This past weekend was spent doing work I enjoy. On Saturday we went and heard an hour lecture about the blues. The speaker is a composer-in-resident at the University of Nebraska (Lincoln) and impressively knowledgeable on not only the musical aspects, but also social, psychological and lyrical/poetic facets of "the blues." The lecture was far too short, of course, to really delve much into the topic. Much of it had to do with influences...which, while interesting, is an area in which I basically knew everything he was saying. Still, I could have sat longer and listened to blues songs and most of what specific forms influenced on down the line...we only got a few down the list and its corresponding mix tape. The Q&A session was all right, though bogged down a little by some little old ladies who were obviously piano teachers and wanting to show off to this composer that they knew music terminology but didn't really quite grasp the concept of "blue notes" and the idea that notes and time signatures weren't necessarily paid much attention by early early country blues singers. I actually thought of a really good question about 5 minutes after we left....too bad.

A question on the Cafe forums really got me thinking. Someone started a thread asking "who was your worst boy/girlfriend?" Tough question, really, and not one I really want to think about. No way was/am I going to post any kind of response on the thread, considering 2 of the 3 women (not counting my wife S, who doesn't go on the board much anyway) I dated still read and post at the board. The question won't go away, though, and while it's not disturbing or troubling me, for some reason it's pinging around in my head now and then the past few days. The truth is, former girlfriends have each had problematic aspects, it's true, as have I. However, the two who are still on the board have both grown up and matured quite a bit in the time since we dated. More importantly, we've talked and forgiven and re-friended since, and I think that says a lot more than anything that happened 5+ years ago or 2 1/2 - 3 years ago. People go through troubling phases, or behave certain ways around people they know they can trust, especially within somewhat stressful contexts. It happens. The one who I've not heard from or seen since a week or so after we broke up, the Russian ex-girlfriend, is by far the relationship I come closest to regretting...while that relationship lacked crazy freak-out stories and looked "normal" to everyone until the very end, it was also the one relationship that could have most damaged me, and I thank God it really didn't all that much. I think I was the most misled in my own head about that one, really, and believed a lot of absolute crap that I peddled to myself...not only about why I was in the relationship, and what that meant, but also about our ability to relate and be combatible. Just because you both like to talk and go to the same type of Church and live in the same area and enjoy a couple other "things," that does not compatability make. I could justify why my idea of combatability was skewed to think that physical attraction without constant big problems equaled "made for each other," but that's a path best not trod, part of the past. Suffice it to say that in the end, perhaps the worst former boy/girlfriend is the one who, without any real overtly obvious issues to overcome, allows a person to think what isn't true, manipulates both the facts and the other person, and uses religion as a tool more than anything else. Deceit trumps all else...and lest I point the finger and shift all blame, self-deceit is no better, intentional or not.

Only a week from the first televised Cubs Spring Training game. I'm taking the whole day off...not just for that (Opening Day, maybe, but not a spring training game), but because I feel the need coming for an extra day's break. My sanity seems to be on the link and the three weeks starting the day after that promise to be the busiest this semester: while "spring break" (which consists of not having my two night classes) runs the 14-18, that's the Orthodox first week of Lent...so plenty of things to keep me busy then...plus we're hosting a couple students for a couple/few days in town working with Habitat for Humanity...and the week after that, I judge an oratory competition, co-facilitate a class, and have an oral presentation due in the other class. I'll probably need another day off after that!Anyway...time for lunch.

Happy St. Valentine's Day to Everyone!

I hope this day of gush and mush finds everyone well. Whether or not you are IN love today, I hope you are loved and feel loved, romantically or not.

