Here we go, the nearly full description of my weekend. Some of the more mundane details were omitted, but most of the really mundane details are all there in exacting detail. Enjoy.

I pulled into the parking lot on the residential side of the University of Saint Francis with some trepidation. Since graduation almost two years ago, I hadn't been back to the school much. Usually I only go back to the school whenever I have good reason, like an art show. It feels odd to go back, to have to look the students in the eye and pretend that their optimism for the future after graduation isn't in vain. Another problem is that I only know a handful of people on campus, and most of them will be graduating soon. The parking lot hadn't changed much in five years. The uneven black surface still collects water and a thin persistent layer of gasoline that never drains properly so much as it evaporates and clings to the nearby residence halls.

I parked my car in the same place I always did for three years, way out away from anybody else and away from the speeding meatheads who would be careening around drunkenly later that Friday night after I had left for the weekend. The path to the student center between two antique single classroom buildings and a clump of overgrown bushes was also unchanged, still uneven and slippery, still the perfect place to slip and fall and lay for hours where no one can see you. The exterior of the student center was cleaner than I remember it, the bushes and trees having been pruned and cleared at some point. Familiarity ended, however, when I gave an unsuccessful tug on the back door handle that I always used when I was a student. Instead of the familiar latch click squeaking door and rush of old building/ new paint musk I had grown accustomed to, I got the resistance of a locked door. Peering through the window, I saw the strange shapes of office furniture instead of a collection of waiting room style couches facing the temperamental big screen TV that my friends and I used to commandeer as out own personal movie theater. Sad, really, as I have many fond memories of that room.

So, nostalgia aside, I ventured up and around to the front entrance to the student center, formerly a horse stable to the Bass family a century ago. Students were already gathered in wait for the drawing of the destination. I felt a little old among them, out of place on a campus where everybody knows everybody else and nobody remembers me. Nobody but a select few who I've always liked. Brooke, who I've known since my first class my freshman year, who now teaches at the college. Rachel, who I know through forensics and art, making ours a friendship borne by educational masochism. Brady, brother of Brooke and former co-worker at Fort Fun. And Don, a great guy who I met very late in my college career. They would be my primary travel companions, the Samwise Gamgees and Neal Cassadys and the Virgils on the Ultimate Road Trip (tm).

I signed a release form and an emergency form, ate some pizza, and mingled with the few people I knew. At this point, I found out that the school had sprung for a charter bus, so I wouldn't be driving, but I was still welcome to come along. My weekend was clear, so I figured I would go. The Dean of Students drew the city from her coat pocket, and the verdict was Dallas, Texas.

Prior to this, my only experience with Dallas was the Dallas/ Fort Worth airport, DFW. The abbreviation is appropriate, as it covered my knowledge of the city pretty well. It's far and wide known as being a bit of a pit, a series of dirty food courts and magazine stands between overstuffed terminals. Our destination was outside of DFW, though.

There was a light rain as I boarded the bus alongside the fellow who normally dresses as Johnny Cougar, the USF mascot. I had already learned this much about a total stranger in the distance of a parking lot: I was traveling with a guy who dresses up as an endangered wildcat wearing a blue jersey.

The bus was the standard long-distance people hauler, complete with overhead bins and coach class seating all the way back. I sat next to Brady and near the rest of my aforementioned friends and resigned myself to sitting for the next several hours through several states. We ended up waiting in the parking lot for almost an hour for some late person rumored to have been in a minor car accident. She showed up looking no worse for the wear, and we departed.

The first two hours, marked as the distance from Fort Wayne to Indianapolis, passed uneventfully for me. Everyone was excited, talking about school and other things. I plugged myself into my iPod and read a few chapters in Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Around the time we passed the Indianapolis skyline I turned to talk to Brooke and Don, discussing music and movie soundtracks, and how good Wes Anderson is at picking music for his films. It's funny because those two are right out of a Wes Anderson movie.

