Journey to the East

Slight Change

2011-05-31T22:44:00.002-04:00

Actually, the new blog address is http://groooover.com/blog. Just a small change, but it will affect any RSS feed bookmarks or Google Reader subscriptions you may have.

New Blog

2010-08-30T14:44:00.003-04:00

Friends,

This blog is officially over, and has been for a year and more. After an extended absence from the blogoshire, I have decided to return, but at a new location. Please find me at

groooover.com

Thank you.

Engage.

2009-05-30T14:02:00.002-04:00

My Number 1 made it so.

A String of Great Days

2009-05-20T22:20:00.003-04:00

My friends,

This is just to say that I've had an outrageously long string of great days in my life. This has prevented me from writing for two big reasons:

1. Why write when I'm feeling good? I know that doesn't really make sense, that it's not a defensible stance, but there it is.
2. I recently visited DC and Utah; I recently wrote, submitted, and defended a master's thesis; I recently participated in a literary festival; I recently saw all the current blockbuster films of the season; I recently sent a woman flowers; I recently met my niece; I recently rode a bike for 20 miles; and on and on. Tomorrow I leave for Idaho for six days.

Besides, the journey to the East is at an end: my graduation is in less than a month.

Proof I'm not dead, or wasn't, two months ago.

The really real reason, though? I fell in love. I spend all my blog time thinking up sweet nothings to whisper delicately in the dark.

Into my cell phone.

On Bad Days

2009-04-20T21:49:00.003-04:00

So today wasn't exactly a good day. I was sitting in class (around hour 3 of 6 straight), leaning back in my chair a bit, staring off into space, and my teacher suddenly chomped at me: "Grover! What are you doing? Why so glum? What's wrong?! Why aren't you sitting at the table with the rest of us!? Why don't you shave!?!"

He was kidding, of course, and I gave an appropriately dismissive response and scooted up. But in that first moment of confusion when he started at me, I thought he was serious and prepared a serious answer—well, a serious evasion. I started to say, "Oh, nothing," because that's what you say when something's not right but you don't want to broadcast your problems. So even though he was just mixing up the class a bit with a humorous aside, it set me thinking about what kind of day I was having and why.

Before I tell you about it, I want to say this: there's a difference between having bad days and being aware that a day isn't great. One gets the feeling that in choosing to call a day "bad," one is choosing to be negative, to see the worst in things. And while that may often be the case, it isn't always true. Sometimes the act of recognizing a day as a bad day is the first step to turning it around.

So that's what I was thinking in my class after being called out. I realized in that moment that the day I was in wasn't my best day, that I wasn't at my best for some reason, and that I was merely suffering through it in hopes of a better one tomorrow.

But that's not entirely true either. The day wasn't all bad. It started quite well. I got up early to do a spot of homework before going with some of my church fellows to the bishop's storehouse to do a few hours service. I'd never been to the storehouse before, and I quite liked it. The smell of cardboard there reminded me of my days stocking a Hobby Lobby, and the smell of the cooler reminded me of keeping the salad bar stocked at the restaurant where I waited tables. Also, my grandparents served a mission in a bishop's storehouse in Houston when I was a teenager, and it was nice to see what kind of service they had been doing all those years, especially now that both have passed on. And it was great to see some Church peanut butter, which is canned in Houston next door to the storehouse, a job my grandfather did for many years.

It was nice to see welfare in action, to see how much work is done and how handily and to become aware of just how many are in need.

So what was making me so unhappy in class? Could it be that I wasn't as prepared as I'd wanted to be? Maybe. I hadn't read the material as closely as I'd wanted to. Could it be the stress of finishing grad school? Maybe. School has been known to cause me undue stress, now as much as ever. Could it just be general chemical biological stuff, the randomness of genetics? Possibly. Spring has that effect on me from time to time (I take Claritin, usually).

But here's another hypothesis. My brother claims that any day on which he fails to shower is a good day. Whenever he's feeling great and wonders why, he inevitably concludes that the reason is that he did not wash away the natural oils that his body produces to protect him. People say that's crazy but he challenges them to find another common factor in all his good days. I, too, enjoy not showering all the dang time, but I think I may have a limit. Sitting in class today I realized that I didn't feel right because I didn't feel clean anymore. My hair was getting greasy and, as my teacher kindly pointed out, I hadn't shaved in more than a few days. I was wearing the same clothes as the day before (and the day before?), and I was a little damp from walking to school in the rain. Earlier in the day I had wanted to shower but hadn't had the time. I was feeling grubby, crummy.

So, could the reason I suddenly felt the day wasn't a good day be that I wasn't clean and wanted to be? Is it that simple?

If so, tomorrow's going to be so good it'll hurt. See you in the morning, shower.

Happy for Me

2009-03-31T21:51:00.005-04:00

So here's the scoop: I've got a girlfriend. Somewhere out there in the world is a nice young lady who has agreed not to date anyone one else for the time being. More than that, she tells me that she likes me, that she thinks about me when I'm not around, that she longs to be with me.

We're a long-distance couple, see, and so this is a big thing, I think. I've been asking around for advice on how to manage a relationship over miles and miles of space, and the overwhelming response is "Don't waste your time." But I am, I want to, she wants to, and we're doing things to make it worth it regardless.

That's not what this is about—this isn't an announcement. But you need to know something about the situation to understand what I'm trying to say.

Many of you are aware that the last time I was in a relationship was three years ago. You may also be aware that I'm 27, which, in Mormon terms, is often "misheard" as 47 (though that's not what this is about either). So you can, perhaps, appreciate that I'm pretty excited about what's happening in my life right now. Outrageously excited at times.

And yet, I've been terribly cautious about talking about this at all. On the one hand, I'm trying to be discreet. But that doesn't explain why I find myself carefully talking around the fact that I have a girlfriend, why—though suddenly hours and hours of my time are being used to compose emails and place phone calls, though half my energy goes into daydreaming and trying to conjure up the remembered shadow of this girl I've met only twice but decided to bind myself to, though since six weeks ago everything I hear, see, touch, taste, and smell is refracted first through the lens of her imagined heart and only then processed by my own—why, despite all that, I don't allow her name to enter my conversation even a fraction of the amount of times it enters my mind. Everything in my world has changed color, but I'm carefully still calling blue blue, green green, and red red. Just the other day, Kate smilingly accused me of being very excited about it all when I accidentally used the words "my girlfriend" twice in one day. She was right, of course, and I checked myself: I had gotten carried away on little hiccups of joy. The pleasure of hearing those words escape my mouth—"my girlfriend"—had proven too much to refuse.

I've been thinking about why this is so, about why I'm loath to make vocal the way I'm starting to feel about a girl. This is the stuff that songs are written about, right? The stuff that poets eat, that spiral notebooks are graffitied with. So why am I playing it so close to the chest?

Part of it is, of course, common courtesy, and another part of it is a fear of finding myself naïve tomorrow. I realize it's all a little ridiculous and a lot tentative, that what today seems to be a real and lasting connection might turn out tomorrow to be a misunderstanding or a misplaced expectation. But that's the easy and obvious answer, one that ultimately speaks in my favor.

May I suggest an original and honest answer? I fear the reason may be that I find it hard to believe that my hearers will be genuinely happy for me. I know, this sounds absurd, and it is. Why wouldn't my friends and family be happy that I'm happy, that I may have found someone with which to be long happy? In truth, all those I've told have been nothing but enthusiastic and encouraging.¹ There have been smiles and interested questions and pats on the back. They've all been dears (thank you, all). But I've met their queries with reluctance, with self-effacement and dodging, in most cases, and widely abbreviated accounts of the truth, and I'm scared of what it says about me and how I see them.

Many of my friends are single themselves, and many of our conversations revolve around past, present, and possible love (or, as one remarked recently, "I thought leaving Provo would end so much talk of relationships, but boy was I wrong!"). Some of them have been single much longer than me and some are older than me, but many are younger or have had more luck. Some really seem to want it and some seem unhurried, and, among the girls who are my confidants, there is sometimes the [mostly] unspoken possibility of love between us. Do I really have so little respect and admiration for these my friends that I imagine, rationally or not, consciously or not, that deep in their hearts they would feel jealousy rather than happiness at my good fortune? Why else would I clam up; why else tiptoe through conversations with my closest and best?

There may be a worse reason. Could it be that deep down in my own heart I lack the ability to be happy for myself? That I don't really believe this is possible, that I don't find myself deserving? Could it be that I believe that I am not destined for happiness, that I am not, in the end, lovable? Could the very reason I almost can't bear to hear myself exult, that her name has become almost an incantation, that I fear to dart and bound lest this collection of stained glass and fairy dust be shaken from my heart be that I respect and admire myself least of all, that what I fear is that I—not she, and not the rest of you—but that I will be the one who finally turns away from me in disgust?

¹ The pessimistic advice has all come from strangers or people who didn't know I was asking on my own behalf.

Contest Results

2009-03-20T13:47:00.003-04:00

Last week in the office at school I sponsored a caption contest. Here are some of the hilarious results (click on pics to see full sized).

The contest announcement was posted on the wall last Tuesday.

First Place: Joe P.—no, that's too obvious: J. Plicka.

Second Place: Holly

Honorable Mention: My Liege

Honorable Mention: Joey

Honorable Mention: Zach

I posted the winners on the backs of old flyers I stole from the bulletin board in the hall. Is that wrong? Since I posted, there's been a lot of backlash in the office including accusations of "Mormon nepotism" and self-declarations of winningness.

Zach says he's going to sponsor a reverse-caption contest when we get back from Spring Break.

Money

2009-03-16T22:20:00.004-04:00

I got reimbursed today for some trips I took as part of my education here in Athens. That's how it works—they'll fund us to go to conferences and things, but we gotta put the money out up front and then they pay us back. So today I finally finished the paperwork and went down to the bursar's office so they could cut me a check.

Only they didn't cut me a check; they paid my in cold, hard cash. Well, green grubby cash, anyway. Suddenly my wallet was too fat to fold nicely—I felt like I used to after a Friday night of waiting tables. I booked it over to the bank and deposited that dough, plus two tax return checks, and suddenly my bank account had tripled in size.

As I was walking home, I passed the Blue Eagle, Athens' music store. There in the window I expected to see two of the prettiest accordions I've ever seen, a red one and a white one for only about $300 each. They've been there for a few weeks and I've lusted after them, gone in to honk on them a bit. With so much new money in the bank—money that'd been gone so long I didn't miss it or need it anymore—I knew I'd be tempted, but I wasn't prepared for what I saw.

The red one was gone! Someone must've bought it in the last few days. I was expecting to stand there for a minute and taste the temptation as I peered through the glass at my babies, but I wasn't expecting the sudden rush of panic when one of them was gone. Now the temptation was real—if I didn't buy the white one right now, someone, anyone, could up and buy it from under my nose. I've got the money, I thought. I could just walk in there and make all my dreams come true.

No! I mustn't! I tore myself away and walked home. I'm opening up a high-yield savings account with ING Direct and depositing that money far away until it's time to spend it on what's really important. And what that is, I ain't telling. But I've got plans...

I thought I should take this opportunity, though, to share some things I've learned about recently. I'm trying to get more into personal finance and building good money habits, and these are some good resources I've discovered.

Get Rich Slowly is a blog that was started by a regular guy who found himself thousands of dollars in debt for no good reason. He just hadn't been paying attention. For years. Once he realized what trouble he was in, he dedicated himself to figuring out how to fix it, and he starting this blog to track himself and his ideas. Turns out he's a gifted writer and teacher, and his advice is always very encouraging. I'm not in a situation anywhere near to him, but I still love reading what he's got to say about things. I recommend starting here.
Pear Budget is a really simple budget service that helps you keep track of where your money is going. You don't have to know anything about budgeting (I don't) to make it work for you. You just throw in some numbers (it guides you) and then keep track of your receipts and stuff, and Pear Budget tells you if you're on track or what. I like that it's online, it's easy, and it's customizable. But it does cost $3 a month after the trial's over (which is plenty long enough to find out if it's worth it).
Mint.com is a similar money-tracking service, but the emphasis here isn't so much on budgeting. It links to your bank accounts and stuff and keeps up-to-the-minute records of what comes in and goes out. It creates graphs and charts to help you see where you're spending, and it looks very slick. You can make a budget on Mint, but it's not as robust as Pear Budget, even though it's prettier and easier to keep track of since most of the updating is automatic. Also, it's free. They make a commission whenever you choose to take them up on one of their "suggestions." The thing is that Mint looks at how you spend money and stuff and can recommend checking accounts and credit cards that match your needs. It's not intrusive at all, but you do get the feeling that your life is being quantified and the information is being sold without a face attached. But that's unavoidable these days, and what you get for it is boss.

It's not too late to start being better with your money this year. We can all go on vacation together. I'm rooting for you!

To Drew, or maybe to Mary

2009-03-12T23:46:00.004-04:00

Drew man,

I know we've always gotten a lot of flack for this:

But what the heck is this, then?

I'm pretty sure that's Henry B. Eyring sporting the only true and living fashion.

Of LyingOf Favorites

2009-02-23T21:46:00.002-05:00

This is a public service announcement.

As it happens, people like to ask people what their favorite things are: favorite books, favorite movies, favorite music, and on and on. To this sort of question there are a few possible responses:

"My favorite movie is Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves."
"Oh, um, I'm not sure, I mean, well, gee, I, uh, never thought about it before but maybe, uh...I don't know."
"Well that depends on what kind of movie we're talking about. If you mean, 'What's my favorite sci-fi?' it's Star Trek IV, unless you count TV movies, in which case it's the special two-hour finale of The Pretender. But if I can count movies and their corresponding TV serieses, I pick Serenity and all of Firefly as pretty much the best thing ever. My favorite Joss Whedon, though, is probably Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog or maybe Season 2 of Buffy. If you mean 'best action movie,' it's definitely Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, which is also my pick for best romantic comedy, best thriller, and best Morgan Freeman movie. But it's actually not the best Robin Hood movie, because I'm actually a big fan of Roger Miller's work with Disney on their version of it, but if you meant 'best overall movie ever' I'd have to go with..."¹

The correct answer is answer #1. Let me illustrate why with a short anecdote.

When I lived in Korea I would make several calls every evening to confirm appointments, follow up on new contacts, return missed calls, and be generally bothersome, etc. Every time I called someone the same thing would happen. They'd answer the phone and say, "Yobosaeyo!"

"Yobosaeyo. Is Mr. Kim there?"

"Where are you?"

At this sudden question I would furrow my brow in confusion and say, "I'm, uh, at home. Where...are you?"

"Who is this?"

"It's the missionaries."

Why this fascination with my location all the time? Every person I called asked me the same question; this went on for months. I would ask to speak with someone and they'd want to know where I was. I already knew where they were, since I was doing the calling, but I thought it might be rude not to ask back so I always did.

And then one day it clicked: they weren't asking me where I was; they were asking me who I was. Oh, the word was definitely "where." But it was an idiom, a semantic twist of language. In Korea, on the phone, "Where you at?" means "Who you is?" Just like how in America, "Why don't you close the door?" means "Please close the door, dear." It's semantics, baby.

So how does this apply to you, friends? When someone asks you your favorite anything, they aren't really asking you that. What they are really saying is something like, "Hey, give me a quick opinion in an interesting category and I'll either agree or debate."

What they're really saying is, "This date sucks. Let's talk about something."

So answer #2 is obviously wrong because it gives no opinion at all. Answer #3 is more information than anyone really wants.² Answer #1 is exactly what is called for, a quick, debatable opinion.⁴

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "But what if I don't know what my favorite something is?" Friend, in that case, lie. Make something up. Choose at random from your top ten-ish things in that category and get on with your life. Besides, who's to say that you're lying? Who's to say that your favorite color isn't currently lavender and your favorite dish soap is the kind that smells like apples? There's no law saying that you can't change your mind later, one minute later even, if you want to. And if anyone challenges whether you really think something's your favorite, just give'm the old Kip: "Like anyone can even know that, Napoleon."

¹ This post is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of any part of this post to real people, living or dead, is unintentional. Unless it sounds like you. In that case, be sure to read footnote 2 when it comes up.
² No, don't read footnote 2 yet—wait till it comes up. Then skip to footnote 3, since you ruined this one.
³ If you give something akin to answer #3 and the person you are with lights up and enters what becomes a long, soul-searching conversation, get married immediately. You're not likely to do better.
⁴ Well, it's not really debatable, but you get the idea.

Bonus Rounds

2009-02-18T22:19:00.014-05:00

The first bonus round was a game to keep people busy until everyone showed up. It consisted of designing a new hairdo for yours truly. Click on the thumbnails to see their true glory. The winner was the wrinkly, freaky looking one at the bottom.

The second bonus round was another Grover Family classic, the Drawing Game. And we didn't screw around, either; we went straight for the action—Scrooge McDuck. Some people couldn't even handle the pressure and threw their pens with great force in frustration, demanding we move on to the next round. I think Pat's may have won, but I can't remember.

As a point of reference:

Over all it was a good mix of games. As you can see, everyone humiliated themselves, but they all had a chance to humiliate me.

Grover Family Game Night: Chicago Edition

2009-02-17T21:11:00.008-05:00

So here's the deal: AWP is fun, but it has lots of flaws. There's a lot of pretension, a lot of backhanded complimenting, a lot of spotlight stealing. I've always wished it was a celebration of writing rather than some kind of seminar, a place to be encouraged and reinvigorated, to enjoy words and the writing of them, rather than a place to enjoy the idea that your own words will be appreciated if you shake enough hands.

I'm not dogging the institution or the people who do it right (the nice girl who talk to Z and I for an hour without even a mention of future favors,¹ the guy I met last year in Iowa who still thinks to say hi [we didn't recognize each other at first: we had traded beards]), but the whole thing lends itself to suckiness.

So, in order to counter that just a bit, and in order to promote goodwill and friendship among my several social circles, and perhaps in hopes of there being a future tradition, I called an emergency Grover Family Game Night to be held in my hotel room Friday night. It was an Academic Octathlon with two Bonus Rounds, prizes to be awarded for top team and top solo player. Behold the fun:

Two reps from each team participated in each round of the Grover Family classic, Forest Whitaker. You could get bonus points by naming the year each movie was released.

Sarah looks beatific. (She left early, before discovering her team lost. Bad.)

Mike and Dave, determined to not look dumb.

Beware this tower of Madden power.

Joey is more than likely about to make a terrible pun, and Melissa hasn't figured that out yet.

Pat calls a foul as other contestants look on in...slight boredom.

The Joey Franklin Experience competes in the Creativity Round, each member in turn saying a word that starts with the last letter of the word before and that fits the category "Family Reunion."

Amy is either a ghost or a master of telepathy—Emily considers the options. (Joe, meanwhile, couldn't be any more handsome.)

Pat wins the Bonus Round and graciously shares his Jonas Brothers Valentine's candy.

Teams check their answers in the Geography Round against a map of Africa.

Mike announces the final scores (we only had time for 6 rounds).

The Winning Team: The Eminent Immethodical Disputants STARSHIP.

Dave, MVP and winner of the Solo Performance Prize (a copy of Best American Travel Writing signed by Charles Dickens), shows off the goods.

The Host with the Most (wearing a dapper Cliff Huxtable sweater).

I only wish more Grovers could've been there (three words: Add-on Dance Contest). Tomorrow I'll post the results of the Bonus Rounds—you won't believe it.

¹The married girl who talked to us for an hour, I should say, so you know it was real. I mean, our literary clout is nothing compared to our good looks and charm, and she didn't have designs on either.

Chicago

2009-02-16T22:04:00.004-05:00

I spent most of last week in Chicago attending the Association of Writer's and Writing Program's (AWP¹) 2009 Conference. It was a blast.

I drove there in a minivan with four of my great friends: Dave, Dave, Mike, and Zach. Well, actually I slept most of the way, but I woke up enough to sing along to a rousing rendition of, uh, well, I forgot. I wasn't all that awake after all.

We stayed at the Palmer House Hilton. Don't ask how that happened—some combination of internet savvy, departmental funding, and sheer luck put us in a gigantic corner room of a four-star hotel with two beds and two extra cots for next to nothing. We went to presentations, flirted with girls at the book fair, ate in posh restaurants, saw the sights, and generally had a good time. On Sunday morning we packed up and drove home (again, I slept most of the way, except when I woke up enough to, well, nevermind). Here are some pictures I didn't take:

Zach and I at some kind of reception. Mom, thanks for
the puffy vest; it gave me Michael-J-Foxlike confidence.

Here's me and Mike and a little sliver of Jackson.

I didn't take this picture and I was never actually here, but it's
a nice shot. I lent Dave my camera for pretty much the whole trip.

¹I know what you're thinking: Why not AWWP? Hey, we're writers, not, uh, well, aw shoot.

Practical Applications

2009-02-09T21:08:00.002-05:00

If I got my three wishes, here is what I would do:

1. I would work as a courier. I'd get some business to pay me big bucks to deliver packages for them, or maybe I'd start my own business, and then I'd transport their mail for them for a few hours a week or something. I could be my own branch of the postal service, or maybe a super special UPS man in brown shorts (yikes!).

2. I'd woo a lady. We'd go on one of those super dates with dinner in New York and dessert in Paris and an evening stroll in the Great Barrier Reef. I'd wow her with exotic locations so as not to draw attention to my flaws. I'd send her love post cards, but I wouldn't actually send them; I'd transport in, leave one on her desk at work, and transport out. All the stamps would be handmade works of art. I'd learn calligraphy too.