3 St. Valentine's Day Stories

1.
(1996)
Among the perks of going to Maranatha Baptist Bible College was the opportunity to attend events the administration hosted and included on the lengthy "mandatory attendance" list. While acknowledgement of a saint of Rome named "Valentine" would have been to admit an unambiguous, documented church history pre-1500 and was therefore never mentioned, the Tops saw fit to organize an event in our gymnasium/chapel/fine-arts-hall for St. Valentine's Day and force everyone to attend. The guest performers for 1996 turned out to be a couple who'd sung at our church back home now and then -- everything they performed was operatic, or in their best operatic style. Jack and I couldn't really stand the singers and found reasons to skip church whenever they performed at our church but couldn't come up with an excuse the Dean's Office would buy. Whichever girl happened to hold my infatuous attention at the time declined my invitation to the concert. The other upon whom my heart was fixed had just recently started dating a soccer team captain or something. Valentine's Day, then, only needed ignored, the Friday night spent on homework or ping-pong in the dorm basement. Jack and his girlfriend, of course, urged me to just ask someone so we could double-date. I, however, knew I'd be a terrible, irritable date to any girl who might agree to go "as friends," and the holiday combined with the faux opera danger to send me careening deep into a faraway place where I alternated between hostility and depression before finally acquiescing to both. No way could I, would I be able to bear what was about to happen. Dressed in my required pre-concert dinner apparel, I ate the cheap slabs of beef and gravy with a choked throat, trying to ignore the happy couples around me. While Jack and C----- flirted and laughed in the cafeteria before heading to the gymnatorium, I sulked back to our dorm room to get at least a little more time alone. I sat for a few minutes, then, knowing that I may get in a little trouble for sleeping during the performance (the university had people watching during these sort of things and chapel services) but didn't need the "demerits" an unexcused absence to a major event would bring, I unceremoniously but not without a martyr's melodrama, downed most of a bottle of a generic Nyquil equivalent. I spent most of the performance slumped over, trying to sleep. The merciful sleep for which I hoped did not occur, but rather sluggish distortion. Pretentious vibrato-woven wailing voices darted and poked about my woozy head. My shoes, pinchingly uncomfortable, glared back up at me but my back just didn't want to stay straight up.A swirl of the metal folding chair in front, a worried Jack and C----- beside, the faded tan vinyl tarp covering the gym floor below, all familiar but confusingly foreign, wound around my half-closed eyes. Closed eyes brought unexplainable, disappointed images shaking what looked like heads and whispering an inability to love or be good or even disappear and stop bothering everyone. Somehow the show finally ended, days later, and I shuffled a groggy path to my dorm room, changed clothes, and wandered back to our main building, up the grey stone stairs to the custodial headquarters, unwilling to miss work. I'd made it there an hour or so early, luckily, and dropped to the floor for some quiet rest. A few minutes before the shift began, I slowly awoke and realized a few other student workers who cleaned at night were standing around. The kid from Bangladesh kept poking me with his foot.

2.
(2005)
We both technically have V-Day evening free this year since S. has a short quiz and that only in tonight's class, but my homework load was lighter (or at least easier to shift off to other weeks, we'll put it that way) this past weekend so we used the whole thing to celebrate St. Valentine's Day. Neither of us celebrated it much in the past but sometimes when you're married, specific days like this are good to set aside as a time to spend more time together when that can't be the case as often as you'd like. No, we don't use the day as a time to act in ways we wouldn't the rest of the year (as was a major reason I hated V-Day in the past, not to mention Christmass, Easter, Veterans, etc. Days). One of the marks of our relationship is that we both really enjoy doing little things for each other so this was more of a time-spending opportunity. We're too broke to really go somewhere besides home for this sort of thing, but still managed a good time. We wandered around downtown for a while Friday night and had a decent meal out there early on. We spent a decent amount of time at the Antiquarium, a used bookstore that also sells records and CDs in the basement. I bought some book on lit.crit. that looked worthwhile and she bought a children's book she really likes, the one they're basing some new movie on, All Because of Winn Dixie. Saturday we went to the University and exercised before going to see Hotel Rwanda, a film about the civil war between the Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda, and more specifically about a Hutu man who managed a 4 star hotel and let refugees stay there amidst all the violence. The film left us with some questions (for one, why the hell no one ever talked about that in the U.S., and why the U.S. and U.N., for the most part, failed to intervene). I knew somewhat about the situation and heard about it a tiny bit back in 1994 but like I said, hardly anyone mentioned it. Sunday after mass we drove out west to go to an Indian restaurant, but it was closed...so was the Thai place we tried next. Stacey was hungry for something spicy but for whatever reason the places I could think of were all closed. We finally lurched into a Vietnamese place that turned out to be pretty good. It refers to itself as a "Seafood Grill" but, while that's definitely their specialty, they have enough vegan/vegetarian possibilities to make it work. We just sort of rested and hung out a good bit the rest of the day, getting enough reading done for classes and enjoying a little relaxation. We ate some Peeps-type big marshmallow hearts that my parents sent. That was enough fluff for us so we didn't watch the any of the Grammy Awards broadcast.

