91. the morning after...

Okay, so I got up this morning feeling surprisingly refreshed and the first thing that popped into my head was hanging out with this girl last night. And it put a smile on my sleepy, morning-breath face.

Hmm...

90. two world records set tonight

Okay, don't think this will make the great book Guinness, but a new world record has been set tonight. Randall Ajimine had two (that's right, two) dates in the span of one month! Load the confetti cannons, bust out the champagne, take the day off, organize a parade...but don't strike up the band just yet.

I'm not entirely sure it counts as a date date. We just hung out at Coffee Talk for a couple hours, coffee talking (over tea and Italian soda). To most people, that's just hanging out, but I'm counting it as a date because...because this is my blog and I get to make the rules.

So this date went a lot better than the last one (see blog 85). I actually got to hold a conversation with the girl this time. And it was nice, friendly, interesting. And that's about it.

"That's it?"

Yeah, that's about it.

"Tell me more, tell me more..."

Well, that's just it. Maybe I'm being unreasonable, maybe my expectations are too high. I mean, it was nice. There was polite conversation throughout...but...

But I don't know. I was trying to figure it out on the way home after dropping her off. What's missing? Why isn't nice good enough? She's a Christian, she's cute, she's got shortish hair, she even wears glasses, and she's taking the bar next year so she's smart (see blog 62). So what's the deal?

Well, I don't have it all figured out yet but I did have the beginnings of a theory, and it goes something like this:

Some people let life happen to them. Some people try to make life happen. Some people prefer to watch the life around them and try to make some sense of it all. I'm sure if I thought about it, I could come up with more generalizations but those will do for now.

See, with all due respect to this girl, she seems to be someone who lets life happen to her. Not that she's lazy or passive, I just get the sense that the things she chooses to pursue are things that she happened to run across through the course of her life. It's not something that's an expression of a deeper, core passion or hers. Of course, being that I only got to hang with her for a couple hours, I could be wrong about this, but I tried asking questions that someone with core passion would have picked up on, but she just answered matter of factly.

Of the three types of people I listed above, I'm more like that last sort - I like to observe the life happening around me and I like to ask questions because I'm trying to make sense of it all. And that's the kind of girl I'm looking to meet. And she just wasn't like that.

Will I ask her out again? I don't know, maybe if there's something where I need a date I'll ask her if she'd like to go, but to just go hang out somewhere or for dinner...I don't think so.

See, this is me being too picky again, but...but that's how I am. It's like the books I read. I go to Borders and browse the new titles. If a book doesn't grab me with the first few sentences, it goes back on the shelf. It's just been my experience that books that don't grab me right away are not books that I'll enjoy as a whole. I don't have the patience necessary to aclimate to an unfamiliar writer's style and the few times that I've tried to power through and read something that was not the norm for me style wise...I never finish those books (usually don't even make it to the ending of act one).

But what can I do?

89. Aimee Mann

What a great show she put on tonight. And I can't explain it, but how is it that she can string otherwise ordinary phrases together in such a way that just rips your guts out (in a good way)?

Two things made the night even better than I expected:

1. Her latest CD, The Forgotten Arm, is kind of a concept album, telling the tragic story of doomed lovers. I already knew that part. What made this show extra cool was the way she provided context for the songs that make up the CD. I mean the CD stands up fine on its own but hearing her fill in some of the fuzzy details really took the concert experience to another level (as well as the CD which I'm looking forward to reviewing).

2. I didn't think she'd do it but she did. She went WAY back and sang a very cool version of the song that put her on the map, "Voices Carry." Completely unexpected. And though it doesn't stand up to the strength of her later work, it's still fun to visit an old friend.

Going back to point number one, what is it about story that's so important to us as humans? You'd think that after centuries of storytelling that we'd have tired of it by now but it's as vital and important as ever. Compounding this mystery is the fact that there are only a handful of stories that get repeated over and over again - only the setting and the characters really change. For example, you have the guy-meets-girl, guy-looses-girl story, you have the man-overcoming-hardship story, you have the journey story, and you have the good-versus-evil story. That's kind of it isn't it? I mean just about every story ever told can fit into one or more of those conventions.

But we still love stories. Why is that? And what is it we look for in new stories?