3. Our wedding reception would be held on ice—I'd transport anyone in who was coming from out of town. Everyone would be ice skating around a rink completely decked out in awesome, except for old people and ice-haters, who could stand around eating cocktail weenies. I've actually written about this before, but now I can make it a reality:

First we'd have to decorate the place pretty good; ice rinks are notoriously ugly and warehouse-esque. Kate and I discussed the necessity of hanging lots of fabric to eat up the echoes and make the room more amenable to music and stuff. There could also be a thin layer of fog over the ice, giving the whole place a fantasy aspect, very "Night Among the Stars" prom-themed. People could have their pictures taken with the Zamboni. Then there'd have to be a stage erected on one side of the rink, for the band. Can you just imagine a rink full of elegantly dressed skaters semi-dancing to the sounds of a live band? Awesome. My lady and I would've worked hard to choreograph our first dance on ice, probably to something like "Everything I Do I Do It For You" or "More Than Words." (Seriously, can you imagine how much fun it might be to spend the weeks leading up to your wedding working on a figure skating routine with your lover? Just designing the costumes would be worth it.) Then, later on in the evening, I'd get up on stage and play with the band, some monster ballads and stuff. When it got time to play the solo to "Purple Rain" or "Every Rose Has Its Thorn," I'd jump off the stage, with my guitar, in my skates, and play those triumphant notes in all there glory as I skidded and twirled and skated to greatest effect.

(Read the full post.)

4. If I got bored of delivering mail, I'd sell myself to science by offering researchers stats from my book. I'm sure they could do something good with that, cure boredom or something.

5. I'd also fake my death once or twice, and leave clues for my wife (she's in on it, of course) to come find me.

6. I'd visit the moon. It'd be a short visit.

¹ What? I said I had faults!

Final Wishes

2009-02-08T00:18:00.003-05:00

For my third and final wish, I demand of you, genie, the following:

A book containing every imaginable statistic of my life, constantly updated, and offering various analyses and breakdowns and graphs of the data. Preferably a small book that I could carry around, and with a tasteful cover design—blank leather would be nice, maybe with a little gold tooling on the spine.

I'll leave the details up to you, el genio, but I imagine it would work well if I could just state clearly to the book what information I wished to see—number of breaths taken on a certain day, total number of heartbeats up to the present, number of times I've used the word "shoelaces," etc.—and then I would open the book and find the desired information there. It would be nice if the book could just read my mind ('twould save some embarrassment not to have to speak aloud, say, on an overnight train ride, when I'm likely to while away the hours perusing my own facts¹), but I'll understand if you're busy or tired. You've worked hard. Oh, and also, it would be cool if the book kind of had a mind of its own, enough to offer extra stats or graphs or analyses related to what I ask for but that I probably wouldn't think to think of on my own.

Doesn't this lamp match my blog's décor nicely?
(Sorry, Google Readers. You lame.)
Well, them's my three wishes. I want to remind you that I am completely serious about this. I've thought about it for a long long time, and these are what I'd really really wish for.

And now, in keeping with the title of this post, I'd like to bequeath my belovéd lamp to Dave, my roommate and boon companion. Let him wish for good things, and let him decide for himself whether to wish the genie free or pass him on (I vote for passing it on).

I want my ashes scattered on the moon, except for my heart. That I leave to Texas, literally.

¹ What the hell am I doing on a train? I can transport! (Pardon my French, SVP.)

Three Updates, Not Third Wishes

2009-02-06T00:21:00.005-05:00

These three updates come from the three fronts on which I seem to be fighting.

Concerning Wishes:

The following is from the "Legacy and Influences" section of Steve Perry's Wikipedia page. It proves something about Wikipedia, though I'll let you decide what that is.

Steve Perry is frequently considered one of the best male rock vocalists of all time. He consistently ranks among the top ten rock vocalists of all time in many music polls. His signature style of using real emotion in every performance, along with his unmistakable tenor voice, makes him a rarity in music. With Perry's wide range of vocal abilities, he was able to invent the power ballad and take it to a new level of emotion and feeling. It was said that Jon Bon Jovi gave him the name "The Voice". Queen guitarist Brian May said in a 2007 interview "Perry is a truly luminous singer, in my opinion — a voice in a million".

Many artists have cited Steve Perry as being an influence including: Josh Groban, Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty, Chris Daughtry, Garth Brooks, Jon Bon Jovi, Barney Greenway of Napalm Death, and Sebastian Bach.

Concerning Snacks

To illustrate further just how far gone the American Snacking Crisis is, allow me to relate an anecdote. Tonight, Zach and I went to see the very last showing of Frost/Nixon in Athens (Fantastic—I recommend it). At the Athena Grand, they sell their tickets directly out of the concessions line, which is a shrewd business move because it removes the pain of taking out your wallet twice. You may have decided about what to see before you came, but you've only begun to consider things like Sour Patch Kids and Junior Mints.

Those aren't so much of a temptation for me, but fountain drinks are. I'm in a pact not to drink soda except for the last day of the month, so when I stepped to the front of the line I knew it would only be a ticket for me. But then, just above the cashier's shoulder, I saw the swirling frosty goodness of a generic slushy machine. "Those aren't carbonated, Zach!" I reveled, and then said, "One ticket and one slushy."

The boy glanced over his shoulder at the machine and asked, "What color would you like, red or blue?"

Did that kid just ask me what color of slushy I wanted? "Don't you mean, 'What flavor?'"

"Uh, yeah. Red or blue?"

I took the red-flavored slushy. Mr. President, what we need is a taskforce.

Concerning Trivial Pursuit:¹

My last post's instigating adventure occurred en route to Rollerbowl, Athens' only bowling alley.² When we arrived, we found the place beleaguered by—what else?—leaguers, so we couldn't play.³ Instead we went to my house to drown our Combined sorrows over Newtons and Trivial Pursuit. We were playing a beautifully preserved Genus edition with the original 1982 questions. Some of the questions were for things that have now become so esoteric that they are virtually unanswerable, and others that may once have been trivial are now so obvious as to be laughable. Among them were these gems:

Who puts you in the driver's seat?
Who tells it like it is?
What does I.Q. stand for?
What is a pyrotechnic display?⁴

At one point I answered a green one correctly for a pie and reached over to fit a green piece in my token. I wasn't really paying attention to the simple operation, and when I couldn't fit the piece in after a few seconds I looked to see what the problem was.

It was a Monopoly house.

¹ If wishes are my Afghanistan and Combos are my Iraq, Trivial Pursuit is my War on Drugs.
² But not, as one may guess, Athens' only roller rink. In fact, it's not a roller rink at all.
³ That was for you, Zach.
⁴ They are Hertz, Howard Cosell, "intelligence quotient," and a fireworks show.

Something of Such Importance That It Demands to be Told

2009-02-04T21:49:00.004-05:00

Hey, you read the title. I can't tell you about wish #3 today because I have to tell you something so important that it can't wait.

Today I ate the single grossest thing I've ever tasted. It was foul and funky and completely repulsive; it defies my vocabulary and analogical ability to do justice. I was in a car with some friends when I stuck this thing in my mouth, and at first I thought I hadn't gotten quite a good enough taste, since I had just been stuffing my mouth with some Chex Mix-ish arrangement I'd found in a tupperware in the back seat ("nuts and bolts," they called it). So I quickly put another one or two of these things in my mouth to make sure I could really taste it.

Suddenly I wanted to retch. Often when you eat something gross among friends it's a laughable experience—you say, "Ewww, gross—hey, eat some of this!" and offer it around to perpetuate the joke. But this was beyond being a laughing matter. It wasn't that the thing itself tasted like dirt or like what [we imagine] poo tastes like; this food item was bad because it presumed to taste like something delicious, one of my favorite things, in fact. But rather than merely fail to recreate the desired taste (as orange soda does, with inscrutably delicious results), it made an unholy mockery of it. I immediately stuffed my face with nuts and bolts and thought longingly and urgently of the sharp, cleansing acidity of carbonation, or possibly the straightforward burn of rubbing alcohol.

I want you to realize this is coming from a guy who enjoys eating things he hates. Who says, "I hate olives on pizza," just before smiling widely and cramming an olive-covered slice in his pizza hole. Who has eaten every known variant of kimchi. Who has sampled raw octopus, candied jellyfish, and some sort of sea vegetable that I could never figure out a name for but that was, until today, the single most disgusting thing ever to grace my tongue.

What was this unutterably sickening food?

Bacon.

Egg.

and Cheese.

Combos.

I do not want to live in a country that willfully produces such things. I don't want to live in a country that accepts such things as legal imports. I've said it for years and I'll say it again: the man who eats Combos is a man who obviously has little left to live for. They are what hollow-eyed truckers and slump-shouldered fisherman reach for when they don't expect to actually come back this trip, what college bachelors eat only after the freezer-burned chimichangas, the rancid milk, and the couch crumbs have all been devoured. When a person reaches for comfort and finds himself reaching for Combos, their mortal coil has become unwound: Combos are murder, murder most foul in the mouth.

Why, then, did I even eat these Combos in the first place, you ask? It wasn't because I didn't know or didn't believe. It was because I honestly didn't believe they could be that terrible.

A few months ago I was explaining with vitriol my theory to a friend—the same friend whose car this was—who then accused me of prejudice. He claimed that I hadn't had Combos in some time, and that I was probably misremembering how bad they were. I was taken aback—he was right, of course, that I hadn't eaten a Combo in years. Maybe he was right.

I immediately found a CVS and made my way to the snack foods aisle. I found the blasted things huddled together near an endcap; I should've taken it as an omen that their foil bags seemed to have grown brittle and old from their long lonely sojourn under the fluorescents. How many bags of Combos does a CVS sell in a week? How often will a delivery truck bring a fresh supply of this, the most haggard and beggarly snack food? They were almost pitiable, like the off-brand Sno Balls my brother used to buy out of compassion, their pink coconut dusting having faded to a ghostly paleness from long neglect.

I chose Pizzeria Pretzel, thinking that (a) pretzels are good and (b) pizza is good, thus (c) pretzels and pizza together must be better. Herein lies the fundamental flaw of the American snack food ideology, a flaw aptly pointed out by the very name of this flagship item. I paid for the surprisingly weighty bag little buggers (is there any such thing as a small bag of Combos?), walked outside, cracked it open, and tossed a few in my mouth, daring to hope that I had indeed been mistaken. One crunch, nay, one roll of slightly salted pretzel-themed cracker filled with pizza-infused cheese product across my tongue erased all doubt from the world: Combos are worthless.

What's worse, I knew in that moment that I would eat the whole bag anyway. As with all popcorn that isn't part of the first two fistfuls, I would eat it in the simple despair that if I didn't eat it, it would still be there. I would eat it so it wouldn't be there anymore, even though the last place I wanted it to be was inside me.

This is another flaw with our snack food system: the obsession with quantity. We go to parties with and plan guys- and girls-nights-in and -out around the idea that we will gorge ourselves on the very thing we know will make us feel like garbage. "Oh man, I'm going to eat so many buffalo wings Saturday night!" "We're going to have like 40 pizzas!" "I just ate an entire box of Chips Ahoy!"¹ I might as well eat a sheet of ketchupéd cardboard and spin in circles until I'm too sick to enjoy anything ever again—it's the same thinking, essentially. We are all familiar with that line of satiety that, once crossed, signals the end of our ability to derive pleasure from an activity, the point at which the diminishing returns are less than the negative consequences. We also all know that once you cross that line—once you've eaten enough Gardetto's to make your tongue tingle disgustedly and make it uncomfortable to do anything but sit very still—the only way to postpone feeling bad is to keep eating, to finish the tub of popcorn so it can no longer torment. (And that's when you get outrageously thirsty, though I don't know what's worse: being outrageously thirsty or soaking 2 pounds of pretzelly cheese product in a gut-busting amount of water?)

And it's not just quantity of product we love, but quantity of taste. Pringles are no longer enough; we need Pringles EXTREME Screamin' Dill Pickle flavored crisps.² We need our Doritos to have more and more chic adjectives on the label, or, if a new flavor isn't on the docket, we'll just take our chips dusted with twice the flavor powder as normal.³ We want our bacon to taste like maple syrup and our cream cheese to taste like sun-dried tomatoes, and it won't be long before we want our bagels to taste like sun-dried tomato-flavored cream cheese. Just look at the variations on the saltine—Ritz, Wheat Thin, Triscuit, Club, etc.—and the newer, more chemically charged permutations of those variations. We want an explosion of flavor in our mouths. I predict the day when Cheeto dust is sold like Fun Dip and the dregs of the Cinnamon Toast Crunch box becomes the main attraction. That's a world I don't want to live in.

But I digress. The real point here is that although Combos partake in the quantity of product fallacy, by having such big bags, and the quantity of flavor fallacy, by combo-ing crackers and cheese (both of which may be combo-ed, the whole then tossed in a flavored powder, possibly), they fail to do either of these things even passably well. A big bag of Cool Ranch Doritos is still a tasty, if dangerous, thing. Bagel Bites and Taquitos are, though essentially utter failures as food, pretty good for the first hour of that Parcheesi tournament. But Combos are never good. They taste like nothing—not salty, not savory, not spicy, not anything. They look like dog food.

And today they crossed a line that I doubt I'll be able to forgive them for. In attempting to imitate the taste of a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit they nearly destroyed one of the holy breakfast combinations. It was particularly the egg flavor that was nauseating. I imagine the scientists in a secret underground vault somewhere creating their flavor molecules—the orange soda molecule now an old standard, the newer breed of Italian herb molecules making a splash in the frozen pasta arena of Bertolli and Stouffer's, and the newest compound, fried egg, ready for testing. But times are tough, budgets are being cut, and the suits upstairs are demanding new flavors now. "Sir, it's not ready; it hasn't been tested!"

"Aww, who cares? We'll give it a street test. Throw in a little bacon and send it over to the Combos people. They'll know what to do with it. They have nothing to lose, after all."

I still have things to lose, though. It's been hours since those things were in my mouth—hours including at least a handful of Cheez-its, several Strawberry Newtons, a slice or two Boston Creme Pie Cake (the kind of oddity made only by a local bakery), and a healthy dose of toothpaste—and I can still taste the sickness in my mouth. Someday I'm going to be kissing a beautiful woman or drinking at the fountain of youth and suddenly the memory of this taste will strike, forever combo-ing a perfect moment with the taint of the most repulsive thing I've ever experienced.

That day I will seek my revenge.

Reading Group Discussion Questions:

In this essay, Grover bemoans the current state of the snack food industry. It is unclear whether he means that the producers of snack food are driving American tastes into the gutter or that American taste is creating a demand that suppliers are happy to fill. Which do you think it is, and what should be done about it?
Grover seems to be advocating a return to a responsible snack food morality, but he doesn't say exactly what that should be. What do you think it should be? He invokes the term "quantity" but says nothing about its correlate, "quality." In your opinion, is quality a virtue or a vice when it comes to snack foods?
Is Grover's tone about truckers and fishermen unwarranted or offensive to you? How do you feel about his failure to include women (or at least gender-neutral pronouns and job titles) in his description of those who eat Combos?
You eat Combos, don't you? It's okay; admit it. Then politely excuse yourself from the room and fill out an application as either a trucker or a fisherman (or fisherwoman).

Further Reading

Isaac Asimov's short story "Good Taste," about a cooking contest in the distant future where all food is designed in labs and grown in tanks and where gourmets are of a whole new breed. The story can be found in the collection The Winds of Change and Other Stories and probably elsewhere.
"Inside the Food Labs," an article from Time several years ago by Jeffrey Kluger. It includes the phrase "pancake matrix."
I'm interested in reading Michael Pollan's book In Defense of Food, in which he argues for a return to eating things your grandmother knew how to eat. Not Gogurt.

¹ Don't let the exclamation mark fool you—it's part of the spelling of "Chips Ahoy!" not an indication of exclamation. That sentence ought to somehow be punctuated with a comma, a period, an ellipsis, a question mark, and and an open parenthesis since it is invariably uttered with a priceless mix of surprise and dread.
² Proctor and Gamble was recently successful in convincing a British court that Pringles are not subject to a value-added tax for potato chips because they are less than 50% potato. The company also "insisted that their best-selling product was not similar to potato crisps, because of their 'mouth melt' taste, 'uniform colour' and 'regular shape' which 'is not found in nature.'" Full story here.
³ "Nacho Cheese" is a flavor, yes, but "Nacho Cheesier"? Completely unbelievable list of available Doritos' flavors here.

Wish 2 [Special Edition]

2009-02-03T20:34:00.007-05:00

Before I tell you what wish #2 is I want to assure you that I only intend to use this wish for good. Wish #1 has some inherent temptations, but I'm sure I can handle them—with wish #2 I'm a little shaky in my resolve. I'm telling you so that you can hold me to it on the off chance that I come into any lamps.

Okay, we ready? Wish #2:

The ability to sing any note that these guys can hit:

Steve Perry¹

Sting²

Bryan Adams³

I have two very nice talents that, when paired as they are in me, actually act as a curse. They are (1) the ability to sing all the time without ever being even remotely embarrassed and (2) a nice baritone. I'm doomed to have the heart of a power-ballad lion but only the pipes of a medium-sized walrus. It's a falsetto world, and all my favorites seem to be sung by super tenors. Thus my second wish.

I know, I know: I should've wished for Roy Orbison and Harry Nilsson's skills, but I'm not greedy. Besides, it's only the range I need—I'll rely on my own hard work to fill that range with more raw emotion and croonitude than you can shake a tambourine at.

Because this is a special edition post, I've loaded it with bonus content. Feel free to click on any of the names above to hear a sample of what I'm talking about.

¹ The linked video above is the only logical choice for a Steve Perry tribute, but, in case you were interested, my recent favorite is this one. It starts slow, but by the end it really gets romping, especially when the piano cuts into the mix. Also, click the picture itself to see one of the best things ever created.
² I can't tell you how much I love Sting. It only makes it better that all his songs are awesome and all his music videos are total garbage. I'm usually too embarrassed to even watch them. However, nothing is as awesomely embarrassing as what you'll see if you click his picture. Dune, anyone?
³ Highlight of my entire summer. For the highlight of my whole life (and certainly the most oft-linked video on this entire blog), click Mr. Adam's beautiful face (what is Sting wearing!?).

Just in Case

2009-02-03T11:26:00.003-05:00

Just in case you didn't hear:

Three Wishes

2009-02-02T21:34:00.002-05:00

I've thought a lot about this (A LOT), and I think I'm ready to make my three wishes. I mean, I'm ready to reveal what they would be, in case I ever come across a genie or whatever.

Wish #1:

The power to teleport. That's right. There's a lot of discussion out there in the world about which super powers are the greatest, and it usually comes down to flight or invisibility, but I think teleportation is clearly the best choice. Here's why:

To teleport is to travel. It is to get from here to there without all the getting there getting in the way. It is a time- and money-saving device of unequaled value. Think about it. Why don't more people travel to more places? No, it's not that they're scared; it's that they're poor. Too poor or too uncreative to manage it, at least. Most of the money I would ever spend on traveling would actually be on the getting there, and teleportation would solve that problem. All I'd need was money for food and admissions.

Ah, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "And for hotels and stuff." But there you're wrong. The great thing about teleportation is that you never need leave home again. You could teleport to Paris in the morning, see some stuff, and then teleport home to sleep in your own bed. Then teleport back in the morning. Or even better, you could teleport to Paris in the morning, teleport back for lunch if you're short on dough, and teleport back to finish the Louvre. Or you could go to class, teleport to mom's for lunch, and teleport back for class again. You can teleport home to change clothes when you're under or overdressed, and you never have to worry about wearing warm shoes when it's cold if you want to be wearing cute shoes once you're inside.

Actually, you never have to carry another piece of luggage again. Imagine traveling without luggage. (Isn't that how Europeans do it anyway?)

Now, a lot of people would like to place limits on teleportation—distance limits or clothing limits or only-places-you've-been-before limits. That's fine. Add any limit to teleportation and add a comparable limit to flying and invisibility (which obviously have some serious limits built in already), and I'll still pick teleportation every time.

First wish down. Tomorrow: wish #2.

Let's Get This Straight

2009-01-30T22:04:00.003-05:00

By now you should've realized the following:

You like being scared.
You hate being too full.

When you were younger you thought it was the other way around. But you were wrong.

No, you were wrong.

Snow Day Pics

2009-01-29T23:10:00.005-05:00

Cute drapes, eh?

The haunted house out back.

Eaves are for thieves.

Columbus Road. You can't see it, but just off to the left is a
Coke machine outside the mechanic's place.

As If That Wasn't Enough

2009-01-29T06:32:00.002-05:00

I dreamed of true love. It lasted for one whole second this morning at about 4:47 before the power of the unadulterated imaginary emotion woke me right up.

I looked at the clock, took a sip of water, and went back to sleep.

The Meaning of Serendipity

2009-01-28T22:03:00.003-05:00

Yesterday was a very productive day. From 6 in the morning on I was moving in the right direction, marking things off the list, capitalizing on the minutes. It's hard work being that focused, but the reward is a good night's sleep, and I wanted it.

Seriously, remember being a missionary (or, for the rest of you: "Imagine being a missionary.")? Your time is consecrated so you're mildly obsessed with not wasting any of it. You're on your feet all day, in a perpetual rush, and any time when your body might rest—say, waiting for the bus—you instead work your mind, trying to memorize something or other, in my case, the dictionary. By the end of the day you're exhausted and you lay down on your mat and you fall asleep in 17 seconds and there's no worrying about dreams waking you or tossing waking you or anything. Did anyone ever have a bad night's sleep after a good day's missionary work?

That's what I was ready for, and I was ready for it at 9 on the clock. So as not to be troubled by a frenzied mind, I spent that last hour slowing down. I cleaned up and packed my bag for the morning. I turned the lights down low and sat by my bed and read Emerson. I emptied my memory bucket of whatever needed to be remembered for the next day by writing it all down. I breathed deeply, a little pranayama, if you will. I prayed. And then I jumped into bed, turned out the lights,

And proceeded to not fall asleep.

I did crossword puzzles on my Gameboy. I read about Shackleton's incredible voyage. I thought; I tried not to think. I got up and wrote an email. I got hungry (the very worst part of insomnia). I did more puzzles.

The point of going to bed at 10 is that I have to get up at 6 to be ready for class. I watched my clock tick away my 8 hours:

7, 6, 5, 4.

I fell asleep sometime after 3.