3.
(No discernable year)
Pink and red and white confetti and streamers and balloons floating and bouncing and swooping and later to be swept by janitors who should've been home hours ago and didn't even get to watch baseball during the dance like they do during prom. Someone popped in a dirty movie but Chuck said he had something better. Turns out a few of the kids paid him to leave a big closet unlocked during the dance. Those kids told a few more kids and pretty soon there was almost a schedule and a request for another open closet. Chuck knew his limits and said no, but figured the already open closet must be booked solid. He talked to a buddy at a pawn shop who also happened to be an amateur filmmaker and the night before, the two of them turned the closet into a studio. The night of the Valentine's Dance, then, Chuck and two other custodians watched and laughed and gawked and held their breath and cheered and, for once, didn't mind staying late. The other janitor played solitaire in the corner, listening to a Hemingway novel on tape through his headphones.
The buffalo wings Chuck had eaten early on in the night took their toll, and he left for twenty minutes but told Al and Smoky, the other two watching the show, to make sure the tape didn't stop because he might need it someday. He'd been gone for six minutes when Smoky recognized a kid Chuck didn't like. "Chuck'd be pissed if he saw his kindness helping that kid out," agreed Al. Their co-worker had told them a couple weeks before to watch out for that boy, that he'd been flirting with Chuck's daughter at the Dairy Queen and just didn't seem like the kind of boy to be trusted. His daughter, of course, had no idea of her father's dislike for the boy, not that his opinion mattered much. Chuck based his dislike on the boy not on appearance - the young man kept his hair short and his clothes new and trendy - but on the fact that this boy was a senior and his daughter only 15. Had she bothered to tell her father about her date to the Valentine's Dance, he'd have said no, but she knew he and his co-workers sat in their lounge in another part of the building and watched sports all night so he probably wouldn't even know she was there. She didn't even really like Trevor, but her friends were impressed at the invitation so she went. When he asked if they could "just go hang out and talk for a few minutes," she hoped he didn't have attachment in mind. Dancing was fun and he was cute but she just couldn't like him and didn't want to pretend to, even for a few months before the inevitable college farewell. She'd humor him, drink some punch, talk about whatever, and then go back to dancing. She'd even hold his hand, since he'd grabbed it, but the sweaty palm led her down hallways and up stairs and she hoped it would let go soon. Any reader with half a mind already knows what happened next. He pulled her into the closet. Not sure whether to talk sweet or just start in on the real fun, he kissed her ear. She turned to the left and a second later, Al and Smokey laughed loudly. At 15, she was naive but not dumb about what might happen in a dark closet with a senior boy who was cute but she didn't really like. He pulled her against him and started talking, saying things that sounded like something from a Julia Roberts or Meg Ryan movie. He wasn't giving her time to reply and she felt his hands moving around but they were just on her back and only thinking about where else a boy's hands might move. She decided to let him have a kiss, on the mouth, but not with her mouth open.
She'd already had a first kiss, four months ago, with a boy she liked at the time but turned out to be not really what she was looking for. Neither was Trevor, but a couple kisses couldn't hurt and after all, she'd accepted his invitation and the corsage. His hands moved to her sides, down, and then up while she made her decision and it wasn't until they were almost back to her waist that she realized they were under her dress. She felt herself push and step back and trip, falling onto a blanket. Smokey laughed and Al gawked. Pinned and panicking, she knew what he was after and didn't want to give that to a guy who was cute enough, she guessed, but she didn't really like. She grabbed all she could see in the tiny stream of light from the door's crack and squeezed and twisted and clenched until she didn't feel the hands exploring or the legs pushing between hers anymore. As Trevor sank onto her, Smokey and Al laughed and wondered if Chuck would come back to see his little girl giving it up. "It'd be really wrong to watch, wouldn't it?" They walked over to tell the other janitor and missed her departure from the closet. The two shrugged and told Chuck he hadn't missed much of anything at all when he returned a few minutes later, just as another couple crept into the closet.
After the dance, Chuck found a quiet, urine-soaked Trevor lying in the closet, liquor on his breath, and figured the kid just passed out. “Lookit this kid’s neck,” he sighed to himself. “Passed out on hickeys an' booze. Thozer sem big, deep love bites, boy.” The boy wouldn’t come to and Chuck laughed. “Had a few benders like that myself. Let’s just git you to yer car, kid. You’ll wake up soon enough.”
***************************************************