The first rest stop we used (in the most impolite sense) was in southern Illinois. It set the standard for the following succession of roadside loos, each one oddly removed from society but yet in no way artsy or avant-garde. Roadside rest stops have always been very alien to me, as if each one sits on land that doesn't belong to America. The routine is always the same: exit the bus, locate the men's room logo door, take care of business, decipher the meth-addled drifter graffiti, wash hands, wipe hands on pants, and try not to touch anything on the way out to check the roadmap and board the bus.

Back on the road someone put on a movie on the bus's video system, Bowling for Columbine. Not the sort of movie you usually watch in this situation, but it passed the time through most of Illinois. It was maybe an hour after the movie ended that the bus stopped for gas and my friends and I purchased candy from the truck stop store. It was a full five minutes before I knew for a fact we were in southern Missouri, nearing some sort of a halfway point.

The time between stops and notable events on the road passed in a sort of hypnotic reverie. The large metal frame of the bus rattled with every divot in the road, and wavered from side to side on it's suspension as the wind buffeted it. Most people tried to sleep, while some talked or listened to music. I sat in my seat alternating my weight from side to side, trying in vain to find a comfortable and stable position. A cross section of the bus would reveal a passenger arrangement similar to Picasso's Guernica, each person differently contorted in sleep depending on body type and tolerance for pain. This is the sort of thing that finances home remodeling for chiropractors.

We rolled into Arkansas in the wee hours of the morning. Outside it was pitch black, with only a vague horizon line in the distance to prove we weren't in an infinite void. I tried to sleep for awhile, and almost succeeded in nodding off when the bus pulled off of the freeway and into a roadside parking lot motel. The lights came on, the driver got off, and a fresh driver got on. I was a little disappointed that they didn't exchange a secret handshake or a retinal scan. The only ID the new driver had was his uniform black tie, an item that could be purchased anywhere. Our only real security is that nobody would ever willingly hijack a bus full of bleary-eyed Catholics bound for Texas. It just isn't profitable.

In the middle of Arkansas we passed through Little Rock. Even with nobody in the city at that hour, it still looks impressive. The city looks to have grown and revitalized in the last decade, and I wouldn't mind having to go there on business some day. Little Rock is home to the TCBY headquarters, which probably has an impressive array of candy in the executive lounge parfait bar. After passing the city and entering the southwestern part of the state I tried to sleep again, but the roads turned bumpy, dashing any hope of quality REM sleep. Instead, I stared out the window on the road between Little Rock and Hope, Clinton's home town, imagining the state, campaign, and national decisions that had been discussed on that stretch of road in the last twenty years.

The sun rose in the east, gradually lighting the lax faces around me with pale blue light. The rural landscape still stretched out for miles in every direction, populated by roadside trees and signs to places with foreign and meaningless names. I watched and waited for a green highway sign that would feature the white Rorschach outline that would tell me what state we were in. Aside from idle curiosity, I wanted to know what highway numbers we would be passing in order to gauge our distance. As I understand, the state highway numbers increased as we moved away from the capitol in the center of the state, so the higher the numbers the closer to Texas. It was still Arkansas, so I plugged into my iPod and sat quietly, the music filling the vision of the wasteland outside.

I think I slept at some point. I remember opening my eyes later and seeing more variation in the land. There were buildings and cars around us. The Texas border was near and people were waking up groaning, massaging sore necks and shoulders and applying deodorant. We pulled into a truckstop gas station for breakfast, where someone spotted the first mullet of the trip walking past the starboard side of the bus. The diner was the harsh side of Americana, a thick mixture of smoke and bacon fat air contained in circa 1982 wood paneled walls. The wizened customers had the collective age of the fossil fuel in the tanks under their feet. They eyed us with suspicion as we passed through to the bathrooms and back again. I kept moving and didn't make eye contact. Outside, I brushed my teeth with a travel toothbrush and a bottle of water, spitting in the grass. It felt good to have a clean mouth, though the rest of me needed some hygiene that wouldn't be available for quite some time. I was able to shave, though, so I felt good from the neck up.

