Something about the way coffee popdrips this morning really fills me with a love for all of humanity. I'm listening to Crystal Skulls, so that probably helps. I might just have to review this record. For anyone who remembers the band Scientific, their lead singer is in Crystal Skulls. He was also in Unwed Sailor for a while, but more or less as a fill-in. I guess that was 5 years ago already. Anyway, he really sounds at home in Crystal Skulls, an "indie pop" outfit that works to hone good SONGS, not just some sort of fashionable sound. A little bit of sophisticated jangle, slightly dark Brit-like undertones, and a sort of natural transition and blending between more guitar-based, then electronic sounds for different songs (or elements within songs). Their press blurb drops names like The Smiths, Steely Dan and Spoon, though they don't really sound LIKE any of those...again, they blend quite a few elements. Anyway, there's my non-review that just sort of streamed. I'll probably work on something based on that for later posting.Speaking of which, Carter and I may be close to a good zine name. Stay tuned.

In case anyone's reading this but doesn't look much at the "Everyday Cafe" board, the other half of our duplex is up for rent. 3 BR (or 2 + office), many new elements, $550/mo. Move to Omaha and start/re-start your band. You'll be ignored by the majority of this generally "conservative" city, but it's probably better that way. The mainstream press here latches onto the occasional decent band, especially Saddle Creek stuff, but for the most part, pretty obviously doesn't "get it." Some newspapers have one columnist that does, and I'm pretty sure our paper here does...but I rarely read their "entertainment" stuff anymore, anyway, so I wouldn't really know. Wow, that really turned into a rabbit trail.

Since I'm already drenching this post with plenty of music content, here's a bit more. This past week I received some birthday money from my in-laws and spent it on a personal CD player that can also play mp3s. The unit's cheap and a bit squirrely, but works for what I need. I like being able to switch between tracks and albums all at once...while working out yesterday morning, listened to Heiruspecs (underground rap from Minneapolis, pretty decent stuff), then sat in the sauna for a few minutes and enjoyed a few Dave Van Ronk songs. Between my own music and the whirring of machines, I can't really hear the TV that's always turned on in the room where I do most of my exercise, but I see plenty of Soledad on CNN every morning. I'm not much of a "morning show" type person (this could elicit several raging journal entries, no doubt) but theirs is the only one I can really handle for more than 2 minutes and the only one that shows signs of true journalism. I digress again.

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I realize that Holy Week in the West is literally just around the corner, but Lent just started this past week for Orthodoxy. Hopefully you'll indulge me my reflections during this time, even though you're all what, a month ahead? Save me some Easter candy, maybe it won't be stale yet in early May.

Beside the usual food/consumables abstinence and fasting, a major focus in Lent is fasting from sins and certain attitudes. Not that these are allowed or encouraged during the rest of the year, of course, but we all have our specific things we struggle with, and this is a time to particularly focus in on those, taking more drastic measures, sacrificing more in order to grasp God's grace in dealing with them. I, of course, found myself locked into an absolutely silly, ridiculous "Internet Scrap" this past week, flipping out and being exactly who I don't want to be. The whole issue aside (and it's since been resolved and the two of us involved fine now), I'm pretty ashamed of my behavior and how I handled a situation that could've been taken care of in a much more mature way. Sometimes we prove our own points far too well, and show our need for grace more than we intend to.

I'm trying also to fast from judgementalism...a character flaw that was ingrained in me as ideal and holy for twenty-some years and I struggle with, usually silently, every day. I'm not sure where the fine line is between judgementalism and commenting on the truth, so the following two things I submit in full knowledge that I may cross the line, for which I beg forgiveness, if it happens.

* Yesterday, of course, was "St. Patrick's Day." I'm not going to get into a dissertation on St. Patrick...if anyone really wants sources and info, ask me or juandelacruz and you'll be hooked up promptly, I'm sure. I probably should have posted some interesting info on St. Patrick yesterday. At any rate, this year and every year I'm bombarded with ads for "pub crawls" and 6am beer specials and people bragging about just how smashed they got (or plan to get) for St. Patrick's Day. I'm not adverse to celebrating a saint's feast day or any other appropriate feast day with alcohol, good food, etc. What I do take issue with, however, is the excitement and willingness to do so without any real concept of who St. Patrick (or St. Valentine, or St. Nicholas, or...etc.) really was, what he stood for, why he really IS important to know about and, if wished, celebrate. It's one thing to have an ignorance, willful or not, regarding Christian history, saints, etc. That is what it is, and I'm not railing against that. But to actually be confronted by something and choose to care not one bit about the actual essence of what it is, but rather use it as an excuse to party, really says a lot. What exactly that says...perhaps that's best left for another time, and most of you probably get my drift anyway. Perhaps I'm a hypocrite because some days I enjoy off of work without really taking interest in the issue at any time of the year (though I've really tried to improve on this in regards to MLK, war-related and other days), though truth is I have no real choice in whether I get them off or not. Maybe I'm a hypocrite because I do this in other ways, I don't know. However, I thought I'd share something I've been contemplating.*