I can only speak for myself, but one of the things that I look for is new ways of using language - new and surprising metaphors and similes are always a plus. And I'm looking for a world that I recognize. I know some people love fantasy because of the way it allows them to escape into another world, but as for myself, I have a hard enough time figuring out this world and so I always appreciate it when an author paints a picture of the world I live in in a way that I can understand because that makes the world a more manageable place - it puts the chaos of change into context (oooh, alliteration!).

I'm not one for plot twists or character studies. I don't like mysteries and I don't like fantasy (although I do love Barry Yourgrau, but that's more fancy or whimsy than fantasy, although I can see how one might put him into that category). I don't like history. I don't like biographies, but I do enjoy memoirs (Donald Miller, Anne Lamott, Kathleen Norris, and Chuck Klosterman). Oh and even though I have a BA in English Literature, I don't like the classics. And in general, poetry just twists my brain up in knots. I like listening to recited poetry, but reading it (or even reading it aloud to myself) makes my head spin.

Oh (and now for something completely different), I also like reading super geeky books about theoretical physics and cosmology - Brian Greene is good but Michio Kaku is more accessible. Now, I don't understand a lot of what they're talking about but I love how even the little that I do grasp completely blows apart my view of reality and makes me all the more amazed at the wonder of God's creation (see blog 66). And I've also enjoyed the work of Dr. Oliver Sacks.

Anyway, I'm not sure how I went from writing about an Aimee Mann concert to listing my reading habits, but such is my blog.

Until next time...

88. answered prayer

So in the last blog I shared some of the general prayers that I've been praying lately. One of the prayers that I didn't share was this one:

"Lord, everything around me seems broken and none of it seems to be getting any better. Can't there be at least one thing in my life that's going right?"

God is god and can do whatever he wants. And sometimes he answers prayers. And sometimes he gives us more than we ask for.

I can think of at least three things that started going right for me over the weekend in answer to that prayer:

1. Last Thursday (09/15) my band, Harrison, was playing at The Wave. After the gig we had this big argument in the parking lot and it got kind of ugly and even though we left with the band intact, I wasn't really at peace with the way things ended. It's complicated and it's band business so I won't go into detail, but this weekend we had a gig at Detox and afterwards we went to Zippys and in a way that I didn't expect and in a way that only God could have done it, we came to a very good, very clean, very peaceful resolution to what had started over a week ago. And it was a weight off of my back.

2. Another thing that I can't really go into much detail right now (mostly because it's still very much in the planning stages) is this Christian artists meeting thing that I'm involved with. This thing has some really explosive potential, and the key people involved are jazzed about it...but we don't know what it is yet. I mean, we know what it is, but we don't know how to put it into words, exactly. It's one of those things where only a few people get it but those who do get it know what it is. What we're trying to figure out is how to explain it to those who don't get it yet because if it can catch on, it could literally change the world (not in a day or a year, maybe not in our lifetimes...but it's got that kind of revolutionary power to it).

So I'm working on this thing and what sucks is that even though we kind of know what the problems are that we want to solve, and even though we have a vague, conceptual idea of what the solution is, we're woefully lacking in specifics. And so I've been praying for breakthrough. And on Saturday afternoon while meeting with Nate, we actually made headway in this thing. After three hours of fun, frustrating, inspiring, depressing conversation, we ended up with one sentence that seems to point the way. It's not the answer and it's not enough, but it's the first really solid lead that we've had.

Okay, so I know you're wondering...and I'm tempted to not share the sentence because to read it, it doesn't seem like all that much, but believe me, it's the result of months of prayer and discussion and observation and reading and thinking and thinking and thinking some more. And to read it out of context, it doesn't seem that big of a deal. And so I'm tempted to not share the sentence because maybe it's better to leave you all wondering about it because that's more exciting than the sentence itself.

But I'll share it anyway. "We are not called to redeem the arts, we're called to redeem the world through the arts."

"What, that's it?" Hey, I bet that's what the captain of the Titanic thought when one of the deck-hands pointed out the iceberg out on the horizon. Believe me, there's a lot of mass beneath the surface of that little sentence.

