so rusty likes to play with boys...

Chris, you have tgo appreciate this.

i can see you in the window!!!!!

just in case chris beth is watching...

okay, so you're wondering, "Who the hell is this?" It's Pat May!!! Hi, Pat. I hope you are well.

long live fubsy

i, robot

I sent that bastard Chris Beth an email three days ago and I haven't heard boo from him yet. See if I ever say "fuzzy p-e-n-e-s-s" to him again. I've caught up with him, AK, and Phil in the past week and told them all that I've decided. And each one seems to be encouraged by the life decisions we've making out here.

Sarah said something to me today about how when she spoke to people that knew me, they always knew that I had played music, but that they were slightly confused by the whole physics thing. (Even more confusing is the grain of rice I just found in my glass of cabernet sauvignon, but nevermind that.) I just (right now) had the realization that I have never connected with anyone regarding physics. Shit. What's that all about? I've been doing this stuff for how long? The entire time I was studying it as an undergrad, I thought I had a scoop on my professors because I was always open to the possibility that there might be more going on than just a bunch of equations. Can we really manifest our own lives? Would that parking spot really havre been there if I hadn't thought about it so much? Any of that airy-fairy stuff is almost by definition non-falsifiable. It's almost like science addresses only that part of the universe that we cannot control, but that there might exist a realm in which we really *do* create our lives, where we really can just imagine something as being and it comes to pass in such a way that the laws of physics aren't violated. Or something...

I had the best experience today with headphones. It started with a bad headphone experience. Sarah and I have started going to a gym. I was on the elliptical machine with the iPod and these headphones that look really cool and go right in your ear. The entire time they kept falling out and I couldn't hear a goddam thing. Whatever. I kept myself entertained by barely hearing Faith No More, Smashing Pumpkins, and The Smiths and by watching the closed captioning on the TV in front of me. Later on during the day I got to wear Sarah's super-duper kickass Bose headphones around town and Oh-My-Freaking-God do they sound so amazing. They're big and make me look like I've got that whole Princess Leia thing going on, but Jesus do they sound amazing. (In fact, they sound so good that I'm putting the damn things on right now!! Ahhhh... Stevie, I love ya...) So I duffed around Davis, California, wearing these Princess Leia headphones on and listening to George Michael and, my god, it was great. The headphones actually cancel out noise from the outside world so 99.99% of all you hear is what you are supposed to. I didn't even care that I stood in line for fifteen minutes only to find out that the credit union wouldn't do sharebranching on Saturday. (We're still banking with the credit union in Portland.) I went to pick up lunch at the Himalayan place and couldn't care less that it wasn't ready that I got there because I got to listen to "I Want Your Sex". Life don't get much better... Okay, maybe that's a little crazy, but you get my point. I hope.

No stereo can ever truly substitute for the listening experience that comes from wearing headphones. There is no better way to absorb music so completely. You can pick out the individual position of different instruments to within inches. Nothing quite compares. I wonder how many people have really experienced music through headphones. Jesus. (How much can a person really say about it?)

How bizarre. I don't know exactly how I did it, but I just had this flashback to living in Boston. Winter. Totally cold, walking to work at Starbucks on Harvard Avenue in Brookline and listening to Stevie Wonder as I walked there. I don't remember having a a CD player so I'm curoious as to how I listened to it exactly. No matter. One of my favorite Stevie songs at that time was "Livin' For The City". There was that one part that would get stuck in my head for days. The nonsense syllable part that was basically the chorus. I thing I actually sang it out loud while I was walking down the street, so long as there was no one around. Or maybe I didn't actually have a portable music player. I could very well just have sung the entire song to myself. I kind of muss riding the T. That was fun.

I don't remember Chris Beth ever coming to visit me while I was in Boston. What's up with that? How did that happen? Weird. I imagine he was at Maine Maritime Academy at that time. He would have been in his second year of college there. Had he met Flood yet? Don't know. Can you believe it was nine years ago? Holy freaking moly.

Why "I. Robot" you might ask? Sarah, Xander, Z and I just finished watching it. I don't know. I didn't think of anything better to write as the subject. But just in case you are wondering, my foot *is* asleep.
.
Boston. Jim and Helena. Holy shit what happened to them? Jim is in the Marines. The last time I talked to Mike Dilios he said that Jim wanted to teach history. Kudos to him. Helena remarried. She lives in Bath. She has a house and another kid named Xavier. I hope she is happy.

AND THEY ARE ALL SUCKERS BECAUSE THEY LIVE IN PLACES WHERE IT GETS COLD IN WINTER! HA!! SUCKERS!!

