Three great CD releases are sneaking in under the radar in the next month or so. I already mentioned the new Tom Waits album, but two more also have me excited. The Black Keys just released their third album, which I promptly bought to celebrate my first check. Oh, the neighbors are going to love me for the next month and a half as I learn to play the new songs. Third is Billy Corgan's solo album, slated for a late October release. I'm not really holding my breath, as he is notorious for taking several months in the studio, but whenever it gets released I'll be frantically scurrying down to Best Buy to get my grubby mits on it.

Work is getting better and better. It turns out that the nice young woman who I met at the Heorat last week works in the office down the hall a couple days a week. She loves music, and the two CDs on her desk right now are my copy of the Breeders' Title TK, and Johnny Cash's American IV: the Man Comes Around. Great taste, I must say. Elsewhere around the office, I found out that my paycheck is delivered to me. This is after I walked all over creation yesterday trying to find it. Convenience. Today, I met the head of BSU marketing. He's a good guy, and that means something from me, as I typically hold marketing majors in similar esteem as middle school gym teachers. I first met him when I accidentally walked in on a meeting with him and my boss and my boss's boss. I wanted to buy a coke out of the refrigerator behind his chair, so his first impression of me was a tall guy with an iPod loping through the door and wedging in behind his chair to acquire a canned beverage. I was introduced by name and then as a student in the Digital Storytelling program. His affirmative answer, like so many others, said that he didn't know what that meant either. Later on, as I was saving my work and preparing to leave, he came in with my boss to tell us about his great idea for the video tour. Something new and innovative- computer animated tourguides! The user would have a choice of three fun characters to watch, and... Something about a greenscreen... Something else... I was thinking "wow, I'm blogging this." He asked me if I thought this sounded good, and I told him that a little animated character was going to come across like the MS Word paperclip. It would disconnect people from the message. I didn't mention that it would mean about ten grand in equipment upgrades and more to hire a staff to create these to have online by March at the earliest. Later, my boss (a saint, I should mention) told me that she was happy that I stood up and told him the truth.

I got to thinking, though. What would an animated tour look like? Imagine Gollum at BSU. "Ahh! Tricksy bursarses, steals your monies! No, they's's good to us, the school cares for us. No! All our monies go to losing football team! We hates them! Hates them! Curses!" It would go on like that, and enrollment at IU would jump through the roof. I find it weird that being an animator has meant that I spend much of my time in such discussions telling people how much harder animation is, and how live action is simpler.

Tomorrow night I'm going to see Wynton Marsallis for ten bucks. I'm going with Gerry and a few other friends, and a few total strangers. Discount tickets to good events is another great thing about BSU. USF would be lucky to get Tito Jackson and John Oates.

Tom Waits has a new album coming on October 5th. story

Today, September 13th, my blog is one year old. I remember starting it after hearing about a purportedly free service that would let me type stuff and post it on the internet. Bored as I was, I decided to check it out. The purpose, for me at least, was personal growth. I didn't really have a goal in mind, I was unemployed and bored, and it was free.

After one year, things have changed for the better for me. I entered the workforce as a retail drone, helped various people move, tried my best to avoid purchasing music from RIAA-affiliated artists, waxed pseudo-poetic about movies and television, went to Texas, watched the Cubs on TV, bought a belt, applied to grad school, got accepted to grad school, exited the retail workforce, and moved several furlongs south of home to start grad school. I started this last year because I was bored, and now I almost forgot that I wanted to make a post at the one-year mark because school has me so preoccupied.

The funny thing about all of this is my audience (hi Mom). Once, I new for a fact that I had three readers. I'm not even sure who reads this now, but it is more than three. We had a discussion in HCI class about blogs, and some people couldn't fathom why anyone would want to read somebody else's blog. I'm mystified myself, but I read at least half a dozen that I can think of off the top of my head.

As for the title of the blog, Misplaced Commas, I plan to keep that. My punctuation has improved somewhat, but I can't think of a better title. "Siamese Dream", "Never Mind the Bollocks", and "Swordfishtrombones" are all taken.