Two hours later the city of Dallas loomed on the horizon. The road into the city was lined with churches and rib joints, bolstering a series of stereotypes. The actual city, however, was gleaming. The first street we tried was lined with all kinds of clubs, bars, and entertainment venues ranging from expensive to seedy. Nothing was open at that time of day, though, so we moved on to the downtown area. Rachel moved to the front of the bus to give the driver directions, relying on a preternatural knowledge of all things Texas.

The bus stopped in the middle of the city and the group set out to see the nearby shops and restaurants. I ate with my friends at a touristy steakhouse, then we all went down the street to a little shopping center full of the usual tourist-trap items, Texas t-shirts and the like, almost identical to every similar store I've ever seen in from Arizona to Italy. In truth, I usually avoid these types of stores after seeing what one or two of them have to offer. The local merchants always hide better merchandise off the beaten path.

After walking a few blocks we came upon the infamous plaza where President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. I think I got the complete tour, in a way. The whole plaza is filled with signs and plaques signifying everything, recreating the whole ordeal in detail. We walked down the path of the motorcade, where the window in the former book depository is visible from the ground. Around a bend in the road there are two X marks in the road about 25 feet apart where the two shots hit the president, one from the window and one from elsewhere, ostensibly the fence nearby. Standing by the fence, I got to see a presentation-cum-sales-pitch from a guy selling picture books about the shooting and conspiracy. Several street vendors were also selling photobooks. There were even kids and families standing in the street on the unceremonious faded X marks for vacation photos. Crass American bloodlust meets selective historical fascination.

A short time later we all gathered to pose for a group picture as required by law, and then boarded the bus to go to the Dallas Galleria mall. The Galleria is a colossal place, but very few of the stores are worthwhile to me. I can say that I've been into a Versace store now, and all of the lights in the store are powered by cables connected to Sam Houston spinning in his grave at the prospect of a Versace on Texas soil. I followed my friends amiably from store to store, perusing things I don't need and fighting sleep deprivation. In the window display at the Gucci store there were large signs that said "ever get the feeling you're being lied to?" My stomach turned when I saw this, and for good reason. These were the last words Johnny Rotten said to the crowd at the last Sex Pistols concert ever. To see this as marketing for effing Gucci is a travesty.

Elsewhere in the mall, things were better for me. I split from the group before dinner to go to Macy's where I had seen racks of men's clothes on sale. I'm not all that fashion conscious, but I do like to look good for art shows and social events. This is accomplished by scouring clearance racks for cheap clothes that fit me. The best place to do this is in major cities, where the clearance items are much more stylish than the full priced items in Fort Wayne. After foraging through racks of pants sized for circus freaks and shirts that not even the designer's mother would wear, I came upon a jacket that I liked. Right size, easy cleaning, good color, and marked down from $85.00 to $20.00, give or take. For some reason, I only find good things on vacation when I'm alone.

At 9:00, about the time I was ready to collapse, we all boarded the bus to return home. The return trip was much less eventful, as I could sleep comfortably. Brady gave up trying to sleep sitting up and laid down in the center aisle for the night. I took advantage of my newfound space and slept soundly on both seats as we made our way out of Texas.

I woke up to a chilly Missouri morning, dimly aware of where I was. A few other people were awake, and those who were were treated to a beautiful sunrise as we crossed the Mississippi river. It made the whole ride worthwhile, it was amazing. The rest of the time was passed talking to my friends until we rolled into Fort Wayne in the middle of the afternoon.

It was a long weekend, and obviously I didn't recover for a while, as this post has taken a long time. There it is, though, my magnum opus blog post in all of it's glory. Now blink your eyes and refocus them on something further away. I don't want you going blind.

I'm about halfway done with a Texas-sized post. Try again later.