Listening to: Hip-Hop:
Paris, The Devil Made Me Do It (checked this out after re-scanning an old issue of Bandoppler I may use as research for a paper in my Af-Am Novel course)
Jean Grae, Jeanius (new outstanding female hip-hop artist)

the rest:
Bob Dylan, "Banjo Tapes"
Pine Valley Cosmonauts
De Novo Dahl, Cats & Kittens

Wednesday was a good day for sickness. I woke up at 5am with a rattling headache that got no better while I worked out (which consisted of batting around a racquetball because I didn't feel steady or energetic enough for the elliptical) turned into nausea early on at work. I spent an hour and a half at work before finally calling it quits. The rest of the workday I spent huddled in bed, just trying to sleep. The cat kept me company for much of the time, content to just lie there while I wished for rest. I did get a few hours sleep, which is probably half of what I really needed, as sleeping hours are fairly reduced these days. I felt close to fine by the time I left for my class at night. I'll get back to working out tomorrow...I've felt a decent amount of energy, just a bit weak and not quite all there the last couple days, and feel like I'll be fine tomorrow.

I ate lunch with Michial today -- he works at the university now, too. He really digs his job so far and it's a great set-up for his situation...I'm very happy for him. The buffet had fish n' chips today, so it all worked out pretty well.

This weekend's just a bit lighter than usual, thank God. We might go see Hotel Rwanda, which looks to be a pretty decent film. St. Valentine's Day is still up in the air, but I'm thinking maybe Indian food late Sunday afternoon is a good date sort of thing for that. We'll see how it all works out.

Today I've listened to Phil Ochs, Skygreen Leopards, an episode of NPR's All Songs Considered, and the new Cass McCombs record, Prefection.

God forgive me, but my patience wears terribly thin when kids come in at the last minute on Friday afternoon and expect me to hold their hand and do their work for them when they can't figure out basic concepts for themselves. Then again, I'm not sure I'm all that patient a person in the first place.

^^^My workouts continue and, in fact, soon may even become habit. I'm beginning to get over the initial struggle to even decide to go, and accustoming myself to the whole thing emotionally. One of these days I might borrow (they lend various equipment out) some racquetball stuff and mess around doing that, just as a break from the routine of elliptical machines. Just something about swatting a little blue ball around, I guess. The real reason, actually, is to build my stamina in a setting that's not a continual workout, but something where I'm stopping and starting and having to keep my mind focused on something (in this case, smacking a rubber ball).

*****I keep intending to post up those Neva Dinova and Pushstart Wagon reviews. My hope was to add another review to the mix (I prefer doing most things in 3's and 4's) but that's not going to happen quite yet, so I'll probably just post the two reviews for now. That will happen if I can squirrel away any computer time after class tonight...Stacey tends to put up barbed wire between me and the computer on nights I get back from a night class, hehehe.

