All day long I search for True. >>06/29/2005 21:16:40:[NtProvUDevs]:AddAccount: addAccount ret=True. These kinds of statements make me smile. The system is working. The headphones are on. I am alone. The rain falls outside my windowpane. The sun shines. I do not notice. >>06/29/2005 21:16:41:[NtProvUDevs]:ProvisionDevs: finished, ret=True The Truth is sometimes elusive. I am a modern day Sage. Always seeking Truth, and, on days like today, finding it with great regularity: >>06/29/2005 21:16:41:[NtProvUDevs]:RmMsgSw: retv = True My fingers go numb from the typing. The air conditioning won’t shut off. The cold keeps me awake. Coffee appears on my desk. I drink it. Truth fails me all of a sudden: >>06/29/2005 20:57:56:[NtProvUDevs]:ProvisionDevs: op(1) ret=False
>>06/29/2005 20:57:56:[NtProvUDevs]:ProvisionDevs: finished, ret=False
>>06/29/2005 20:57:56:[NtProvUDevs]:RmMsgSw: retv = False I check the code and realize this is expected behavior. I am back again on the path to Truth. I look up. The moon is out. It is brilliant above the mountain.

The rain is falling lightly, around me, lightly falling. The smoke from my cigarette twirls in the mist. I look up and see a rainbow in the soft moonlight. I am tired. I climb into my car and press {POWER}. Noiselessly, the car purrs to life. I ease it from the now empty parking lot and onto the deserted highway.

This guy is the vagrant who inspired Angel of the Lord. He attacked me last night as I was eating my food. Said he wanted some, and I told him it was for sale right down the hill, then he tackled me. Was cussing and muttering at me, calling me names. Even called me “Nazi”. Which led to the best quote of the night when my group of friends and I ran into him later. He said, “Sorry for calling you a Nazi”. Not sure why, but we all thought that was a riot.

Also, heard that the Goodyear Blimp, which was originally stationed in Akron, OH, where I’m from,crashed yesterday in FL. From the AP:

In this photo provided by the Coral Springs Fire Rescue Thursday, June 16, 2005, a Goodyear blimp is shown partially deflated after it crash landed in a industrial park in Coral Springs, Fla. The two people on board were not injured. Both people onboard were trapped briefly while electrical crews cleared the site, authorities said. (AP Photo/Coral Springs Fire Rescue via The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Mike Moser, Pool)

“I want to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city one day suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of my book.” –James Joyce

Happy Bloomsday, all. Anyone who has read, or attempted to read Joyce’s Ulysses Has their story to tell. Here’s mine.

Back when I was a sophomore at Kent State University, I had the good fortune to study under Dr. Culleton, who is, though I didn’t know it at the time, a Joyce fanatic. She tricked me and the rest of our British Novelists class into falling in love with Joyce.

It began simply enough. The reading list included Conrad’s Nigger of the Narcissus, Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray and Joyce’s Ulysses. We blasted through most of the reading list and hunkered down with U, as it came to be called, for most of the semester.

Some of us were excited, others intimidated, still others stressed out that we wouldn’t “get” it. Dr. Culleton was so in love with Joyce, and she wanted so badly for others to see his brilliance that her patience guided her teaching of the book, never allowing us to become discouraged, always enthusiastic and finally overjoyed when we all “got” it. We got it so much, and loved Joyce so much that Dr. Culleton petitioned the Dean to allow her to teach a James Joyce seminar class the following semester, and we all attended.

Since that first time though, I’ve completed U five times. I even was paid by one of the other instructors at the university to teach him how to read it. Each time, the book is more interesting, more funny, less complex and more enjoyable.

Every year since at least 1954, fans of author James Joyce have celebrated Bloomsday on June 16– the date (in 1904) when Ulysses takes place.

For Joyce, the special significance of 16 June 1904 was that on that date he had his first date with 20 year old Nora Barnacle, a chambermaid he’d met on 10 June on Nassau street. She’d stood him up on the 14th (or 15th?) but he wrote her a note asking for another meeting, and by August (’heavenly summer’) they were in love.

