yowsa



yum. want it, need it. hook me up. i'm lonesome and my heart is broken.

alive and well

guess who I saw on Sunday night? uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh-uh-huh-ooooooooooo!



yup. the Pixies, ladies and gentlemen. happy to report that all are well. Charles (Black Francis/Frank Black) Thompson can still scream, Kim Deal is still totally cool, Joey Santiago still throws feedback around like nobody's business, and David Lovering still channels Keith Moon.

go see 'em.

fuck

i'm single again.

why is love not enough?

i hate this.

authentic happiness

took this survey today. here's what it said, based on 9 pages of self-scoring questions:

Signature Strengths ("The ranking of the strengths reflects your overall ratings of yourself on the 24 strengths in the survey, how much of each strength you possess. Your top five, especially those marked as Signature Strengths, are the ones to pay attention to and find ways to use more often.")

Top Strength

Creativity, ingenuity, and originality Thinking of new ways to do things is a crucial part of who you are. You are never content with doing something the conventional way if a better way is possible.

Second Strength

Honesty, authenticity, and genuineness You are an honest person, not only by speaking the truth but by living your life in a genuine and authentic way. You are down to earth and without pretense; you are a "real" person.

Third Strength

Judgment, critical thinking, and open-mindedness Thinking things through and examining them from all sides are important aspects of who you are. You do not jump to conclusions, and you rely only on solid evidence to make your decisions. You are able to change your mind.

Fourth Strength

Love of learning You love learning new things, whether in a class or on your own. You have always loved school, reading, and museums-anywhere and everywhere there is an opportunity to learn.

Fifth Strength

Bravery and valor You are a courageous person who does not shrink from threat, challenge, difficulty, or pain. You speak up for what is right even if there is opposition. You act on your convictions.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

well ain't i just special.

enuff to go around

well, shit. just when it looked like i was getting back into a groove of regular posting (well, it felt that way to me, anyway), some latest MS upgrade made posting to blgger from Internet Explorer at first a big pain in the ass (see reference to lost post, below) and then completely impossible. hence, the hiatus.

so, a tip from a techie led me to download and install the free version of Mozilla's Firefox. and now everything works better than it ever has. fancy that. kinda makes ya wonder if maybe MS is working on its own version of blogger........

of course, now that it works again, i'm not much feel like writing. since you've been kind enough to check up on me, though, here's what i've been up to:

finished reading:

• Broken Music: A Memoir, by Sting. Interesting, on a number of levels, but nothing like I anticipated it would be. Turns out the Stingster is just a normal guy, the son of working class people, who struggled and worked hard to make it big, and who cites that and sheer determination more than any brilliant talent as the reason for his success. Perhaps he's just humble. When I finished the book, I was sad.
  
  
• Jarhead, by Anthony Swofford. A much better read, as books go. Swofford has the way, that's for damned sure. I intended to leave you an excerpt here, to get a taste of his style and the tone of the memoir, but I had returned the book before I was able to start posting again. Choppy at times, but only in that way that people who know how to write will notice, and only in a way that makes them (read: us) jealous that Swofford was able to either get past any worries he had that the style would prevent the book from being accepted by a publisher, or he's brilliant enough to have worked in the choppiness intentionally to reinforce that sense of the soldier waiting for combat -- who said it? -- "long periods of boredom alternating with tedium, with occasional side trips to ennui." Anyway, read it. Well worth it.

and yesterday, laid up with some undiagnosed sickness, I watched Tod Browning's Freaks, a dark and bizarre morality tale filmed over 36 days in 1931 and released for only a few months in 1932 before being pulled from distribution. The fillm is set behind the scenes at a turn-of-the-century traveling European circus and revolves around the lives of the side show performers, or "freaks" as they proudly refer to themselves. Strange and sad, along the lines The Blue Angel, the Greta Garbo classic filmed just a year earlier. Oddly enough, parts of the Freaks set were recycled from Garbo’s Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise; perhaps bits of her ambience carried over. One can easily make some parallels between the relationship of Cleopatra with the little person Hans (in Freaks) and that between the whore Lola and the Professor, in Angel. Each flick takes a look at star-crossed love through distorted lenses, and each in its own way documents the fast-wilting flower of forbidden love, and the sickly sweet and deadly fruit of betrayal. The sentiment appears today to be dated, over-romanticized, and idealized, but each film remains heartrending and poignant.

