaires–playing upbeat, romping rollicks–and an acerbic dash of Modest Mouse’s lyrical style. Wikipedia notes that “Andrew Jackson Jihad has obtained much coverage for their songs about “serial killers, cigarettes, child abuse, and a vengeful Jesus”

Check him out. And check out his tour schedule. He plays in Denver tonight.

“I don’t have a drinking problem / But I have a drinking solution / I don’t think I ever learned to to think.”

Visit his website: http://andrewjacksonjihad.com
Or, on MySpace.com: http://www.myspace.com/andrewjacksonjihad

The Tallest Man On Earth

The Tallest Man On Earth is actually not so tall. In fact, at five foot six or so, he’s rather unpreposessing. But just wait until you hear him sing.

If you haven’t listened to The Tallest Man On Earth, you owe it to yourself to find Shallow Graves and give it a listen. It’s one of the best albums of last year, bar none.

As a songwriter, he possesses all of the burgeoning talent of Bob Dylan. But … unlike Dylan, this guy can sing. What a voice. What a voice.

I’ve just returned from seeing him perform. And, my … what a show. John Vanderslice played after, but didn’t play half the show. Check this guy out. Now. Thank me later.