Did I mention that part of what made me so productive was the fact that Athens was covered in snow? The grade schools were cancelled, but not the university. Still, there wasn't much to leave home for after getting back from class. Kate and I had barely got there in the first place, despite 4-wheel drive, and the walk home had been, uh, slushy.

When the alarm went off at 6 I was too tired to be furious. I looked out the window at the sidewalk I had trudged home across the day before and imagined trudging it again in a few hours. It looked like the footprint-pocked slush had refrozen into icy, peaked, death. I grew crafty: I could cancel class. I'm the teacher, after all. I don't need the school's authority to call it off, and it being only 6, none of my students would be up yet—they'd wake in an hour or so and see my email and rejoice!

Wait, this sounded suspiciously like the promises I make to myself in the morning. If my brother were there he wouldn't have even bothered to point out the flaws in my groggy reasoning; he'd have just said in disgust, "You're not making any sense—go back to SLEEP."

I didn't care. I found a piece of paper and wrote on it in marker, "Kate, No class! See ya!" and hung it on the door so she wouldn't wonder where I was. I grabbed my lappy, logged into Blackboard, and wrote an email which said, "Hooray! We won't be having class today, so go back to sleep!" Once sent, it couldn't be rescinded. I pressed send before my waking mind could think better of it.

I ignored the feeling of guilt and lay down. As I began to drift, I dimly realized that both those messages might be misinterpreted to mean that the University, not just me, had cancelled classes. 20 people's days might take an odd turn because of me. Oh well.

This is the meaning of serendipity:

At 9 I awoke to the cheers of my roommates: Athens had declared a Level 3 snow emergency; the University was closed. Not only was my class completely justifiably cancelled, but the 4 hours of class I should've attended that afternoon were history. Even Institute was cancelled. All homework postponed.

A less lucky guy would've had insomnia and a snow emergency on a day he didn't have class anyway. He would've lost power or heat or realized he had nothing to eat.

I'm a lucky guy. I now will have had no reason to be at school (except one hour tomorrow morning) for 6 full days.

I spent the day doing absolutely nothing productive. I didn't shower. I didn't do homework. The power didn't go out. I made a leftovers omelette and ate it with toast and baked beans. I spent the afternoon doing a puzzle and listening to Billy Joel and the Grateful Dead. We ordered pizza for dinner and watched TV on DVD.

It's called "The Wizard's Observatory."
As is my style, I did it without looking at the picture.

Now, having squandered my time and created more to do tomorrow, I'm of course going to sleep like a baby.

Two things:

2009-01-27T19:11:00.002-05:00

Number one, you may not know this, but I'm the Managing Editor of an online literary magazine called Brevity. It features creative nonfiction of 750 words or less, which is an interesting conundrum for a writer to face. For readers it's nice, because if you don't like the piece you're reading—BAM!—it's over, on to the next one.

So if you're interested in that kind of thing, issue 29 just went up and it's got some gems, including a great odd piece by Lance Larsen. (Note: Some people may find some of the content very edgy or even offensive. If you're easily bruised, just ask me which ones to steer clear of.)

Also, Brevity keeps a blog which usually features the contributors talking about how a particular piece came about. So if you like something and want to know more, check that out.

Secondly, check out this premium analogy riffed out by Rolf Potts. It's not every day you find such a good one.

Indeed, to get a sense for what it’s like to be 18 and Cuban these days, imagine going to a high school that won a miraculous and inspiring football championship in 1959. The guy that quarterbacked the team some 50 years ago is still wearing the same damned uniform—only now he’s the school principal, and he’s decreed that all academic subjects must be studied within the context of that bygone championship game. Everyone at your school is now an honorary member of the football team—though the stadium is condemned from years of neglect, no actual games have been played in decades, and anyone with the temerity to point out this discrepancy is summarily sent to detention. On most school days you’re required to study your principal’s old pass-routes and blocking schemes and tell him how ingenious he was to have devised them. All of which would seem insane were it not for the fact that tourists from wealthier schools—schools with actual, functioning football teams—are constantly visiting your class to marvel over how wonderful it was that your team triumphed 50 years ago, and gush about how proud you must be to have such innovative role models. In this context, it’s easy to understand why young Cubans are underwhelmed by the idea of Che: To them, he’s just another sepia portrait in the trophy case—handsome and intriguing, perhaps, but hardly relevant or revolutionary.

Read the rest of Pott's essay, "Che: The Ronald McDonald of Revolution," at worldhum.com. (You may recognize Potts from my reading list last year; he wrote Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel.)

Right Now! Friendship in Jeopardy!

2009-01-26T17:37:00.005-05:00

Don't wait! Go to Jeopardy.com and register to take the online contestant test this week!

You have to register ahead of time to take the test at the exact same time as the rest of your time zone later this week.

I know what you're saying: "I'm not smart enough to be on Jeopardy! I don't want to be on Jeopardy!" (not that you're that emphatic about it—those exclamation points are part of the spelling of Jeopardy!, not indications of inflection).

Who cares? The fun of taking the test is two-fold:

You can be positively sure that during the moments you are struggling to answer those 50 questions (standard I-don't-know response: "Who is Otto von Bismarke?"), thousands of your time-zone compatriots are doing the same thing, facing the same struggle. To me, that means much more than thinking of all the people who are watching Lost at the same time as you. Then, you're all just admiring J. J. Abrams' handiwork; with the online test, you're admiring you—us—America!¹
You get to find out how much you still don't know. You might discover something you want to know about very much; ten minutes on this test now will give you a week's worth of Wikipedia-ing later. Failure is like a drug to me. Or at least a big vitamin.

¹ Besides, half of everyone watches Lost online later anyway. With the Jeopardy! test, we stand together. Like this.

Cold

2009-01-21T21:26:00.005-05:00

I get up these days around 6 because I teach a class at 8 am. Most days this involves extravagant lies told in the semidarkness by my responsible self to my groggy self—promises of eggs and bacon and sausage, promises of naps taken in warm beds with my clothes still on, my shoes hastily deposited by the door upon arriving home from class. I rarely make good on these promises (I've been to Wendy's only once, and as yet the only naps have happened in my chair at my desk).

This morning I got up feeling cold. The average temperature here for the last week or so has been a single-digit number, often with a minus sign in front of it, and today was no slouch. I hobbled downstairs to a bowl of Cheerios, realized I should've checked into the bathroom first, came back up to grumble in front of my email while all my systems came online. Consciousness: check. Internal Clock: check. Sensitivity to Light: fading.

Senses of Humor, Self, and Responsibility: check, check, check.

Better Judgment: standing by.

Internal Combustion: nothing.

I'm not a morning person, which is why waking at 6 is requisite to teaching at 8. I have to plan in advance not to be grumpy if I know interaction with others is on the docket for the am. I leave myself a detailed plan of the first 2 hours of my day so that there isn't any dependance on a mind process of any kind; every morning I mark off the words "breakfast," "vitamin," and "prayer" without questioning the wisdom or the order. Despite all this crummy biology, however, I never worry about being warm. It's a given with me.

I'm one of those warm hands types—I sleep with my feet hanging off the end of the bed and the window cracked. I don't own a pair of gloves. When Kate came to pick me up the other day and I was wearing jeans and a puffy vest, she expressed her worry that I'd freeze walking home later. I showed her the odd-square foot of wool in my hand: "It's okay; I've got a hat."

But this morning I was cold, and I don't know why. I didn't warm up with the return of consciousness and I didn't warm up with the application of clothes. I waited in vain for the needle in the dash of Kate's Explorer to sidle over from C to H and the floor vents to begin blowing warm air over my feet. When we got to school I excitedly ran into my office expecting a familiar rush of snugness, but instead I found the room drafty. I taught. I napped. I was cold.

All day this went on. I wore my heavy coat indoors all day and never felt good. Is this how the rest of you feel all the time? Jeez.

I'm about to jump into bed with a giant pair of thick sweatpants on. I have two quilts and a bottle of water. I'm going to dream of true love.

Winter Barbeque

2009-01-20T13:22:00.004-05:00

Last night we celebrated something with a winter barbeque. Everyone came over and feasted, and then we watched Spirited Away, one of my favorite movies. Sorry I didn't get any pics of everyone looking so attractive and having such a good time—I was too busy having a good time and looking so attractive to take pictures then.

Grilling on the front porch. Average temperature: 10º F. My landlord was taking his trash out and shouted across the street, "Something wrong with your kitchen?"
"Nope," I smiled."
He shook his head: "Now I've seen everything."

See guys? I told you a headlamp would come in handy.

Darrin and Dave keep me company.
I should admit right here that this was all Dave's idea.

Here's the feast, minus Matt's chicken enchiladas and Dave's tapas sides: mega mashed potatoes and Italian meats-wrapped asparagus. Notice his roasted red pepper salad already on the table.

If I had 4 wishes, the fourth would be to live in this bathhouse, always barefoot, sleeping by day and working by night.

Leftover Pictures: Group C

2009-01-17T23:19:00.004-05:00

Behold the annual Jump-in-the Truck-and-Look-at-Christmas-Lights party. I don't think I got a single Christmas light in any of these shots:

Oh, there's some Christmas lights, back there behind Charlotte. My bad.

Here's Mary trying to sweet talk her way into the cool truck.
Too bad—we had a strict no-matching-accessories policy.

Me, Liz, Faith, Luke, Harris, Ike, Ethan, and Matthew. If it wasn't for this slightly cold
night and the 25-mph windchill, it'd have been a total waste
to bring home anything I'm wearing here.

Hello, Luke.

I'm out of clever captions.

Bonus Pics!

3-D IMAX, people. 3-D to the MAX!

Unwashed, unshaven, unabashed. This is EYE-MAX, people!
(I'm talking to you old folks in the second row there—I need to see more MAXing).

Leftover Pictures 2

2009-01-15T09:51:00.007-05:00

Here's a few shots from our Halloween party last year.

Kate got some farmer to up and donate an Explorer full of pumpkins to our cause.
That smile? That's the "It's so early I'm not even sure what day it is" smile.

Awww, Boo House is all dolled up for the party. I wish you could see the inside; it's
completely covered in streamers and bats and candles. And pizza, mountains of it.

Most of the action took place on borrowed lawn furniture under the twinkle of borrowed lights. The lights are hung very unprofessionally from house to tree and back. Basically I strung them through the windows and tied them to door knobs and (mostly) heavy-enough furniture. Ken, on the other side, tangled them in the branches. Très romatic.

Zach (tourist) and Danielle (horse girl) play Twister while
I (my branch president biker) mope about losing.

Typical Court Street reveler.

Quit checking out my butt.

Leftover Pictures

2009-01-14T22:20:00.005-05:00

Here are some pictures from the 2^nd annual Grover Family Game Night.

Mary blows out the candles on what I am required to say
was not a birthday cake because we were not celebrating her birthday.

The funky papers hanging on the bookshelf are our attempts to rip pieces
of paper into Christmas tree shapes behind our backs.

Props to Mom for funding the whole thing.

We like to keep winning in the family: my sister-in-law-in-law won
the jar of M&Ms by guessing closest to the right number.

Mary won the jar of Nerds. That's right—I counted every single one.

Oh, and here's us actually playing a game at Game Night. Fancy that.

Elder Dave

2009-01-12T21:06:00.002-05:00

My roommate's name is Dave, as you may have gathered. He's taller than me. He's lived in Athens longer than me. He's several years ahead of me in our program. The utilities are in his name. He's engaged to a lovely woman.

Whenever I'm giddy and need someone to gloat to, I find him, as I did this morning when an essay I was working on went very well. Whenever I need to vent about the department's functioning or a particular assignment, I find him for sympathy. If there were any bullies about, I'd probably ask Dave to walk me to school.

There's only one problem: Dave's well over a year younger than me.

Not a problem, I guess, but interesting all the same.

(note: In composing this I went downstairs to confirm our mutual ages. Dave fed me something spicy he had just whipped up that included, as far as I can tell, black beans, onion, peppers, almonds, kidney beans, Granny Smith apples, corn, and tomato sauce. We ate it over Fritos. Vive le Bachelorhood!)

Lovesick, or

2009-01-11T17:34:00.002-05:00

The Weapon of the Future is the Montage

I can't explain why, but I'm feeling lovesick right now. (Okay, that was a dumb thing to say, since the whole point of typing this is to try to explain it anyway.) You may remember the feeling: the mild anxiousness, the fluttery guts, odd swings between elation and despair. I've wanted to listen to the saddest songs I know all afternoon. My usually paralyzing nostalgia (for foreign lands and other days) has ebbed in favor of a new flavor of angst. I haven't felt this way in years, literally.

Alright, before I go any further, let me lay down some ground rules. Number one: no, Mom, I'm not actually in love, so don't get your hopes up just yet. Number two: yes, Internet Girlfriend(s), I still think you're sweet; let's flirt later.

If I was really in love, I wouldn't be talking about it—for one, it wouldn't be noteworthy enough for a blog post; for two, I'd be discreet (see post, 12.11.2008). The reason I'm talking about it, the reason it's worrying me, is that I can't explain it.

Here are the possible reasons I can come up with for why I might be feeling this way:

1. I watched several episodes of Freaks and Geeks this weekend at the behest of my roommate. I liked it. It made me feel like a high school again, which is where I spent a lot of time feeling lovesick. So maybe I'm just over-identifying with the characters.

2. I haven't had access to a (steel-string) guitar for two months. I didn't think this would bother me, being such a casual player, but it really has. I've found myself wandering around aimlessly at odd hours recently, and when I come to my senses I realize I'm looking for a guitar. Jeez, I sound like a hippie. Or a high-school cry baby theatre kid.

3. I've been on several dates in the past few months, all with charming women, and that's more than my average for a few years now. It could be an overdose of romance feeding back into my consciousness.

4. I could be in love. With who, though? The girl on Freaks and Geeks? She is a T-babe, but I don't usually go for imaginary girls. With you? Are we in love?

5. Perhaps I'm having a prescient emotion: perhaps love is on the way. How exciting!

My money's on the tv show. There's something about the mixture of film and music that is completely unfair to the senses. Throw on some dated t-shirts, intercut with shots of good times and slow-motion smiles, and choose a soundtrack of Journey-like proportions and you can't help but create something both completely false and inexorably compelling. I'm opposed to montage! (And yet, somehow, they're the best around. Nothing's ever gonna take them down.)

So what are your hypotheses? Why might I be feeling this way? (No PMS jokes, please.)

Waste

2008-12-20T18:17:00.003-05:00

There's something about home that's entirely debilitating. Not my home, exactly, not the specific set of rooms and furnishings that my mom has put together over the years. I just mean home. Being home. Something about it sends me dashing towards the other side of the spectrum, towards—not depression, but languor.

When I'm home, I find myself full of ideas and intentions but barely able to lift a finger towards them. The small bursts of energy and ambition I get are indeed small, about enough to lift a body over towards the TV and flip a few switches before abandoning said body into the sweet entropic descent that is Dr. Mario. Which is what I inevitably do. (I think I beat the computer on hard mode about 70 times this week, no exaggeration.)

Despite repeated attempts to get up early and begin doing things, I find myself sliding towards the wee hours of the morning and the single digits of the afternoon. Despite long lists of to-do's and goals and projects and destinations, despite ample room and resources, despite a wide open schedule and the realization that this is the time people are always talking about—"when I'm finally not so busy"—despite all of this I find I can't move from my chair. I can't get out of bed. I can't dial the phone.

This wouldn't be a problem if I was merely on vacation, home for a week or two here and there to just fritter about lazily, going out to eat nine times a week, attending parties and reunions and such in the short span between semesters. But I'm not really on vacation. I'm out of school for nearly five months a year: three in the summer and two in the winter. Technically I should be working—if not actually out there doing a nine-to-five, I should at least be writing, knocking chunks out of my soon-due thesis. I should be reading and writing and furthering my life's work, tuning up some serious hobbies. And if not any of that, I should be playing with my 12 nieces and nephews during the short time that they're young and I'm here. I should be assembling the basketball goal that no one's been able to assemble at my sister's; I should be painting family's living rooms and mowing their yards; I should be making myself, if not useful, at least helpful.

So why can't I? What is it about home that debilitates?

I once had three theories to try and explain this. One had to do with the idea of going home as putting on your old skin, of inhabiting old habits when in old places. I've felt this a lot in past years, but I think it's wearing off, or at least being updated as time goes on. See, the idea is that it's hard to be yourself when you go home because the self you used to be when you lived there encroaches on your present self. You sleep in old beds in old rooms and start acting like a teenager again.¹

Another theory has to do with the suburbs. I read a book by Žižek a year or so ago that made no sense to me at the time. It was about how modern society has replaced what's real with what is imagined to be real and how big things like 9/11 shock us into seeing beyond the suburban spectacle for an instant before the seeing beyond becomes the spectacle and the real is hidden behind the thought of the real again, etc. etc. (You see why I didn't understand it, yes?) Anyway, it didn't really make sense, and I really didn't read much of the book at the time, but when I went home a few weeks later for break, suddenly it hit me one day what he was talking about and why the suburban life might be dangerous at times. It really freaked me out.

The third theory actually has nothing to do with this.

Phew. It took me all day to write this. Every time the thoughts were there the energy wasn't, and every time the energy was there I just wanted to go drop pills on some viruses. Which is what I plan to do right now.

¹Which is why, if you want my advice, it's "Move out."

"Isn't that the payback for being indiscreet?"

2008-12-11T23:57:00.004-05:00

I've been thinking about something a friend once said. In London one day, a bunch of us were sitting around the dining room chatting about—what else?—love. The question on the table was "What have you learned about love in the past year?" and each person who walked into the room was asked to answer. The group had gotten rather large, and lots of good advice had been offered, but what I'll always remember is what Paul said when he walked in and was asked. Paul was pretty much the coolest guy in the house, so we were all anxious to hear what he had to say.

"Be discreet," he said, and then he shut up. (So clever!)

Someone asked what he meant. He explained: "Whatever feelings you have about a person should be between you and that person."

This was quite different advice than we had heard thus far. That was quite a different position than most of us were apt to take; it seemed every other conversation one overheard among our group was about crushes and signals and possibilities. 40-some-odd girls and 7 boys on a bus together twice a week was a recipe for giggling. My own brother had captivated the crew when he grabbed the bus microphone one day and told an epic of love. But Paul, now that I thought about it, never shared his own love stories, past or present. He had been silent on the matter of his own love-life.

So here is my reasoning:

Paul = cool
Paul = doesn't talk about love

ergo

Cool=not talking about love

This makes a lot of sense to me, on the one hand. I mean, I have a lot of stories about love. About failed love (all past-tense love stories with living protagonists are failed-love stories, more or less). Some days I feel like I'm walking around with a lot to regret. But here's the thing: I'm not so sure my future lover will care. When I was younger, so much younger than today, it seemed like every third or fourth date was the "life story" date. The one where you tell each other all about the clubs you were in in high school and about the trouble you caused and about the epic birthday parties and, of course, about the long list of boy- or girlfriends you've had. It seemed necessary for two to understand each other, for two to have proper conversation. But when I think about it, I don't really see any couples I know talking about all that stuff that happened to them before they got together. I don't see them worried about the string of relationships leading up to the present. Rather, it seems like those failed relationships, those "mistakes," never happened at all, or, it you insist on bringing them up, the person just shrugs them off as part of the process—but who would dwell on that when I've got her now? It's like all the hurt and scars have been healed by finding "the one," yadda yadda.

Sorry, I'm grossing myself out a bit with all this lovey-dovey vocabulary. But you get the idea. No in-love person I know is worried about the past very much, and as I've gotten older, I think I see why. So rather than wait for the moment when I too will feel no more shame at my love-mistakes, I feel like maybe I should take a page from Paul's book and shut up about them. If they come up I should just smile and let the mystery stand.

On the other hand, I'm a storyteller, and I don't have many better stories than the ones in which I'm a fool for love. I mean, you should've seen me last week telling J and G about that one time—I was on fire, and they were cracking up. I had them feeling all the passion, pain, embarrassment, indecision, and every other emotion I felt went it all went down that fateful night. I'm not sure I'm ready to give that up. Perhaps this is why writers turn to fiction...

A Whole 'Nother Question: How come I can't seem to talk around my own family? I'm all smarm and charm around my peers, but as soon as I get home I can't seem to put two words together.

Contest Winner

2008-11-05T00:18:00.002-05:00

JSK was the winner of our contest, so on Monday I presented her with a box of chocolates and a bouquet of freshly sharpened pencils. I've got the biggest crush on her.

Coming soon: Halloween party pictures, a tirade against plastic bottles, and the Election Breakfast.

Sing, Dear Gemini

2008-10-30T20:33:00.004-04:00

Editor's note:

The essay that was originally posted here has been removed. It will be published in the Spring 2010 online edition of Black and White Journal for the Arts. Thank you.

Revisions, Round 2

2008-10-30T10:04:00.002-04:00

I'm sitting down with the essay/post originally titled "Stars, Doubts, Girls" again today. I took a few days off from looking at it or thinking about it because that always seems to help. For one, it lets me come at it with fresh eyes that have forgotten most of what's there, so I can evaluate it as a stranger would. For two, it gives my mind time to work things out subconsciously, and I always have more ideas this way. Normally I'd take even more time off, but since it's such a short piece and we have such a short history together, it was easy to forget (is this some sort of sad parallel for SG herself?)

Anyway, before I get too far into it and before I post the results here, I want to say a few things about how I'm revising, about how I am deciding what to do. It seems to me that this essay has three moving parts that need attention: narrative, meditation, and what-its-really-about.

The narrative, of course, is the story itself, and the standard for revision there is honesty and interestingness. I want it to be snappy, to draw the reader on to the next sentence and the next, and to sound like me. And since I've said it is a true story, I want it to be accurate. That's why I changed the names of those present in the first sentence when I found out exactly who was there—it's a small thing, of course, but it makes for a good habit. More important is how I portray my thoughts and emotions from years ago, for I can't remember exactly what I said to myself or felt on a particular day and it's easy to be less than honest for the sake of the story. Dave actually questioned some of the things I'd written in the first draft, whether I had actually thought through D names on the way to SG's house that day. I told him I didn't know exactly, but that I definitely had done it throughout the week whenever it crossed my mind and that the emotion I felt then—that combined dread and excitement—was very real. Actually, at first I had been tempted to write that I stormed over to her house the minute I thought of the initials, since that seemed to fit the tone and import of the story, but since I know very surely that that isn't true I changed it to read I asked on our very next date, which is true.