When the book was published, however, a huge scandal ensued, many claiming that the book was “obscene” or “pornographic”. It was contraband in the United States, and had to be shipped to America in a false book jacket.

But it is not pornographic or obscene. It is beautiful. Each chapter is written in a different style, culminating with Molly’s stream-of-consciousness soliloquy at the end. Plenty of guidebooks exist on how to read Ulysses, but the best piece of advice I can give to anyone is to not get too wrapped up in the details of it the first time though. Dr. Culleton compared reading Ulysses to seeing someone walking in a snowstorm. You see them out the window, you cannot get any details about them, but the important thing is that you see them.

Read it. Enjoy it. Laugh. And for those of you too lazy to read it, here’s a handy summary told in horrid animated gifs and brief one or two sentence summaries for each chapter.

Happy Bloomsday. Tip a pint for Bloom.

(Note: I was unable to find online the best edition of Ulysses. If you plan to buy it, pick up ULYSSES, The Corrected Text, edited by Hans Walter Gabler.

Recent posts by both Dex and Pep, I was reminded how lucky I am to live where I live. Here in Missoula, it’s a comfortable 71%, no humidity, clear and sunny. I look out my South-facing office window over Pattee Canyon and look forward to my two mile bike ride home on a bike path where, when I do encounter a street with cars on it, the cars actually stop to let me cross.I’ve been biking everywhere for almost two months, now, since Perceval, my ‘85 Volvo wagon, died (bad fuel pump). So far, I have commuted to werk 48 consecutive days, in rain and snow and sun. That’s 96 miles for those of you without a calculator. And, according to the Missoula in Motion site, I have conserved 77.73 pounds of carbon dioxide by commuting.

I don’t have to drive two hours to float a river, I have the Blackfoot right in my backyard. I can head down to Caras Park, near the Clark Fork River downtown and catch great local music for free on a Wednesday afternoon while soaking up the sun in the grass, mountains all around me, a blue sky, the smell of cottonwoods wafting up from the river and make it back to werk in time to grab my paycheck, hop on my bike and deposit it in the bank. Getting around is easy. The scenery is great. I feel very lucky.

View from my office window

So I got called into the radio station to fill a show one recent Friday morning. I am not A morning person. At all. And I had to be in the studio @ 5.45AM. I knew I needed to do something to motivate myself so that I wouldn’t sound all tired for my listeners.

Here it is. (You need Quicktime to view.)

You’re not the Cat’s Pajamas anymore, Baby.[clicky]*

*Note: Originally I had the movie embedded, but thought better of it. No sense forcing you to watch.

AOL has recently launched yet another web-based email service. Occasionally, when I am on the air I use AIM Express while in the studio. Whoever is in control of the computer there has permissions locked down, and Messenger is not installed (and, sadly, neither is Firefox) and I sometimes have reason to IM with folks.

Because of this, I received, today, in my regular email account, a notice from AOL that the new mail service had been launched. To save the rest of you the hassle of signing up for an account to take it for a test drive, I’ve done it for you. Login to this AIM Mail account I created with the following:

screename=not5real

PW=aimmailsucks

You can see for yourself what I mean.

My initial thoughts are, well, look at the password I provided, and you can tell my initial thoughts. And here’s why:

1. Gmail does it best
2. Even Hotmail is better than AIM Mail
3. OK those weren’t really reasons
4. Neither is this: I am just acknowledging that I was merely pointing out what AIM Mail is not
5. AIM Mail’s advertising is too in-your-face
6. Limited functionality: 2G of storage — so what? Where’s my free email FWDing? Where’s my free POP?
7. Composing a message opens a pop-up window
8. The GUI is intuitive, but the pageloads are slow, and I tested from a T-1 line
9. Did I mention Gmail?
10. It’s AOL for crying out loud! One of THE WORST service providers around.

Google has raised the bar for web-based email ridiculously high, and I cannot fathom how a better free web-based service would look.