I planned on making a list of my favorite blog posts, but I think I'll just post a few. There's a big archive up on the right, and clicking randomly will take you to different points in the past year. It's interactive hypertextuality fun for the whole family.

There was this one...
The time I went to Texas and then wouldn't stop talking about it...
There was that possum...
And then there was the two part moving weekend post. Part One and Part Two

Don't bother reading them if you have something better to do. They're some of my longest writings ever.

The big cultural question of this generation will be, for better or for worse, "where were you on September 11th?" Much like the deaths of John and Robert Kennedy, this otherwise innocuous early autumn day has become an immediately recognized day of infamy and sadness, so much so that the corresponding year of 2001 is left to the shared assumption of the populace. To be more specific, then, where were you on September 11th, 2004?



In 2002, there was a solemn memorial held across the nation. The dust in New York City had settled or blown out to the ocean, the Pentagon had been repaired, and the burned scar in a field in Pennsylvania was beginning to grow wild grass in patches of dirt not too saturated with jet fuel. Similarly, the nation as a whole seemed to exhale a bit. One year later and at least two hours back on the Damoclean doomsday clock, America was still on the map. My own choruses of Barry Allen's "Eve of Destruction" had turned out to be premature, thank goodness.



In 2003 we lost our sense of humor. Coping mechanisms that had been the chic of the past two years became sources of shame and embarrassment. Overeating due to stress became the "plague of obesity" on the nightly news, reinforced with pictures of overstuffed children and anonymously photographed giant adult midsections, cropped in and blown up in hi-definition for the world to see and scorn. Stress in general became any number of "anxiety disorders" or even "adult ADD." However you feel, there's a pill so you won't. Rational discussion also fell out of favor, as often happens to groups of people under pressure. News programs degraded into gladiatorial shouting matches for the favor of the public and the patronage of advertisers. The extremes on both ends screamed world war III at anyone who would listen. Whether America falls to ruin tomorrow or miraculously enters an era of peace and prosperity, the pop-pundits will emerge from this period each with their own personal fortune to retire in luxury.



In the weeks approaching September of 2004, I began to wonder how this year should be marked. More quiet reflection with video montages on TV? Eat a lot and yell at someone who disagrees with me? Spending another day reliving the bloodiest day in American history and recounting two of the most trying years since the last big war era is not how I wish to spend the rest of my finite and chillingly precarious life. But to try to forget and pass the day like any other would be callous, and would require avoiding other people, lest someone self-consciously mention the date in conversation. After some thought on the matter, I decided on a third option.



In 2004, I smiled. With conviction. I woke up in the house I spent most of my life growing up in and came downstairs to my parents. Mom made cookies for me to take back to my apartment, Dad sat and drank his coffee from the same sacred ìDadî mug he's used since I was little, the dogs ran around barking at squirrels, and I was happy to be visiting home. I bypassed the front page for the sports section where I found that the Cubs won the second of a double-header, and I was happy to cheer for my team. I called my brother to ask where the spare set of car keys went, and, upon hearing that he was out on a Saturday morning with no foreseeable time to return, I was happy that he is happy and prosperous. I was happy to hear that my high school marching band started their season today with two contests in one day. In general, I was happy.



Upon arrival back at BSU, I spent much of the remainder of the day with my good friend Gerry. We laughed, celebrated another victory for the Cubs, and wandered around the mall with no real shopping agenda aside from a gift for his co-worker. In the later evening, I went to the Heorat to meet my fellow graduate students and see a band fronted by another of our classmates. We drank, sang along to raucous blues rock, and the whole bar smiled in the cloying atmosphere of dim lighting and thick smoke.



Allen Ginsberg posited the volatile question: "America, why are your libraries full of tears?" Ours is a tumultuous history, inexorably intertwined in the history of the world. The calculated actions of madmen who export fear and rigid obedience to the rest of the world are regular footnotes in the record of the centuries of civilization, but they have never defined or altered the course of history completely. This may be because the most fundamental defense against them is to smile, laugh, and remember why life is worthwhile in the first place- friends, family, and a belief in a better tomorrow.