Anyway, narrative is the easiest thing to revise. It's a matter of pacing and spacing and trimming sentences, usually, like we saw in the first round of revision. Keeping a blog has been a great aid to my storytelling skill because it gives me the opportunity to present stories every day and try to give them maximum effect without worrying too too much, cause hey: it's just a blog.

The meditation is where the narrative slips away and I get to contemplate aloud on the meaning of things. Sometimes it is asking questions without answers and sometimes answers are proposed. In this particular piece there is almost no meditation going on. It's really only in the last paragraph. Originally I gave this a good four sentences or so and commented on love broadly, but in the first revision it was cut to only one or two sentences right at the end. The trick in most essays is to do the exact right amount of meditating, to lead the reader far enough to almost read your mind but not so far as to disallow them to draw their own conclusions. It's rarely something you can plan to do right; there's no formula for it. It's usually just a matter of tweaking and trying until it feels right.

The third thing, the what-its-really-about, is the hardest to define but probably the most important. It's the bottom line, the real story. When an essay doesn't work, it's usually because I haven't figured out what it's really about and thus the narrative and the meditation are at odds. It's like I'm saying, "2 + 2 = Robinson Crusoe"; I fail to connect, to maintain unity. This aspect of an essay not only dictates what the meditation can be about; it dictates how the narrative should be presented, what elements should be emphasized, what should be dropped entirely. Especially in a very short piece like this, it's essential that every word be accounted for.

So that's it: that's what is going through my mind as I reread and revise. Generally. At this time. My concept of craft and genre and style changes as time goes on.

Let the Voting Begin!

2008-10-28T11:03:00.003-04:00

Friends,

The four chosen contest entries have been posted below. Please read them and, in the comments, vote for the one you think is best. At the end of the week we will crown one the winner and I will begin crushing him or her—I mean, crushing on him or her. My mistake.

Why The Reverse Pretend Crush Is Not A Viable Life Strategy:

2008-10-28T10:57:00.002-04:00

A Warning
by JSK

I’m not going to tell you about the many, all too obvious, reasons that the Reverse Pretend Crush (RPC) is not a good idea. I won’t waste your time pontificating about exactly how Reverse Pretend Crush selection might work (If you are willing to entertain that Person X has an RPC on you, what does that mean? Why Person X and not Person C? And, most of all, where my little narcissistic poet-of-a-brain goes, why not me?) It’s hardly even worth mentioning that the RPC seems like a way to protect yourself from the slings and arrows of outrageous real-crushdom. Like you’re caught forever in a Family Circus cartoon where Not Me is running around breaking things so Billy doesn’t have to take responsibility.

“David, who had his heart broken again?”

“Not me.”

(Not Me slouches in the corner of the frame, crying little ghostly tears and eating a stack of little ghostly Skor bars.)

It’s just pretend. But you see, from this word we can make rend, meaning to tear apart but we also can find tend, which is not only to care for, but also to give attention to. In pretending, Self-Protecting David Grover is able to simultaneously give attention to another yet also remove himself away from the commitment and possible rejection¹ that the RC or RRC (Real Crush or Reverse Real Crush) might entail.

Additionally, it is not worth my time or effort to discuss how unfair this using-another-as-a-wacky-self-motivational-tool set-up is to the RPC. What if one begins to develop an RC on Irresistible David Grover but later come to find out all those J.Crew catalog-worthy outfits were not really to impress her, but were merely to pretend impress her. Tears, lots and lots of tears. And that’s why we’re not going to talk about that, there’s no crying in RPC-land.

Instead, what we need to focus on is the possibility of the RPC being infected during the up-coming zombie epidemic. Once zombified, the RPC will think back to Luscious-Locks David Grover and start to get very hungry. And let’s not forget all the witty things the RPC will remember Banter-King David Grover having said. The RPC will not care if it was only for pretendsies. The only thing the RPC will think of is David Grover’s brain and her mouth will begin to salivate. Now, all I’m saying, is that this is an issue that needs to be considered. And you can’t say you haven’t been warned. If the Way of the Reverse Pretend Crush is continued, I, for one, will not offer my assistance should said zombie epidemic come to pass, as you have brought this on yourself. If you insist on having RPCs, you’re on your own, Tasty-Cerebellum David Grover.

¹ But seriously, who could reject Sweater-Shoe-Coordinated David Grover?

Why the Reverse Pretend Crush Is Not a Viable Life Strategy:

2008-10-28T10:53:00.002-04:00

The True Danger
by La Cabra

There are a few reasons that the reverse pretend crush is not a viable life option—such as appearing arrogant rather than gallant or being so caught up in being the reverse-crush object's dream that you miss a true love opportunity. These, however, pale in comparison to the most dangerous reason to eschew the reverse-pretend crush: It becoming REAL.

Should the pretend-crusher pick up on the covert attention, the pretend may become real for the crusher. Then, not only do you have the inconveniences and discomforts of being actually crushed on, you run the distinct though irrational risk of thinking that perhaps you crushed on them first. Then, all confused, you feel obligated to allow the advances of the crusher until, never having had feelings for the crusher in the first place, you are forced to dump the crusher in the middle of your workplace after listening to him (or her, of course) sing a capella ALL the verses of "C'est Moi" from "Camelot" in front of your co-workers! (Trust me on this one.)

Pretend Crushed

2008-10-28T10:46:00.003-04:00

by Mystery Girl

Living for the imagined opinions of others, let alone complete strangers, isn't living. It's turning fool and spy. I just wrote a paper on how the Fool in King Lear employs all the tactics of nonfiction authors. To be a fool or a spy is to be intelligent, witty, and always (always!) alone. As mythic rocker Jim Morrison wrote:

That's what real love amounts to—letting a person be what he really is. Most people love you for who you pretend to be. To keep their love, you keep pretending—performing. You get to love your pretence. It's true; we're locked in an image, an act.

Katherine Hepburn took this self-sacrifice to another level when she said, "Acting is a nice childish profession—pretending you're someone else and, at the same time, selling yourself."

It's one thing to act on a stage, but in life, to sell this falseness in reality? The theory undermines self entirely. To pretend one is lovable is to admit one is not, maybe never can be. Pretend and Reverse Pretend Crushes are the ultimate insult. In a preemptive strike, the theorist rejects himself above and beyond the capacity of the outside world. He breaks something whole in order to avoid the chance of it falling apart unexpectedly. It is a fear-based thought process meant to procrastinate genuine human interaction. As we learn from "the immortal words of The Doors, 'The time to hesitate is through'" (Lucas, Empire Records). Real love exists beyond reason. It isn't subject to cosmological compatibility or moments in dark music halls. Real love is downtime, the "I'm so not attracted to you right now, but, man alive, I love you" time. Otherwise it is only as real as stage production, as infatuation, as Romeo and Juliet—a gross misrepresentation of the best stuff.

Why the Reverse Pretend Crush I Not a Viable Life Strategy:

2008-10-28T10:36:00.005-04:00

A Call to Positive Action
by JM

A reverse pretend crush can be an effective paradigm if your ambitions don't exceed waking up on time and not dressing like a homeless man. If you actually want to accomplish things in life, you have to totally abandon the concept of the crush. It's childish and self-diminishing.

That doesn't mean that a reverse pretend meaningful-and-intimate relationship is any better. What it means is that if the only way to get out of bed is to lie to yourself, then there is a deeper problem that needs identification and correction. If you find it necessary to say to yourself each morning, "Oh! I had better dress fashionably to impress Betsy-Sue!" then you need to wholly re-evaluate your psychological state because the earthly truth is that Betsy-Sue doesn't give a damn about your Paul Mitchell styling gel or your Argyle dress socks, and if by some miracle she does notice how you've managed to mimic the model in the latest Banana Republic catalog, then you are inescapably caught in a maelstrom of emotions: has the reverse pretend crush gone too far? Has it become a real reverse crush? Will I break the reverse pretend crush rules by exploring his or her interest in my fashion sense? Has the prophecy been fulfilled, or is it mere coincidence? Both reverse pretend crushes and regular pretend crushes will end in sobs, though those sobs will originate from fundamentally different reasons.

Furthermore, pretend reverse crushing invokes an non-conscious and unfair attitude against the subject of the reverse crush. If you assure yourself that the reverse crush is truly pretend, then you will act accordingly and during discourse behave as though his or her words and actions are in some way complimentary toward you. At no fault of his or her own, the subject of the reverse crush will be exposed to a façade that is both demeaning and unprofessional.

As previously stated, it shouldn't require self-deceit to function in society. Don't depend on the false admiration of an acquaintance to inspire you to wear some clean clothes, shave every once in a while, and behave like a normal human being. Instead, do it for yourself. Do it for your friends and family. Contribute to your nation and to humanity for the sake of productivity and the benefit of mankind. Dress like you don't live under a bridge, not to incorrectly diagnose your fake-heart-throb's every move, but to generally improve the aesthetic value of yourself and your surroundings.

Don't involve someone else in your petty excuses. Grow up and face reality, and maybe someone will actually develop a crush on you for who you are, not for who you don't not pretend not to falsely not be.

Last Chance

2008-10-27T09:52:00.002-04:00

Dear devoted Readers,

In my mercy (or maliciousness), I have decided to extend the contest deadline for one more day. So get off your duff, think for five whole seconds, and write your entry. Perhaps this equation will help you decide:

As you can see, you have everything to gain and nothing to lose.

Revisions, Round 1

2008-10-24T21:33:00.014-04:00

[ note for those who use Google Reader or some other RSS feed aggregator to read this blog: this post was written to include pop-up notes throughout the text, but unfortunately your reader cannot display these properly. I recommend going to the source to read this one, but if you can't be bothered, just know that the notes that normally wouldn't appear until you hovered over the asterisks are in plain sight here, probably in bright blue text. I here I thought Google could do everything. ]

My roommate Dave and I stayed up late batting ideas back and forth and arguing about what this essay is really about. It was terribly fun. He sat in his grandfather's easy chair, and I sat in my Salvation Army barcalounger. He pointed out things he really liked, and I graciously accepted the compliments. Then I pointed out things I really liked and demanded more compliments. Then we got to the business of improving the essay rather than my ego.

What follows is a marked-up copy of what we did so you can see how the piece is progressing. Deletions are struck out, and alterations are in red. I've also added some commentary to show what we were thinking when we made certain changes. I've marked these as green bracketed asterisks in the text, like this: { * }Boo! . To read the comment, just hover the mouse over the asterisk and it should pop up right there.

I'd also like to thank Dave for his honest criticism and his very valuable suggestions. No writing happens in a vacuum, and no piece ever really has just one author. So here it is:

Stars, Doubts, Girls
Sing, Dear Gemini

The other day Ash, Jake, Joey Steve, and I were dinking around the office talking, when someone brought up the idea of dating people with your same birthday. On the one hand, it was suggested, it could be neat and really, really convenient (as far as remembering one more important date memory goes¹). But On the other hand, pointed out Ash, it might be dangerous, a form of "cosmological incest."

{ * }We just trimmed this for readability and correctness (Thanks, Steve, for setting me straight on the facts).

As the only one in the room that had actually pulled this off, I can say it does with any experience in this area, I assured them it did have a certain creepiness to it. I once dated a girl exactly one year younger than me, and it was weird, but not in the way you might think. The thing was that we had way more in common than just our birthday.

For one, we met at a concert. A concert we were both performing in. I was standing in the wings after performing my song for the BYU Guitars Unplugged concert a few years ago when I noticed that the girl presently performing on stage was pretty good. I mean, I don't want to rag on girls or anything, but the truth is that it's kinda rare to meet a guitar-playing girl who actually has good technique, good rhythm, and a good voice. And good song-writing skills.² She had red hair, and this pink light was shining down on her like magic, making her all strawberries-and-cream.

{ * }Again, we're really just editing for smoothness here, cutting out anything extraneous and avoiding repeating words if possible.

Which brings me to the next thing we had in common: good looks.

Tom and I tearing it up at the concert.
You can't tell, but under my jeans my left leg
is in a splint since I had torn my ACL skiing
just a week or so before this.

Anyway, my brother got her number for me³ since he worked at the same place as her, and we went out a few times. I remember we went on a walk once early on and we were asking each other questions—you know those first-date-ish questions like "What's your favorite ____?" or "If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be?"—well, I'd ask her one of those and silently be thinking up my own answer, and then she'd say exactly what I was thinking. It was weird. I asked her when her birthday was, and when she said, "June 11," I died. It was like I was falling in love with myself; it felt so wrong—but I was so attractive.

We sat in my living room and sang "Somethin' Stupid," crowding together around a sheet of lyrics as I shuffled out the chords on my guitar. She fell into the harmonies so naturally as to melt my bones.

{ * }I'm still not satisfied with the phrase "shuffled out the chords." I want to describe the rhythm and the sound just right—that latinish one trip-e-let and three and four grooviness that the guitar does. Does anyone know what that's called? Is it a cha-cha or something? There's the same groove in the Eagles' songs "Tequila Sunrise" and "New Kid in Town." It makes me think of being thirsty in a Mexican cantina somewhere.

Sometime midweek I realized that her initials were S. G. My initials, not counting my middle name, are S. G. Walking to pick her up for our next date, I reeled off D-names in my mind: Danielle, Darcy, Daphne, Deborah, Diane, Dawn, Dorothy, Drew. SDG: Stephen David Grover. SDG: Super Dateable Girl. June 11, 1981. June 11, 1982. SDG: Sensible Days Gone. June 11. June 11.

{ * }Here's where we started tweaking things for real. Notice that we moved the SDG phrases around to play with the dramatic pacing of this section. Doing this had another effect as well: it help define the meaning of each of these phrases more clearly. Dave really liked the SDGs, but in the cases of "Sense of Doom Growing" and "Sudden Death, Grover," he felt it was unclear exactly what I was anxious about.

SDG: Sensible days gone.

Sudden Death, Grover.

Sense of Doom Growing.

I knocked on her door, and practically before saying hello I demanded to know her middle name, sure it was—the greatest thing ever or the biggest mistake of my life—Desdemona or Deliliah or Davida.

{ * }The quick aside between the dashes above was a gutsy idea from Dave. On the one hand, it helps clarify that I felt both excited that I may have found the one and terrified that she might be too much like myself, but on the other hand, it interrupts the sentence in a weird way that may be misread.

Sense of Doom Growing.

"I don't have one," she smiled.

Sudden Death, Grover.

"Oh," I said.

So we were S. G. and S. D. G. { * }I left these dates the same as before but changed the one's above to be just the month and day. I'm hoping it will emphasize the sameness I was feeling before I got to S. G.'s house and the reality I encountered once there that we aren't the same.1981 and 1982. We went out a few more times, but nothing ever really happened. Perhaps we would've been star-crossed, ill-fated, cosmologically unsuited—we never got far enough to find out. Something Didn't Go. That's always been the real mystery for me anyway: why some loves catch and some don't. How all the tumblers can line up but still the key won't turn. It's almost a miracle when it does, when one person likes another at the same time that that person likes them—it's a shuttle-launch window, a total solar eclipse. It's a real miracle, and yet it happens uncounted times every day as our planet tumbles and rolls on to the stars.

How Something Didn't Go.

{ * }Endings, of course, are the hardest part to get right. This is just another try, to see how it goes. Although I really like the meaning behind the images of a space shuttle and an eclipse, it feels a little off topic. In an essay this tight and terse, you can't indulge yourself at all.

{ * }Also, I should say at this point that Dave and I spoke a lot about what this essay was really about. Was I happy or sad to see it not work out? Did I want it to work out or not? How do I feel about it now? Who knows? I can say that I was both freaked out and hopeful as I was getting into it (which I think I've conveyed here), and I was both relieved and disappointed when the sparks didn't fly. Have I said enough on this, though? Does it connect enough to the common experience of all people to be poignant?

¹ My sister got married on my birthday, which has been great for me. I'm thinking of doing the same thing myself.
² Before you jump to conclusions, let me explain. It's rare to find anyone, male or female, that combines all these skills. It seems like no one gets through college without learning a few chords and how to play "Free Fallin'" or that Green Day song that was the emblem of everyone's senior class a few years back. But so few ever take it further, ever learn how to really play. And given that the proportion of guitar-playing males to the skilled guitar-playing males is completely bonkers, and taking into account that there are that many fewer girls than boys picking up guitars to begin with, it follows that there are very very few girls who can do more than play third-rate Jewel covers.⁴
³ Actually he got a whole date with her. For me. What a bro: he asked a girl out on my behalf. That's going above and beyond.
⁴ If you were born after, say, 1989, change "Free Fallin'" above to "Wonderwall," "Green Day" to "Dashboard Confessional," and "Jewel" to—I don't know—"Michelle Branch"?

{ * }I'm still not sure "Wonderwall" is the best choice for this, but it's the best I could do at 3 in the morning. I need a young guitarist to set me straight—what are all the kids playing these days?

=============

Also, in the revision process I thought of several things that might be included in this essay that aren't yet. Rather than break my brain trying to fit them in at this stage of the revision, I've just written them down to consider as I go forth:

"Somethin' Stupid": The song was sung by Frank and Nancy Sinatra, a father and daughter. That's kinda weird. Maybe I could draw a parallel between the near-incest feel of that and the "cosmological incest" feel of my relationship with SG? Also, I might consider using the phrase "something stupid" later in the essay to link back to the oddness of the whole situation, of singing those lines with this girl.
The song SG played at the concert was one she wrote called "Movin' On," about how little she intended to worry about things, including failed relationships. Oddly appropriate. Also, the first song I ever wrote and performed publicly was called "Movin' On." No joke.
The song I performed at the concert was called "The Sweetest Part"; I had written it about a girl who eventually broke up with me. I'm not sure if that connects at all, but whatever.

Well, that does it for the first round of revision. Hope it sheds some light on how this works and what I have in mind when I write. I'll post round 2 just as soon as I do it. All comments, suggestions, and opinions are welcomed.

What I Do, or Revising

2008-10-24T03:14:00.004-04:00

As a grad student, I have a hard time explaining what exactly it is I do.

I mean, first off I can't even explain to people where I go to school. I go to Ohio University, not Ohio State University. It's in Athens, a tiny town in the country, not Columbus, the state capital. Our football team is in the MAC (which you've never heard of), not the Big 10 (which you can't get away from). OSU is the largest single-campus school in the country; OU is the oldest university in the state, first in the Northwest Territory (which gives you some idea how old it is—one year older than Joseph Smith, one year younger than Ralph Waldo Emerson).

Got that? OU, not OSU. Athens, not Columbus. Brains, not brawn, and certainly not money. Age, not size.

You don't got it.

What I do is even harder to explain than where I do it: I'm getting an MA in English. Creative writing, to be specific. Creative nonfiction, to be precise.

Creative nonfiction is a genre, like fiction or poetry. Only, unlike fiction, the stories must be true, and unlike poetry, there aren't so many line breaks. Most of the time. (The truth is that we are always stepping on each others' toes—hey, we're writers, not dancers.) To put it simply, creative nonfiction is true stories told well. It is things like personal essays, memoirs, or travel writing.

It is, really, like this blog.

But don't go getting the idea that me writing this is going to get me a degree. There is a fundamental difference between what I do for school and what I do for the web. And that difference is revising. Going back and looking again, wrestling with the words and ideas until they are as good as I can make them. It's craft. What I do is craft.

Get that? What I do is craft. Words.

You don't get it.

Which is why I've decided to share with you some of the process. On Wednesday I wrote a post called "Stars, Doubts, Girls" that wasn't like most blog posts I do. It had something more to it. I started with just a stolen phrase I thought was clever: Ash's "cosmological incest." But before I knew it, it was 2 in the morning and I had spent hours carefully laying out a story, balancing memories and observations that were nowhere near my thoughts when I started, and playing with words and timing to make it swing just right. I had been drawn in by the fun of trying to describe pink light on a red-headed girl and what I felt when I saw her. I had been drawn on by the accidental inspiration to use my initials to further the story and then drawn deeper by the need to think up as many SDG phrases as possible. In the end I felt I had come close to something, a truth both disappointing and hopeful.

Since it was a blog post, I published it then and there. But since I am a writer (and since my roommate demanded it), I'm not done with it yet. It bears revision; it can be improved. I'm going to craft it—that's what I do.

Tomorrow I'll post the first round of revision for your perusal.

Stars, Doubts, Girls

2008-10-22T23:48:00.007-04:00

The other day Ash, Jake, Joey, and I were dinking around the office talking, when someone brought up the idea of dating people with your same birthday. On the one hand, it could be neat and really really convenient (as far as remembering one more important date). But on the other hand, pointed out Ash, it might be a form of cosmological incest.

As the only one in the room that had actually pulled this off, I can say it does have a certain creepiness to it. I once dated a girl exactly one year younger than me, and it was weird, but not in the way you might think. The thing was that we had way more in common than our birthday.

For one, we met at a concert. A concert we were both performing in. I was standing in the wings after performing my song for the BYU Guitars Unplugged concert a few years ago when I noticed that the girl presently performing was pretty good. I mean, I don't want to rag on girls or anything, but the truth is that it's kinda rare to meet a guitar-playing girl who actually has good technique, good rhythm, and a good voice. And good song-writing skills.¹ She had red hair, and this pink light was shining down on her like magic, making her all strawberries-and-cream.

Which brings me to the next thing we had in common: good looks.

