last post? not if I do this again...

Saucy Brute + the Diamond Wedding Weekend Highlights
1. Dr. the "I'm buying a pitcher per person" Caveman (father of the groom), and Mrs. the "let's talk about how my son and daughter-and-law need good sex" Diamond (mother of the groom)
2. the popularity of our homebrews
3. being in charge of the alcohol
4. watching groomsman nop.bot in fine gay-tor drunken glory, including giving him a shot of water (while the rest of us took real shots)... which then resulted in him puking
5. dance-off with the great poet
6. college football
7. high school football, both the night before and the day after (playing on that hallowed ground)
8. S & J, and their breastfeeding bartender
9. how it was simply a magnified version of our typical lives anyway
10. being a part of the diamond & saucy brute's family

And when you wake up the morning after a wedding with the bridal bouquet in your house... does this mean you've simply done your duty as the best man?

Song of the Day: Bob Dylan - Make You Feel My Love

a woman (not my wife) sang / to me of the ghost land

A similarly blogging friend recently did a post creating a movie soundtrack from one's (randomly shuffled) music. I love music, and I hate astronomy, so I thought I'd kill some time at work with it. The relevant "movie" moment...

Wedding scene: Rilo Kiley - Ripchord. Now, at first, I was ridiculously excited, because of my grand scheme to marry Jenny Lewis (see the photo above, from last night's Rilo Kiley show in Tucson... it's a crappy picture, but I was distracted). But then I realized that Jenny Lewis doesn't actually take part in this particular song... instead, it's all done by the lead guitarist, who as a child was Pinski (Budnick's replacement) on Salute Your Shorts. Anyway, not my wife (Jenny Lewis). And then I realized that the lyrics to this song include 'cuz nobody loves you, etc. So much for coincidental fate. Even despite all my carefully laid plans, I am not, in fact, currently wed to Jenny Lewis.

In case you're wondering, or are looking to kill some time of your own, the iTunes-randomly-generated soundtrack to my autobiographical movie would go as follows below. I especially like the Driving and Death Scene choices, both of which I might have actually selected.

Opening credits: Modest Mouse - Styrofoam Boots/It's All Nice on Ice Alright
Waking up: The Velvet Underground - Pale Blue Eyes
First day of school: The White Stripes - This Protector
Falling in love: The Who - Happy Jack
Breaking up: Iron & Wine - Sunset Soon Forgotten
Prom: Tiger Army - Under Saturn's Shadow
Mental breakdown: Natalie Merchant w/ Billy Bragg & Wilco - I Was Born
Driving: Neil Young - After the Gold Rush
Flashback: The Beatles - Rocky Raccoon
Getting back together: Rage Against the Machine - People of the Sun
Wedding: Rilo Kiley - Ripchord
Birth of child: Goldfinger - 99 Red Balloons
Final battle: Counting Crows - Big Yellow Taxi
Death scene: Ben Kweller - Wasted & Ready
Funeral song: Johnny Cash - Flushed from the Bathroom of Your Life
End credits: Pavement - Newark Wilder

and the song of the day, one past the list (and certainly soundtrack-worthy)... The Beatles - A Day in the Life

drunk again and looking to score

Last night I skipped frisbee to play kickball with sooz & her pink team, "drunk again and looking to score." I think I was a solid tribute to the team name:

1. I was a solid drinker... especially when umpiring for the other teams.
2. I scored from third on a suicide squeeze bunt up the third-base line.
3. I told a girl, so, sooz says I should sleep with 3 girls tonight... you can be one.

In dealing with the morning that follows nights like these... it's good to have a blender.

Song of the Day: CAKE - Shadow Stabbing

in frustration that the nozzle wouldn't fit my tire... I peed on this air machine

2 stories, related only because they happened in the same night.

At the grocery store last night, this girl ahead of me is trying to buy like 10,000 things all on some kind of gift card. Her card ends up being short like $35, and she decides to take things off. I can see that I'm in for a long wait, and the pork chops I left in the oven at home are probably going to burn. But instead, the dude right behind her offers to pay the bill. Now did she really not have a credit card or something to take care of it? I'm always suspicious of attractive women like this one who have men do stuff like this for them...