I rented Taxi Driver last night, at long last. I'd tried in vain for years to get it at the Fort Wayne library and I think they lost the DVD at some point. It was a good movie, kind of like Catcher in the Rye with a lot more guns and drugs. What really impressed me was the editing. It's obvious that Martin Scorsese trusted his actors enough to leave the camera running during long exchanges between characters instead of editing every sentence back and forth between shots. The famous "you talkin to me?" monologue is one of these shots.

Back to class today. I'm current on all of the reading so far, so it shouldn't be a big deal. I feel a little like Harold Hill (or perhaps Lile Lanley). "Yes, digital storytelling, that's the ticket! Media convergence, narrative, paradigm, blah-biddy-blah-internet." I'll feel a lot better when I'm able to get back to actual video and animation work.

"If we were talking face to face, ... you would have heard me say just now to someone climbing the stairs outside my window 'Your pants are falling off, you retard.' And I guess saying that isn't very PC, but neither is walking around without really committing to wearing pants."

-My brother Michael

Today I was working on encoding videos for the teacher's college website at work. I've told everybody who asks that "yes, I know all about digital video editing." It appears some people take this statement at face value, because today I got to use Final Cut Pro, which I haven't really dabbled in since USF, to color correct these videos. It kept crashing, and this happens enough that the video guy here has this note below his monitor: EXPECT A CRASH. Yup. After a while, I started looking for other options. I ended up signing away my masculinity and self-respect by using iMovie, the generic Apple box video editor to fix the contrast and export video suitable for the web. It worked surprisingly well, albeit clumsy for multiple video file exporting. So, I got an important lesson about techno-hubris, and Apple got a fat stack of OS X crash reports to ignore.

Gerry and I ware going to the Football game tonight. We get in free, and the school gets to use the new lights for the first time. More importantly, we'll see our newly acquired friends in the band. That counts for something. Gerry also promises that we'll leave if they get blown out early, which is likely.

There used to be some concern, at least in my mind, that the things I write here are boring and repetitious, and void of any real content. That may even have been true while I was working retail during the past year. In light of the past hour and a half, though, I now feel much better about the things I used to write. I just spent a good size chunk of time reading a twelve page .pdf of a scanned chapter about narrative. The author had maybe three interesting points that could have been summed up in four pages. I wouldn't be all that upset, as twelve pages isn't normally very long, but I know that this probably won't be important in class Monday. The last reading assignment was a 30 page small print history of narrative, and I decided that I was going to read the hell out of it. I highlighted, wrote in the margins, and even made notes to myself about what I was going to ask in class and even made conjecture about what we might discuss as a whole. I'm a serious student now, right? No longer the aloof academic screw-up with a singular focus on animation that I was in undergrad, right? I read that damn thing for three and a half hours, fighting fatigue and my almost non-existent attention span, trying to make sense of the schizophrenic academic language that these damn things are always written in. My brother knows what I'm talking about; we've had this discussion about academic writing being needlessly complex and murky.

The discussion in class was focused around a powerpoint presentation of images pilfered from the internet. A dozen or so slides with jpegs on a black background as a (dubious) supplement to a lecture about symbols in history. We covered maybe half of what I had read for class. It was marginally interesting, but nobody else in the room really knew how to add to a possible discussion. I said something and one of my classmates, a card-carrying Superextrovert if ever there was one, said something, and that was it. These are smart people, too. Maybe things will get better, I don't know.

As I've been writing this, the squeaky-voiced guy I mentioned before sat down about thirty feet from me. I have my earphones in, and his little muppet voice still cuts through the live recording of the Smashing Pumpkins song "I am One"; roughly eight minutes of distorted guitar crunch and screaming vocals. This is no match for his super-sonic warblings, though. For some reason, I keep seeing him around this big campus, a place where it's possible to never see a good deal of the student population. Of course I see him, but for the life of me I can't seem to run into the cute Bulgarian artist with whom I discussed Christo and pop art for the better part of two hours the other night at the Hoarat. Insert irritated sigh here.