Tom and I tearing it up at the concert.
You can't tell, but under my jeans my left leg
is in a splint since I had torn my ACL skiing
just a week or so before this.
Anyway, my brother got her number for me² since he worked at the same place as her, and we went out a few times. I remember we went on a walk once early on and we were asking each other questions—you know those first-date-ish questions like "What's your favorite ____?" or "If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be?"—well, I'd ask her one of those and silently be thinking up my own answer, and then she'd say exactly what I was thinking. It was weird. I asked her when her birthday was, and when she said, "June 11," I died. It was like I was falling in love with myself; it felt so wrong—but I was so attractive.

We sat in my living room and sang "Somethin' Stupid," crowding together around a sheet of lyrics as I shuffled out the chords on my guitar. She fell into the harmonies so naturally as to melt my bones.

Sometime midweek I realized that her initials were S. G. My initials, not counting my middle name, are S. G. Walking to pick her up for our next date, I reeled off D-names in my mind: Danielle, Darcy, Daphne, Deborah, Diane, Dawn, Dorothy, Drew. SDG: Stephen David Grover. SDG: Super Dateable Girl. June 11, 1981. June 11, 1982. SDG: Sensible Days Gone.

Sudden Death, Grover.

Sense of Doom Growing.

I knocked on her door, and practically before saying hello I demanded to know her middle name, sure it was Desdemona, Deliliah, Davida.

"I don't have one," she smiled.

"Oh," I said.

So we were S. G. and S. D. G. 1981 and 1982. We went out a few more times, but nothing ever really happened. Perhaps we would've been star-crossed, ill-fated, cosmologically unsuited—we never got far enough to find out. Something Didn't Go. That's always been the real mystery for me anyway: why some loves catch and some don't. How all the tumblers can line up but still the key won't turn. It's almost a miracle when it does, when one person likes another at the same time that that person likes them—it's a shuttle-launch window, a total solar eclipse. It's a real miracle, and yet it happens uncounted times every day as our planet tumbles and rolls on to the stars.

¹ Before you jump to conclusions, let me explain. It's rare to find anyone, male or female, that combines all these skills. It seems like no one gets through college without learning a few chords and how to play "Free Fallin'" or that Green Day song that was the emblem of everyone's senior class a few years back. But so few ever take it further, ever learn how to really play. And given that the proportion of guitar-playing males to the skilled guitar-playing males is completely bonkers, and taking into account that there are that many fewer girls than boys picking up guitars to begin with, it follows that there are very very few girls who can do more than play third-rate Jewel covers.³
²Actually he got a whole date with her. What a bro: he asked a girl out on my behalf. That's going above and beyond.
³ If you were born after, say, 1989, change "Free Fallin'" above to "Wonderwall," "Green Day" to "Dashboard Confessional," and "Jewel" to—I don't know—"Michelle Branch"?

Contest!

2008-10-20T23:07:00.002-04:00

I, David Grover, am a fan of contests. I have an entire philosophy about contests. I enter every contest I can.

But now, faithful readers, it's your turn to enter a contest. Behold, the first ever Journey to the East contest:

The Reverse Pretend Crush Guest Post Contest

Here's the deal:

Read "Reverse Pretend Crush," a post I posted last week.
Write a guest post for this blog entitled "Why the Reverse Pretend Crush Is Not a Viable Life Strategy."
Send it to me at groooover[at]gmail[dot]com by 11:59 pm this Sunday, Hawaii time.

I'll choose the best 3 posts and post them on this blog, and then you all will get to vote for your favorite one. The writer of the guest post that gets the most votes will get flowers and a box of chocolates and permanent pretend-crush status with me.*

So get reading and writing. For all you lurkers out there (those who read but don't comment), this is your big chance to quit being creepy. You have a whole work week to procrastinate, a Saturday to put it off, and a Sunday to get it done.

* Unless you're related to me. If so, you just get bragging rights against the rest of the family all this holiday season.

The Circleville Pumpkin Show

2008-10-20T22:16:00.010-04:00

Last Friday I tagged along with the Kinghorns to the Circleville Pumpkin Show, a local event that's been held every year since 1904 or something. It's kind of a hassle to go to things like this—I always drag my feet and make up excuses and say I'll go next year—but I've been living a philosophy of saying yes to fun more, so when the chance arose I took it. It helped that I had spent the week getting mountains of stuff done through a combination of will, going to bed at 10, and rewarding myself with cream soda; by Friday, I actually had 7 hours to blow without any immediate deadline to worry about.

Here's Kate and I with the 1st place pumpkin. That ain't no Burger King crown—this picture doesn't do it justice. I could live inside that thing.

Here's me getting my fortune told by a computer. I'm pretty sure it was related to KITT.

Two words: Pumpkin Pizza. Also: Pumpkin Donuts. Also: onion rings, giant brats, pecan prailines. Also: Danger (see below).

Here's one of the main drags of Circleville in all its pumpkiney glory. The show fills five or six streets like this. Locals make a killing charging for parking in their yards.

Looking down from a ferris wheel.

The freaky thing about carnival rides is that you know they were built by gypsies, but you don't know whether gypsies adhere to the standards set by welders' unions and accredited-engineering-degree dispensers and local governments. You don't even know if the welding equipment was legitimately purchased and is up to code.

Gourds of all kinds are welcome at the Pumpkin Show.

I really don't know what to say about this. Is it a Halloween Tree? Is it a shrine to the Great Pumpkin?

Live it up: you're all going to be pies.

Here's where the danger comes in: The Fireball. Pretty much it's a 60-foot high circle with a roller coaster car attached. Some bum sits at the control and decides how fast and in what direction to spin you.

Our particular bum/conductor took great joy in letting us hang motionless for upwards of 20 seconds at a time, then throwing us through a spin cycle of a minute or so. Worst best ever.

And the place was crawling with Shriners! They made up a good third of the parade all by themselves, noodling around in tiny cars and playing in Dixieland jazz bands and strutting in lime green tuxedos. Classy. I need a fez.

This is the saddest individual I've ever seen. He was made entirely of patches and tears and was dragging an old broom broken in four places and held together with shoelaces.

Big thanks to Kate for remembering to bring a camera and for taking most of these pictures. See you at next year's show. And if you're in Texas this year, you should be going to this.

Reverse Pretend Crush

2008-10-14T21:45:00.003-04:00

Behold my latest invention: the Reverse Pretend Crush.

It's not what it sounds like.

You know what a crush is—it's when you feel all delicate inside whenever that special someone walks by. Crushes are great, but they can have pretty undesirable consequences (disheveled hearts, mainly).

And I'm sure you can guess what a pretend crush is: it's when you only pretend to have a crush on someone. The bonus here is that you still get to have something to get up for, to get dressed and be on time for, but you don't risk nearly as much. You still get to gush and groan and giddily write letters to your mission-bound siblings, but there is lots less feeling sissy about never getting up the nerve to say anything. Not saying anything is the whole point. Pretend crushes can get you though the low times when a real crush is inadvisable or unfeasible.

For a long time, pretend crushes seemed like the way to go, but then, against all odds, I discovered their hidden danger.¹

So now I've invented a replacement, something I'm pretty sure is foolproof. It's the reverse pretend crush. The thing is this: instead of imagining you have a crush on someone, you imagine someone has a crush on you.

[This is the sound of your mind being blown. If you were wearing socks, they are now across the room. If you weren't wearing socks, look down.]

Genius. You go to work or school or church or wherever secure in the pretend knowledge that Such'nsuch has a secret crush on you. You try to catch him or her looking wistfully in your direction. You try to look cool and say intelligent things so as not to destroy the illusion that you are indeed crushable and crushworthy. You dress a little nicer in the morning, brush that hair a little more gallantly because, hey, someone will be noticing.

It's working for me. One day on the pretend crush diet and suddenly I can match like a robot running the latest matching software. Check this out:

I got up this morning and put on my favorite shirt. This Mossimo polo from Target recently surpassed my old brown bartender shirt (thanks Liz, Christmas '06) as my luckiest top.

Then I put on my favorite shoes. I spent months searching for the perfect pair of silver New Balance and weeks breaking them in (fashion isn't comfort, says Kate), but it was all worth it. It was even worth sending back the first pair when they weren't quite right (thanks Zappos for your excellent customer service and thanks Zach for bringing the glory of silver shoes to my attention).

Next I slid on this pair of super socks (thank you Gap clearance rack and thank you old Gap gift-card-found-in-my-wallet-from-Christmas-with-a-few-bucks-left-on-it). How I got them on under my shoes I'll never figure out.

Lastly I went downstairs to see what was hanging in the coat closet, and I noticed this sweater, also Mossimo and also from Target, but purchased at least 8 months before and long since forgotten. Can you even believe it?

Watch out pretend crush! You dead.

¹I don't want to talk about it. Get me on a good day and liquor me up with cheesecake or cream soda, and then maybe I'll talk. Maybe.

Kirtland

2008-10-13T21:08:00.004-04:00

In an effort to make my brother jealous I present the results of my trip to Kirtland last Saturday:

'Twas beautiful weather in Kirtland, headquarters of the LDS Church from 1831–1838.

Had I lived then, I would've set my rocking chair here, on the porch of the Newel K. Whitney Store, and played Parcheesi all day.

The temple and the historical houses are pretty great, don't get me wrong. But the best part about Kirtland is this: a real working sawmill. It blows my mind that all you need to build this wood factory is a blacksmith and some guts. You just jimmy up some great big gears and some levers and BAM, you're cutting day and night. I gotta build me one of these.

Isn't it beautiful? Oh that I were a pioneer!

See, the waterwheel turns the gears,

and the saw blade goes up and down,

and the logs move back and forth and get cut into beautifully straight planks.

Ramming Speed!

Yeah, so who's jealous now? Who cares about pyramids and canyons o' the crescent moon and domes o' the rock? Who cares about the pillars of Hercules and deepest darkest Africa.

Shut up. You stink.

Last Year, IMAX

2008-10-13T21:05:00.002-04:00

photo by Moo

Slight Modifications

2008-10-03T01:40:00.006-04:00

Since moving in we've made a few slight modifications to the old Boo House. Allow me to show you:

click to see it nice and big

This is the Gravity Room.¹ I put up a dark blue butcher-paper racing stripe to give the walls some color, and then I made some orange denim curtains to really snazz up the place. Dave kindly provided the lamps, the rug, the futon, and an endless assortment of books. Joel brought the six-foot-wide bean bag that's back in the corner. He also brought his projector, which you can see hooked up to a DVD player and some nintendos in front of the boarded-up fire place. It shines on an actual projector screen (like from a classroom) rather than an old sheet; we bolted it into the wall next to where this shot was taken. There's also a surround-sound system hiding out in various nooks. Joel also provided the nice painting above the mantel, which actually matches the room quite well, even though we didn't plan it that way.

I acquired that gorgeous green Barcalounger at a Salvation Army in Lancaster, OH. I went in there and looked around, the way you do when you're sizing up a thrift store, and in about a minute I had figured out that the only thing worth a dime in the whole place was this beautiful green chair. It was clean and comfortable and was without tears or stain or even many signs of wear, and it was just sitting there alone against the usual jumble of indecipherable furniture parts and blue-jean concoctions.

And it was the only thing in the whole store without a price tag.

I went up to the front to ask about it, just knowing that it would be like $80 since it was clearly such a find. The lady at the front didn't even know what I was talking about. "The what?" she asked.

"The green chair back there in the furniture. I was wondering how much it is."

"I'll have to go take a look, honey. Just a sec."

She seemed stunned to see it there when we reached the back of the store, like it wasn't supposed to be part of the inventory, like it was the office chair and some worker had thrown it out on the floor as a joke. I cringed for the moment she would name it out of my price range, out of my future (I had an Explorer full of Target dorm-room furniture outside and a wallet that was feeling the strain despite the considerable back-to-school discounts.)

"Twenty bucks," she said.

Sold.

¹ I once had this dream where me and a bunch of friends (I think it was the gang from Scooby-Doo) were being given a tour of a brand new, as-yet-unopened skyscraper. The guide was taking us from room to room showing us all the incredible things that had been built into the building. Finally we reached the top of the tower and stood outside the central, pinnacle room, and the guide explained to us that all we had seen was nothing compared to what we would now see: the Gravity Room. The whole building had been built for this room to exist. It was new and incredible, and we were to be given the honor of seeing it in person before the whole world. I was dying to see what the Gravity Room held—an antigravity device? furniture on the ceiling? controls for the gravity of the whole city? a huge meteorite glowing with energy being fed into some fantastic machine? This was it, the moment I had waited for, the unveiling of the Gravity Room. Like, wow, Scoob. The guide went to the doors, reached for the handle,

And I woke up. I've spent my entire life trying to figure out what it is. I usually name a room in my house the Gravity Room in hopes that it'll inspire me to finish the dream, but who knows if I'll ever know?

Welcome to Boo House

2008-10-03T00:04:00.000-04:00

After our landlord, Ms. Knight, married her high school sweetheart, Mr. Right, and informed us she would be selling the house and moving to North Carolina, Dave and I began the search for a new place. Friends were skeptical that we would be able to find anything comparable: 159 Grosvenor St. was a palace. It was a Sears Craftsman home, probably built in the 20s, reportedly for a local physician and his family. In 2008 it still had its original wood floors—though they were mostly covered by highly practical but thankfully new berber—and the crown molding capping the walls, the decorative columns framing the living room entry, and the woodwork around the windows, doors, and fireplace was still beautiful. The rooms were spacious and the ceilings high, and a second bathroom had been added some years before.

That's not what made it a palace, though. The thing that sealed the deal, that made us grimace at the news of changing ownership, was that Mrs. Knight-Right had been content to rent it out at a mere $1000 a month to four grad students—one tenant more than the legal limit of three unrelated occupants per house. And even though four of us split the rent, it only ever felt like two of us were living there.

See, the other two tenants were practically ghosts. Tom, a first-year masters student in the theatre department, spent pretty much all his time at school and on the stage. Even when he was home he pretty much kept to himself in the attic bedroom. I never saw him watch TV, never saw him do homework in the living room, and never saw him sit down and eat a meal—he would just microwave a Lean Pocket and stand over the kitchen counter before slipping back upstairs and out of sight. It wasn't odd for me to go a week without seeing him, or if I did it would just be for the second it took him to hit the bottom of the stairs and lock the bathroom door behind him (why he ever agreed to live on the third floor and use the first floor bathroom I'll never know).

Tony was even more absent. He actually lived an hour and a half away, with his wife, and only came into town for days he had class or taught. He would usually show up Monday morning pretty early and leave Thursday afternoon, but even when he was in town I'd see him more at the office than at home. The only thing I ever, ever saw him eat was popcorn.

I can count the times all four of us were in the same room on one hand. I can count the conversations I had with Tom and Tony on the same hand. Which means that Dave and I had the run of a beautiful three-story home with porch, swing, parking, basement, laundry, and more for a mere $255 a month each.

Finding a comparable deal elsewhere seemed, uh, unlikely.

But, as it turns out, I'm the second-luckiest guy in the world, and Dave is maybe a close third. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: Boo House.¹

It may not look like much on the outside, but this house is a real catch. Turns out it almost exactly the same as our old house but smaller. The floor plan is eerily familiar, but everything is five or six steps closer and there's no attic room. Instead, there's a nice walk-in shower, a laundry room on the first floor, a coat closet with a full-length mirror on the door, and a deck out back.

There's also a dishwasher—an insane luxury and a big selling point—but it is missing an important part, so it doesn't work yet.

Dave found the house a few weeks after Mrs. Knight-Righter gave us the news, and upon seeing it we knew we had found the house for us. There was only one problem: there was now only two of us since our ghost-roommates wouldn't be moving with us, and the house needed three to make the rent feasible. But where could we find a third warm body that wouldn't cramp our style of using the whole refrigerator and all the cupboards and all the furniture as if no one else were around? Should we sign the lease and then find a sucker or should we risk someone else leasing the house while we made inquiries?

Dave was a little worried, but I told him not to sweat it, that if God had thrown us a house with a dishwasher He'd certainly toss a roommate in on the bargain.

I went to church that very Sunday and noticed a guy about my age sitting near the back in street clothes. After the service I found out he was a soon-to-be BYU grad in Athens for just a few days to find housing for the next year when he'd be beginning a masters in history. "Looking for a house, eh?" said I.

And the rest is history. Joel, as it turns out, is a real champ. He's even better than a ghost-roommate, which is good, cause I don't want to live in a haunted house in a town that has five graveyards and a haunted insane asylum.

¹ Haven't you always wanted to live in a house with a name? "See you this evening for whist at Pemberly, what?"

Recommendation

2008-09-30T23:47:00.006-04:00

I mostly decline to give book recommendations. (I explained why here.)

But just in case you are looking for something to read, something new and perhaps unlike what you've read before, something that isn't just another novel or memoir, something that doesn't require a big commitment, something contemporary yet tested—

Just in case you actually would like a book recommendation, here's mine:

And here's why:

1. Each of these books is chock full of contemporary literature, but neither forces you to run the normal risk associated with new writing. You know what I'm talking about: you're browsing at the bookstore and you find yourself enchanted by the very very clever graphic art covering the latest by Ian McEwan or Jonathan Safran Foer or whatever, but besides the congratulatory blurbs on the back of the book you have no independent confirmation that this book isn't going to be a huge let down. You stroke the cover a bit and look around and find yourself drawn in deeper, towards the depths of the store, to the [Proven] Literature section, where old classics like Jane Eyre and Moby Dick are sporting similarly clever graphic updates on their old covers along with a century or so of success to justify their purchase. You're torn. You want to be hip, to be aware of the newest books on the block, but you don't want to wind up buying garbage.

With the Best American Series you need not worry. Every entry in this yearly anthology is triple-checked for awesomeness—once by its original publisher, again by the series editor, and again again by the guest editor for any given year. And it came out today—you can't get any more modern than that.

2. Even if, despite the fine taste of three editors, something in one of these books doesn't appeal to you, that doesn't mean the whole book was a waste. With essays, all you have to do is wait for half a dozen pages—or skip half a dozen pages—and you've got a new essay with a new author.

3. You probably haven't read many essays since high school and college ruined them for you by imposing deadlines and minimum page requirements. So if you've been steadily reading novels or memoirs and want a change, here's twenty or more short changes in one book.

4. I haven't actually read either book yet, so I won't be offended if you don't like it after all. (Somehow, recommending something I haven't read seems right. I recently sent E-style two CDs for her birthday that I had never even heard before.) I've never yet been disappointed with a Best American Travel Writing. On the one hand, every essay in it is loaded with heaps of fantastic knowledge about the world: it's the best kind of education. I've learned about eating whale meat in Iceland, the disappearing Aral Sea, the Pope's favorite ski lodges, and even Wilmington, Delaware, the credit card capital of the world. But even if I don't happen to be particularly interested in the place or topic of a particular essay, there's still the other hand: every essay is the account of someone's crazy adventure someplace. You can't lose.

The Best American Essays isn't as foolproof (since essay is a term widely interpretable) but it has the added advantage of being wide open for length and topic and style. I'm not out of the roman numeral pages yet, but I'm excited by the introductory remarks of this year's guest editor, Adam Gopnik. He seems to share my opinions of what an essay is.

6. They are self-perpetuating. Meaning (1) they come out every October, (2) if you like a particular piece you can look up the magazine or journal that originally printed it and perhaps find a whole treasure trove of reading you never knew you were looking for, and (3) they each contain a list of "notables" that were considered but not selected for the book, which you can look up on your own time if you still haven't gotten enough.

5. They're beautiful outside and in. Just look at that blue. And for those of you with an eye for typography, they have nice fonts, kerning, leading, gutters, and all that. Quite nice on the eyes. They have a nice heft too. My only concern is that they seem to be using a noticeably cheaper paper this year, thinner and grayer but by no means lousy.

So there it is. And in case you were interested, they also publish the Best American Comics, Short Stories, Mystery Stories, Nonrequired Reading, Science and Nature Writing, Spiritual Writing, and Sports Writing.

Read or die.

Sailing

2008-09-29T23:26:00.003-04:00

So on Saturday I went sailing for the first time in my life. It. Was. Awesome.

It all came about when I told JSK that I was planning on sailing to Antarctica as soon as I could save up the money. She basically said, "That's nice. My dad sails," to which I responded, "Can he take me sailing?"

See, the problem with saving all my money to sail to Antarctica is that it is a big commitment for something I know nothing about. I might not even like sailing. I might have irreconcilable seasickness. I might be opposed to so much cussing. Before last Saturday all I knew for sure is that I loved the idea of sailing, as evidenced by the list of books to the left here (at least 13 of which star the sea, not to mention all the ones currently next to my bed).

But now I'm sure. JSK, her husband Tim, and I drove up to Columbus to meet her dad at Hoover Reservoir where we saddled up his dinghy and hit the water. Mr. Schomberg manned the tiller while Tim and I acted as ballast. We sailed up the lake for an hour or so, zigzagging against the wind; Tim manned the jib on the port tack and I got it on the starboard one. It felt like flying a kite. The weather man had predicted rain but it was clear and sunny and windy: just perfect weather for sailing.

Click to see larger photos; see more at my facebook profile.

Huge thanks to JSK for making this salty sea dog's dream come true. Next stop: penguins.

The Triumphant Return

2008-09-15T22:09:00.004-04:00

I think this picture pretty much sums up the sort of entrance I'd like to make as I power my way back into the blogosphere:

"The Last Unicorn" ^©1981
purchased for $1 from Goodwill by David Grover, also ^©1981

A Short Story

2008-08-28T02:52:00.003-04:00

I've been thinking for a long time about stories: about what they are and why they have such power over us.

You know what I mean. We are all constantly telling stories. We are dying to hear stories. The whole point of the telephone and all its descendants is so that we can more quickly and efficiently tell our stories. The newspaper is a daily dose of stories; all of television and cinema are stories. Even documentaries are stories—the good ones at least—and the ones that fail to make a story of their subject are often the ones we have in mind when we yawn at the idea of documentaries. Half of the songs on the radio tell stories ("Here's the thing—we started out friends..."), and for the other half we supply stories ("Every breath you take, every move you make..."), and we feel especially lucky when at a concert we hear the true story behind a song from the lips of its creator ("This next song is one I wrote after my girlfriend left me...").