and, last night, like all of you, watched the debates. thought our boy John did pretty well for himself. let's hope that helps realign the momentum.

have a weekend.

more catch-up

Tried to donate blood last night. Apparently, there's some health requirement that students can fulfill by donating blood, because the place was crowded as hell with an inordinately high number of freshman. Talk about feeling old! I signed in and sat down to wait to be called. The girls, in jeans, flip-flops and cute t-shirts ("Everybody loves an Irish girl" said one). Their faces are so young, still carrying a little baby fat, trying to sit up straight to look worldly or something. The guys sat together in packs, non-stop verbal banter -- attempting to make witty comments about every situation they're in and every topic that comes up. So wanting to be cool, yet doing everything that confirms how far they have to go to get there. Really gives me a better idea of why so many girls are attracted to older guys -- these young dudes reminded me much more of my 14-yr-old son than of the swaggering image of the carefree and available young college buck. Many of them were sporting those silly attempts at full beards that you see on young guys. Like their efforts to look cool, their baby-beards have the same effect -- instead of highlighting their masculinity and perhaps reinforcing their virtility, they look more like kittens. Just as I couldn't envision any of these young women taking a romantic interest in my eight-grade son, I couldn't imagine any of them taking an interest in these fuzzy babyfaced boys, either. How long do guys efforts to achieve one effect result in the opposite?? When's that stop? -- when you're in your mid-20's? Later?

So there's a positive thing about being older -- I'm past that shit. Now, when I'm cool, I'm cool. If I appear to be displaying cool detachment, I'm either not paying attention, or tired. When I convey an air of indifference, it's generally a pretty good sign that I really don't give a flying rat's ass. (Though pretty girls typically can draw me out.)

Damn. I had a pretty lengthy post about self-image here, but beloved f-in Blogger ate the whole damned thing. Sucks. Not feeling like recreating it either, at the moment. I'll leave you with this link to American Soldier -- amazing firsthand accounts of what our young enlisted men and women are dealing with.

And this sad, sad fact: Over 1,000 American soldiers have been killed in the Iraq conflict, and over 7,000 have been injured (with 1,000 of the injuries taking place in the past month alone). Over 10,000 Iraquis have been killed in the conflict so far. It's a true and awful mess.

Time for a change, kids. Time for a change.

catching up

Howdy, dear readers. Hope you had a pleasant and relaxing Labor Day weekend. Mixed it up a little here -- nothing wildly exciting, but kept busy. Saturday morning went to a John Kerry rally -- sad to say it was terribly boring. Stood with the masses for an ungodly length of time listening to a string of local politicos do their best to rev up said masses -- leading me to conclude that, if I plan to get serious about showing my face at such events, I may need to make some kind of donation so that I can at least sit when the show sucks. I don't mind standing, if the act is worth it -- but -- ~sheesh!~ this was tedious. And hot. And people were annoying. And ugly.

Kerry needs to do something. Seems like a nice guy, really. But, what is his plan? Says he's gonna make it so that Medicaire can get a bulk rate on drugs so senior citizens can afford their meds. Says he's gonna stop the hemorrhaging of American jobs -- how? Says he's gonna make taxes fair for the middle class -- how?? The whole platform at present seems to revolve around "Bush lied to us, so elect me." And, while that is, imo, enough of a reason not to re-elect Dubya, I think it may still be a little too abstract for your typical American. Like, they still want a plan. Trust me -- I was surrounded by these yokels at the rally. So many of them are broke-ass poor, if not unemployed and, if they are working, they're slogging away at some grueling soulless $7/hour factory stint, showing up for work each day paranoid that it may be their last, looking forward only to their lunch breaks so they can engage in the bonding ritual of the proletariat -- dissing management (still know to them as "The Man") for taking advantage of them, for screwing them, for getting fat off the sweat of their labor, blah, blah, blah.