First off, go check out Making Fiends. It's some funny stuff.

It's February, a TV sweeps month, so I feel the need to do something to do something in (dubious?) honor of this. Faithful readers may remember when I made noodles with peanut sauce for my last sweeps stunt, blogging live from the kitchen as I prepared the dish. This time around, though, I'm going to leave off with a cliffhanger. A non-ending or sorts. I'm leaving for a little weekend jaunt to who knows where as a driver on the annual USF road trip. The official title of the trip is the "ultimate road trip", but this is erroneous.

The idea is to set out on the open road to whatever destination on Friday night and be back by Sunday morning, so it really isn't that large of a trip; nor is this the last trip that will ever be taken, hence there isn't anything "ultimate" about it. I was part of the inaugural trip a couple of years ago. We started towards Colorado Springs, Co. but ended up stuck in some small town in Kansas during a particularly heavy blizzard. I got the whole thing on tape, though, and edited it into a documentary of the whole affair.

I'll make mental notes and report back on either Sunday night or Monday sometime, depending on when I return. If I return...

I learned something tonight. Possums don't especially like being photographed. There was another one in the yard earlier, smaller this time, but no less angry at the sight of me. I was armed with a digital camera this time, though, and I got a couple of pictures. These pictures prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that "playing possum" isn't pretending to be dead. "Playing possum" shall now be defined as looking like Bruce Lee in the climactic battle of Enter the Dragon: supremely pissed and coiled like a spring, ready to strike screaming and tear asunder anything that comes near.

Not a whole lot else going on here. I'm waiting for a CD I ordered to come in at Barnes and Noble before I quit, so I can get my discount. I'll try one last time to get a book floor job back, but if not, I'll be leaving.

It would be nice to find something without customer interaction. If I had to, though, Wendy's restaurant has an opening for someone to portray Wendy herself. If they'd settle for a surly, hairy legged Wendy with a deep voice who refuses to eat the burgers, I can oblige them. Just don't go lifting the trademark skirt, kids. You won't like it.

I have plans in the interim, though. This weekend I'm going to be driving a van full of college students to an as-yet-undecided location. Maybe Colorado, maybe Boston, maybe Dallas. I have no idea. That's the fun of it, you see. It's a semi-spontaneous road trip. This will provide a wealth of blogfodder if I make it back.

"If you havin girl problems I feel bad for ya son, I got 99 problems and a [chick] ain't one." -paraphrased from Jay Z

One more Valentine's day down, who knows how many more to go. It wasn't bad, as corporate fueled guilt trips go. I slept in through most of it. I woke up with a headache, which I treated with two ibuprofen and two episodes of the Simpsons. I also went to see Lost in Translation tonight. It's quite a good movie about feeling isolated in a foreign environment and finding something or someone to connect to. If you like smart movies, see this movie. If you don't like smart movies, then I don't know how you got this URL because I sure didn't give it to you.

The Possum is still at large; similar to bin Laden, but without ambiguous ties to the Bush family.

Twentieth century novelist and horror pioneer H.P. Lovecraft used to write about nightmarish creatures known as the Elder Gods, a race of giant evil superbeings that have been asleep deep under the most remote regions of the world since long before the rise of man. Though they sleep, their minds still have some power over some parts of humanity, driving people mad. The scary part is the idea of the creatures waking up and destroying everything.

So bearing that in mind, imagine a similar situation scaled down to fit in a suburban backyard. For the past week or so, Chewie (the good dog) and Toby (the adequate dog) have been begging to go outside every five minutes. Every time they get out there, they run around barking and tear-assing through the bushes by the house. Usually, it's a squirrel or a chipmunk or dead leaves blowing around. Chewie likes the chance to run around and Toby has a short dog complex, so they both enthusiastically chase anything they can.