California is so weird. How the hell did I get here? And how is it that I don't have to scrape off my windshield in the morning? Why is it that I don't have to shovel snow? Why? Because I live in Californina! HA!

This is kind of random, but did you know that Shay (used to be Dubar but married Matt) Bellas owns a professional women's football team? How funny is that? If you don't believe me, look here.

Okay. I've had it.

javelina

In Sedona there are these wild pigs called javelinas. Whenever somebody mentioned them I ended up with the Pixies song stuck in my head off of Bossanova. "Ha-va-lee-na... Ha-va-LEE-nah!" While we were visiting everyone in Arizona we kept singing it back and forth, getting it stuck in each other's heads. Having had enough of all of this, I turned on the original song and found the lyrics to be as follows:

"Walking in the breeze on the plains of old Sedona, Arizona, among the trees... Havalina[sic]"

Go figure. We never did see one.

november

I was updating the mark curry blog and thought I might as well touch base here. Not that anyone reads it.

The long and the short of it is this. We live in California; Sarah, Xander, Zara and I are all together again. Graduate school is really, really hard. George W. Bush is still the president. Damn!

That would be the gist of it all. I could talk about our trip to San Francisco a couple of weeks ago. I got to see Mike Patton and then three of the four of us come down with the flu in our hotel room in a matter of hours. There was much suffering on all of our parts. No fun.

Xander is in a Spanish immersion class now. I recently picked up the John Frusciante album "Shadows Collide with People" and I really like it a lot. I eagerly await the new (old) Mark Curry album. And Patton has just got to come out with something else soon. Oh. And I have Mechanics homework due soon. I bet you want to hear about that. Lagrangians, phase spaces, conjugate momentums, energy surfaces, yada yada yada.

Talk of succession? Maybe Canada could invade the US? They could justify it using the doctrine of pre-emptive strike. The US is bound to take over Canada at some point. They should invade us before we invade them. Let New England, California, Oregon and Washington become part of Canada. Everything else can just be part of Texas.

why don't more americans see through this guy??!!

It seems like everyday I am amazed by something else regarding our fine "president". Back in the summer of 2002 I was blown away to see the Iraq War grow in the headlines day by day in front of my very eyes. It seemed so obvious to me that Bush was just banging the war drum. He did it long enough and loud enough that people started to listen. I never expected that to happen. But it did.

So month by month went by and eventually he just did it. Pre-emption, WMDs, democracy, whatever... He started a war that wouldn't have happened without him and his cronies. And every reason he came up with to justify the war was total BS. Terrorism? There weren't suicide bombers back when Saddam was running the place, were there? Don't even try to feed me the line about Saddam being a twisted tyrant because you know as well as I do the example the Army and the CIA have set in the name of democracy. Thousands are dead. And it is all W's fault.

And guess what? Remember those WMD's that no one ever found? Remember that crazy guy with the funny sunglasses in the country that didn't have any oil? Here's what he's been up to. I thought you said we shouldn't wait for a mushroom cloud?! Oh, sorry. That was the other guy, the one in the spider-hole.

Does anyone else out there watching this administration feel ashamed? W has his Bible to soothe his conscience. Karl Rove has Machiavelli. Clearly he doesn't need one.

One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.

Niccolo Machiavelli

global warming and the inevitable trauma of living

Today was Brian's birthday. His birthday gift was pampering. We ended up making breakfast for him and Don. Sarah and I left them to their own devices for lunch, but proceeded to make them dinner and a birthday cake with a nice bottle of wine from the kiosk at the market.

Xander was intent on playing cribbage with us this evening, despite the fact that he hasn't yet learned how to add larger numbers in his head. He *is*, however, quite gifted at giving away what cards Sarah has in her hand. And I don't mind at all.

When I rubbed his back tonight before he went to sleep. he mentioned to me that he wants to work on two things tomorrow; he needs to make a machine that can eat paper and he also wants to make his own "Sorry" game. He's such a riot. I think it's a great idea; one complaint I've had since I was probably nine years old is that I can't stand when game companies "update" the look of their game. Xander's Candy Land is nothing like the Candy Land I had as a kid. Mine was more creepy and scary.

miss nelson has a field day

Xander and I went down to Deering Oaks after dinner today. He had a blast running around with a couple of kids he met. I sound old when I say it, but I am completely amazed by the amount of energy children have.

I posted links to the Mark Curry Blog on a site called Roadkill or something like that. Time's up. I must sing to the boy.