This whole grad school thing is a pretty strange endeavor. I think I'm getting the feel for it, but that could be because I took an allergy pill that put me in a stupor. From my antihistimine haze, this all looks pretty well possible to accomplish, but that could be because I'm incapable of panicking until the medication wears off. I set my work hours for this semester today. I had to distribute them around my already haptic schedule, but it should work okay. I do four hours a day, give or take, and most days I do two blocks of two hour shifts between classes. My office (yeah, office)that I share with my boss is right across the street from the comm building with all of my classes and a place to eat. It's all quite convenient. I'll often have only scant minutes to make it from work to class, but I scheduled plenty of time to eat lunch and dinner on most days.

The library here has a great collection of Kurosawa's movies here, so I checked out The Hidden Fortress, the movie that inspired Star Wars. I might even have time to watch it one of these nights when I'm not too tired.

I'm sitting in the BSU library right now with a clear view of a large gray cement pillar behind my monitor. Behind that the view is better, though, with many shelves of books and periodicals.

I moved the remainder of my stuff into my apartment last night, and to mark the occasion, Gerry and I went to the village to celebrate. We had a beer at the Bird, formerly a Buffalo Wild Wings franchise, followed by a stop at the Martini Bar across the street. It's a swanky little establishment, with cool lighting and reasonably clean couches. He had a fruity concoction, but I opted to wait for some time when I didn't have the overpowering flavor of Guiness in my mouth. We talked about all the usual stuff that we've talked about for years, and then chatted with the bartender for awhile. She was cool, but then some guy started trying to get into an argument with Gerry about how BSU's journalism program isn't as well respected as Notre Dame. I don't know what his problem was, but he had thick glasses, a hearing aid, and a high squeaky voice. Those disadvantages coupled with a bad attitude made arguing with him rather pointless and dull, so we left.

The graduate development conference this morning was actually worthwhile in a big way. It turns out that my old high school friend Jessica is a grad student here too. We caught up with each other during breaks and over lunch. I also met a couple of people from my same area of digital storytelling. Media geeks aplenty. I talked to one of my co-workers, and she said that my work computer is awesome. I get a GB of RAM.

After the conference I went and took a walk through the art museum here. The collection is pretty nice, with a couple of Ansel Adams prints and a Degas statue, among a few other names I recognized.

I got my student ID picture taken. If you can imagine me as Andy Kaufman, that's what it looks like. Kind of crazed, but fortunately not at all like the passport photos of the 9/11 highjackers. That counts for a lot, I think.

My stuff is still mostly scattered and in boxes and I need to go to the store to buy food. I haven't any orange juice, and I fear I may succumb to the scurvy.

Last night was honored to attend the wedding of my former roommate Todd and my friend Christa. Wedding reception, to be precise, at the botanical conservatory. The wedding was a smaller family and cameraman only affair before the meal. I arrived a little late after cleaning up from moving my stuff to my apartment earlier, and dinner had already started. I was pretty sure this was the right place. All wedding parties look the same until you recognize someone you know. In this case, Andrew, my friend and conscience during college spotted me and called to me from where he was sitting. I hadn't seen him in a long time. His hair was always long in college, then he cut it short a while back, and now it's getting longer again. This may sound rather pedestrian, but it's significant to me. We were the two long-haired art students, you see.

The wedding reception was outdoors in a tent on a beautiful evening. It was idyllic, really, not a cloud in the sky. It's what you get when two artists get married. There were little girls who I assumed to be her cousins wearing wreathes of orange leaves who were darting around laughing as little kids are prone to do. A band was playing acoustic music, sometimes featuring a seven-year-old fiddle player who was really good.