Forgive my insensitivity. But, really -- wake up. Wake the fuck up. Ya know what, folks? -- the only way to ever really start resolving the true problems of our nation -- inequality, bigotry, poverty, hopelessness -- is education. I'm tired of hearing people talk about unions, and tired of hearing unions talk. Unions are on the way out. They've served their purpose (I mean, hell yeah, Workers of the World Unite!), but it's played out. All it is now is a sad, empty shell -- the Fat Cats haven't gotten any thinner, and Joe Six Pack hasn't gotten any more financially independent. It's just one more tool of The Establishment to keep the class system in place, and to keep the working class in its place. Which is, of course, at the bottom, doing the shit work for the owners. None of that has changed, and anyone who thinks it has is shortsighted. I stood there listening to all the pro-union talk, listened to the union reps make all the pro-American worker proclamations -- man, it makes me sad. Unions are a crutch -- they don't help anyone anymore, they just make people think that their intolerable situations are better than they are. It f'in blows.

So, union people, listen up: You want improvements? Get educated. Support education. Build education opportunities into your labor contracts so that your members can free themselves from this archaic form of oppression. You wanna help the working class? -- you oughtta be advising them to get out of the fucking union, not trying to convince them to join one. You oughtta be getting them pumped up to take some personal responsibility for improving themselves, and their own existence -- instead of conning them into thinking that if they are loyal, if they pay their dues, if they work hard enough that you're gonna take care of them. Because you aren't, and you won't. Unions are institutions, and institutions in our capitalist democracy exist to take care of themselves, not their members.

Cynical? Perhaps. But, hell -- I've never been in a union in my life, and I've done alright for myself. Not as well as I'd like to, but better than just about every single person I've ever met or known who is part of a union. I know you hate to hear this -- sounds like one more elitist voice from some privileged rich kid. Makes you wanna tell me the way it is and maybe kick in my face for emphasis. I'm sorry about that, and I wish you didn't feel that way -- and not simply because your assumption is wrong (I've worked hard to get where I am, and the only people who ever gave me anything were my parents, god bless them). I'm afraid that on this point, I'm stone-cold right. You're living in denial if you think otherwise. If it's too late for you to do anything about your own situation, then at least for crying out loud emphasize the importance of getting an education to your children and your grandchildren. Get over yourselves and your blue collar pride and at least make sure your kids won't be sentenced to the same sorry-assed existence that was passed on to you.

[~exhales~]

Saturday evening, went to a county fair with my seester. Was fun to spend some time with her.

Sunday, spent the bulk of the afternoon in the woods, hiking around a bridle trail. It's been a good summer that way -- I've spent quite a bit of it outdoors, mostly in the woods, hiking, largely by myself. This I enjoy. Communing with nature -- giving my regards to the trees and the streams, the turtles and the deer, the ducks and the hawks, the chipmunks and the squirrels. It's also why I so love the summer, and so do not enjoy the winter. Daylight's already fading, which means that if I don't pretty much fly out the office door by five, the window of opportunity for my daily three-mile hike is already closing. I like to get out there for at least two hours, I like to work up a sweat, I like to feel it in my legs and in my knees when I'm done, like to feel like I've actually managed to do something after having spent yet another eight hours mostly sitting on my ass in front of a PC (at my safe professional non-union solidly middle-class job).

Yeah, in many ways, I've got the dream job. You know -- nobody breathing down my neck, having more people reporting to me than I have to report to, pretty standard hours, safe office, no dangerous work, and a staff of basically-good-if-boring/annoying-in-that-conservative-traditional-midwestern-family-values-kinda-way. And -- you've heard this before -- it mostly drives me nuts. Very often has me questioning what I'm doing with my life, even though I'm confortable knowing that I am helping to make a difference (I raise money for higher-education) in our little part of the world, in our society, in the lives and experiences of current and future students. But -- g-a-w-d! I so wasn't born to spend this much time indoors, let alone sitting in an office, let alone sitting in an office in the friggin' midwest! But here I am, making the most of it, as I have been doing for close to twenty years now.

Damn. "Close to twenty years" -- now, there's a statement that makes me feel old. At 42, I really don't consider myself to be "old," though I'm certainly no spring chicken (am i?).

More to add here, but I'm gonna go try to donate blood. We'll try to pick up this thread soon, using the metaphor of time passing like sand through the hourglass, except the sides of the hourglass are actually lenses, with the perception of the Self changing over time, depending on which area of the hourglass you happen to be looking through as you examine your own life at different points in time...

-- and more on this, too, because I was watching this. plus some recent shows I've seen but neglected to tell you about.

betcha didn't even apply.....

Job Opening: Surely You Jest...
Thu Aug 5, 2004 12:20 PM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - WANTED - A court jester to fill a post vacant for 350 years since England executed its king.