())()(()An entry for those who enjoy the workplace notes.Yesterday my boss gave me some of what I need to work on piecing together our budget proposal, informing me that it "needs done sooner than later," which means pretty much what it means. I went to work on it yesterday afternoon. At some point in the afternoon she comes up to my computer to mention something else to me and then says, "I hope you don't leave this budget stuff out on the desk and on your computer when people are around your desk. That's one of the confidential things you work on that needs to be kept out of everyone else's sight." For the 99% of you who haven't been to my workplace (Michial and Stacey are the only ones, I think), understand that my desk is at the front of one of the major student-related offices in the Student Center, and plenty of wide open spaces to one side of my desk and behind it make my desk viritually not only at the front, but a kiosk in the midst of a place where students and others are constantly coming and going, not to mention that people often linger at the side of my desk for a variety of reasons (very rarely to just talk with me, to make sure we're understood). Major parts of my work include confidential info and while I'm adept at clicking between screens when necessary, I sometimes have no choice but to work on things with people walking around me, making noise, etc., and if people want work done we must understand that it will be done within a certain context. It's not HER fault things are this way, it's the administration who decided how this would all be, I think, but even so...it's just a funny thought, that I'm able to completely shield everyone from whatever I'm working on when it needs done on a deadline. I'm still amazed at the absurdity of the situation...the person doing the Human Resources, Accounting and Budget stuff not only is the low person on the totem pole, pay and rank-wise, but is also supposed to do all that while also providing excellent Customer Service, surrounded by noice, and being constantly interrupted. My boss and I agreed long ago that this job and I just aren't meant for each other, and it's really frustrating at times, but I'm still glad I have it...and on top of that, finding another decent job to even apply for is proving difficult, so who knows how long I'll be here, even though we agreed I'd look (and I have). The important thing is that I'm in grad school and this is only temporary. I keep telling myself and Stacey that while I have to sacrifice certain things, it just has to be like that so I'm not a secretary or something along those lines for the rest of my life. Anyway, this went from a somewhat light-hearted "isn't this ridiculous?" to a drudging rant, for which I apologize.

&&&&This past week in Sunday School we talked about the real St. Valentine, who probably didn't do anything remarkedly "romantic"himself, but was martyred for his faith and lived a life of holiness, certainly making his "saint" status nothing to sneer at. When A. (young man who just turned 14) found out that's who we were talking about, he loudly and obnoxiously began exclaimed that it was all crap, just made up by Wal*Mart and card companies to sell stuff. I told him that as a Republican (as he's declared in the past -- his dad is an active Republican who helps campaigns, travels around during presidential elections, etc., but is an actual THINKING Republican and one of my favorite people ever to talk to) he shouldn't be bothered by such things. He didn't really get where I was going with that, but I told him I agree and we'd talk about it AFTER the lesson if he wished. The lesson, in fact, taught us that as a saint, St. Valentine has always had his own feast day (as all saints do) but the romantic element entered into things because it always seemed that around his feast day (Feb. 14, of course), the birds started choosing their mates. In fact, people began arranging betrothals during St. Valentinestide (a "tide" of a feast day lasts that day plus 7, as I recall, when applied) and then of course things really got rolling again due to consumerism, which Alex and I discussed a little bit afterwards. Anyway, thought a few of you might find that interesting.

Just a little meme fun for right now, then an actual entry in the next couple days, hopefully.

To see what kind of hipster I am and what O.C. character I most resemble, go here.

I'm not sure why but last night after working on homework, a record review (Pushstart Wagon) and doing some other research, I decided to work on our taxes. Maybe the rum had something to do with it, though that helped my mind slow down enough to concentrate so it wasn't exactly a bad thing. Anyway, I did a pencil version of our feds and wrote down the basics of our state tax stuff. We have a couple questions regarding our fed one...S. earned just over a grand on a dinky part-time job she had for a while, and they didn't take out any federal tax whatsoever, which leaves us owing there. S. said, though, that a co-worker told her that they probably didn't take fed taxes out because the earnings wouldn't amount to enough to necessitate that...and so we don't need to report it. Of course, this same co-worker is also somewhat mentally goofed as a result of a car accident and, nearing 40, hops from man to man while missing enormous amounts of work (and should've been terminated long ago, but the school district needs para-professionals). I'm not really of the opinion that she's a trustworthy source on tax issues, but sometimes these sorts of people somehow cling to decent pieces of information while otherwise driving themselves into the sanitarium. Of course, if this is the case, the temp job I had for two weeks shouldn't be counted, either. We'll probably ask a lawyer friend of ours at church, he works quite a bit with financial situations. Luckily, even if we DO owe federal taxes, the amount we'll be refunded that we paid into the state will more than cover it, so we'll end up a bit better than even as things currently stand.I just realized that the only thing worse than using a blog for cliched emotional gutwrenching is using it to blather on about tax/financial issues. I wonder if a subgenre of post-punk has ever been the exploitation partner of THAT particular subject?

