I'm posting this link in order to have access to it later. Some funny stuff on there.

http://moondawg.blogspot.com/2004_01_01_moondawg_archive.html

Today I'm at a class brushing up on my MS Access skills.

Tonight I actually have a night all to myself to work on stuff. That's rare these days. Hopefully I'll get quite a bit done.

"Elation" is how I describe the feeling I get when thinking about how Brian Wilson's Smile album will finally come out this fall (only 38 years late). Supposedly he's touring the US this fall. Start saving now.
Of course I've had several Smile bootlegs and whatnot for years now, but a packaged album is just the best. I wonder if they'll release it in vinyl...I can only dream.

Even though I got hired in early February, I won't see a paycheck until 4 March. Leeean times for Joel right now. I'll probably end up being a little late on my car tags, which are due to be renewed in February. After that probably 1/3 of each paycheck goes to schooling costs...that'll take through April.
This isn't to complain, just to say hey, this is why I won't be doing a whole lot of anything until then. Well, okay, probably not after that either. Between church, work, school, zine, bringing shows in, and personal stuff, life is frenetic...but I'm busy doing what I love.

Happy Birthday, Seth.

If my walls were birthday cake, I'd eat them to celebrate.

Last night I dreamed about Flannery chasing mice. It was a good dream.
I attribute this to the fact that she sneezed into my face twice this past weekend. Some cultures believe that when you sneeze, a piece of your soul escapes, hence the origination of "God bless you" for sneezers.
It only makes sense, then, that little pieces of Flannery's furry little soul somehow transmitted into me and I would dream about her chasing mice. I'm really sort of curious as to where this is all going to go. I'll post a picture of her soon.

We ended up watching most of last night's Democratic debate. I don't have the time to go into detail, but I think Kucinich and Sharpton are much more interesting, imaginative, and idealistic (whoa, alliteration bonus) than Kerry and Edwards and Dean. It's always interesting to note which questions get asked of which candidates; milder questions tended to get lobbed toward the latter three, while Kucinich and Sharpton were tossed bones such as "Did Bush lie? Why did he lie?" and so on; it makes for some GREAT soundbytes if nothing else.

Apparently here in Nebraska the libraries don't carry tax forms. Michigan and Indiana libraries did but apparently here the place to go is the Post Office. One more lesson in not taking anything for granted.

Soon I have to pay a $25 fee just to graduate. I don't plan to be a part of the graduation ceremony at all.

I rarely win prizes. I'm not a terribly big believer in "luck" but don't rule it out -- to what extent there IS luck, I don't have much of it when it comes to winning things. My "luck" has been applied to things like not having cavities or not getting sick or injured while being without health insurance.
Anyway, I finally won something on Friday night. The big local art museum had a college night and gave away door prizes after a band played. We were standing clear at the back, of course, and couldn't really hear much other than the names drawn. Stacey didn't even register because she said she doesn't ever win anything anyway, so why bother. I'm a bit more optimistic and sure enough, my name was drawn. I wound my way through the crowd, most of them sitting at tables, and finally arrived off to the stage, terribly embarrassed to be in front of any kind of crowd. I told the assistant my name and she handed me my prize...
a MUG.
I have a whole shelf of mugs in my cupboard and don't have room for any more; in fact, I wouldn't have room for all I have now if it weren't for my propensity to frequently drop mugs onto hard surfaces. The mug I won is black and shiny, which is nice, but isn't even microwave-safe. Not only do I not want or need a mug, I now have the burden of determining what to do as to treat this prize responsibly.
This is how life goes, I suppose...my rare prize-winning is something absolutely worthless that I have absolutely no need or use for.

This month Turner Classic Movies is doing their whole "31 days of Oscar" promotion. I dig the channel quite a bit, anyway -- where else can I catch old Harold Lloyd films? -- this is a good month to keep tabs on what they're showing. Tonight I think they're playing "Some Like It Hot." I've never actually seen a Marilyn Monroe film but plan to tape it (unless today's snow downpour results in a canceled class).