English Heritage said in an advertisement in the Times on Thursday applicants for the competition at the weekend should bring their own costumes with bells, but said it would provide a bladder on a stick -- a traditional jester's prop.

Contrary to the image of a buffoon, court jesters had to be highly astute, able to lift the spirits of their monarchs and risked death if they failed -- as many did. The duties of the last court jester, whose job ended in 1649 when Charles I lost his head, included making him laugh and providing a distraction from politics.

This time, however, English Heritage said the winner would not risk decapitation but would still have to provide trenchant wit. Would-be fools should attend a public audition Saturday at Stoneleigh Park in central England, wearing their costumes.

UPDATE:
England Gets First National Jester for 350 Years
Mon Aug 9, 2004 07:55 AM ET

STONELEIGH, England (Reuters) - Nigel Roder beat six rivals by public acclaim on Saturday to become England's first official jester for more than 350 years, succeeding Muckle John who lost his job when King Charles 1 was beheaded in 1649.

"This is a real job. He will have to amuse and provoke -- although failure to do so will no longer risk beheading," Tracy Borman, events director of English Heritage, told Reuters.

Unlike court jesters of old, Roder will be able to negotiate his salary, and his initial contract with English Heritage -- to divert the public from the tedious daily grind -- will run from March to October 2005.

Roder -- professional name Kester the Jester -- juggled and diaboloed his way to victory over a diverse field that included a poetry-reading Frenchwoman in the contest near Warwick in central England.

"It feels good. I am a national fool now. It is the best thing a man can be," he said after his victory.

Jesters of the past, though figures of fun at the royal court, were often highly intelligent men whose quick wit and sharp tongue both diverted the monarch and reminded him of his mortality.

Success could bring fame and fortune, but failure could result in shame, pain and even death. Two jesters, Will Somers under the quick-tempered King Henry VIII, and Tarlton under his younger daughter Elizabeth I, were household names in England during their lifetimes.

Many of William Shakespeare's plays feature fools both as buffoons and as rapier-tongued deflators of bombast -- notably in Twelfth Night and King Lear.

The role of court jester died out in Europe in the 18th century, though their roles were taken up by comedians and satirists. "It is about time we had a jester again. We could do with one," Borman said.

- 30 -

-

alternative visions



Sihstrin as Pinup | Copywright © Beth Bajema & bajema.com



The Angel Balm | Copywright © Beth Bajema & bajema.com
Brings to mind the images of Gustav Klimt:



Hygieia | Gustav Klimt

Future Plans

One of these years, I'm going to this:



...I think I like last year's poster better, though:



And I just think this one's cute:

Life in Mosul

As seen through the eyes of a soldier in the U.S. Army: My War - Fear And Loathing In Iraq.

something's gotta give

~sigh~

The Band thinks everyone must agree -- this site is so much better with visuals. Your Humble Chronicler can't help but wonder -- if I'd've had this funtionality from the start of this blog, would I today be one of the Net Stars?

wonder what carl's up to these days

surely you remember:
pop-tarts

poptarts.bmp

"children should be supervised"

pop-tarts, doritos, cheez-its, they weren't allowed - we were on a budget, and the budget did not call for the likes of pop-tarts, or doritos, or cheez-its. in the breakfast foods aisle, andra looked at the rows of pop-tarts - frosted and unfrosted, chocolate and fruit-flavored - then hesitantly placed a box of generic artificially flavored strawberry toaster pastries in our cart. she glanced back at the shelves. "go ahead, get the pop-tarts," i said. -- from placing, by Carl Steadman

- from suck, 02/06/98:

on a lighter note....



you just gotta love the la perla site.

what you once were / isn't what you wanna be / anymore

an intriguing collection of pix, ranging from battle sketches to the holocaust to x-files to 90210 (??).

the trajectory of life, the incredible lightness of being -- variations on where are they now??

fascinating -- rented the weather underground last night. another review here. you should do the same.

''Like Bonnie and Clyde, many of them were attractive personally. They were into youth, exuberance, sex, drugs. They wanted action.'' - Todd Gitlin, former president of Students for a Democratic Society

here's what some of the sexy lefties are up to now:

• bernadine dohrn is an attorney and activist
  
• brian flanagan owns the night cafe, an upper westside bar
  
• todd gitlin teaches journalism and sociology at columbia
  
• bill ayers is a professor of education at the university of illinois
  
• mark rudd teaches math
  
• naomi jaffe promotes progressive causes
  
• laura whitehorn is free
  
  
• fred hampton was assassinated

fascinating stuff.