I went to drop off my wedding present on the designated table and then to congratulate Todd and Christa. They were both much cleaner than I had seen them in years. Todd was clean shaven with a neatly trimmed goatee, and Christa didn't have any paint on her hands. Other people at their table looked more familiar, though. Marlon had his Canon XL-1s with a big shoulder-rig and eight-inch digital display. James was alternately using Todd's 16mm Bolex camera and Super-8 camera. He handed me the Super-8 for when the bride and groom danced together and with their parents. All was right with the world, then. Just like in college, Todd was directing, and James, Marlon, and I were shooting footage. I can't wait to see the final edited product. Rachel, James's wife and professional photographer, was shooting still images with a professional digital camera that made me quietly drool with deadly-sin level envy.

James pulled me aside and told me that Todd was going to play a song that he wrote for Christa as a surprise, and I needed to film that too. Armed with the Super-8 I filmed Todd playing his guitar and her reaction to the song. It was one he wrote back when we lived in an apartment. I remember him staying up all night writing and playing, and a couple of days later the apartment office gave us a notice that we'd been too loud because of the guitar sound all night. I slept through it, so it wasn't that loud at all, but the lady next door didn't like it.

We all sat around talking and catching up on everything we'd done at and since USF. I got to talk to Christa's Mom briefly, too. I always had oddly spontaneous conversations with her, like the time she called Todd and I's dorm room looking for Christa. She was out with Todd, so we ended up having a nice conversation about art history and things to see in Italy. I also saw Todd's lifelong friend Russell, to whom I am forever indebted because he got me a Smashing Pumpkins ticket back when they were at Purdue.

It was an enjoyable wedding reception. I like those two together, and I can only say that about a certain number of people. I know some couples who I don't think will last more than ten years, but I'm confidant that Todd and Christa have a long, crazy life ahead of them.

I have a cell phone now. It's a big step for me, as I generally don't approve of the devices. I think they're needless gimmicks, toys of affluence, arrogant, and rude. I despise classical music ringtones especially, and most other cellphone noises in general. I don't like the feeling that I'm always available with this, either. So why, then, can I not put the thing down? I'm enamored with it. I've fiddled endlessly with the little features, trying various display color schemes and wallpapers. Currently I have a little cartoon bomb icon in the back, though I'm strongly considering changing to the black pumpkin icon. There doesn't seem to be a cool skull icon, but if there were, I'd use that. I check obsessively for missed calls and voicemail messages, though this has yet to be an issue, as only three people have my number. I don't know what I would say if someone would call me, though. I'm not really a talkative person. The phone is a little smaller than my iPod, but I have yet to decide of that is significant. I suppose it won't be that bad to have, but if I ever leave it on during class or in a movie theater and it rings I'll have to commit seppuku.

I got my first look at my apartment today. In a way, I signed the lease sight-unseen, but I had already seen what it would be like when I took a tour with Gerry and his kin. The walls were freshly painted white and the electricity was on and powering the refrigerator. My brother filled my ice cube tray, so at least it's doing something somewhat constructive. Also, for some reason www.apartmentsguide.com/ gave me a $50 discount on my first month's rent. I've never been to this site, but if they're footing the bill for part of my rent, I'll give them a plug here. It probably means that one of their admins reserves the right to crash on my floor for a couple days, though.

Last Saturday at 5:56 PM I shelved my last book at the library. Feeling a strange sort of giddiness surge through me as I stood up, I wheeled my big wooden cart back to the employee elevator on the fourth floor and proceeded to the basement where I removed my ID tag and walked out for the last time. No more books in bulk for me, just one book at a time now. An oil tanker full of rolaids and preparation h couldn't match the level of relief I felt as I made the two block trek back to my car, past the bank buildings, through the alley with the Cthulhu graffiti, and across the freshly paved road to the library lot. Even the mundanity of the local radio stations couldn't quash my good spirits.