3. So I'm working with Disc Makers, trying to get my band's CD manufactured and we're running into problems with the graphics. Well, the second set of proofs arrived on Friday and even though they're not quite what we wanted, I'd say it's ninety to ninety-five percent there. I showed it to the rest of the band and they said it was okay, which is good because everytime we make a change it's another $50 added to the bill. I also got to show the proofs to Nate (who I mentioned above), who designed the graphics and he seemed okay with it, which meant a lot to me. So the graphics are all approved and that means the Disc Makers elves are hard at work with our CD.

I asked for one thing and God gave me three. God is god and can do what he wants. And sometimes, he wants to bless us with more than we asked for.

87. prayer

I've been in an odd state of mind lately (see blog 86 for an example) and the one thing that's been happening as a result is that I'm praying a lot more. Now this sounds noble and spiritual and all, but that's not the kind of praying I practice. My prayers are more akin to a bitch session where I whine and pout and complain about how wrong everything seems to be going in my life.

Here are some of the prayers that have been making the rounds lately:

1. Lord, I'm tired of being lonely and frustrated.
2. Lord, there's this space inside me that's empty and I want to fill it with my love for this woman but she has no idea and I have no idea if I even have a chance or even if she's right for me (or me for her). So I ask you to fill this hole with your love and your presence instead.
3. Lord, the world is so screwed up. Everywhere you look it's just problem upon conflict upon corruption upon greed upon selfish stupidity. It's everywhere from the back of the welfare line to the tops of multi-national corporations and at every level in between. And your church, your people, and I aren't doing any better. I don't know how you keep yourself from rubbing us out like cockroaches.
4. Dear Lord, where's my harvest? I'm no Mother Teresa but I've done my share of work - work that has benefited others, often working for free. I sow and I sow but nothing seems to grow. My fields are empty. There's nothing in the storehouse. All that work seems to vanish into thin air. It feels like all I do is tend the greener grass on the other side then return home to my famished, empty wasteland.
5. Dear Lord, I want to glorify you through my life but I don't know how to do that without sensing, knowing, experiencing your joy and your love.

And so I pray. And I wait. And I listen. And I wait.

Some might ask why I pray if this is the case. I guess I pray because there's nothing else to call upon. I pray because if I don't, I have these maddening imaginary conversations with this woman I'm attracted to and I hate it when I do that. I pray because I know that God is listening, even if he's not answering.

Do I pray expecting an answer? That's hard to say. It's not as easy as "yes I do" or "no I don't." And I'm sure there are those who read that and think, "well there you go, Randall. You don't have enough faith." And I don't know, maybe that is the case. But what can I do? Show me a faith pill and I'll swallow it. I pray with what little faith I have and hope that it's enough. And even if it's not enough, I'm praying and that's still something isn't it?

This is a kind of prayer that I've never heard spoken about in church but I'd be willing to bet just about anything that this kind of prayer happens all the time with all kinds of Christians. And the fact that we don't talk about this kind of prayer is stupid because it used to make me feel like a shitty Christian. And I'd be willing to double my bet on the wager that there are lots of Christians out there today who feel like shitty Christians because their prayer life doesn't live up to the one they hear about from the pulpit or read about in Christian books.

So how do I reconcile this in my own prayer life? Well way back in January (back in blog 24) I wrote about an epiphany I had and it goes like this: God is God and I am not. Here's an excerpt from that blog:

"Anyway, epiphany number one has to do with the realization that God is God and I am not. I don't understand his ways but by faith, I have to believe that God is a just god and that he loves me, despite what seems like evidence to the contrary. On top of that, even if God did lead me on and left me hanging, that's his right because he is God and I am not. On top of that, even if he did those things on purpose because that was his right, he is still worthy of all the praise and honor that my body can bring - because he is God and I am not."

See, I used to feel like a shitty Christian because I thought I wasn't trying hard enough. And so I tried harder and harder and harder until I just burnt out. And after years of guilt and confusion and frustration, realizing the simple fact that God is God and he can do whatever he wants, that freed me from the broken idea that I wasn't doing enough, that not hearing or experiencing God to the degree that I wanted to was my fault.

God will reveal himself to me when the time is right. No amount of prayer or fasting or worshiping or reading the Bible can speed that along because God is God and I am not. God doesn't jump through hoops.