A church across from the University (Disciples of Christ, I believe?) has large banners up to advertise that on Easter Sunday, they're holding a "Brunch With The Bunny" promotion. A google search shows that this promotion isn't uncommon, even with churches -- and in a community center setting, where this promotion often occurs, would probably be a good family activity. The difference between a community center and a church doing this is immense, of course, and something I grit my teeth about every time I see the sign. It's one thing to send cute little bunny rabbit toys to relatives and godchildren, at least I hope so, and quite another to form a church's Easter celebration around something like this. Then again, maybe this is just ironic hipsterism and their Independence Day picnic will feature a musical tribute to Osama Bin Laden or something.

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Well, now that I've pissed everyone off, I'll just add that this week marks the second anniversary of the beginning to the Iraq War. I've been invited to and thought about going to an anti-war rally in the park, and still may go despite looming term papers and presentations next week (ok, so that probably just convinced me not to go)...I've already angered most of you, anyway, so I'll leave out anti-war rumblings, but whatever your position is on it, this marks a good day to pray for the over 1500 dead, their families, and their comrades still over there. May they rest in peace, and may the rest of us find peace.

Spring Break Week here at the University.
The last time I really went anywhere or did anything for Spring Break was back in 1998, when I visited my sister at her college in Tennessee. My dad and I drove down there, but then my dad had to leave after a couple days and I stayed the rest of the week. I rode back up north on a Greyhound. The first part of the trip proved uneventful other than a drunk racist screaming at the black busdriver. By the time we started moving out of Kentucky and into Indiana, the snow hit. The bus inched along, stayed for a long time in Indianapolis before officials decided that the straight shot up US 31 from Indy to SB was one big sheet of ice, so we'd instead take back roads over to a station in Gary, Indiana (which is in the very NorthEast corner of Indiana, almost to Chicago). We waited there for hours. Exhausted by then, I grew overwhelmed by the "create-a-drama" activities going on in the bus station waiting area and started looking around for anywhere else I could be. I found a bus station bar & occasional grill with a sandwich and television. 24 hours after I originally left, I finally made it home. And now it's supposed to snow this Spring Break week, as well. Nothing really changes for me this week, though, so I'll accept winter's last gasp and just have fun with it this time around.

My real break comes in May. I mentioned this before, but we're heading back east for a few days. Our hope is to spend about a day and a half with each side of the family, roughly, get in at least one ramble session with Jeff (juandelacruz on Vagrant Cafe) and catch up a little bit with the rest of his family, and then spend maybe a day and a half in Chicago...I'm hoping to meet up with a few Chicago folks, perhaps, and otherwise just enjoy a brief vacation I'm sure I'll greatly need by then. The weekend after that is the big Vagrant Convention dealie, and while I'm not quite sure how that's all coming along, I'm sure it will be fun, as well.

Much of this past weekend I spent working on various school-related work, and had a great time doing it. Our church bookstore had a pretty big shipment (for us) come in, so I worked on that, as well. Late yesterday afternoon, Stacey was bored and looking for something to watch and all that looked good to me was Silence of the Lambs. My main goal yesterday was to read a good chunk of Invisible Man (by Ralph Ellison) since I'm co-facilitating our session on that in my African American Novel class, so I read that and sat next to her while she watched the film. She ended up liking it quite a bit and once it was over, around 7, took off and rented Hannibal, the sequel. I'd not seen Hannibal since the original theatrical release, so I stuck around while it was on (we had to watch it AFTER Arrested Development, of course, and she was gone while the Simpsons was on). I'd warned her that Hannibal just isn't quite as good...I'm not a cinemaphile so I don't know much about Jonathan Demme (who directed the original) other than that he also directed Philadelphia, which I never saw...but Ridley Scott (who directed and produced Hannibal) is somewhat inconsistent, and at times becomes infatuated with sensation -- though I am admittedly biased toward the understatement of, say, a Hitchcock -- and where Hannibal suffers and Silence shines is in the fact that Silence is much more psychological and mentally manipulative, whereas Hannibal far too often falls into a "Check out this Gore, Dood!" mentality. In case anyone wonders, I never did see Red Dragon or whatever the "prequel" is...never too interested in that, to be honest.