My new (used) road bike has had a slow leak in the front tire. I noticed that the nozzle was a little bent, so I straightened it and it seemed to fix the leak. I bike to work, home, out for a beer with law/latin-american-studies people, and back to work and the tire's staying full... and then when I go to bike home at about 1 am, I find that it's completely flat. So I end up with a long walk home. Apparently the alcoves of the Baptist church up the street from me are the comfortable spots for sleepy bums.

Song of the Day: Wilco - I'm Always In Love

national pride

More on Africa...

We spent most of the trip in Botswana. I'm glad we did. Our time in Botswana included:

1. A mini-bus from Jo-burg (South Africa) to Gaborone. I count this as "in Botswana" because all the other people in the combi were Batswana (the Setswana way to say Botswanans). Ox ended up promising his older brother in marriage to a girl who claimed that she would be the star in "Big Mama's House 3!" Afterwards, ox says to me: well, I had to throw my brother out there, because pretty soon it was gonna be us instead. We stood them up at the Bull & Bush that evening, though it was only because we had a train to catch. It's quite sobering to recall that of those girls, 2 probably have HIV.

2. Camping out in the Ntwetwe Salt Pans. It was a completely barren desert, like pictures of the lunar surface. When I woke up in the morning, it was disorienting... nothing but flat unmarked desert in all directions. In case you're wondering, it tasted a lot more like dirt than like salt.

3. The highlight of the trip, a 3-day mokoro (dugout canoe) trip in the Okavango River Delta. Every morning and evening our guide led us from our campsite on hikes out into the bush. This featured elephants (above), warthogs, monkeys, baboons, hippos, giraffes, etc. It was amazing. I also really felt like I gained an understanding of the environment, as the guide pointed out all facets of the landscape and its inhabitants. It was quite different from the jeep-safari way to see wildlife.

Anyway, the people in Botswana were especially friendly. We took public transportation and hitchhiked, and felt generally comfortable even as we stuck out as the only white people around.

Song of the Day: The Decemberists - Sons & Daughters (I challenge you to find another song which uses- and rhymes with- the word "dirigible")

slick andy's donkey emporium

I've been back from Africa for almost 3 weeks, but I only just got a battery charger for my camera and managed to get the photos onto my computer. And I still have a lot to say about the trip.

Pictured above is my friend fiery ox, who just finished up his Peace Corps stint in Lesotho. He decided that he would take two months and just travel, and he asked me if I'd like to join him for some of it. So I did, for two weeks.

We started in Johannesburg, and I was pretty glad to get out of the city. As a whole, South Africa seemed paranoid and uncomfortable. White people were afraid of black Africans, and wealthy blacks were afraid of poor blacks. There probably is a violent crime problem, but I didn't witness it, so I can only comment on the paranoia. It's not very pleasant to walk around neighborhoods where all the homes sit behind 10-foot-tall fences topped with coils of barbed wire. And though all the other southern African countries are far less economically developed, I witnessed a lot more national pride from their citizens than from South Africans.

Plus, they lost my luggage for a day.

Song of the Day: The Strokes - You Only Live Once

not just a coach, but also a mentor

My camera battery is completely dead, but I managed to get about half of the pictures from my Africa trip onto my computer. Here's me and a baobab tree outside of Gweta, Botswana.

On an entirely unrelated note: Last night, during a cock-ale-tasting / blender-explosion party, surly barnacle decided that we should coach a pop warner football team. The following roles were quickly agreed upon:

head coach: surly barnacle
offensive coordinator: dirty jersey
defensive coordinator: me
line coach: the cook at bobo's
southern consultant: the diamond

Mustaches required for all the coaching staff. (The moms will love us.)

Film at 6 am, with two-a-days beginning at 8 am. I'll be staying up all night drinking so I can make it in time. The kids will have a lot to learn, with the 300 offensive plays (all featuring variants of the hook & ladder). There will be only defensive play: all-out blitz (including the corners).

Today, while checking out the website:
dirty jersey: 12-15, unlimited weight division: that's what we want. They allowed to be over 170 lbs! That's like my dream: 170+ lb 15-year-olds.
me: yeah, the coaching page says "looking for qualified head coaches..."
dirty jersey: that's us, right? I mean, they'd take us?
me: sure! I'll tell them, "I work with children. It's okay, I'm like a doctor."
dirty jersey: yeah, we'll put down: qualifications: master of astronomy.

Song of the Day: Wilco - Candy Floss