Anyway, that's my prayer life right now. At least it's "better" than the one Anne Lamott describes in one of her books (I'm pretty sure it was in Traveling Mercies). Lamott writes about a friend of hers who prays the same two prayers everyday. In the morning, she prays, "whatever." And then at night before sleeping she prays, "oh well."

"Pray at all times and on every occasion in the power of the Holy Spirit."
Ephesians 6:18a NLT

86. choose

I feel I'm at a crossroads. Like there's a decision to be made and it's mine to choose. But I don't know which way to go. And unfortunately, it seems that God can't be bothered...or at least that's how it seems since he's not throwing any clues my way.

Perhaps some preface is in order here.

In the movie Crash, there's a scene where Sandra Bullock's character is speaking to a friend and she says, "I'm angry all the time and I don't know why." That's me, only I'm not angry. I'm...and I'm trying to think of the right word to use here...numb. "I'm numb all the time and I don't know why." I was originally going to use the word, "sad," but that's not it. Numb isn't exactly it either, but it's a lot closer to what I'm feeling than sad is. A more accurate word might be angst, but that's not so much a feeling as a state of mind. I mean the sentence, "I'm angst all the time..." doesn't really work does it?

ANYWAY. I've got this angst all twisting me up and it seems to be all the time and I know it all started when my dumbfucking (yes, one word) heart fell in love. See, before this, things were going well. My mood was on the upswing, I had hope for the world, and I was generally in a cheery mood for a change. But then my dumbfucking heart fell in love and I knew I was screwed (see the middle of blog 52, I predicted this) but what can you do?

See the heart is like a dog and the mind is like its master. The heart wants to please but it's stupid and has a habit of peeing on all the wrong things. And so the mind tries to train the heart, to discipline it, to make it listen to its commands. And sometimes it works and the heart is stable and happy and all is well in the world.

But then the heart sees something it wants and sometimes it wants it so badly that all the training in the world won't stop it. All the animal instincts return and you just can't reason with it. The mind tries to beat it down, tie it up, trick it into chasing something more constructive but you can take an animal out of the wild...

And that's what happened to me. My heart fell for someone and no matter how I reasoned with it, no matter how many warnings I gave it, no matter how tight the collar or how close I held the leash, that dog will hunt.

It'd be one thing if heart and mind were separated like man and beast because then you could just let your heart run free, get it's ass kicked and then when it comes whimpering back to you, you just nurse it back to health and go on with life. Unfortunately, you can't let go of the leash. You're tethered to that sum-bitch and you can't break free. If your heart starts dragging your mind down some dumb-assed dead end cliff, you may as well kiss your happy ass goodbye because you're going over whether you like it or not.

So finally, back to the crossroads bit. Here's my choice. Stop fighting, and start following my heart. Maybe it's right this time. Maybe she will respond favorably in return.

Or, keep fighting it. Keep telling myself that she's not right for me, that I'm not right for her, that any kind of relationship with her is just too good to be true (and you know what they say about things like that).

I don't know what to do. There's a line in a song by Loudon Wainwright III that goes, "I've been writing off love for so long now, I don't know what to do." That sums it up real nice. That's pretty much where I'm at right now.

My normal reaction is to write it off, to say that love and I don't mix, that I should cut and run. That's the response that I'm familiar with. It's the comfortable choice.

But I wonder...

85. the blind date thing

Okay, so a friend of mine sets me up on a blind date. Well, anyway you look at it, it wasn't much of a date.

Here's the original plan:

1. Go to the evening service at a designated church.
2. Go eat somewhere nice afterwards.

Simple right? Well here's what ended up happening:

1. Go to the evening service at the designated church.
2. Meet my "handler" who informs me that the woman I'm supposed to have this date with (let's call her BD...for blind date, of course) is hanging with her other friends (her backup) at some kind of Chinese Moon Festival (WTF?).
3. My handler asks me if I want to stay for the church service and meet the group afterwards or head over to the Moon Festival and meet BD and friends now. Well I don't know what a Moon Festival is (butt cheeks come to mind) and I wasn't crazy about learning about it that night so I opted for the church service which wasn't all that bad...though not great either.
4. So after the service, my handler calls the target group to arrange the meeting.
(and here's where things really start to fall apart)
5. Somewhere along the line, the target group decides they want to see a movie. Unfortunately, the movie they want to see is Stealth at the Wallace Dollar Theaters.
First of all, I don't like going to the Dollar Theaters. Films mean a lot to me, I care about them dearly, and to see them in some kind of run down, cheap ass, has-been theater seems like cinematic blasphemy to me.
Second, a movie about a fucking futuristic stealth jet with artificial intelligence that (what a surprise) goes batty and starts attacking people is about as appealing to me as trying to file my nails with a chain-saw.
6. My handler and I end up at the theater and I finally get to meet BD. But here's how well organized this whole thing was. See I thought we were meeting a bunch of people at the theater. We met three people - two girls and a guy. At that point, I was thinking that BD wasn't here yet...but I was wrong. And then I thought BD's friend was my BD but I think she was actually the guy's girlfriend. By the time I figured out that BD was there already and which one of the two women she was, it was time for my handler and I to go into our movie. See, I wasn't about to budge about seeing Stealth and luckily for me, Crash was playing there and so we all decided that my handler and I would see Crash, BD and friends would see Stealth, and we would all meet up afterwards so we could actually spend some time hanging out and talking.
7. We go to our separate movies. Crash is an excellent, amazing film. Highly recommended. So good, in fact, that it almost made me forget what a shitty theater I was seeing it in, but the thuggish dude to my left kept laughing this Kahi Mohala laugh at the oddest times and was silent during the few humorous bits. Creepy.
8. Our movie gets out first so we head over to the Row Bar to wait. Two good things (the last two good things of the night) happened here. The bar had Rolling Rock (my fav beer) and my handler makes good conversation.
9. So it's something like four hours after this date thing was supposed to have started and finally, Stealth gets out and BD and friends join us at the bar along with another guy (don't ask me where he came from, I think Scotty beamed him down off the Enterprise) who knew BD or her friends or both (yeah, that's as clear as I can make it because it wasn't explained to me either).
10. Um...well, I suppose this is where things are supposed to get interesting because finally (and I do mean finally) I'm sitting at a table with BD (and the others). And I'd like to write about the things we talked about but honestly, I don't remember a bit of it. That's how stimulating and engaging the table talk was.
11. But I'm still hungry and I'm still thinking that food is on the agenda. Wrong again. Turns out the others ate at the Moon Festival thing. But they're open to going somewhere and hanging out while my handler and I eat. But BD has to work tomorrow and wants to be dropped off at home. BD's friends are still up for meeting and watching my handler and I eat but at this point, I've lost my appetite and I ask my handler to drop me off at home as well.
12. The end.

What started out as a simple two step plan turned into a twelve step program designed to rid me of my desire to date at all. And it almost worked.

Okay, quick disclaimer. I know my handler reads this blog and I want him to know that things weren't as bad as I described them...well, not everything was that bad. I mean, I have a blog audience to entertain so I exagerated a bit here and there for their sake.

Overall it was a fun night but not in the way anyone expected. After a while, it was more fun for me to just watch things go wrong knowing it would make great blogging material. And it did (well at least I had fun writing it).

Was it worth it? Sure. Will I go out with BD again? Nope. Will I let my handler set me up again? Yeah, sure, why not?

Anyway, there it is. It ain't happily-ever-after, but when it comes to me and love, it never is.

Have a nice day.

84. some questions

So I'm reading Donald Miller's new book (which is actually a reprint of his first book) and I come across this paragraph:

"I just feel like God put us here to enjoy Him, and He gave us free will so it is tough sometimes, because people use their free will selfishly, but I think also He created us to enjoy Him, that He is love, you know..."

Donald Miller is on a road trip with this guy named Paul and this is Paul speaking.

Anyway, it doesn't really follow from that text but somehow it got me thinking and asking questions. And the first question I asked felt like a kick in the head, the way it surprised me. And the question was this:

"Do you like me, God?"

I know God loves me (for the Bible tells me so), but does he like me? I mean, we all have people whom we love but don't necessarily like right? And so I started to wonder, does God like me or just love me?