I just finished watching "Good Morning, Vietnam" that I taped off TCM. Incidentally, I don't think they're editing these films one bit (not that they ever did or normally have to, just pointing it out). It's nice to be able to watch a film on television where all the words match up. Before the Christian Coalition goes after me for supporting "foul language" or something, I should point out that if much of a film's or book's aim is to present an artistic (Walker HATES it when I just throw that word around) portrayal of what could be a true situation and true characters, then inclusion of certain language, behavior, and so on is part of being true to that. Anyway, on the subject of GM,V: Despite my dislike for large doses of Robin Williams, I enjoyed the film. It isn't particularly thought-provoking but well-done escapist fiction. The sort of conflict between The Establishment versus The Funny Edgy New Guy is sort of cliched, but put within this context is pretty good. For me it was worth watching once since I'm pretty much interested in anything having to do with that period. Incidentally, I'm NOT really big into researching and reading about the Vietnam War itself, though I'm slowly warming up to that sort of study (thanks in part to my Culture of the 60s class). I don't find much so disturbing that I just can't deal with it, but Vietnam has always sort of been that way for me. Last week in class our guest lecturer was the Chair of the History Department, a man who served in the Navy very very early on in Vietnam then went on to do his graduate and doctorate work at Yale in the late 60s, early 70s. Someone asked him why we haven't seen any television sitcoms based on the Vietnam conflict whereas Korea and WWII both had pretty popular shows based on them. Dr. Garver said that the public just isn't ready to laugh about anything regarding Vietnam yet, and may not ever be...and in fact, is just now becoming able to start looking at it for more than brief moments (2 hour films being brief moments). While the Vietnam War ended not long before I was born, we early members of the post-Vietnam generation still know relatives and friends who were greatly and negatively affected by Vietnam and it's still a very sore spot in the national dialogue. It's too early to say whether any actual healing will occur or if it will just eventually become "history" with no real treatment...perhaps a nation's sins aren't so easily forgotten.

In other news...

The neighbor came over about 9:30 last night. Stacey and I were about to go walk to her house and he banged on the door and asked to use my phone again. This time he needed to call his brother-in-law to ask some question about reprogramming a Playstation. I couldn't look at Stacey for fear of cracking up because I knew we were thinking the same thing. A Playstation probably keeps his kids from screaming and bothering me while I work, so it's all good...just funny that someone has to borrow a phone to call for help with a video game system.

Second Monday snow day in a row.
Doesn't matter for the jobless, I suppose, except today I'm supposed to hear back from my new department about a solid start day. I guess we'll just wait for tomorrow.

Last night my neighbor came over. A big bottle of Budweiser in one hand and a cigarette in the other, he asked to use my phone. I told him, "Sure, come on in" and he placed the Bud bottle on the porch railing and stood inside my house, cigarette hand still dangling out the screen door as he called his significant other. They both work at a Long John Silver's in Council Bluffs, as I understand. I'm back at the computer working on a story about hair and watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind without realizing his cigarette hand was still stuck outside with our door open. Ben came downstairs to see what was happening and tell me to catch the last few minutes of the Super Bowl (it turned out to be exciting). Finding the doorway quite cold (being in the midst of a Great Plains Blizzard and all), he informed the neighbor that, indeed, he could smoke in here, we don't care. I went and found an old wine goblet that doubles as an ashtray in a pinch.
Ben went back upstairs while I tried to pretend I couldn't hear the phone conversation. It started out simply enough, a man wanting to know when his love would be home from work, kindly warning her of the winter weather conditions she'd face on her ride home. Then the Relationship Talk started in.
Now I know all is not smooth for the folks next door. My desk stands against the wall separating our townhouses and I hear the yelling, screaming, and occasional striking blow (though whether it's person on person or person on object I don't know). Apparently the neighbor guy was feeling conciliatory last night, however, because he started in on the talking smooth, sliding promises through my cellphone. "We can talk about it when you get home, honey...," he started. "We can do what we talked about, I been writin' out a list. Let's get this behind us. It's just stuff that just ain't right. We can get through this." (Silence) "I saw you left your ring off tonight. It's been off all night. I ain't accusin' of nothin', I just know what I see, we should talk about it. No, I'm sure there's a reason. We'll talk about it. I just don't know that it's right...lots ain't right, we should talk about it, get it behind us. I don't want to...well, we got a kid together. We got a kid together and we shouldn't..." At this point I went from pretending to watch televison to pretending to write again. He couldn't see the print on my screen, so I just made things up. A fake conversation between a news reporter and her son at dinnertime. Backspace...write the same thing, a bit different.
The neighbor finally wrapped it up with an admonition to be careful coming home and (the last of several times) asking if she was going anywhere between work and home. I pretended to be so wrapped up in my work that I didn't hear him tell me he was done.
Ten minutes after he left I went out on the porch to empty the wine goblet and two more empty 12 oz. beer bottles had joined the large one on my railing.
If they had their Big Conversation last night, I don't know. I went over to Stacey's for a while once the game was over and came back in time to watch Mission Hill, eat some Ramen noodles, and fall asleep on the sofa reading Desolation Angels while the same 5 stories looped on CNN.