The vast majority of scripture is story rather than sermon. The lessons and classes from my youth I still remember I remember because they were wrapped in stories; the teachers I remember most vividly were storytellers.

That much is given. What I haven't ever pinned down is why. Why do we love stories so much? Why are they so important and so powerful? What difference does it make whether a story is true or not?

Tonight I was watching a fine film when I realized one part of it. We—should I say I?—I love stories because they tell me who I am. Or rather, or more often, they tell me who I am not, which is just another way of telling me who I am. I am not, say, the Count of Monte Cristo, nor am I Edward Rochester. I am not Robin Hood. When I read them or see them, I can feel stirrings of antipathy or of common feeling. I say in myself, "I have never felt that way," or "I have had that experience," or, "I would not have acted that way." In seeing others—all others in all stories—I come to see myself: my boundaries come into focus. I can say, "I am not you; I am me," with more alacrity. Stories help turn the vast field of emotion and color that is my mind's-eye view of the world into a great big Venn diagram: "Here's where Rochester and I intersect; here's where we do not."

We all do this. How often have you interrupted a friend telling you about some experience at the grocery store to say, "If I had been there, I would've done this"?

Perhaps this idea offers a way to evaluate literature and literary merit. I know I am guilty of indulging in stories merely for the sake of not having to think for awhile. This summer it was five seasons of NCIS. I also often read just to find out what happens: notice the three Star Wars titles that have shown up on my list this summer. They weren't very good or all that exciting, and I certainly didn't feel any deep connection with Luke and the gang. I just wanted to see how things turned out (the Empire never struck back).

Seems to me these are lesser uses of story (not that there's anything wrong with recreation—I'm not so high-brow as that). It certainly feels different to read, say, Jane Eyre than to read Heir to the Empire. Jane tells me things I didn't know about myself. She makes me more of me.¹

Not that it need be one or the other. Harry Potter, for one, has done all three for me. Not only have I been able to while away the hours countlessly, I've wondered intensely what would happen next, and I've seen myself in and out of Harry, Snape, and the rest.

So there it is. We love stories.

We love stories because they tell us who we are. They separate us from all other living beings.²

¹ "I've always known myself," Jane says in the fine film I watched this evening. "But Mr. Rochester was the first to recognize me."

"Know thyself," goes the Greek proverb.

To be so lucky.

² They also connect us to all other living beings, but that's another idea for another day. "Come in and know me better, man!"

"And this is life eternal, that they might know thee."

How It Turned Out

2008-08-18T21:41:00.002-04:00

Well, I slept until about 2:30 am. I think my body thought it was just a nap. After that I watched a movie, did a crossword or two, read.

Round two of this fight begins tonight!

The Big Effort

2008-08-17T21:47:00.002-04:00

Alright, it's time. Tonight I take back the night.

Somehow I've gotten turned around and I've been sleeping from about 7 am to 2 pm every day. It's weird. I tried several times to just stay up all night and on through the next day, but I haven't been able to make it without crashing in the afternoon. But today is different. I slept from 7 to about 11, got up and went to church (and stayed awake!), came home and made dinner, and then went to my sister's house—no napping! Now it's 8:50 and I'm going to go jump in my bed and sleep. Yay!

Have You Seen This?

2008-08-13T02:11:00.002-04:00

This is weird and quite funny. But weird.

nograpesnonuts.com

I just listened to a monologue about dogs in ponchos—on a site about grape-nuts.

Game Night

2008-08-09T03:26:00.013-04:00

Last night was the first Grover Family Game Night.¹

The night began with a pre-game night game of Yahtzee, with Liz winning the first game and me winning the second. Yahtzee dances abounded.

After that I put on my Game Night clothes² (including my lucky socks), and we congregated in the kitchen to formally initiate Game Night with a tribute to Sarah and Andrew, the two siblings who couldn't be there: a tap dance. From there it was a furious game of Don't Eat Pete played with peanut butter M&Ms.

Don't Eat Pete

Place an M&M on each of the faces on your Don't-Eat-Pete board. Someone leaves the room and the rest designate one face to be "Pete." Then the person comes back and eats one candy at a time until he or she chooses "Pete," at which moment everyone yells, "don't eat pete!" and the person's turn is over.

When Don't Eat Pete petered out we slumped into the living room to play the Thimble Game (which is extra fun with kids who can't actually count to a hundred.

From small and simple things is great meyhem brought to pass.

The Thimble Game

Everyone sits in a circle and the person who's It fills a thimble full of water and chooses a secret number between 1 and 100. Then each person in turn guesses a number, to which It responds "Higher" or "Lower," narrowing down the range of choices. When someone guesses the secret number, instead of answering, It flings the thimbleful of water on them.

When that ended we decided to have an add-on dance party, in which each person in the group adds a dance move onto the growing chain. When we had gone around the circle two times or so we pumped up the music and put it all together. Here is a video of (most of) us doing the dance—see if you can follow all the moves in order (the video starts on the Harris):

the White Boy
the Squid³
the Batman
the Harris
the Maracas
the Pistol 360°
the Crow
the Worm (barely)
the Magic
the Snorkler
the Harris II
the Brady Bunch
the Break Dancer
the Sarah and Andrew Million-dollar Move
the Ecstatic Chipmunk
the Jimmy Stewart
the Monkey

height="256" codebase='http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab'>

controller="true" loop="false" pluginspage='http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/'>

(If for some reason the video isn't here or doesn't work,
click right here to see the video.)

The Moore's showed up just as we were finishing our dance-off, which embarrassed them more than us.

The next game was a feat of skill: a blind taste test. We blindfolded three or four people at a time and saw if they could taste the difference between name brand stuff and the generic brands, if they could differentiate between close cousins like Pepsi and Coke or Cheezits and Cheese Nips, and if they could identify candy bars at only a taste (Whatchamacallit and Zero proved difficult). As a tribute to our hometown we even had people try to tell the difference between regular Dr. Pepper and Dr. Pepper made with Sugar Land's own Imperial Pure Cane Sugar.

Everybody did well and felt sugarsick.

From there we split up—some kids ended up watching a movie; some grown-ups attacked the cocktail weenies; Liz and I sampled the Cinnamon Cake with Cinnamon Frosting that was a month in the making.⁴ Pretty soon I got embroiled in a eight player Rummikub game 'round the dining room table. We had to mix both our sets (one old, one new), which resulted in a lot of puzzling over colors.⁵

All in all it was a pretty good night. More dancing than one would expect, but that's the Grovers, I guess.

¹ As opposed to the first Grover Family Luau, which has yet to happen.
² read "clean clothes"
³ This summer's hottest dance move, and my own personal Yahtzee Dance.
⁴ Special thanks to Amy for sharing that post; find the recipe here. I slightly altered it—before step one insert Step 0: "Try to get someone else to make this and otherwise generally procrastinate for four weeks."
⁵ See tomorrow's post.

Two Complaints

2008-08-05T13:49:00.003-04:00

1. Google Reader.

Don't get me wrong—I like and use Google Reader, but it has just one major flaw (that I know of): it strips all the formatting out of the websites it displays.

For those of you who don't know what Google Reader is, it's a program that keeps track of all the stuff you regularly read on the internet. Like, say you read a dozen friends' blogs everyday, scan a few webcomics, and maybe like to check to see what's new at apple.com or something. Instead of having to go to each website individually to check if anything's been updated, you can just enter each site into your Google Reader and it will check for you, grab what's new, and show it to you to read. It saves a lot of time and effort (you can check it out by finding the "reader" button on the top of Google's homepage, perhaps under the "more" button).

But what it doesn't do is show you the actual websites themselves. All you get is the text and photos displayed in simple black on white. Which is all well and good, but where's the joy in that? People go to a lot of trouble to make things look nice on their blogs and stuff—they pick nice colors and fonts, interesting layouts, and constantly update endless sidebars—but I'm not getting to appreciate any of that anymore. All I get is the naked text. So democratic. There should be a button on Google Reader to open a tab to each updated page in one click.

2. Local News.

Forget all the hype about a liberal media bias, the true culprits of funky journalism are the local cats. All I see, in no matter which city I live, is an endless war between stations offering the most accurate weather team, the most hard-hitting investigative journalism, and the most local local-interest stories. It's shameless and irrelevant.

Watching them squeeze every possible drop of story out of nothing makes me sick. Seeing them attempt to wield executive powers several steps beyond "investigating" is troubling. Seeing my neighbors actually tape their windows today in anticipation of a tropical storm making landfall today is laughable—and certainly the result of overhyped, quarter-hourly updates by our city's opportunistic news media.

My writer friends and I often talked derisively (and somewhat jealously) about bad literature, bestsellers, tell-all memoirs—stuff we find distasteful or dishonest about our field. I don't know what my journalism friends talk about, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was it.

God's Radio

2008-07-24T13:56:00.002-04:00

Ditto everything I said about the radio a few days ago for church.

341 hymns in the book ÷ 52 sundays a year = at least 6 original songs per week. (Can God get tired of "The Spirit of God"?)

Also: I dislike how we all seem to think "We Thank the O God For a Prophet" is a song to the prophet on account of that first line. I get the feeling people think that "his goodness and mercy" is the prophet's, not God's.

Revenge of the Night Person

2008-07-21T12:51:00.004-04:00

So I've been making good progress on becoming a morning person. That is, until a few weeks ago.

Sometime after crashing Mary's bike, my old nightself made a comeback I couldn't believe. I went from getting up cheerily(ish) before 8 to stumbling from bed to couch for a nap at around 11. It was weird how quickly it happened.

Then I got sick. I NEVER get sick! Even when I do get sick, it's only barely sick (I barely had a cold), but since I never get sick, getting sick destroys me. I have ultimate respect for those who still manage to do something with themselves through sickness¹, because it only takes a tiny amount to make me completely worthless. As evidence of my inability to do anything at all when incommoded, I offer Exhibit A:

Exhibit A: click to enlarge

Clearly I got sick sometime around weeks 4 and 5 of my 10,000 pages goal. Luckily I had been such an overachiever earlier on.

¹ Before gloating, read The Journal of a Disappointed Man. And I'm not talking about pain; that's different.

Cruel Summer

2008-07-18T05:03:00.006-04:00

Being in Houston for the summer, I am with car. Being with car means I am with radio. And here's what I've noticed:

Houston went through a real bad spell a few years ago of having very few good stations. It seemed whenever we got one that was decent, it would soon turn into a tejano station. That's what happened to Rock 101, at least (the only station I've ever heard play Rush without a request). But in the past year or two, things have really turned around. There's an 80s station, a pop top 40, a classic rock, a modern rock, an easy listening, a few dance/hip-hop/rap, and at least two good country stations. To top it off, Houston recently got Jack FM (formatless, DJ-less, requestless radio), a station called Country Legends (which specializes in George and Dolly), and the oldies station has dropped the 50s doo-wop and moved up in time a decade to cover the classic rock station's butt (sorry if that makes you feel old).

This is good. It means that our Accord's 12 FM presets are locked and loaded and that the CDs can stay in the doohickey between the seats, not causing any accidents.¹

However, I can't help but notice one odd thing: with all those stations, I still only hear the same twelve songs over and over. It turns out that "Pour Some Sugar On Me" counts as classic rock, 80s rock, modern rock, pop top 40, and even easy listening. So do all the Boston songs I don't like, and "Electric Avenue" (which I never recall hearing before 2004 but now can identify within 2 bars). Why? Why with all these options, all these stations, can I hear "Tainted Love" or "Land Down Under" at any time of any day?

I did some research, and it turns out that at least three of my most listened to stations are owned by the same company. Would it be so hard to coordinate efforts a little bit so as to prevent the overexposure of the public to REO Speedwagon and Peter Frampton?

I'm not really complaining—I'm sure there's a business model somewhere that explains all this. I'm just curious why, for as long as I can remember, I've never heard more than one Beatles or Michael Jackson song in a week no matter how much time I spend in the car, yet I can hear Lenny Kravitz's pretty-much-terrible cover of "American Woman" any time I like. Why, with 2 full greatest hits albums to choose from (one of which is tied with Thriller as the top selling album of all time), the radio has let me hear "One of These Nights" three times this week but hasn't given me "Peaceful Easy Feeling," "New Kid in Town," or "Tequila Sunrise" once the whole summer?

I don't know anyone with any kind of station loyalty. I don't know anyone who listens through the commercials instead of switching the station. I don't know anyone who listens to exactly one kind of music. I don't know anyone who approves of the way radio is done. (I don't know anyone who likes 3 Doors Down.²)

And I don't know anyone who wants to hear the same 20 songs over and over forever. Even if there was only one radio station, and even if that station played only hits, and even if it only played hits in, say, one genre from, say, one decade, it would have at least 1000 songs to choose from. Fifty minutes an hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 4 minutes a song—no song would need to be played more than twice, and the chances of me hearing it both times is slim slim slim.

Classic rock stations boast that they play 3 decades worth of hits, and "rock" is a broad term.

There's one group that I haven't minded (mound?) hearing a little too often, though: Ace of Base.

Good times, E. (I hope I never hear Lifehouse again, no matter how much money a station may be giving away.)

¹ I can't figure out why, but no matter how many other stations crowd the buttons, the one farthest left is always, always the classical station. I keep thinking it's my dad, that he prefers to have that station at his fingertips, if only to feel more classy because of it—but it's my mom's car, not his. I'm changing it tomorrow.
² Don't tell me. It would only harm our relationship.

Counting

2008-07-16T22:47:00.005-04:00

Alexander Dumas isn't really seen as a great writer in a literary sense so much as in an action sense. But I found some gems in The Count of Monte Cristo. It was the longest book I've ever read, including the Old Testament (have I read all the pages in the Old Testament? Has anyone?¹)

There are some situations which men instinctively comprehend but are unable to comment on intellectually. In such cases, the greatest poet is the one who emits the most powerful and the most natural cry. The crowd takes this cry for a complete story, and it is right to be satisfied with that, and still more so to find it sublime when it is truthful. (1174)

This next one struck because I often think about this Greek maxim in conjunction with John 17:3 and the MySpace blogospherical age we live in.

...It was, in reality, deliberate arrogance, an extreme example of aristocratic contempt, in short, the application of the maxim: "Admire yourself and others will admire you," a hundred times more useful in our days than the Greek one: "Know thyself," which has now been replaced by the less demanding and more profitable art of knowing others. (548–9)

And this last one is great because it groups Montaigne in with the greatest literature of all time. What, you don't know who Montaigne is? That's okay, I don't know who half the others are. This was said by the old priest in prison, by the way.

In Rome, I had nearly five thousand volumes in my library. By reading and re-reading them, I discovered that one hundred and fifty books, carefully chosen, give you, if not a complete summary of human knowledge, at least everything that it is useful for a man to know. I devoted three years of my life to reading and re-reading these hundred and fifty volumes, so that when I was arrested I knew them more or less by heart. In prison, with a slight effort of memory, I recalled them entirely. So I can recite to you Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, Livy, Tacitus, Strada, Jornadès, Dante, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Machiavelli, and Bossuet; I mention only the most important. (156)

I read the Penguin edition, by the way. I love Penguin editions (I don't love penguin movies, though).

¹ I'm looking at you, Deuteronomy.

Bike

2008-07-12T11:52:00.002-04:00

Why do we say "drive a car" and "ride a bike"? Shouldn't it be the other way around? I mean, it takes a lot more effort to keep a bike moving on down the road; one's legs are actually driving the cranks round and round. In a car we more or less just sit there and stretch our ankles back and forth. There's no leaning into turns, no ducking into the wind. Cars pretty much drive themselves, and if there is more than just the driver inside, the others are certainly riders.

Anyway, I've been riding around Sugar Land for the past few weeks, and I think it's interesting that I've gone down street after street that I'd never been down before. We moved here when I was six, yet I'd never been in Venetian Estates before this week. I'd never really ridden around the mansion on Lakeview. I don't think I'd even ever been on some of the streets in my own neighborhood that I've found. It's like I'm on a voyage of discovery.

The other day I waited only ten feet away as a train barreled past. I've done that in a car hundreds of times, but standing in the open air on a bike—it was brand new.

I don't know if I mentioned this, but back in Athens I saw a real live fox one day while riding. I also saw a couple dozen chipmunks, a large bird of prey, and a five-foot-long snake that was stretch out width-wise in the middle of the trail. I swerved to avoid running over it, luckily making for the tail side rather than the head side. I also saw a bunch of Indian kids out in a field playing cricket.

Current Status

2008-06-30T23:54:00.004-04:00

Hair: short

Knee: scraped

Ankle: sprained

So far I've read 3,159 pages and hit a top speed of 60 mph on Mary's motorcycle¹. Thanks to Sarah for taking me to the pool with her kids, but despite the time in the sun...

Farmer's tan: still completely ridiculous

¹ Sorry for crashing your bike, Mer-ber-her.

Embarrassment

2008-06-26T22:22:00.005-04:00

I've had the urge lately to be in an embarrassing commercial involving medicine or a hygiene product. You know what I'm talking about, something for Pepcid AC or Preparation H, or even a public service announcement for gonorrhea or something. Maybe a Gas-X commercial, something where my ability to make believable faces would help get the job.

Before, I thought about how humiliating that would be—there's a Seinfeld episode or something where someone gets on a poster for a disease and then all their friends think they have it. But now I think I would love it. I could tell all my friends to come over for the big premier (though I wouldn't tell them what I'd done the commercial for—we could take bets), and then, right in the middle of the commercial break after Double Jeopardy and before Final Jeopardy, there I'd be in living color, shooting hoops with the guys. I'd shoot and miss, and instead of going for a rebound I'd turn to the camera and confess that it's hard to play while constipated, but with new Ex-Lax^® Maximum Strength laxitive, I'm getting prescription strength relief without a prescription. Cut to a computer-generated diagram of the medicine actually working in my bowels and a brief description of the possible side effects, and then back to me with a heartfelt testimonial about how important it is for me to stay regular, what with my active lifestyle. Then I'd post up, grab the pass, and sink a three-pointer.

I don't think I'd be embarrassed by that anymore. On the contrary, I'd crack up; I'd be proud of it. I'd learn all the facts about the product and spout them off whenever I got the chance, prescribing it to all my friends at the slightest provocation.

I just put this in because every post looks better with a picture. This is my brother's bike, which he sent me so I could begin training for my century ride. One day I saw a fox, and another day I almost ran over a five-foot-long snake.
What changed? When did I cease to be embarrassed by myself so much? As a kid I would gladly have died before putting myself out there like that. Not that I thought about being in Viagra commercials (not that they had them), but I did think about, oh, say dancing. Just the thought of dancing in public terrified me to no end. I don't know that I've ever had as much angst as I did in the weeks leading up to the 8th grade dance. Now I always want to watch Harry Potter 4 for no other reason than that it has a middle school dance in it and I love to feel that anxiety again.

Jeopardy!

2008-06-24T22:48:00.003-04:00

Here's how it all turned out:

I got to admit, it was even more fun than I anticipated. Dave and I got really into analyzing the players' styles and strategies, and when we had everyone over for a barbeque to watch the final two matches it was off the hook. The wagering in the final game was heroic, and Andrew redeemed himself poetically after engendering hatred among us viewers.

Next year it's going to be even bigger, even better.

Summer of Tough

2008-06-23T23:09:00.003-04:00

Welcome to the Summer of Tough.

I got no rules, no responsibilities, no income. No job. I'm just chilling in Texas at my parents house for the summer, which you think would be sissy, but no way. I got a big list of awesome things to do—tough things—things to do just for doing.

One of em is to read 10,000 pages, which is about all of these books:

I'm plotting my progress on a giant thermometer graph I drew and hung on my wall.

Here are some of the others (I'm taking requests, if you think of anything)

Ride a hundred miles on a bike in one day
Hold my breath for 90 seconds
Do 20 chin-ups
Draw every day
Write every day
Learn Adobe CS3
Learn to ride a motorcycle (I got my permit today)
Learn to shoot a gun

I also want to go camping or hiking or to a waterpark or the beach or something rad like that, or all of those together, but I'm not sure if anyone will go with me. Also I'd like to do something tough like take cold showers every day, but since they remodeled the bathroom upstairs it doesn't really do cold very well.

Superstition

2008-06-05T13:29:00.006-04:00

The other night, as I told you, I jumped into bed to read the final story in The Amazing Adventures of Father Brown. The story was called "The Blast of the Book." I found it to be an apt parable.

In the story, Professor Openshaw, a skeptic scientist who debunked local psychics for fun, was stumped when a visitor arrived at his office and told him of a magic book that made people disappear. Apparently this man had seen the book in action in Africa when it made a friend of his disappear, and he was now in the process of bringing it back to its owner, but he thought he would bring it to Openshaw first since he was such a well-known destroyer of superstitions and myths. Openshaw agreed to look at the book, but when they went back out to the clerk's office where he had left the book, they found the book on the desk, unwrapped, and the clerk gone!

Eventually three more people disappear and poor Openshaw is frantic that he can't explain how this book can really be magic. That's where Father Brown steps in and helps crack the case. I won't tell you how he does it, but I'll tell you the last thing Brown says about it—they're the last lines in the book, actually. Openshaw asks Father Brown, "Did you never feel just a momentary awe of that awful volume?"

"Oh that," said Father Brown. "I opened it as soon as I saw it lying there. It's all blank pages. You see, I am not superstitious."

Ha ha! One point for all good Catholics! And, more importantly, one point for all good readers, for those who aren't afraid of books!

How often are people afraid of a good book on the grounds that it's too big or has too few pictures or that they don't have enough time? How often do we refuse to pick up the book that intrigues us because we feel bound by the book that obligates us? Openshaw was afraid he too might disappear, but Father Brown shows us that there's no need to worry—what's so bad about disappearing into a good book?

As a kid I was always intimidated by books I thought were out of my age group. When Liz was reading Lord of the Flies and got me hooked on the premise, rather than grab a copy myself I fretted that I wasn't "old enough" for a high schooler's book. When Jen showed me the very cool covers of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings that were in our house—that had always been in our house—I was too scared to try them out because they were thick and there were four of them.