''Sometimes when you try to oppose something, instead of becoming the opposite, you become the other side of the coin." - David Gilbert, political prisoner.

Making Art History on the Edge of Culture

Pulled an all-nighter Friday night. Started things out by catching the opening of Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11, then stayed up reading On Top of the World. Jumped in the car at three a.m., picked up a Red Bull for me and a diet Coke for The Muse, and headed in to Cleveland to the East 9th Street pier for a pre-dawn gathering. Spencer Tunick was in town.

We gathered. Men and women. The black and the white. The short and the tall. The thick and the thin. The bearded and the clean-shaven. Blonde and brunette, long hair and short hair, curly hair and straight hair, pony-tailed and bald. Old and young. Mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, sisters and brothers, cousins and co-workers. Tatted and pristine. Pierced and not. Couples and groups and all alones. All shapes, sizes and colors.

And, shortly after dawn, with the wind coming in off the lake and the temperature a cool 57 degrees, 2,758 brave souls stripped bare in the name of art. Here's a nice shot of our sea of bodies, covering the pier and pouring up onto East 9th street in the heart of downtown Cleveland:


"Lie down and look serious."
Media coverage:

TV: CBS | NBC | ABC | Fox (lame)

Cleveland Plain Dealer: Slideshow | Tunick Interview | Journalist's Account

Akron Beacon Journal: 1 | 2 | 3

The host: MOCA Cleveland.

We'd do it again in a heartbeat.

happy bicycle day!

More brainfood (Mo' Fodduh fo' da Greymattuh)

Shizzle fo' da brizzle, if you wizzle. Listening to:

• Lee Morgan -- The Cooker. Cool-hot import i was turned on to by good old public radio. Pricey as hell through the usual channels, but found an indie vendor and got it for a normal price. As I said -- cool. Hot. Interesting -- knew he was kind of a wildman, as many jazzers were, but had no idea until just now that he was shot!
  
• Tupac Shakur -- Greatest Hits. Ok, what's a 42-year-old white guy doing blasting 2Pac out his dayum car windowZ? Jes' representin' fo' sho' yo'. Ain't got nuthin' but luV 4 yA.
  
• Eroica Trio -- Beethoven Triple Concerto Op. 56 and Piano Trio Op. 11 (w/ Prague Chamber Orchestra. Classical's version of babes with guitars. Could easily cross over if they changed their name to the "Erotica Trio." (gurlz with instruments are hot, and a lady with a cello just does it for me) Subtle, emotional, yet still rocking.
  
• The Cambridge Singers -- The Cambridge Singers Collection. Lotsa good stuff -- "sacred and secular, historic and contemporary, a capella and accompanied" say the notes. A little Debussy, some Verdi, a bunch of folk songs, a Gregorian chant -- I grabbed it for their treatment of Bruckner's Ave Maria.

That's it for now. What are U listening 2? There's a sadly underutilized message board over there on the left, ya know.

R.I.P.



Humphrey Osmond, who coined the word psychedelic in 1956 in correspondence with his friend Aldous Huxley.

The two men were looking for a word to describe this new class of drugs, and they were doing so in rhyme. Huxley wrote:

To make this trivial world sublime,
Take half a Gramme of phanerothyme.

To which Osmond responded:

To fathom hell or soar angelic
Just take a pinch of psychedelic.

Psychological Exercise

This is an effective way to determine how to get your needs met, when you're experiencing negative emotions.

1) Feelings. Label the feelings that you are having. Think of a few different words that you feel describe the emotions.

2) Needs. Using the labesl you came up with for the emotions, now think of words that would be the opposite of those. Often, the opposite of the emotion is the need that is going unmet.

3) Action. Focussing now on the words that you came up with for the needs, think of a couple ways that you could do something that would allow you to get the needs met.

So, practice that for awhile. Btw -- street value? $120. But, for you, dear reader? -- gratis.

Feeding my Head

Reading:

• Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs -- John (Johnny Rotten) Lydon
  
• Dude, Where's my Country? -- Michael Moore

Listening to:

• Jeff Buckley -- Live @ Sin-e. Tremendous and touching.
  