I let Toby out tonight so that he could go arbitrarily mark his territory in an already fenced yard (someday he's going to feel really foolish when I show him the deed to the house that says we already own it, yard and all) and maybe chase squirrels in a Don Quixote fashion. He was barking, so I went to go tell him to shut up, but when I leaned my head out the door the only words I could produce were "holy shit." Toby had cornered a possum (an opossum?) by the fence. Not just any possum, but a full grown one that had survived outside in the longest stretch of cattle-killing cold winter I can remember in at least five years. There's a line in the movie Apocalypse Now: "Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger." Toby lives indoors, eats from a permanently stocked bowl, and sleeps on soft warm beds made for people. He gets his hair cut at Sissie's Pet Salon. The Possum lives in the bush like the VC. Toby is a blob of cookie dough. The Possum is carved out of wood.

The Possum was just sitting there with it's mouth open, giant teeth bared. Toby was a few feet away, trying to decide the stupidest possible course of action. Chewie was trying to see what all the fuss was about, and if it was worth his valuable time. Being the largest mammal present, I decided I had better put a stop to this rodent-foolery. I walked out onto the snow trying to look big to assert myself as being dominant, but it occurred to me that I'm 6'4" and the Possum could probably still take me if given no other alternative. I called Toby and told him to go inside, and in a rare moment of obedience, he actually took a few steps toward the door. The Possum was looking at me now, silently gauging the distance from its feral jaws to my balls or throat. One thing he didn't count on was that I was raised a suburban kid, and if I'm threatened in the winter, I will immediately unleash a torrential hadoken of snow and ice balls that rivals the bombing in Vieques. I even hit the Possum a few times before it closed its jaws. The gate was closed, so it had nowhere to go, and we were at a stalemate. I went back inside and the Possum went back to whatever subterranean dwelling it thinks of as home, but I know it's still out there. It's in the bush getting stronger.

Incidentally, had this been a badger, I would have made haste to the internet to research what badgers eat. "Badger? Pfft, it's probably Milhouse."

There are a couple of good people I know who often rave about Smallville in their blogs, about how good it is and how everyone with even a shred of geekiness must watch it. In fairness, I do enjoy Smallville. At its worst, it's still a fun novelty, and at its best it's a great Joseph Campbell style origin story of the modern heroic archetype. Often it meanders back and forth between these two extremes with no consistent middle ground, so faithful viewers aren't always rewarded. The writing can also waffle back and forth. Often the only esoteric references are whenever someone says the name "Superman", even if only referring to Nietzsche (one time).

Now, I should point out that any gripes I have about the show are undercut by the fact that the show is written mostly for thirteen and fourteen year olds. I'm a decade older and a bachelors degree wiser than the target demographic. That Smallville entertains me at all is a huge testament to the writers and actors. But there is another show geared toward someone my age. The "little Buffy spinoff that could", has, and still does consistently every week. Angel.

I've been a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer since my freshman year of college, but it wasn't until later that I started collecting back episodes of Angel from the now defunct Kazaa. Angel takes several novel approaches to the classic struggle of good and evil, often borrowing from mythology and world religion. The show also has much more suspense in the ultimate direction of the show; the final apocalyptic battle between good and evil. The twist on the idea is that the titular character (a formerly evil vampire now possessing a soul and thus, a conscience) is expected to play a major role in the battle, but it is unclear which side he'll end up on, and whether or not that side will emerge victorious.

Smallville exists safely in the comfort of the foregone conclusion that young Clark Kent will invariably grow to be Superman. The show often treats him as being infallible, even though mentally he is still only a sixteen year old boy with untold destructive power. As scary as this ought to be, the danger is often glossed over in favor of the teenage melodrama that the WB network is founded upon.

Angel has recently explored the areas of moral uncertainty and the questionable ethics of choosing the lesser of two evils. TV is not normally a moral authority or an introduction to philosophy. Shows that aspire to do more can often be counted on one hand of an absent-minded carpenter; shows like MASH, the Aaron Sorkin-directed seasons of West Wing, and the original Star Trek. That a television show would even attempt to deal with weighty issues and ideas, even by indirect fantasy and allegory, is commendable.