What's the worst that could've happened to me? I could've read them for 15 minutes and then tossed them aside, bored. Why was I superstitious about only reading books I considered to be at my age level? Why be afraid of chapters or pages or reputations? So much time lost.

Well no more. I'm a book slayer now. You should be too.

Where is Shannon When I Need Her?

2008-06-04T10:10:00.003-04:00

So this morning I'm working on an annotated bibliography that's due early this afternoon. I've got to get it done because I have meetings with students soon and there just isn't any time left.

So why do I feel like dancing? It's pretty early in the day, I'm in my pajamas still, and it's thunderstorming outside. We put on Led Zeppelin's "When the Levee Breaks" and watched out the window for a few minutes, and now all I want to do is dance dance dance.

Here is what I'd be dancing to right now if I wasn't busy getting annotated.

My House

2008-06-03T22:05:00.003-04:00

Looks like this:

I sit and type out these blog entries by that second floor window on the left.

Proof

2008-06-03T00:08:00.003-04:00

So, you think all us English majors just sit around and read books all day, huh? Well think again.

Some of us write, sometimes. And sometimes, some of that writing gets submitted someplace. And sometimes, some of that submitted writing gets accepted and published.

Sometimes.

And that time is today! In case you aren't a subscriber to The Religious Educator and thus missed my recent article on the history of the Richard L. Evans Chair for Religious Understanding, you can still see proof that I, David Grover, am a writer...

...sometimes.

Check out my very short essay entitled "Second Coming" in the new issue of the online literary magazine JuiceBox. Many thanks to Jes for both choosing it and helping me with the ending.

And to all you naysayers: I can still beat your butts at Tetris, so watch out.

The Great Day

2008-06-02T10:24:00.005-04:00

Yesterday was a very, very good day.

It all started when I woke up and went to church. It was a good week for church, and it helped that I took along a piece of paper on which I had printed out a 15x15 table, which I intended to use in making my very own crossword puzzle. It was great—not only was it fun (and hard) to fit letters into all the spaces, but it helped keep me awake and aware to the various speakers and lessons (much like doodling does for students).

Just as Joey was dropping me off from church, I saw Dave and Megan heading out for JSK's party, and they invited me to come along. I changed clothes and we took a cooler full of orange Crush out to the country, halfway between Guysville and Coolville, to her beautiful house in the hills above Lottridge. There we met friends, continued work on the puzzle, played frisbee, ate hamburgers and hotdogs and incredible potato salad, and looked out over the beautiful Ohio country. Delightful.

But it doesn't stop there. On the way back, Dave dropped me off at Kate's for the Young SIngle Adult Break-fast (I got a nap in in the car). There I found a full page of puzzles in the Columbus Dispatch and got busy; by the time we left I had completed (with help from many) the large crossword, the Jumble, the Cryptoquip, and the other jumble, and I had made a mess of the quintuple sudoku. And I had read my horoscope, which was surprisingly accurate.

We ate Mexican food, including the Barte secret family recipe of Corny Corn and lots of lemon bars.

After dinner, I played Kate's 5th-grader little brother in a game of memory. You remember that game, right? With the cards you flip over and match?¹ Well this was a Monsters, Inc. version of the game, and I must say it was the worst possible incarnation. First off, the cards were not square; they were a festively skewed box-shape, kinda like Arkansas. Secondly, instead of having lots and lots of nicely different pictures to match, it only had the same fourish pictures repeated dozens of times with very, very minor changes. No joke, there was a pair with the one-eyed guy with his hands on his hips (?) and a nearly identical pair with his hands in the air. Then there was a pair with one hand in the air and one hand on his hips. This went on for every character (there's really only three), so what we ended up with was headache.

But I won.

Next I played Battleship against Kate herself. It was pretty fun forcing her to make explosion sounds whenever I got one of her ships, but I was making plenty of them myself. After a hard fought battle, I also won this game, sinking her battleship last of all.

Then a bunch of us played Settlers of Catan in what turned out to be the weirdest match ever. I won't bore you with the details, but you should know I bought 16 development cards since I pretty much couldn't do anything else. It went on for several hours, it seemed, but I eventually won with an army of 9 soldiers and the longest road, but only four settlements (no cities).

Then I came home with a tupperware full of homemade salsa and talked a bit to Dave and Megan while I sipped my fourth and final orange Crush of the day. All told, thats

2 parties,
2 free meals,
1 puzzle created,
4 puzzles solved,
3 games won, and
4 orange Crushes.

What a day.

A fourth and final orange Crush

¹ In my family we just called this the matching game.

Hero

2008-06-01T00:50:00.004-04:00

So today Dave and I were watching MSNBC's coverage of some committee's deliberations about primary votes in Florida. Well, Dave was watching that; I was doing crosswords on my DS with a big dictionary in my lap. We heard a mass of sirens roll by a few streets away, but honestly, that's not such a big thing for a Saturday late afternoon in our small town, so we didn't think anything of it. I was more worried about an 8-letter word for "doesn't go along."

Until Dave's phone rang.

It was our dear friend [codename], who briefly explained that the sirens were on his account, that his car had caught fire in the Lowe's parking lot and that he needed a ride home for his wife and kids. Dave said I'd be there in a jiffy and threw me the keys to his Malibu (he wasn't about to miss the imminent voting). I filled a bell-pepper orange bowl full of peanut butter ice cream and jumped in the car, off to the rescue.

As I pulled into the Lowe's parking lot I wondered what it would be like to shop around a hardware store eating a bowl of ice cream. Does anyone do that? Would the workers there ask you to step out or anything?¹ I was only there for a quick rescue, so I didn't find out. The girl at the returns desk, where I found my friend and his fam, was a little incredulous. "Is that ice cream?" she asked, and then shrugged as I smiled.

Short story: I got the wife and kids home while [codename] waited for the wrecker to come tow his car. He said he would call her for a ride from the shop in a few minutes. I loaned him my gameboy in the meantime, just in case, and, having done my duty, started home. As I was waiting at an intersection, however, a wrecker towing [codename]'s car drove by (and pretty much ran the red light), so I decided to follow them to the shop and preempt his wife having to come pick him up. I couldn't think of a way to get his attention though, and I worried that he would call her on his cell phone in the meantime. I even saw him pull out his phone, but there was nothing I could do.

When we got to the shop a minute later, I parked and walked over to where [codename] was paying the guy in the deserted parking lot. Boy was he surprised to see me, and he said he'd called Dave for a ride and that Dave was waiting for me to get home so he could pick up [codename]. But I was already there! I felt like a spy, man, or a flippin' ninja.

Well, the fire almost ruined [codename]'s day, and the cost of towing his car came out of the grill fund (the reason he was at Lowe's in the first place), but it all turned out fine in the end. Instead of chowing down on flame-kissed pork chops from a grill, he ordered chicken pesto pizza and we watched various Netflix.

And I got to feel like a hero: I was there when I was needed, I had ice cream when it was needed, I had a gameboy when it was needed, and I got pizza as a reward. The only thing I could've done better was to have my camera handy for insurance claims shots. Oh well, next time.

¹ Speaking of things out of place, the other day I was teaching my class when I noticed B, one of my students, holding a large metal bowl and a metal spoon. Food in class isn't out of the ordinary, but real dishes and silverware are a little weird, since they don't come out of vending machines. I stopped mid-sentence while I took in the scene—there was a half-gallon jug of milk on his desk as well. I gave him a quizzical look, to which he responded, "Fruity Pebbles" and raised up a box of cereal that was sitting on the floor by his bag.

And Another

2008-05-30T09:27:00.003-04:00

After thinking about it, I would like to revise my book-recommendation strategy.

When people find out I read a lot, they often say something like, "Oh, man, I wish I read more. I've been wanting to read, but I don't know what to read. Could you recommend some books to me? Like, if I only read one book, what book should it be?"

To this I say: "Read whatever book you really want to read." What I mean is that, since there are more books than anyone can possibly read in a lifetime, it's no use worrying about and apologizing for all the ones you haven't read. It doesn't matter if you read Moby Dick or Hank the Cowdog; the point isn't what you read, it's that you read. Besides, reading is supposed to be enjoyable first and foremost, especially if one expects to continue doing it. The kind of people who ask me for recommendations are the kind of people who haven't been swept away by the joy of reading, so if they obsess over reading the right book rather than a book they are interested in, they're likely to continue hating reading.

Thus I tell them, "Go out and read whatever book you've always wanted to read, and don't worry whether it's Mark Twain or Anne Rice. And if, halfway through, you lose interest, pick up another book." Sometimes we aren't ready for books, even when we are interested. Just because I read Huck Finn like a comic book, laughing aloud the whole time, doesn't mean it'll jive with you. You can always come back to a book later and see if you've become ready for it (for example: how I couldn't read Wuthering Heights to save my life in high school but I flew through it last year just for fun [you're next, As I Lay Dying]; how the Book of Mormon all of a sudden started making sense to me sometime in late high school—now I didn't have to decode the language of every verse bit by bit; the book opened up for me and I could enjoy it for the first time).

However, I would like to revise this policy. From now on my recommendation is thus:

"I recommend you go to the library and get a copy of the one book you've always felt obligated to read—something big and scary, preferably—Atlas Shrugged or Uncle Tom's Cabin. Take it home and read it for a few days, and then pop in to a book store and browse around until you find a book that really interests you, preferably paperback and short (feel free to judge by cover). Then read that book instead of and in sight of the first book, thinking often of the impending due date."

A Few More Things To Say About Books

2008-05-29T23:07:00.008-04:00

1. The smell. I smell my books. They smell great. Two examples:

This Father Brown book smells delightful. You know that decades-old mass-market paperback paper smell? Well you should. It's one part library, two parts older couple's house, and another part mismatched art supplies. It smells like the Fifties—not the fins and curves themselves, but pictures of them done on card stock with a dated color palette and propped up on a rickety old easel. It's the lampshades and carpet that decorated the church you grew up attending. I think you can find this smell in some of the less-frequented stacks of the Harold B. Lee Library, down in the subterranean floors near the faded photos of smart people with horn-rimmed glasses.
On Sunday I was hanging out after church with the elders and this guy James from the local newspaper who is doing a piece on them, and I found myself once again smelling my scriptures. They're the mini size, smaller than the normal ones but bigger than the military ones, but they aren't a quad (that's right, be jealous, cuz they're discontinued). I got them in Korea when I was a missionary. Back then, for the first month or so I had them, I was constantly smelling them to soak up that leathery smell of the cover—like new shoes only without the thought of funk to come. Now, years later, the leather smelled has mellowed and mixed with the ultra-thin paper smell and the gilt-edge smell. Delightful. James got plenty of pictures of me sniffing it up.

How to smell a book: open the book to a good page in the middle somewhere, bring it up to your face so your nose is right in the crevice of the pages, close to the binding, and inhale. I like my nose to be near the top of the page so I can open my eyes mid-whiff and look suspiciously at any gawkers. Like opening your eyes to look around at whose looking at you kiss someone.

Hmmm, the words are backward but my part is on the right side
(unlike in that last picture).
Well, this is plenty long for now. More things about books tomorrow!

All, or Nothing at All

2008-05-29T00:10:00.004-04:00

Today I had a Zero bar and it occurred to me that it was pretty much the polar opposite of a Snickers. I mean, Snickers is pretty much the candy bar, the archetype and all that. But a Zero, it's like the anti-Snickers. Take a picture of a Snickers and then look at the negative and what would you see: a Zero. Throw a Snickers in a black hole and what would you get: a Zero.

Crazy, yeah?

Turns out the real difference between the two is that Snickers has an advertising campaign. I looked around the internet for some Zero stuff, and I found zero stuff. When I looked for some Snickers—you guessed it—I laughed. Here are some of the good things:

    I pity this commercial.
    Pilgrims and Vikings?
    The Feast
    This one is made by superb facial expressions.
    I'm impressed by this website.
    And this seems to be an entire Spanish-language campaign devoted to Snickers.

Stolen Time

2008-05-27T22:29:00.006-04:00

It turns out there are few joys that can rival the joy of reading a book you know you shouldn't be reading. Allow me to explain.

Last week I was sitting in a class—Romanticism and War, if you must know—which is held in the Graduate Student Library, a room on the second floor of Ellis Hall that is one side all bookshelves crammed with books in no readily-discernible order (sometimes they appear to be chronological and other times topical), one side all windows looking out on big trees and freedom, and between them both a large table that fills the room. I was sitting in the back corner on the bookshelf side, and as I squirmed a little in my chair, my eye caught on a book quite a bit more slender than its fellows. It was G. K. Chesterton's The Amazing Adventures of Father Brown.

I knew immediately that I must read this book. On the one hand, it was written by G. K. Chesterton, who was a fantastic essayist (even though no one today has ever heard of him). He was also a writer of many other things including 52 Father Brown short stories, 10 of which are compiled in this book, and he was a great popular Christian thinker, like a pre-C. S. Lewis C. S. Lewis.

On the other hand, the book was short, falling apart, and printed on yellowing, mass-market pulpy paper; it was a book you might find on the paperbacks rack at the library, crammed between a Star Trek novel and a beat-up Grisham, while looking for something much more respectable. I couldn't resist the temptation.

The thing was: I knew I shouldn't be reading this book. Not that isn't worthy—I just have so many other books I should be reading. For Romanticism and War alone I was supposed to be reading Byron and Austen, not to mention several articles and chapters on Shelley I needed to be skimming for a paper that's due soon. On top of that there's a stack of books in my room that have just come in from amazon (thank you economic stimulus), half of which are meant to further my career and the other half of which I just wanted to read. On top of that there's a desk full of books bought long before and still waiting to be read, and a list of books to check out when I get the time tacked up on my wall. Of all the books I should be reading, The Amazing Adventures of Father Brown was not one of them.

Which is precisely why I had to read it.

Father Brown is a Catholic priest who has an uncanny ability for solving mysteries, mostly murders. In each tale he applies his unfailing reason to the case and discovers the killer, his method, and his motive. It's a little bit Sherlock Holmes, a little bit Poirot, and a little bit Encyclopedia Brown, and I've been eating up every word, savoring every minute I'm reading this instead of anything else.

And as if that wasn't enough, this book actually incorporates one of the other great joys: the joy of found things. Everyone knows that the best clothes are the ones you didn't buy but found—the t-shirt you borrowed and never gave back after getting wet at your friend's slumber party, the hat you swiped from your cousin on that visit, the jacket left at work that no one claimed. Well it works the same for books. My first one was The Further Adventures of Batman, which I found in a used book shop in Lincoln, Nebraska, and recently I read that Will Smith autobiography that Dave came across. Both were similarly pulpy and brittle, both were stealing time from nobler pursuits, both were awesome.

And so my friends, to bed, where I will be reading the tenth and final case in Father Brown, appropriately titled "The Blast of the Book."

Crazy Hair Day

2008-05-26T23:54:00.004-04:00

Last week I got to cut ten-year-old Abe Ogles' hair for Crazy Hair Day at his school. He had purposely let it grow long so he'd have something to work with, and he planned to shave it all off the next day, so nothing was out of the question. Normally his brother Max would do it, but since Max is off at school this summer, I was the replacement. I was honored.

After being treated to a hamburger dinner at Abe's house, I sat with him and his brother Sam and we sketched out some possibilities on a slice of scratch paper. Stripes, mohawks of various persuasions, the Shaolin monk—we even browsed a book called The Mullet: Hairstyle of the Gods. But in the end we decided on a simple design that was sure to shock. Ladies and gentlemen,

the Half'n'half:

Simple, effective, and gutsy. I heard he spiked the long side straight out for school the next day. And even though there isn't an actual winner of Crazy Hair Day, I'm pretty sure everyone over at The Plains Elementary School knows who won.

Me and the winner

Short Paragraphs for Emily

2008-05-21T09:35:00.002-04:00

Early this morning I dreamed was bus driver in New York City, which is perhaps the scariest, toughest job, since you have to drive in Manhattan. In my dream I was rolling and tumbling all over the road, slamming on brakes and gunning it to keep up, and I always seemed to be a block away from a major construction site.

Then I woke up and found that someone had been jackhammering the road outside my window for the last half an hour and that some very large vehicle just out of sight had been idling—is still idling, actually—loudly, like a snoring dragon.

I went back to sleep and dreamed I was visiting an old Irish Republican Army friend and his wife and small kids in rural Russia where they had taken refuge away from the conflict. We sat and didn't talk and smoked a cigarette each; I lived every drag in real time. Then he and I and a dozen of our mates dressed up in old fashioned baseball outfits and jumped on a bus; we were on our way to blow something up and this was our cover. I forgot my hat and his wife sent it up to me with one of his kids just as we were leaving.

On the Street Where I Live

2008-05-19T21:11:00.001-04:00

And, in case you forgot

Another Reason My Mom is Marge Simpson

2008-05-15T11:16:00.004-04:00

Yesterday I watched an episode of the Simpsons in which Homer finds out he isn't cool anymore. He spends the rest of the episode trying to be cool again. At one point he goes to a record store only to be depressed that he doesn't recognize any of the band names on the wall and all his favorites—Styx, Grand Funk Railroad, Bread—have been put in the oldies bin. He laments this to Marge, who replies, "Record stores have always seemed crazy to me, but it doesn't upset me." Then she adds matter-of-factly: "Music is none of my business."

At the end of the episode the whole family is driving home after an adventure (involving the mashing Pumpkins), and this is what they say. I'm pretty sure I've had this very same conversation with my own parents.

Homer: So, I realized that being with my family is more important than being cool.
Bart: Dad, what you just said was powerfully uncool.
Homer: You know what the song says: “It’s hip to be square.”
Lisa: That song is so lame.
Homer: So lame that it’s…cool?
Bart and Lisa: No.
Marge: Am I cool, kids?
Bart and Lisa: No.
Marge: Good; I’m glad. And that’s what makes me cool: not caring, right?
Bart and Lisa: No.
Marge: Well how the hell do you be cool? I feel like we’ve tried everything here.
Homer: Wait, Marge. Maybe if you’re truly cool, you don’t need to be told you’re cool.
Bart: Sure you do.
Lisa: How else would you know?

And off they drive.

How It All Turned Out

2008-05-14T23:53:00.002-04:00

The results are in:

I didn't get published today. But I didn't get rejected either.
I did receive those books today, and there's more coming tomorrow.
She got it; she loved it.
Alright, I didn't register for motorcycling, but I'm going to. My sister already took the class and bought a bike, so I'm pretty much committed.
I'd take a picture of my new camera, but I don't think it works that way.
I didn't get any ice cream, but I'll tell you what I did get. One, there were free cookies in the office. Two, there was a huge spread of fruit and cheese and crackers in the room where I met Dean Ogles (also my stake president) to go over to his house. Three, there were hamburgers on jumbo buns at his house. Four, there was some dessert made of strawberries and whipped cream and cream cheese and crumbleys there too.
Rain kept me off my bike all day, but I don't see how not exercising is a bad thing.
Made it through the first round of working the system; tomorrow's the clincher.
Dave didn't come home so I couldn't watch Jeopardy!, but I did watch last week's Office and now I only have to wait one day for the next one.
Oh yes, I cut that kids hair. Exactly half of it. Pictures soon.

Bonus: Bought stuff for two consecutive barbecues, one tomorrow to celebrate the end of the intramural softball season, another on Friday for the J! Championship. Also, good hair day.

So now it's late and I'm about to jump into bed and I gotta ask myself, Was this day better than the dream? The answer: I don't know. I mean, it was a good day. But I didn't kiss my true love today. I didn't kiss anybody.

However.

The fact that I had a spectacular dream last night has made me excited to hop in bed right now. After all, tonight's another night—who knows who I might kiss? Who says both my days and my nights can't all be red-letter?

Good Dreams Make Bad Omens

2008-05-14T10:19:00.006-04:00

Last night I had maybe the best dream of my entire life. I was doing something related to Jeopardy!, though I'm not sure what. I might've been on the show or I might have been doing some work for the show; I don't know. Anyway, I found myself in the company of Sarah from the Clue Crew, and it occurred to me that this was the chance I had dreamed of, my chance to talk to her and make her see what a great guy I was. At first she wasn't paying attention to me really—there was no need to since whatever my purpose there it was only cursory, but at least we exchanged a few words. Then she told me to get on this curved piece of metal because she was going to give me a ride home. I had seen this hunk of metal before (apparently we were here in Ohio and it was something I pass often), but now it turned out the thing was a rocket-seat of some kind. So she hopped on behind me and we lifted off into the sky. We had various flying adventures on our way to Texas, apparently, and I gathered that this was typical Jeopardy! procedure, to give rides home to contestants or whatever (but always on a rocket-seat?). As we flew we talked more, and I realized that Sarah, more than being just a Clue Crew member, was also a scientific genius, for she had created this contraption (was Jeopardy! a front for secret genius development?). She realized that I wasn't just some guy around the show, but a truly dedicated fan and pursuer of great knowledge (although I perceived future trouble when she would find out I wasn't too a mechanical genius).

See, this dream was great because it had flying in it, which is always awesome (but in dreams always problematic—you never have the mobility your waking imagination is capable of producing), and it had Sarah in it, who is my one true celebrity crush. We were sitting next to each other, motorcycle-style, on a rocket-seat, and she was digging me. All my dreams were coming true.

Eventually we had to find a safe place to stop and recharge the seat. (On the one hand, it seemed like we weren't supposed to let people see us, but on the other hand we were constantly in view of people. Also, we somehow veered too far west and ended up in California, passing the Jeopardy! studios.) She showed me how I had to sit in the driver's seat and activate the recharge procedure, which involved me holding down a lever at the front of the seat with my foot for like fifteen minutes. Then she sat and talked to me a bit, looked at me directly for the first time since leaving, and then leaned in and kissed me. On the lips. It was hard to keep pressing the lever with my foot when being distracted this way.