And then I got to thinking about other things. Like the Pharaoh from the Old Testament. I think it's pretty clear from the text that he was slated to die from the beginning of Exodus, and he deserved it...or did he? I mean the Bible makes it pretty clear that it was God who hardened Pharaoh's heart (Exodus 9:12, 10:1, 10:20, and on and on). Did God like the Pharaoh? Did he love him?

And then there's Judas in the New Testament. It's my understanding that Judas's betrayal was part of the prophesies about the death of Jesus. In that case, doesn't it mean that despite free will, that Judas had to betray Jesus, that he had no choice in the matter? And what does that say about God's love? Did God love Judas? Maybe God loved Judas but didn't like him.

I don't know, I'm confused. See here's the thing. Lately, I've been trying to figure out how to experience God - his love, his presence, his guidance. I've tried the things that seem to work for most people - reading the Bible, praying - but I've always been a kind of spiritual numbskull, that is, I've never been very sensitive or cognizant of spiritual matters. But I'm pretty that God wants to have a part of my life or at least wants me to experience him on more than an intellectual level. And I know that if I'm going to glorify God with my life, if I'm going to want to share him with others, then I'm going to have to have something more than arguments from apologetics.

I don't know. God is God and can do whatever he wants. That's his right, that's why he's God. If he wanted me to experience him in a way that I understood, he'd know how to do that. If he wants to be a bit more hands-off with me, well he can do that too. I have no say in the matter and no right to judge God either way.

That's a pretty bleak out look, but here's what I really think is going on. God just wants me to figure out for myself how to find him. I don't know why, but maybe it's because there are more people like myself out there for whom a relationship with God does not come easily. Maybe I'm supposed to kind of work through this not-hearing-from-God thing so that when I do figure out how to find God, that I can share it with these other people who have the same frustrations.

1 Corinthians 13:13 (NIV)
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

I've kind of got the faith thing down. It's hope and love that I'm working on now.

83. spoke too soon

Okay, so about the blind date thing (see blog 82), I spoke too soon. Turns out it's going down this Sunday night. Funny thing is (and I doubt she reads this blog...but if she does I'm in big trouble) in order to make the whole night run smoother, my friend who's setting this whole thing up is bringing along another girl. Turns out this girl and I have a lot more in common than the girl he's setting up the blind date with. So why not set me up with this other girl instead? I don't know, but we may have a Harry Met Sally situation on our hands (you know, the bit at the beginning where they switch dates).

Anyway, another thing that's interesting about the timing of this blind date thing is the fact that I've kinda, sorta decided to give up on the whole relationship business. I mean I'm sick of it. It's stupid and I never know how to make it work and all it does is bring me grief. It's just not worth it and so I'm giving up, throwing in the towel, cutting my losses, scuttling the ship.

Of course I've tried this before, but I figure it's like smoking. Maybe you didn't quit the first time but that's no reason to stop trying.

And I never though of it until just now, but that smoking analogy works rather well. I don't smoke much (a few every couple months, maybe) so when I do, there's a pretty instant buzz (btw, I'm talking about cloves here, not any kind of illegal herbs okay?) but after that, I'm left with less energy - I feel sluggish and unmotivated. Same when I'm checking out some woman. There's a buzz about the chase and the possibilities but then when it doesn't work out, I feel sluggish and unmotivated.

Difference is, women don't give you cancer. Think that's a good thing? Nope. It leads to depression and stress and that leads to other health problems. And there's no chemotherapy for a broken heart.

82. keeping busy

I know I've been slow with the blogs lately. Here's why.

I've been keeping myself busy with other work. The Harrison CD went out last Wednesday night. I treated myself and saw a movie on Thursday night (Broken Flowers dir by Jim Jarmusch, starring Bill Murray). Then on Friday I got to work on the cables for the band (see the Harrison blog titled, "the repair saga (part 2)...Randall's rant"). The cable making project took up the weekend and the final touches were completed Monday night. And tonight I got started on the new website for the band.