I stopped at Books Comics and Things and picked up Ultimate Nightmare #1 and the new Batman 12-cent Adventure. Ultimate Nightmare seems interesting, and it's written by Warren Ellis, so I expect good things, even though most of the pages are ads. The Batman 12-cent stories are always cheap springboards into longer story arcs, which serve as a great preview of things to come. This particular issue wasn't particularly interesting or well-written, but for 12 cents, it was a decent read.

Last night, as I was practicing my guitar, I accomplished something significant (for me). I was practicing the song Jennifer Ever by the Smashing Pumpkins, which uses the F chord often. Normally, I can't hit this chord at all, but last night I did.

So, thus begins a week of preparation for moving to BSU. I'm going to do as much laundry as I can while I'm here so that I don't have to worry about that later, and so I don't smell funny as I introduce myself to new aquaintainces. I have a decent hodgepodge collection of amenities and brickabrack from my previous college experience, except for a dish drainer for the sink. It seems an odd item to be lacking, but I never had one when I lived in an apartment my senior year, so I didn't know that I needed one until someone told me.

I've been really boring for the past week. Just dull. The next few weeks will be much busier as I pack and move to BSU, so I've allowed myself some downtime. Yeah, that's the ticket.

I've been reading The Smashing Pumpkins: Tales of a Scorched Earth by Amy Hanson. I ordered it at Barnes and Noble and it came in a month ahead of the scheduled release date, much to my surprise and delight. It's a little bit challenging to read, though. I'm pretty sure the author did all of the editing herself, judging by the unusual amount of cliches and egregious similes. The book is really well researched, though. I mean really well researched. The author gathered information from sources so obscure that even the most devoted fansite wouldn't have on file. Even personal interviews with producers who remember the band from back in 1988. It was at least twenty-five pages before the first Metro concert was ever mentioned.

I went to the eye doctor this morning. My eyes are fine, even though I got them dilated. When I left I needed sunglasses for anything brighter than indoor lighting, and my peripheral vision was so wide I could almost see my ears. I looked pretty cracked-out.

This is my last week at the library. I'm not especially sorry to leave this job, even though I like some of the people I work with. I am going to miss the cheese bagels from the food cart in the entryway, though. Those are amazingly good.

I got the call about the web content job at BSU today. I got the job, and apparently I get more money for it than I originally thought. In addition to this, I think I get a newly renovated office space to work in. I also know I like my boss, whom I've spoken with a couple of times. She's nice and competent, and I don't imagine she'll ever tell me that I need to work harder to sell reader's advantage cards.

This hasn't been the case for a long time, but I've been so busy this past week that I haven't blogged. I've been doing things.

Last Monday I was in Muncie for an interview about a web content producer grad position. I think it was a good interview, and I'll hear if I got it or not in the next few days. After that, Gerry and I went and drove to downtown Muncie to find dinner. If I ever need photo-reference for the city at the end of the world, I'll know where to go. I thought certain parts of Toledo were depressing, but this might top that. We did eat at a good restaurant, though. I had a grilled sandwich that I anticipate eating again sometime in the next few months. And there were boats hanging from the ceiling, in the eventual case that Muncie is wiped from the landscape in a flood.

Tuesday through Thursday, work, yadda-yadda.

Friday night after I left the library I went to Cebolla (pronounced seh-boy-ya) for dinner with several of my college friends. It's the second best Mexican food in town, which is still quite good. I ate cheese enchiladas and caught up with two of my old forensics comrades, and life was good. I came home and later my brother and I watched Duck Tales at three in the morning, and it was every bit as cool as I could've hoped.

Saturday evening was my last day at Barnes and Noble, which is both good and bad. I'm happy to be closer to leaving for grad school, but I'm going to miss my co-workers. I went to Henry's with three of these guys after work and they gave me a proper send-off. We talked about books, mostly. These are some freaky-smart guys with literature, which is why I like them, because it gives me something to aspire to and they recommend really good books. We toasted to my success in continued education, and then to The Da Vinci Code and mediocrity.

