while i was home this weekend i watched SportsCenter with my brother pretty much every night, and i was struck by the level of coverage devoted to Barbaro, the racehorse whose leg was badly broken at the Preakness.

the sight of Barbaro pulling up lame in obvious pain and of the distraught jockey trying to settle the horse down after jumping off -- along with the fact that the injury may turn out to be lethal -- seems to have struck an emotional chord with thousands of people, many of whom have sent cards or carrots to the big fella along with wishes for a full recovery.  this is actually a very tragic event, and i think it's reasonable for people to treat it that way.  watching the jockey cry, guessing that in his mind he's grieving for a friend, a coworker, and a magnificent athlete rather than "just an animal," i hope that these thousands of well-wishing fans come to understand that there is no magical dividing line between human and animal.

my guess is that most of these people wouldn't get nearly as upset at the sight of a hamburger as they would at the sight of a horse with a broken leg.  i asked my brother if he figured people would be as viscerally affected by footage of a cow writhing in pain after breaking its leg, and he said: "probably... but they would try really hard not to see that footage."  i guess that's the difference: Barbaro suffers on national television so we can't ignore it, but millions of animals suffer hidden from view in slaughterhouses and factory farms and we actively pretend they don't exist.  as long as meat comes shrink-wrapped on a styrofoam tray, we can remain willfully ignorant of the understanding that it was sliced from the flesh of one of our fellow beings.

i know everyone has a seed of compassion inside them, because it could be plainly read on the faces of the spectators at the Preakness.  it's absolutely horrifying to me that so many people choose to ignore what their gut tells them about the suffering of animals and the unity of all life.

i looked up the other day while i was walking and saw that the hills were all completely green all the sudden. which means i missed all of spring.

i broke my collarbone on March 31st, which means that for the past month i haven't realistically been able to do any of the following things: play guitar, ride my bike, work at my job, put on a t-shirt, throw a baseball, draw, mow the lawn, repair anything, or carry anything that doesn't have a handle. i'm unaccustomed to dealing with limitations, but i resolved shortly after the accident to find creative uses for my suddenly abundant free time. i even made a list.

as usual with things like this, it's all more or less come to naught. i haven't written words or practiced singing, i've barely played piano, i haven't bought a car or a van or gotten auto insurance, i haven't gotten in touch with people i planned to get in touch with, i haven't cleaned my room, i haven't sold any of my excess guitar stuff, etc. etc. etc.

and of course i'm sitting here writing this instead of doing these things.

and of course i spent five minutes trying to get a good picture of poor me in my sling.

anyway, i've got exactly three weeks of this crap left. i hope to get at least a few things done between now and may 26th. and whether i do or not, you people better watch out, because when i get this sling off i'm coming out swinging.

they will be pitiful, atrophied swings... but i'll be swinging. mark your calendar.

i flew back from Ohio tonight.  it's nice to see my grandparents and cousin, but it's always hard to leave.  i left, though.

waiting in the airport i thought i should work on some words for songs since there's apparently a possibility that my band will be playing a show saturday night.  after a great deal of effort i found what i needed, but i stumbled upon some rather vexing questions in the process.

the main one is: what is it exactly that i'm trying to say?

i guess have a peculiar way of looking at the world, but i try not to act like i've got it all figured out, because i don't...   but uncertainty is really difficult to write about... you can only write "i'm confused and unsure" a couple different ways, so i end up writing things along these lines: the universe is creatorless, rudderless, and meaningless, and human beings are dangerous creatures.

the thing is that it's really important to me to see the world as a miraculous place, which it is.  it's also important to me to realize how fortunate we all are to have been born at a time and place that makes it possible for us to live like we do.  but it's far beyond my capabilities to capture the majesty of the life in words... i worry that i end up writing whiny things about my little life just for the sake of saying something.

that said, i think that love and community are needs just as basic to a sentient being as food or shelter, and there are plenty of forces in the modern world that sever connections that we really need to live.  i don't think it's invalid for a suburban teenager to be depressed about breaking up with her boyfriend while thousands of infants in Africa are born dying of AIDS.  being alive is hard either way.  and i guess if i'm feeling a complaint and that's all i can squeeze out onto paper, then that's what i ought to go with.

i guess the root of my problem is that i feel like i only describe a tiny anomic corner of existence while the rest goes unheralded and uncriticised.  and i can't imagine that these petty observations, apropos as they may be to my life, might mean anything at all to anyone else... in which case i'm failing to achieve the main thing i want out of music, which is a sense of shared understanding or some sort of emotional-connection-by-proxy with some subset of the human race.  or something like that.

i'm afraid i might be barking up all the wrong trees.