In other news, S and I took part in a protest rally this morning. The President was in town giving his Social Security Speech so we decided to join with others to greet him and share our dissent. The security officers and cops, of course, kept us contained to a small "Free Speech Zone" and told the organizers that we shouldn't cross the lines, but couldn't tell anyone where those lines exactly were. I saw a decent number of folks I know and it was nice to catch up with them. A state senator for whom we voted was there and we got to hear her speech, which was good. The crowd itself was fairly diverse: lots of common workers, some old hippies, lots of young people, even high schoolers. A lot of the folks decided to walk on down toward the entrance of the event center and one of the high school kids get joking about getting shot. We could tell who some of the high school kids were, partly from demeanor and partly because some of the young women were in Catholic school red plaid skirts. S.commented that at first she thought maybe some of them were "radical cheerleaders" or some such feminist group that wears red skirts, but none of the chapters are anywhere near our state, not to mention that these young women weren't really cheerleading, just hanging out with everyone else. I got to talk for a few minutes with a guy who used to be one of my bosses, and it was good to see him again. We work on the same campus but don't run into each other much, I guess. Anyway, the protest was enjoyable and hopefully showed a few people that not everyone swallows Bush's ideals and policies wholeheartedly and without thought. We thought it would be funny if S.'s mom saw us on Fox News or something, though we didn't really see any of their cameras there.

What's funny is that this was supposed to be a "forum" with Q&A from "regular Nebraskan folks," but I heard almost that whole portion on the radio and it was pretty obviously fabricated. No one asked a genuinely tough question, just shared anecdotes about how when life got rough, Social Security was there for them, but this new plan would be better. How they know that is hard to say, since Bush hasn't really explained yet how this will all REALLY work, but whatever the people need to make them feel better about it is what's going to be said.
Read about the protest here: http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_np...6&u_sid=1328223

What am I reading these days?
--Richard Brautigan, The Hawkline Monster
--various poems by Bob Kaufman (black Beat poet, quoted in my title for this post)
http://www.litkicks.com/BeatPages/p...what=BobKaufman
Bob Kaufman is one of my two recent great discoveries, the other being a collection containing the Floating Bear newsletters (ed. and produced and sent out by Diane DiPrima & Leroi Jones back in the early 60s).

Today's the day I've decided to listen to Dylan's Biograph. Not really a favorite of most of the kids who wander up to the desk, but none of them have even probably ever heard of Robert Johnson, so I'm happy to be some weird old guy listening "that dood who did Mr. Tambourine Man and Blowin' in the Wind and stuff."

My intention going into last night was to put up a couple reviews, but we'll try and get those in the next couple of days. I ended up spending a significant amount of time making us a nice dinner, hanging out with S., then watching 24. By the time she was tired and I got to the computer, I only had time for homework. I would rather have stayed up to midnight working on things but that just wasn't to be, what with early morning alarms and whatnot.

I've finally decided which critic to "follow" for my African-American novels class: Henry Louis Gates, Jr. http://www.galegroup.com/free_resou...bio/gates_h.htmOf course, he's terribly prolific, so finding something he's written that pertains to some element of whatever novel we're reading any given week should be relatively easy. The man's one of the leading academics of our time (has chaired and developed the Black Studies Dept. @ Harvard for years), someone with whom anyone studying literature or Black Studies should at least be a little acquainted.

Right about now, my nephew should be getting his first peek at the world. I've not heard anything quite yet, but I remember hearing my sister should be getting into surgery around noon, eastern time. Welcome, little Benjamin Isaac!