• Joe Firstman -- The War of Women. Ok. Kinda poppy. Made by a friend. Like the last tune a lot.
  
• And miscellaneous streaming punk, just 'cuz I'm in the mood.

Something in my Veins, Bloodier than Blood

You can't tell what it is. Not exactly, anyway. Did you hear something? A vibration in your stomach, something not quite unhinged, but on the verge of coming loose. Somewhere between nausea and panic. Did you forget something? A snippet of a conversation, something someone said, something that sounded innocuous in context, transparent, yet, taken out of context in and of itself, holds foreboding. Something coming loose -- what? A moral? some priniciple? some fine line wavering between right and wrong? A bill you forgot to pay? a phone call you forgot to make? a day you forgot to take off? did you remember to turn in that sick day you took last week? how much will your tax return be this year? will it be enough to get a new car? put a downpayment on a house? or to escape? Did you remember some obscure personal anniversary? Did you forget another sibling's birthday? Will this cough ever go away? Are your lungs damaged forever? why do you wake up with the cold sweats almost every night, every winter? why was I born here? why now? Paranoia.

Stuff I Gotta Do

• Get my vision checked and get a new script for glasses.
  
• Trade in my car.
  
• Get back to the gym every day after work.
  
• Find a way to make this job interesting again, or find another one.
  
• Move south.

Every Moment is a Little Bit Later

Read my previous post and laugh along with me. At the absurdity of my current reality. Here. In the Midwest. Where it's currently 13 degrees. I won't even bother calculating the wind chill factor. It's too boring, too atrocious -- too absurd that it has again become the lead story on the local news. Just as it does every year. Every year. Every year. Does enyone in the Midwest ever get tired of enything??!?! ~sheesh~

(Suffice it to say that one of the highlights of 2003 for Yours Truly was experiencing Hilton Head Island. And I made a promise to go back. So, The Muse and I will be returning this summer. Prolly gonna take Haze along with us, which will change the dynamic a little.)

Also realized that in all of 2003 I blogged a total of 12 posts. That's an average of one post a month, and a fairly atrocious record for a veteran of the medium like me. I fear I can't hold a candle to my pal lola........much as I'd like to........*smile*.........

[Aside: Listening to some tune by a band/artist named Genovese -- called "Swinging on Poles" -- a fairly nondescript hip-hop jam -- with the marked exception of these wonderful little female sex grunts mixed into the rhythm track. Not enough to make me buy it, but *yum* for that.]

So, fans -- what's been going on? For our part, we present, in brief:

The been-there-done-that list for 2003:

• we -- that's the US, which is us, for better or worse, folks -- went to war, again. For the second time - ? - in as many years, that we're aware of.
  
• we "won" the war, but remain in foreign lands, with a status of Foreign Invader & Tormented Victor.
  
• we "went orange" twice, but hung tight through it.
  
• we had a big East Coast electrical power grid fiasco -- remember that?
  
• the ever-sexy Madonna smooched her de facto wannabe proteges Britney and Christina on TV, initiating waves of hope and nausea, respectively, among the sexually enlightened and the homophobic. I, for one, would kiss any and all of them, in any combination -- and can't understand anyone who wouldn't, but, hell, to each their own. I've more than learned that. (Check out the divine M's site, btw -- pretty neat.)
  
• perhaps even more scandalous, Dubya remained president.
  
• "we" caught Saddam Hussein, former leader of the vanquished nation of Iraq, after killing half his family and reducing his already decimated country to further rubble. The other bearded nemesis remains at large. And gas prices in the old US-of-A remain no more or less better.
  
• my own primary love r-ship hit a bump, causing me to initiate a separation, but we humanly and miraculously found ways of coming to terms with the break-up, each other and our differences, and, while we remain living apart at present, we remain very much together, and are shooting for a spring re-synching of physical space.
  
• your pal Runey saw the fair city of San Francisco for the first time, liked it much, and hopes to return.
  
• and, somehow, in the waning days of 2003, I discovered a penchant for hip-hop, which I never had even the slightest interest in or understanding of before.

And that's the news that was, gang. So, an eventful year or not?? -- you be the judge. Please. We even fixed the message board for you (click on "Comments" below).

Write and let us know how the hell you are, how you were in 2003, and how you plan to be in 2004. Much love to you, always.

Stay tuned......