Halloween is my new favorite holiday, and i can't for the life of me figure out why it never has been before.  at no other time of the year do the forces of makeup, costume, and general creepiness combine to such unsettling effect.  i think over the past couple of years the prospect of being not-me has grown increasingly appealing as well.

saturday i was a polar bear, which was good because i think bears are probably the master race.  i was definitely the world's largest land predator.

i think i slept most of sunday, and then on Halloween proper i went to Atlanta to see Coheed and Cambria at the Tabernacle... which was like creep central, because there is probably no geekier band in the world right now.  there were a good number of costumed dweebs in the audience; Jenni and i just went with the simple zombie look.  Coheed of course had a smoke machine, a ridiculous light show, and a big guillotine on stage, plus we were in an old church... and it just felt like the right place to be on Halloween.  it was also a fantastic show.

but now Halloween's over, so if i want to wear a costume any time in the next 360 days i'll have to make up some other excuse.

and the red is surprisingly difficult to wash off... hmmm...

so this past saturday, after a frivolous cross-country automobile voyage, i pulled on a piece of officially-licensed Nike athletic apparel, painted my face red, white, and blue, slung a drum around my neck with a modified guitar strap, and marched into a stadium with my dad and little brother (both of whom had painted themselves to resemble weird French mimes...)



anyway, why would i do something like this?



two-nil, motherfuckers.  that's why.

anyway, now that i've gotten that out of the way, i can go back to being ashamed of my country like i ought to, at least until the World Cup rolls around next summer... when the streets of Stuttgart will run red with the blood of America's enemies and all opposition will be trampled under my imperialist jackboot.

but until then, i'm still safe to talk to.

one of the minor reasons why life is actually good against all odds:

five-hour drive with a broken tape deck
plus Avril
plus Kelly Clarkson
plus Mariah
equals 65MPH falsetto singalong.

and Coldplay... oh, Coldplay.

when the world was created, god, in his infinite wisdom, put some sort of meteorological funnel over the future site of Sylva, NC, so that every west-to-east storm front and every hurricane raging in from the Atlantic would drop a few bucket loads on the inhabitants before it moved along.  i'm actually very glad about this, because it means that the hills in summer are my exact favorite shade of green, but it also means it rains all the time.  it seems like it's been raining nonstop for a week and a half, although i know that's not true.

(there's also not really a god.)

anyway, i know it wasn't raining on the 4th of July, because they definitely shot a lot of fireworks off from the courthouse a few blocks from where i live.  for some reason i hadn't really expected them to do that, and it was very disconcerting.  it felt like the town was being shelled.  the walls and windows rattled, and it scared the bejeezus out of Onyx and the cats.

and i can't really think of anything that's happened between then and now except a lot of rain... but the other day i made a realization that may mean i'll quit my job before the year is out.  we've got older kids now, and the last of the younger little devils is gone, and i think a very distinct corner has been turned:  i can't honestly say i particularly like any of the kids we have now.  i still care about them and want the best for them... but i don't feel as good when i get home from work as i used to, and i don't really hold out any high hopes for the bunch we have now.  i guess i'll keep going until i get really uncomfortable; right now i'm just less happy than i was before, which isn't really much to complain about.  it's still a good job.

that's enough outta me.

so i took a trip to Cleveland for a week with Jeff.  we watched some baseball games, and we saw some rock and roll shows, and Jeff made a bunch of friends through smoking and drinking, and there were a bunch of posters for the Grog Shop, where we saw some decent shows, drawn by a guy named Jake Kelly, and they made me pretty happy.  we also went to Detroit for long enough to be scared of Detroit, and to Windsor, Ontario, for long enough to not really want to go back to Detroit.  i got falafel in the middle of the night, which is really important to me, and Jeff got to be the first person in his family to leave the country since they got here, as far as he knows.  we got hassled and searched at the border on the way back in, but they didn't find the 12 ounces of dank i had hidden in my chubby cheeks.  they just thought i had a speech impediment.

anyway, that didn't actually happen, but i did shoot a shotgun exactly 50 times and i hit the clay disc 24 times, so if i ever find myself in a situation where i have to senselessly murder some birds i guess i'm ready.  (you never know.)  i had fun with my grandparents and they had fun with me.  Boompa showed me and Jeff the sandstone quarry where his father and grandfather worked their whole lives.  it was a huge hole.

a few days ago we came back and i haven't done anything since except hang out with my lazy cats and break Jenni's camera.  i did get something fun in the mail the other day: a bachelor of arts degree from the esteemed Western Carolina University.  i had no idea i had graduated, so that was neat.  i am now officially qualified to do something somewhere.

now i'm at work, which is where everyone always ends up, especially in my circle of friends, because we all work at the same place.  and for the moment, for some reason, i'm not feeling too disappointed about anything, so i'm going to roll with that and go dish out some meds.

so there's this website i run.  it's about people trying to make independent music in these sparsely populated, Bible-belt mountains i live in.  it's nothing great, but it's been a fun hobby and it has provided a venue for a few interesting conversations.  i'm proud of the fact that i've spent my time trying to help other people achieve their creative and social goals.

so i was very sad the other day when the emails and IMs started rolling in to tell me that the quietzine forum had been hacked and replaced with some amateurish graphics and a boastful taunt from this kid in Turkey who had decided to spend his free time destroying instead of creating.

after a couple of hours i had everything running again, but the database had already been wiped clean of all the conversations, announcements, arguments, and jokes that people had posted over the last year or so.  it's not that this is such a huge loss -- quietzine is not a big deal -- but another blow is dealt to my flagging faith in humanity every time i see a new example of people's propensity to senselessly destroy everything in their path.

note to self:  please do something at some point.  please.

does it even count as hanging out with a friend if i just sit in a friend's room and play a video game for a few hours while he cleans stuff?  i don't think so.  maybe half of it counts as hanging out, and the rest counts as me finding yet another way to totally waste time.

it's one thing if you procrastinate to put off homework, or yard work, or doing the dishes, but i always manage to do a good job of avoiding doing the things i want to do.  this is a problem.

i would say that wasting the past few minutes on MySpace is another fine example of this phenomenon, except that i'm currently at work, where it's hard to really do anything important except work.