Today my brother and I went to dinner at Taco Cabana- the highlight of this outing is in his blog. After this, we went to check out the new Mitchell's bookstore that opened where Million Story Books used to be. It is only the second day of business for them, but I wasn't all that impressed. The books were scattered and disheveled, even though we were two of maybe four customers in the store, and the staff were just standing around. Also, it isn't the most efficient use of space. The science section is right in the front, and for some reason they sell luggage. And the fiction wasn't even alphabetized right, and biographies were mixed in all crazy-like. In short, I don't know what they hope to accomplish with this store, but organization really ought to be a priority. I kept feeling that it's just not Million Story, which made the place feel sad, like a dead bird. That sounds dramatic, but it really was a somber feeling in there.

I'm going to turn in my resignation at the library this week. It's not at bad job, but I don't think I'll miss it as much. I'm not all that attached to it.

I had quite a night last night. As per the mission statement of this blog, every time I do something interesting my small but distinguished audience gets to hear about it.

When I got home from work last night, my brother informed me that the Three Rivers Festival's most essential Junk Food Alley would not last for the duration of the festival, but only half. We had planned on going on Tuesday, but all we would've found then is an empty space and a few bloated carnie corpses (they always leave a few). Our goal was to find something fried and delicious, and this year did not disappoint. First, though, we took a walk through the carnival.

This was the first bright shiny novelty to catch my eye. Most carnival rides are titled "serpent", or "racer", and are painted to reinforce these names. The theme here was film. Apparently, sitting in a teacup and spinning around is just like being in the movies. I think "ciak!" is Italian for either "action" or "motion sickness".

I liked this shot with the lights and the sunset and the helicopter. There was a similar scene in Apocalypse Now, so of course I had to pay homage. There are always helicopter rides every year, but the ride is really expensive. I think Gerry went on it one year, and I didn't want to so I sat on a bench and got to know Wes. Good times.

I hoped I would get a cool tracer effect here, but no such luck. I include this image anyway because Michael dubbed it the dumbest ride there because it holds you upside down for a long time. I agree, that is pretty lame. "Metal fatigue" spelled upside down still means the thing. After I took this picture, some peasant did a slurred impression of someone asking me for fifty cents. Ahh, carnivals.

At this point, we made our meandering way to the food. Last year, we ate Milky Way candy bars dipped in funnel cake batter and fried and covered in powdered sugar on a stick. If your religion doesn't include some mention of this, you're being seriously gypped. After solemn consideration and perusal of the various fried-dough-capable neon trailers, we decided on...

Fried Oreos.

Served hot and delicious, these were our fried indulgence of the evening. Even as they lay cooling on my lap, I could smell how sweet they were.

Inside view. Michael commented that for the price we paid, they could've at least used double-stuff. They're still good, though.

One of Michael's cookies actually fused together in the frying process. This is dangerous science, here; not to be trifled with. When we were standing in line pondering what we were going to eat, we heard somebody call the various fried cookies and candy bars "heart-attack on a stick." As we were eating, Michael responded to this: "I've had a heart attack, and it kind of sucked. These are awesome." We made our way back to the car as it began to rain slightly, our stomachs full of fried dough and lard cookies. It's bliss, I tell you what.

After we got home, I remembered that one of my co-workers at the Library was having a party. I've known her since middle school, and she said that there would be live DJs there, so I figured I ought to give it a go. After all, the premise was lucrative in of itself- an outdoor party at night in the middle of nowhere with live techno music. I'm no socialite, but I am a sucker for novelty.

I exited the interstate by the General Motors plant and drove east into the uncertain lightless void that is rural Allen county. My invitation said to take the second exit and turn left, putting me in increasingly unfamiliar territory. Still, I pressed on through the directions and pulled into an unassuming farm driveway. There were cars parked on the grass, indicating I had found the place. Still no sign of a party, though. No lights or music, just a quiet farm at ten o'clock at night. There was a grass path with tire tracks on it and a sign advising against driving on the muddy grass. I took this as an indication that the rest of the trip would be on foot.