Both Angel and Smallville are enjoyable programming, albeit quite different. Between the two of them, though, Angel is the show that manages to reward me for retaining my college education. So credit where credit is due to the show with a soul.

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that everyone who reads this blog can, in fact, read. (Bear with me here.) If this is the case for you, esteemed reader, then you may enjoy an article I read recently. Next time you're at your local library, look for the December 22-29 2003 issue of the New Yorker. Towards the back and flanked by advertisements for all kinds of frivolous things is a great article comparing the Lord of the Rings with Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung. The similarities are pretty interesting. I don't know much about Wagner, but the article provides ample info about both Wagner and Tolkien. The illustration of Gollum riding a tricycle around Wagner sitting at a piano is reason enough to pick up the magazine.

Since I'm the unquestioned despotic ruler of this tiny patch of cyberspace, I have decided that I get to tell you all what media I've enjoyed recently, along with my half-baked opinion for each.

Movies:

Russian Ark- the idea for this alone makes it cool, never mind that it's a really good movie all around.

the Sword in the Stone- Quite possibly the best script Disney ever produced. It's a geek fable of the highest order.

the Lord of the Rings (Ralph Bakshi)- It isn't the greatest movie ever made, but some of the visuals are really cool and unique.

Nosferatu- An old German vampire movie. The effects were pretty groundbreaking back in the day.

Music:

Sex Pistols: Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols- This whole album sounds like orchestral power tools, especially Sid Vicious's voice.

Tom Waits: Mule Variations- It's kind of a hybrid of his old and new style.

the Dandy Warhols: Dandys Rule, Okay?- I downloaded it and enjoyed it, and I plan to buy it, as it's their only non-riaa release.

Smashing Pumpkins: Gish- I had "I am One" going through my head all day at work the other day.

the Black Keys: Thickfreakness- I love this album and I recommend it to anyone and everyone.

Books:

Ernest Hemingway: the Old Man and the Sea- Somehow, I thought I read this a long time ago, but I don't think I ever did now that I am reading it currently. Weird.

Art Deco Lighting- Lamps used to be really cool. What happened?

Sandro Botticelli, the Drawings for the Divine Comedy- What has two "i"s and painted "the Birth of Venus" in 1485? A.- Botticelli! Bwa haha!

the New Yorker Magazine- I just got into this magazine. They use big words.

Video Games:

Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4- The only sports game series I can play for an extended period of time.

Undying- This game reminds me of why I want to be a game designer. Muy bueno!

Guitar Music: (stuff I'm learning)

Beethoven: "Moonlight Sonata"- It sounds great on guitar.

the Black Keys: "Thickfreakness"- I learned this one by ear, thank you very much.

Radiohead: "Street Spirit"- I've been playing this one since college and I still don't have it exactly.

Dave Matthews Band: "Satellite", "Crash Into Me"- These are standards for midwestern white guys.

Tom Waits: "Poor Edward"- I just got the music book for Alice and this song was the first song I was able to play.

Smashing Pumpkins: "Take Me Down"- Todd recommended it, as it's easy and it sounds really nice on a solo acoustic.

I think my employment at Barnes & Noble is coming to an end in the near future. I don't mind, really. The work isn't ever hard and I like making coffee drinks, but the pay isn't that great and the bleach in the cleaning rags is taking the skin off of my hands at an alarming rate. These are pithy complaints considering that my salary and working conditions are far superior to those found elsewhere in the world. Still, I need a job with more hours. I only have eight hours this week and next week. The upside is that I don't have to work much to keep my employee discount.

This week I'm back to my old schedule, or lack thereof, doing nothing. I plan on reading more, as well as planning a trip to BSU next week when the roads clear up. And, of course, playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4. Probably a healthy amount of that.