So do yourself a favor, if you had any inkling of giving it a try, use the above login to take it for a drive first.

BTW, if anyone needs an invite, let me know and I’ll get you one. It may not come directly from the linked address, but you’ll get one.

The trains were coupling in the trainyard. Metal on metal and loud clanging banging that would wake anyone who hadn’t heard it before. It was almost six A.M. I was walking home from work.

I’d gone in early last night, at nine. The new guy had called in sick and I made the mistake of answering the phone when it rang. I wasn’t looking forward to slopping a mop all night on my night off, but I needed the money. and the overtime was good.

Now the sunlight washed over the empty tracks ahead of me. Behind me, the huge metal cars loaded with lumber and military machines crashed into one another as the day began. I liked this time of day before the rest of the world was awake. The birds sang their good mornings to one another and the air was sweet with rain and cottonwoods.

Walking across the trainyard, though, my nose took in freshly cut trees, oil and grease, and the smell of old. Only two more blocks until I hit the front step. And I knew Mary Ann would have coffee on, and I could imagine the sound of the bacon sizzling in the cast iron skillet.

As I picked my way carefully along the railroad ties, I spied a man sitting in the shadows of the buildings along the tracks. As I approached him, he stirred, and, hearing my boots crunch over the gravel, he spoke.

“Spare any change?” he asked.

“No thanks,” I replied, shoving my hands into my pockets.

“You ingrateful little fuck,” he rasped. “You ain’t got no respect.”

I had walked just slightly past him by this time, and I slowed my pace.

“You’re a punk!” he yelled.

I turned and walked towards him.

Only last year, I too had found myself evicted and jobless. I was lucky to have Mary Ann to go home to. To now have a roof over my head, and to have a job that pays the bills, even if I was slinging a dirty mop over dirtier floors night after night. My stomach tightened at the memory of having to find my dinner in a Dumpster, having to hope that the police were feeling tolerant that day.

I stopped in front of him.

“Do you have something to say to me?” I asked.

He spat on the ground. His clothes were dirty and ragged, but looked fairly new. His shoes had no holiest in them. “You got no respect. You’re a punk. You’re ungrateful and you fuckin’….”

I cut him off. “Where do you get off,” I asked him, “begging for money, and then insulting someone who doesn’t give it to you?” My hands clasped at the change in my pocket, then let it loose. I knelt near him, to be on the same level as him. “Where do you get off?”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck me? Fuck me. Really.” I was tired, but I wasn’t going to listen to a common panhandler mouth off to me. Not after I just worked eight hours. I wanted to punch him. No one would know. And no one would care.

The yard man stepped out from the shadows about fifteen yards away to have a look at us. I raised my cap to him and smiled. He waved and disappeared again, into the darkness.

My hand tightened around the change in my pocket, clenched in a fist.

“No respect, you mongrel,” he said. “I’m an angel of the Lord.”

“An angel of the Lord?” I repeated.

“I do God’s work,” he said.

“I can tell you, God does not love you,” I said. “God loves those who love Him, and who love themselves, and you, my friend, do not love yourself.”

“Fuck you.”

“Angel of the Lord,” I said, and spat.

“I’ll kill you,” he said. He didn’t stir. He smelled of stale beer.

“Come on, then,” I said. “Kill me.”

“I’m an angel of the Lord,” he said again. “I do God’s work,” he roared, and stood.

I started, and stood abruptly, thinking he might come for me.

He unzipped his pants. His penis was small and pink. He stood there holding it.

“I’m ‘o piss right here,” he said.

“Angel of the Lord has performance anxiety,” I said.

He laughed, then caught himself. “Takes me a while sometimes,” he said.

Yeah,” I said, then turned to go.

I never did hear his piss hitting the concrete.

Yes, I finally acquired the pics. Not many of them turned out, but here are three of the better ones.

Branded Cow.

The hair on my arm burnt off from standing too close to the fire as I ran the irons.

And finally, the payoff.

Yes, those are Rocky Mountain Oysters.

leo devours pisces

consume. nonstop.