I thought I was going to take a break after the CD was done but here's the thing. I've been really moody lately and I've found that when my hands are busy, my brain doesn't have time to be depressed or frustrated or lonely. And so I've been keeping myself busy

But it's not like I'm workaholic level busy. I work pretty slowly. For example, even though I started on the new website design today, most of that was spent looking at other bands' websites to get ideas. After that I started doing a rough mock-up of what the site might look like in Photoshop. Tomorrow night I'll try to pin down the general template and plug everything into Dreamweaver. That's where the real work begins because when it comes to HTML and CSS and website design, I'm all thumbs. My coding is about as elegant as a cat's hair-ball. But I get it to work somehow (a credit to the power of Dreamweaver).

Sounds like a lot of work? It is, but for me it's a distraction, a way to trick my brain (not hard to do) into not thinking about how stupid some areas of my life are right now.

I suppose I could busy myself with blogs (hmm, maybe that's why I was posting so much these last couple months) but all I'd do is post dreary, pissy, spoiled, woe-is-me bullshit and I'm tired of writing like that.

Oh, and another thing. I had this crazy idea that with all of the ranting and raving I've been posting, that I was being the kind of open and honest, in touch with his feelings kind of man that women wanted to find. Turns out that all it really does is turn women off. I mean, who wants to be with some cranky, whiny, lonely, wanna-be writer?

I found this out because there's a guy who's trying to set me up on a blind date. This guy's job is to get me to agree to the date, which is not hard because I'm game for almost anything. This guy's female friends' job is to get this girl to agree to the date. Unfortunately, these girls asked this guy about me and he pointed them to my blog. These girls read my blog and THEY started having second thoughts about setting this blind date up. "He's kind of bitter, isn't he?" My friend went into damage control mode and he said he would work things out but I haven't heard from him for a few days now so I'm thinking the whole deal is crash and burn, code blue. Yet another relationship torpedoed before before even setting to sea.

I'm not that bummed about it though. From the little my guy told me about this girl, this blind date had all the future of an antimatter particle in an atom smasher. Still, the thought of sitting at a nice table with a real, live girl on the other end of it sounded like fun. At least more fun than making cables or designing a website.

The lesson here is this. Randall and relationships don't mix. It's like trying to force similar poles of a magnet together, or trying to get Rush Limbaugh and Michael Moore to agree on who to vote for president.

Anyway, that's what's been going on with me these past couple weeks and it's why I haven't been posting nearly a much as I did about a month ago.

Things feel like they're on the up-swing. Once I'm feeling something like myself again, I'll probably be posting more. But until then....

81. bounce

Some people have spring, they have resilience - they bounce back from adversity and setbacks and then go on with life.

I, on the other hand, have all the bounce of a bowling ball.

80. from the movie, Say Anything...

LLOYD DOBLER (John Cusack)
How hard is it for you to decide to be in a good mood and then be in a good mood?

CONSTANCE DOBLER (Joan Cusack)
(dripping with sarcasm)
Gee, it's easy.

LLOYD DOBLER
You know, you used to be sick and twisted and fun, and I mean that in the best way possible...

CONSTANCE DOBLER
I was fun wasn't I.

LLOYD DOBLER
(nods)

CONSTANCE DOBLER
I still can be.


Dear Lord, I need some sleep!

79. the difference between goop and gold

The CD is out of my hands. It's in the good hands of FedEx, bound for New Jersey to the good hands of Disc Makers, to return to the good hands of our fans.

I feel like an elephant's been lifted off my shoulders. I suppose I should be happy...or happier than I am. I know my band-mates appreciate all the hard work and they're pleased as jelly beans with the sound of the CD, and on some level I am too...

but...

It's a strange thing because I know (or at least I'm pretty sure) that it could have been better. Perhaps an analogy would work here.

Think about movie animation today. Digital animators talk about how technology allows them to create virtual characters that are indistinguishable from real life actors - at least in static images. But the human mind is a terribly perceptive instrument. These animators talk about how they actually have to dial back the realism so that the brain understands that it's looking at animation because if they go too far with the realism, people get confused.

Take the movie Final Fantasy. Now the biggest problem with that movie was the writing, but one of its other problems was the realism factor. There are some scenes where you just about forget that you're watching a world constructed of binary ones and zeros - it looks that real - but in most of the scenes, there's a kind of subconscious struggle going on where your brain can't quite decide if it's looking at real people or fabricated people.