And then of course I woke up. I didn't just regain consciousness, I jolted awake, lying on my side, my face facing the clock next to my bed. It said 7:27, and the room was light. I immediately thought, "That was the best dream ever, and it's over. I have to tell Andrew."

In the past I've had pretty good success going quickly back to sleep and continuing good dreams. But I knew when I woke that this wouldn't be the case, that I was too awake too fast to get back. But that didn't stop me from trying. I rolled over and closed my eyes against the light and tried to go back to sleep. It was a shoddy effort, and I couldn't ever tell if I was actually asleep or just nearly there, with my mind beginning to fire. I think I managed it eventually, because I remember a dream about playing basketball with a bunch of guys and Sarah and others were watching. I think I really wanted to impress her, and to my surprise everyone out there really stunk but me. But there was no kissing afterwards. Oh, and I had another dream in which I parked outside this building (in what turned out to be the milkman's designated spot, but I didn't get a ticket) that turned out to be a museum. I went into a certain room and was looking through these artifacts for some way, some thing, I don't know what, that would help me contact Sarah. It was all just wishful dreaming.

I woke up sometime after nine and was immediately depressed. I went downstairs and told Dave that this day was ruined before it began by dreams that were better than life could be. He sympathized. I looked in the kitchen and thought about breakfast—cereal or English muffins—and then I shouted, "I must have pancakes!"

I'm not going to let some dream win, no matter how good it was. I'm going to stack this day with awesomeness until it comes out victorious over the subconscious meandering of my mind. The first step was pancakes. Further steps include:

Getting published. Everyday Dave and I wait for responses from literary journals concerning essays and poems we've sent them. I'm currently waiting to hear about an essay I wrote about Jeopardy!, and I'm taking this dream to be an omen that the response is coming today.
Receiving some books in the mail that I recently ordered on amazon using my economic stimulus from the government (is there nothing the mail can't do?).
Hearing that Elisa, whose birthday was yesterday (happy birthday and sorry I never caught you), received the very great present I sent her in the mail and loved it (no seriously, the mail does it all).
Registering today to take a motorcycle riding course this summer.
Buying a digital camera with more of my stimulus
Going to Cold Stone Creamery instead of Institute (it's cancelled).
Riding 18 miles on my brother's bike to continue my training (thanks, Jon, you rule).
Working the system at school to ensure I don't have to take a useless-to-my-future class and get to take a very-useful-but-otherwise-untakeable class next year.
Watching Joey smash Vera and Suchita in the last semifinal round of the Jeopardy! College Championship.
Cutting the hair of young Abe Ogles, the stake president's son. Tomorrow is Wacky Hair Day at school and he wants me to make him wacky. I think I'm up to it.

Any other bright ideas?

It's My Beardday

2008-05-09T23:00:00.005-04:00

It was one year ago today that an anesthesiologist (who looked surprisingly like my dad) put me under before I could even count to ten. When I awoke the ligament in my knee had been sewn back together with a slice, a splice, of my hamstring; I had no hair on my left leg from mid-calf to mid-thigh, and five small holes plus one long incision provided an interesting new counterpoint to the more familiar scars.

At least, I knew they were there. I couldn't see them on account of the surgical tape, the gauze, the bandages, the brace, and the cold pack connected by a hose to a small teal cooler connected to an electrical outlet, the whole of which circulated a constant stream of ice water to the wound. I was loopy, frizzy—falling in and out of consciousness for several hours I think as the twenty-some-odd chemicals that had entered my body made a slow exit (the bill arriving a month later gave the exact names and doses—and prices; the cooler itself rang in at over $300). I think Steve picked me up, brought me home, helped me into bed—I'm not really sure.

It's a good thing my mom wasn't around to see me.

I was told not to shower for three days. I was told, Steve was told (yeah, it was Steve), and it was written on two different sheets of paper that I shouldn't shower for at least three days, that I shouldn't remove the sterile tape sealing the incisions, and that I should take x pill y times a day.¹ That's when I decided: No shower: no shave.

And thus my beard was born, the beard which made me a double agent in Provo. The beard which will forever date my brother's wedding photos. The beard by which a whole new state of people have known me, without which they cannot really imagine me.

Today is my beard's birthday.

And, as I promised my niece and as I planned from at least October, it's also its last day. We had a good run, and I'll miss you.

¹ When I showed up for physical therapy three days later, freshly showered, the doctor flipped out. "They told you three days?"
"Oh yeah, three days."
"Are you sure? Three days?"
"I have it here in writing."
He excused himself to make some phone calls. Turns out it was supposed to be ten days. Ten days without a shower on account of the possibility of infection. When I think about it, about the impossibility it had been to half sponge-shower that morning contorted on the edge of the tub, ten days seems absolutely reasonable.
"Am I gonna die?"
"No, but keep a close eye on it for the next week." As if I could do anything else.

Update

2008-05-07T23:00:00.002-04:00

The bee died in the night sometime.

Should I have felt death come for him? Does it work that way for bugs? How big does something have to be for its passing to wake you?

May Madness!

2008-05-07T18:16:00.001-04:00

It's here: the Jeopardy! College Championship!

In order to properly enjoy this event I request you do the following:

Go to jeopardy.com and take a look at who's competing. This year each of the contestants has a video interview and a blog, so you can really get a feel for who's going to be a contender.
Fill out a bracket. That's right, a bracket. Guess who's going to win each match and even the whole thing.¹ Click here to download a fill-in-able PDF file, then fill it in and send it back to me at groooover@gmail.com. Whoever guesses closest will win a great prize!
Watch the tournament unfold over the next two weeks. Tonight is Day 3 in the quarterfinals and it's going to be big. To see when Jeopardy! is playing in your area, click here.
Come to my house next Friday, May 16, to watch the final two matches back to back and larger than life as projected through our proscenium arch. There will be barbecue and cake, and maybe even some potent potables (for those so inclined).
And if you can't make it to my place, have a party of your own!

¹ The exact line-up of the semifinal matches won't be revealed until Friday, so you'll have to guess which 3 from the 9 will make it, without knowing exactly who will compete against who.

One Night Stand,or You Knew What I Was When You Picked Me Up

2008-05-06T22:22:00.007-04:00

There's been a bee in my room all day. I wasn't here much, so I let him have run of the place.

But now I am here, and I want to go to sleep. Apparently he does too, cause he just sidled up to the fan and seems to be rocking himself to sleep by its vibrations. I'm completely okay with that (and a little jealous), but I'm worried what will happen later. We may be bunkmates tonight, but will we still be friends in the morning?

(I've had an odd urge recently to let a bee sting me, to watch him do it without flinching. I've been visualizing it at stoplights and in lines.)

I'll let you know how this turns out.

Does That Make it a "Conception Album"?

2008-05-05T23:32:00.007-04:00

So, as it turns out, English classes are mostly places where professors futilely try to hold on to whatever coolness or trendiness they have had (or think they have had) by imposing their preferences upon a captive audience. By this I mean that English teachers teach their favorite things in the hope that some one student or two will somehow validate that interest.

By this I mean I like to show clips from my favorite movies or have my students read favorite essays of mine, and if they respond favorably I feel like a million bucks. I'm constantly asking, "Yeah, but did you like it?" Of course usually they just groan or laugh at whatever I present (or worse: they stare, completely dumbfounded, and can make no response as to why I might be showing them, say, scenes from an old He-man episode¹—they don't even now who He-man is!), but on the rare occasion one of them says, with a modicum of enthusiasm, "Yeah, its okay I guess," I revel in my relevance and reaffirm that the eight years between us is not so much after all.

Enough preface; on to the story:

The other day was one of my favorite classes of any semester, because I was teaching the lesson in which I've managed to sneak three of my all-time favorite clips. The first was the opening scene in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure where Bill and Ted are making a music video in the garage for their band, Wyld Stallyns. It didn't get much of a response from my students, but luckily there weren't too many blank stares either (I was of course hoping for a chorus of "I love this movie"s). The second clip was the scene from Back to the Future where Michael J. Fox is playing "Johnny B. Good" at the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance.

That couldn't fail to get some mild approval, even though the movie is several years older than most of them. Then came the third clip, my absolute favorite. It's a recording of Prince and The Revolution playing "Purple Rain" at the American Music Awards in 1985. Prince is decked out in a green and blue shiny suit and a ruffled shirt—the jacket doesn't have tails so much as it just becomes a cape. His band is just as flamboyant; the keyboard player looks like Stevie Nicks in super-gypsy mode. Prince is playing his signature guitar with the big swirling arms and he struts and spins and squeals and at times looks and sounds like he's actually going to cry. Near the end of the performance he jumps off the platform he's been on and plays a crazy solo while throwing himself violently around—how he keeps his platform-booted footing is beyond me, but when he kicks over the mic stand I pretty much lose it. Hottest. Thing. Ever.

And I really want them to like it.

But of course it's a little too over the top for most of them, a little too 80s. There were chuckles and confused looks, and a couple of people couldn't stop themselves from saying, "What is this?" before they realized that not knowing might make them less cool. But then one of my students, Brendan, silenced us all when he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, "Man, it's 'Purple Rain.' I was made to this song."

I may be relevant, and I may have been reaffirmed. But nothing can bridge the eight years between us.

¹ Well, I haven't actually shown any old He-man episodes, but you get the idea.

Ovrhrd Rcntly

2008-05-01T23:06:00.003-04:00

I was walking home just the other day when I heard a girl say to a friend as they passed me, "I don't know how people walk and text all the time."

At first I felt smug, since I was, at the time, reading a book as I walked. Here I was, the walking, reading proof that I could do what they couldn't.

But it's not that simple, is it? Texting's different from just reading, right? It's reading and writing—and from the looks of it it's an odd and somewhat difficult form of writing not so much based on dexterity as it is on timing. Texting might be quite a bit more difficult than reading. That girl may well be just as accomplished a walker-reader as I am though she has yet to master the art of mobile mobile-phonery.

The truth is that I don't rightly know. I've never sent a text. I've never received one, on account of I don't have a cell phone (but that hasn't prevented at least one person from trying to text my landline; I won't name any names, but her initials are Lauren Everett). I think the typing thing would be pretty tricky, and looking at that tiny little screen has got to be hell. Plus the thinking you have to do to read and then compose meaningful, classy, and often flirtatious responses probably doesn't jive with the thinking involved in not running into things.

See, reading while walking is made easier by a few important factors. For one, bigger books make better reading. You have to hold little books up close, not so much because the words are smaller but because they're harder to hold still. As with ships on a rough sea, books with a little weight to them ride much more smoothly. Also, with larger books you don't have to turn the page so often, which is good, since every time you are distracted even a little bit—by turning the page or turning the corner—you are kicked out of reading mode and become just a walker for a few seconds. To read when walking, you want to take long, straight paths. You aim yourself at the end of the road, look down at your book, and just walk, trusting that people will stay out of your way. You take smaller steps to compensate for uneven terrain so that you don't need your eyes to do more than subconsciously monitor the parallelity of the edge of the page and the edge of the sidewalk. A cell phone is tiny, thus shaky, and they don't command the respect or create the spectacle a book does in a pedestrian's hands (though one fellow of my acquaintance is not so much awed by my books as inspired—the muse moves him to taunt, "Bookie loves his bookie-book," as he tries to slap Dickens or Dan Brown from my hands before I can look up and shift my myopic focus), so more maneuvering is probably involved. And all that switching gears, from reading to composing to punching buttons, probably accounts for more zagged ambles than heels and booze combined.¹

Maybe I give too much credit. I dare say it is tougher to ingest, say, the text of a 1790s gothic novel while on the move than the text of a...text. And cell phones are backlit, so there's never a need to "pan for gold," tipping the book from street lamp to headlight to neon sign just to read one more sentence before dusk becomes final.

I guess I won't know till I try. Don't tell my mom, but recently I've felt dangerously close to breaking down and getting a phone. Any ideas²?

¹ Not meaning as the sum of two separate factors, but actually combined.
² what plan I should get? how to combat such weakness?

Commonplace Book 2

2008-04-29T10:55:00.003-04:00

Here are three quotations from Robert Louis Stevenson's fine essay "Crabbed Age and Youth." It it Stevenson argues that the old need not look down on the young, nor should one regret one's own past folly too much. Likewise the young should not be afraid to think and act, even wrongly, due to their inexperience.

"Doubtless the world is quite right in a million ways; but you have to be kicked about a little to convince you of the fact. And in the meanwhile you must do something, be something, believe something. It is not possible to keep the mind in a state of accurate balance and blank; and even if you could do so, instead of coming ultimately to the right conclusion, you would be very apt to remain in a state of balance and blank to perpetuity. Even in quite intermediate stages, a dash of enthusiasm is not a thing to be ashamed of in the retrospect: if St. Paul had not been a very zealous Pharisee, he would have been a colder Christian."

"When the torrent sweeps the man against a boulder, you must expect him to scream, and you need not be surprised if the scream is sometimes a theory."

"If we are indeed here to perfect and complete our own natures, and grow larger, stronger, and more sympathetic against some nobler career in the future, we had all best bestir ourselves to the utmost while we have the time. To equip a dull, respectable person with wings would be but to make a parody of an angel."

The Commonplace Book

2008-04-22T23:09:00.003-04:00

Here are some quotes from today's reading:

"Pleasures are more beneficial than duties because, like the quality of mercy, they are not strained, and they are twice blest. There must always be two to a kiss, and there may be a score in a jest; but wherever there is an element of sacrifice, the favour is conferred with pain, and, among generous people, received with confusion. There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy, we sow anonymous benefits upon the world, which remain unknown even to ourselves, or when they are disclosed, surprise nobody so much as the benefactor."

—Robert Louis Stevenson, "An Apology for Idlers"

("Score" in this quotation refers to the number twenty, which I didn't find immediately apparent.)

Reading this today reminded me of those times when others have mistaken me for a cheery and upbeat guy. In Korea I was surprised on several occasions when somebody would be talking to me and refer to me as such a happy person, so enthusiastic and all that. I would immediately contradict them, to which they would respond with equal confusion. Eventually I discovered that although I saw myself as a very reticent and even melancholy person, to others I appeared quite joyful. It boggled my mind that I could be so unaware that I was happy. I thought it was just a result of the recent changes in my life, but it's even happened quite recently.

The first sentence is a gem as well. It reminds me that reading and writing—two things I espouse as major pursuits—should be first and foremost enjoyable. School (often) stinks.

"The captivating sisters displayed all their talents, and I own they excel in almost every accomplishment.—I have seldom seen a finer figure, taken altogether, than the younger sister, and indeed, your description of the personal beauty of both, was not an exaggeration.—To their acquirements, I have already done justice: yet, I am convinced, that, with all these advantages, my heart, were it totally free from every other impression, would never become devoted to either.

"It would be nonsense to pretend to give reasons for this.—With these caprices of the imagination, and of the heart, you have allowed that Reason has very little to do."

—Charlotte Smith, Desmond

I really couldn't say this better, and it's nice to know people knew it way back in 1792. Funny that it's that way in the first place.

Will Power

2008-04-22T09:53:00.006-04:00

Last week my roommate got back from the thrift store with a stack of books he'd pulled off the shelf, most for 50¢ each. On top of the stack was this book, Will Power! A Biography of Will Smith, by Jan Berenson. You've seen this kind of book before. It has a "bonus color photo insert" and way more exclamations and scare quotes than is generally considered healthy for writers to use. In this book things aren't top-notch, they're "top-notch!" which makes sense, since Berenson's other writing credits include Meet the V. R. Troopers and Sister, Sister, Sister; Getting Along at Full House.¹

So why would I actually read this book? Well, for one, I've had good experience with this genre. While at BYU I was thrilled and excited by Sting: Every Breath He Takes by Barney Cohen.² For two, if I didn't read it I would've missed out on the following sentences:

As [DJ Jazzy] Jeff recalled in an article in Disney Adventures, "I was the best DJ in Philadelphia and I had heard of Will, but I already had someone that I worked with."

The successes, and the slings and arrows aimed at them because of it, would follow them for the next decade.³

Like Rock the House, this new album [He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper] reflected Will and Jeff's irreverent sense of humor and flippant approach to everyday life. It wasn't so much hip-hop as flip-hop!

Perhaps the most provocative passage in the book is this one, both for its unexpected sophistication and its grammatical difficulty:

To some in the rap community, what the frothy "Parents [Just Don't Understand]" had done was not so much crown Will and Jeff kings, but open the door of rap music to a more mainstream—read: white—audience.

Maybe I haven't become my dad at all.
Also, if I hadn't read this book I wouldn't have learned the following fact:

It wasn't only the music that was selling. DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince started their own 900 number info line—which soon turned into a 900 number info gold mine.⁴ The rappers simply prerecorded daily messages for their fans, who responded eagerly to the new venture. In the first six months the line was set up, it received over two million calls—at an average of $2.45 a pop. Record company executives were taking bets that Will and Jeff would make more money on the telephone than on the album itself.

Friends, let us read. Let us read and be happy.

One more story to send you on your way. Will Smith starred, as you well know, in the uproarious sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. One of the best parts of the show was watching the snooty English butler, Geoffrey, look down his nose at the family. Well, a few years ago my brother and I were on study abroad in London, and as part of the trip we went to the Globe theatre to see a production of Shakespeare's Coriolanus. It's a lesser-known play of his, but you can imagine our surprise when Joseph Marcell, the actor who played Geoffrey, appeared on that famed stage as Cominius, Coriolanus's general. It was awesome to see him in what appeared to be his natural habitat, and after the traitors cut Coriolanus's beating heart from his body right before our eyes, Marcell smiled at Drew during the curtain call when he heard him point out to Rachel (Drew's now-wife, who probably has never seen an episode of Fresh Prince in her life) who he was.

¹ Amazon has no picture of this book—what is it about!?
² ML 420 .S84 C63 1984, but, amazingly, it's not due back until 8/18/2008.
³ This Shakespearean phrase appears again four pages later.
⁴ Wait, does this mean the phone line was an informational treasure trove?

Father Time

2008-04-21T22:55:00.003-04:00

Last Thursday I was in class, setting up a DVD for viewing. I guess I was sort of shaking it a bit to the music playing on the menu screen, because one of my students said, "Mr. Grover, I'd like to see you dance."

"Heck yes, I'm a great dancer," I replied, "And I'm a rock star. You guys don't know a whole lot about me, it turns out."

I was just goofing around, but immediately another student challenged me: "I don't think you're a rock star, Mr. Grover. There's no way."

"What? Why not? I'm cool."

"Naw, not with those bright white New Balances. I'm just not seeing it."

I tried to defend myself—"You don't even know, man; these shoes are hot. I'm a rock star."—but he just wasn't buying it. Hmph. I didn't see anything wrong with white shoes and jeans.

But as I thought about it later, I realized he was right. I don't know how this happened, but I've become my dad.

False Hope

2008-04-16T23:24:00.002-04:00

So you know that feeling that lingers with you all day after you've been swimming in a pool—the slightly wet hair behind the ears, the chlorine smell on your skin, the faintly itchy eyes, and the intense desire to be eating a popsicle?¹ I've had that feeling all week, everywhere I've gone, but I haven't been in a pool at all.

I finally figured out what it is though: allergy season. Turns out the mild irritation of springtime is a decent approximation of summer joy. My eyes are just a touch itchy all the time, and it's giving me fantasies of slacking around in flip-flops and air-dried shorts. I gotta get some popsicles.

¹ The reason that feeling is so great is because (1) it is proof and a reminder that, even if you do nothing else today, you've already done that and what could be better, and (2) wearing a swimsuit is pretty close to being naked, which is awesome.

Best Ever

2008-04-15T23:26:00.005-04:00

Remember a couple months ago when I was complaining about never being able to find a good messenger bag? Well those days are over!

That's right, since posting back in January about missing my old bag from Korea, I've come into the possession of what may be the world's greatest messenger bag, even better than Old Blue. Check it out:

A beautiful bag atop two beautiful quilts¹
Where did I get such a beautiful bag, you ask, and what's so special about it? I'll tell you.

It is exactly the size of a MacBook in length and width, and it is only three inches deep. It has exactly one main compartment and one small pocket on the front the size of a typical paperback. The flap velcros down but has no other unnecessary fastener. The strap is long. And the whole thing is constructed from tough black canvas. It can hold very little without feeling floppy and empty, and it can hold as much as I'm ever likely to carry to school without having to be as huge and formless as most messenger bags.

It turns out that when I was researching my previous post on bags, I stumbled across a website I hadn't ever seen before: churchillbags.com. The site is the home of a small collection of messenger and other bags all made from scratch by a fellow named Kevin Churchill, a college student from these United States. Since it was such a small operation, I emailed Kevin to see if he would be interested in helping me get the bag I've been dreaming of. He read my blog post and told me he'd be happy to do whatever he could to help me, and we spent the next month or so chatting about possibilities and ogling the beautiful but expensive offerings at jackspade.com.

Finally I decided on what I wanted and Kevin offered to make it for me from some spare fabric he had, kind of as a prototype. I wired him some dough, and he got busy. A week later, this beauty showed up at my house and I haven't stopped smiling.

Friends, let me emphasize what I'm getting at: This messenger bag is 100% custom-made. It is exactly what I wanted. Exactly. I didn't have to settle in any way, shape, or form. It was made by a total stranger who not only was happy to follow my whim but who also freely proffered his advice and expertise and pulled the whole project together in a flash. I couldn't be happier—except of course, when I consider the price.

Kevin made and mailed this bag to me for $26. With my whole heart I recommend Mr. Churchill to you who seek fine handmade products. I suspect he would agree to your custom demands as well, though when you see his paisley-lined corduroys and sexy suit-wools you may just stick with the established catalog. Tell him David sent you.

My prized possessions: a ratty old quilt, a Taylor limited-edition made from Tasmanian blackwood and Sitka spruce, and a Churchill original

¹ I stitched that light blue quilt together from two sheets I bought and Bed Bath and Beyond years and years ago. It's not and has never been much of a quilt, but it has touched down on three continents.