The walk back was dark and quiet, with a field to my left and eventually trees to my right. The clouds overhead obscured the moon and stars, so the only light I had to navigate by was the ambient light from the GM plant two miles away. I could feel that the soft ground under my boots was grass and occasionally mud, so I took this as a good sign. Tire tracks lead to people, or so my theory went. After about ten minutes or so I came upon a pond dimly illuminated by the industrial light bounce off the clouds. On the far side I could see a bonfire and a lantern, and movement that looked like people. The way around the pond was shrouded in trees. To quote my wise Grandpa, it was "darker than a sack of assholes."

I reached the bonfire circle of partially visible strangers and scanned for a familiar face. My co-worker Levon was the first person I could recognize, so I sat down in a chair beside him and we talked about stuff and idle chitchat. I knew a few people, including the host. This was all well and good, but the real fun started with the music.

Two DJs were standing at a table under a tent. Their equipment was laid out in front of them like something at NASA. Like funky NASA, to be specific. Each had some sort of drum machine with blinking light buttons to indicate which beats and parts were playing. Each was linked to a larger control box in the center with sliders and lights that shifted the sound in different ways. I stood watching as they worked, listening to the thumping music and studying how each guy changed the music every now and then. Though the beats and sounds were pre-programmed, the whole thing came off as one continuous jam session. The free form aspects of it came from the DJ's improvisation and ad-lib. I kind of felt like Mr. Rogers, visiting an unfamiliar place and learning all about it. Like the aforementioned sage, I felt hopelessly square among the cool people around me, but I watched enthusiastically and nodded my head to the beat.

People would periodically get up and dance when the DJs were doing something interesting. Not the lame-ass R&B club dancing that keeps me away from dance clubs, but cool crazy dancing. This is often accompanied by people waving various colored lights around with varying degrees of success. One guy had two glowsticks tied together, but every time he'd swing them around one of them would fly off and he'd have to go chase it. That was kind of funny, but the really cool thing was the girl who was swinging two wires with clusters of LEDs on the ends. Each strand twirls opposite the other, and in the dark with the music it looks really intricate. The lights illuminated her as they swung past quickly with red, blue, and yellow light. I can't help but think that Degas would have absolutely loved this dancing with weird light. Her next feat was holding the lights close to her hands, standing in front of people and moving the lights in front of and around the person's head in a dizzying display. She turned to me and asked if I'd like to try. I gave an affirmative and she introduced herself. Then, lights in hands, she rapidly waved them around in a random pattern, sometimes in opposite ways so my eyes couldn't follow both. It was quite something. I watched the DJs for a little while more, but I had to leave early because I had to work for eight hours the next day.

Like an Orc peon with four trees left within reasonable walking distance of his Orc encampment, I'm getting close to being done with my work at Barnes and Noble. It's funny, because different people have all said "so, I hear you're leaving us" in the same casual way. This leads to me telling them that I'm going back to school at Ball State. Inevitably, I then have to explain what Digital Storytelling is. It feels pretty darn good to be working behind a counter and think about how I could break out in a dance like Christopher Walken in that Fatboy Slim video. Coincidentally, I found this list of things that people ask in bookstores. I've heard most of them, often more than once. I recommend perusing the other lists on the site, too.

Well, wonder of wonders, the computer is fine. The guy at A-plus was able to install a new drive and even recover all the data from the old one. Looks like I can keep all of my digital ephemera.

Now that I have a fully armed and operational machine again, I want to try something a little different with this blog. Since blogger hosts images, I plan on doing more photo blogging. It's something to do as I kill time until/ prepare for mid-August. The only subject I can think of is the Three Rivers Festival's annual Junk Food Alley. That ought to be worth taking pictures of. That, and there are a few places around the city that I want pictures of. There's a really great side-street alley that I walk through to get to the library that I've always liked. Todd and I filmed part of Courier there.

Here's a site that made me laugh. FU-H2. This is good therapy after working at Jefferson Pointe for so long.