Normally, this isn't a problem because animation looks like animation and real acting looks like real acting and your brain knows how much belief to suspend. But in Final Fantasy, the animated characters look so real that your brain is constantly short-circuiting between animated mode and real mode because it looks too good to be animated but not good enough to be real.

Of course your brain is also rebelling against the awful writing, and that just compounds the problem, but I'd be willing to bet that a great script might have let the audiences surrender themselves to the story thereby making the animation/reality conflict moot...or at least tolerable.

"Okay, so what's that got to do with the CD?"

Well to my ears, this CD teeters between sounding like a good self-produced band demo and a real record release. There are some songs that almost sound good enough to almost sound like a something a real record label would produce. And that's where I'm kind of uneasy about the thing. It's almost too good to be a band demo, but not good enough to sound like a major label release (or even a solid small label release).

And that's frustrating for me because it's like that Howard Jones song, "No One Is To Blame" which goes:

You can look at the menu but you just can't eat
you can feel the cushions but you can't have a seat
You can dip your foot in the pool but you can't have a swim
You can feel the punishment but you can't commit the sin

It's like it's almost there but not quite. It'd be one thing to fall short if you're two laps behind but to run out of gas three feet from the finish line? That burns.

I know I shouldn't be so hard on myself, but confronting one's limitations is a humbling thing. I wish I could blame the technology, but I'm past the point now where that holds water. Better recordings have been made with lesser tools. I'm the link in the chain that's not up to the task, not my gear. I can't use that excuse anymore. And that's a bummer for me.

Well, all that said, I'm glad it's out of my hands now. I have to accept that I did the best I could with the experience and knowledge I have, in the time I had to use them.

See, here's the thing. I used to pride myself in getting really crappy equipment to produce recordings that sounded better than they should have. It was fun then because it felt like I was bending the rules, trading three quarters in for a dollar. And if anyone had misgivings about the quality of the recording I always had the excuse, "well, it was recorded on crappy equipment." It made me feel smarter than the technology.

But I can't use that line anymore and the technology is far smarter than I. At this level, tiny decibels spell the difference between goop and gold. At this level, you need a surgeon's touch and tweezers. At this level, I'm mixing with my feet and I've got KISS shoes on - the kind that lace up to your knees.

But it's so close, and that's what kills me. I know a more experienced engineer could come in and tweak just a few tiny things, and this recording would cross that line between good and good enough.

Regardless, it's out of my hands now. All things considered, it's a pretty good sounding CD. Maybe I'm just too close to it right now. Maybe it's just a forest for the trees kind of deal right now. Maybe I just need to catch up on a bunch of sleep instead of writing a blog at 1:30 in the morning.

And on that note...

78. sleep

Geeze, I've been on a roll with the negative blogs, no?

I need more sleep. Between working the early morning shift (6am - 3pm) and trying to finish the Harrison CD (4pm - whenever my ears start bleeding) I've been small kine sleep deprived.

I'm hoping that's to blame for all the woe-is-me crap I've been writing lately. That and I've been too busy to run or hike or catch a movie or veg in front of the television or go out dancing.

Soon. Very soon. I'll be back to myself.

The sooner the better.

So, um...what the hell you doing up posting a blog at midnight?

Yeah, I'm logging off now.

77. Neglect

News flash:

Kindness was found, alone in her apartment, near death. She was dehydrated and malnourished. Odd, because her refrigerator was full of food and water and her pantry shelves were stocked with soup tins and spices.

When they found her she was lying on her side in the middle of the floor, unconscious, in a fetal position, with wilted fruit and flowers in her hands.

She is recovering now in a hospital bed. IV needle in her arm, EKG patches on her chest, electroencephalograph electrodes on her scalp. A pillow. A blanket. The television tuned to an info-mercial promising clear skin.

She has no visitors, no cards, no balloons, no teddy bears with stethoscopes - the sort they sell in hospital lobby flower shops.

The doctors are baffled. It's not a coma. As far as they can tell it's simply sleep. A sleep without dreams - her EEG shows slow wave sleep, never REM.

Outside, the world goes on without her. No visitors, no calls, no one filing a missing person's report.

And the world goes on just fine.

76. what's the point?

...that's all, just that question, "what's the point?"

Kind of sums up everything in my life right now.

Any suggestions?