Some person on vagrant (who rarely posts anything of substance, anyway) decided to step up the idiodacy lately, for some reason, so I had to delete a couple posts that were either completely inappropriate, or just inconsiderate to post on certain threads. He sent me a whiney pm about it, I told him he knows better and should either knock it off or leave, to which he called me an "asshat" and said "i'm smarter than you, anyway." I'm not really upset or anything, it's more funny than anything else, but his own lack of diplomacy and my own busy-ness leaves me not really in the mood to negotiate or haggle. We'll see what happens. This is mostly just a case of someone wanting attention and craving everyone to think he's funny and wacky and mr. bizarre humor, most likely, but this is the sort of thing that makes Carter and I wish we were rich enough to buy plane tickets and show up on doorsteps.

In other news, I wrote a critique of this blues seminar I attended a few weeks ago. I ended up writing 8 pages, about twice as much as expected. Anything less, however, wouldn't have done the subject justice...and hey, the professor asked for outside sources, so he was just asking for my style of verbosity. I had fun, and that's the important thing.

As I mention from time to time, one of the great perks of working at a university is the wide array of observable people and activities around. This morning, for example, I saw underneath a bathroom stall that some guy was wearing only shorts and tighty whities, which were around his ankles and partially covering his feet, bare but for Homer Simpson flip-flops. Note that the temperatures this morning around that time were in the low 30s. People call me crazy because I walk around without a coat (or in only a light jacket) much of the time, including this morning, but I appreciate the efforts of others to make me appear a bit more sane. People do give me that look reserved for the homeless from time to time. While my looks would have been little to glance at on campuses in the late 60s and early 70s (well, and okay, many even today), the student body here in this highly Republican Great Plains city/state tends to lean toward the "conservative" side on certain things. I mean, STD rates are through the roof, half the kids show up for class in pajamas or something along those lines, and I hear a lot of sailor-talk in the hallways, but the majority of these kids insist on certain strange facets of conservatism. As a result, someone with long crazy hair, a patchy beard and thrift store clothes is a bit of an oddity. Granted, we do have a few homeless folks who wander in and out of the student center and library on a regular basis, but the one who's around the most just recently got a haircut and fits in much better than I do now.

While I'm talking loosely about work, I feel I should point out something. I make occasional references to my boss and scenes that could straight out of "The Office" or "Office Space." We have our disagreements and situations, for sure, but in general I hold absolutely no real genuine negative feelings. She's in a fairly high-pressure job with bureaucrats stacked atop her, poking her with pointy sticks, at any given time. She's expected to put in long hours at times, not to mention subject to "The Office" type circumstances even more often than I am. Much/most of what's crummy about this job has very little to do with her and is out of her control, and some of what's pretty fine about this job actually is because of certain aspects of her management style. She's actually quite gifted in particular facets of her position and I figure it's good I mention these things.

Anyway, I'm just trying to be fair. Sometimes I get huffy, often rightfully so, but I feel as if that presents only part of the story. I refuse to write a whole lot on this blog about certain people, at least on a regular basis, because it's easy to present a lopsided, horribly unfair projection of a person. There are those with whom I have disagreements, and writing about those disagreements may be done objectively on MY end, but people who know only me (and might actually like me or "get" my perspective) and either don't know the other person, or may only know certain aspects or images of them, will end up with a bias against them that I certainly wouldn't have myself or support in others. Carter, for example, is a dear friend with whom I have a multi-faceted relationship. We disagree on things, and sometimes derive incredible enjoyment from our disagreements, but writing about those things (or even alluding to which idea belonged to whom) could fairly easily present a distorted picture of what's really going on. I hope I've never fostered any kind of "Joel vs. Carter" mentality because that's certainly not something going on in my mind.

I'm trying to be careful in general, not wanting to present others as something they're not, or presenting only small pieces of other people and therefore grossly misrepresenting them. Plus, truth is, I can be difficult to work and communicate and live with on a regular basis, at least for many people. I've also learned that most people have no real concept whatsoever of what they're like to be around, and as a result their representations and perspectives on other people are skewed not only by that, but also by the inability or disinterest to even attempt to understand other perspectives. That even before other motivations and selfishness get involved. God, no wonder we fight so many wars, personal and international.

Our spring break comes this next week. It's also the first week of Lent in the Orthodox Church. Why is it much later this year for the Orthodox than for the West? http://www.smart.net/~mmontes/ortheast.html

Here's a fairly in-depth article regarding what the various weeks of the Lenten season entail:http://www.goarch.org/en/ourfaith/a...article8126.asp

Our parish is "Western Rite," which means we do involve some Western customs and traditions into our Lenten season -- Ash Wednesday, Shrove Tuesday, to name the first couple. Music update:Today's disc of files includes the following:

Rolling Stones, "Concert for Brian Jones at Hyde Park" (1969)
This show gets back to a lot of their more blues-based tunes, my favorite sound by them. Incidentally, I just read an article in Uncut Magazine about the mysteries surrounding Jones' death.

Brother Jack McDuff, Down Home Style
Soul & early funk style noodlings. Sounds like the type of thing hip hop artists would've been sampling in the 80s and early 90s (well, and some still do).

Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers, Moanin'
Some of this sounds like a Miles Davis tribute (roughly circa Kind of Blue), to be honest. It's probably more indicative of that general era of jazz styles, though by 1969 Miles Davis and others had gotten more experimental.

Family, Family Entertainment
Allmusic describes them as "a blues-based band with art rock inclinations," fitting only somewhat into the "psychedelic" era. I guess they did all right in Europe and the UK, but were barely heard in the States, which, based on this record, is a shame.

All of the above were 1969 releases. Lately I've been just punching in certain years to see what might be available to sample and finding some pretty good listening.

Coming up this afternoon is stuff by John's Children (folkish pre-T.Rex band for Marc Bolan...some wonderful recordings!), Richard Hell & the Voidoids, a band called Litter, a psych compilation, and Wilson Pickett's Hey Jude album, recorded in 1969 and featuring Duane Allman on guitar. Apparently this is more of a rock effort for WP -- he covers a few rock numbers like the title cut and "Born to be Wild." Should be an interesting listen. My pre-listening thought is that if any soul singers could do rock, Wilson Pickett would certainly be one of the best to do so (and of course we all know Ray Charles achieved success in this vein, as well).

The weekend ahead promises to be completely loaded, so many projects going on and getting closer to deadline. I'd absolutely love to go check out the Todd Grant Project, which includes Tim Kasher of Cursive and The Good Life infamy. Todd Grant, apparently, was a major influence on some of the more well-known Omaha/SaddleCreek types back in what some refer to as "the Golden Age of Omaha Indie Rock" back in the 90s, when Kasher, Oberst, etc. were all teenagers. Anyway, I guess TG had some drug rehab to do in recent years, spent a little time in jail, etc., and is starting to get back to recording and publically performing music. The outfit will be opening for Dolorean, who I've been meaning to check out at some point, anyway. Sometimes Sunday night shows aren't the best idea, but this looks to be quite worth it. Read more about Todd Grant here: http://www.timmcmahan.com/lazyeye.htm (you'll have to look at the yellow blog section and scroll down a little bit)

In other news, my sisters-in-law are visiting in April sometime. They're both great kids and we'll have fun. Well, they and Stacey will have fun. I'll probably lock myself in the study, considering that's near semester's end. I enjoy them both quite a bit, though, so hopefully I'll get to join in the fun at least a little bit.

This turned into a long post, but be glad it isn't longer.

(originally posted yesterday, 5pm)

After a decent day off Monday, this work week proceeds as usual. I've got a dozen things to write (approximately) and just a small time to do them, and none of them things I can really work on here at work, hence the journal entry. I need to make concrete decisions regarding this summer very soon. My options regarding classes to take are scarce, and enough other things are or may be going on that perhaps just taking the summer off from classes to focus on those things as they happen, and the zine, church things, and my own writing as well. If I do take the summer off then it's virtually a lock that I'll be heading east on I-80 with S. mid-May. We'll have to figure out what's in store as it will be a combined wedding attendance (well, for her...not sure about myself being there) and vacation. We'll probably try to spend a couple days in Chicago if we can afford it. I'd like to get together with a few folks in Chicago this time around, as well. We'll see what happens. I'll meet soon with my academic advisor, hopefully in the next few days. Hopefully he's more help than my undergrad advisor, a little old lady who kept screwing things up and ended up just going under MY direction on how things would work. On top of the free time I'd gain in taking the summer off from classes, the Indiana trip would mean I'd get a little time with our families and my godson, his sister and the young child forthcoming, plus their parents (one of whom is "juandelacruz" on the vagrant forums -- check out his journal!). All those things together really have me leaning toward taking no classes.Today on my lunch break I started reading sections of Blues People by Leroi Jones aka Amiri Baraka. I'm finding what I've read thus far to be very in-depth on a number of levels. For the African American Novel class we just read Their Eyes Were Watching God, possibly the first "black feminist novel," by Zora Neale Hurston. I enjoyed the book and our class discussion on it last night, as well. While not a critical success or heavily-studied book in its day (published 1937) or in Hurston's lifetime (died 1960), it's drawn quite a bit of scholarship in the past 25-30 years. The novel is well-written on a number of levels and definitely a worthy member of the Black Literature canon, and I tend to agree that it should be on the list of great American novels, as well. Incidentally, a film version premiered on ABC this past Sunday night, executively produced by Oprah Winfrey. As with most films, it left things out here and there, but also made a few major errors, a couple of which greatly influence the perception of the author's intent and voice. But, you know, Oprah produced and Halle Berry starred, so it scored pretty big points with a lot of people, I'm sure. I'd get more into details but don't want to spoil it for anyone, plus my time at work is almost through.This new zine really needs to just name itself.