the Trumpet Child

The trumpet child will blow his horn
Will blast the sky till it’s reborn
With Gabriel’s power and Satchmo’s grace
He will surprise the human race

The trumpet he will use to blow
Is being fashioned out of fire
The mouthpiece is a glowing coal
The bell a burst of wild desire

The trumpet child will riff on love
Thelonious notes from up above
He’ll improvise a kingdom come
Accompanied by a different drum

The trumpet child will banquet here
Until the lost are truly found
A thousand days, a thousand years
Nobody knows for sure how long

The rich forget about their gold
The meek and mild are strangely bold
A lion lies beside a lamb
And licks a murderer’s outstretched hand

The trumpet child will lift a glass
His bride now leaning in at last
His final aim to fill with joy
The earth that man all but destroyed

--Over the Rhine

Don't copy 'dat floppy!

I have to admit that I didn't have the patience to watch this entire PSA, but the extreme 90s-ness and the floppy disk rap have been the highlight of my day.

Oh Microsoft...

The Shoe Story

Per request from Danielle, here's the infamous shoe story from GSP, as I originally wrote it twenty minutes before class:

The brakes squeal as she stops by the graveyard. She steps out of her car into the pitch-darkness that only one-in-the-morning can bear and pulls a shovel from her back seat.

Laying the shovel on the ground, she reaches for the newspaper and flashlight on the console. The paper pierces the silence as she spreads the obituaries page across the hood. Madeline Raye. . . Let's hope she had better taste than the last three stops!

She scanned the graveyard for a patch of freshly broken ground and quickly focused on Madeline's final resting place.

The distinctive sound of shovel breaking ground was one that, despite hearing it hundreds of times, unsettled her with its action. she didn't necessarily feel guilty for this maneuver as much as unsettled by the reexcavation of a buried casket.

Finally, she had reached the coffin. She opened it and found exactly what she was looking for. On the feet of Madeline's corpse were the most beautiful shoes she had ever seen. She grabbed them, pushed the dirt back over the grave, and returned to her car. She placed the shoes and the shovel in the back of her car and marked Madeline's name off of the list.

I wrote a much longer version as well that was devoid of the humor. . . I'll spare you that one.

STRESS-AHH-CRAZY-WHAT-NO-MORE

So college applications are evil creatures. Who knew?

Between that, homework, and occasionally writing songs in my head while driving home on empty back-roads, not a whole lot has happened. . .

Well, that's a total lie.

I'm extremely ready for fall to actually start behaving like fall, at least in the plants-dying-pollen-leaving-the-air-smell-of-dust-burning- off-of-the-heater sense of the term. Instead there's a sort of bizarre pseudo-desert climate in place right now, with days reaching at least two hundred degrees and nights getting down into the fifties. This is October. Why isn't it always in the fifties? It's always seemed much more homey that way.

Maybe it's just some way of making me more comfortable with the fact that I might not be living here next year.

I have to go... I really want to write some more; I feel like I need to, if just for myself.

Iron & Wine – Pagan Angel And A Borrowed Car

Daft Hands

Stumbled across this earlier today. It has yet to cease amazing me.

Wanton Bagpipery

So we found this bagpipe. It came in individual pieces. We had no idea how to put it together. But thanks to the wonders of the internet, it's now (to our knowledge) functional. Playing it is another story entirely:

I apologize for my goofy laugh infiltrating the video... It's late; I was tired; I laughed.

Musical Vegetables

Tesla!?

Apparently Tesla coils, when in the right hands, can be more than just demonstrations of arcing electricity...

Seriously, check it out:

By changing the frequency of the electricity spark within a Tesla Coil and modulating it, one can make it sing :)

Musicianity

Otters Shall Have a Slide

For the last few days, four nomadic baby skunks have been roaming the land around my house, most likely because some ill fate befell their mother (car, coyote, etc.). So, yearning to help the skunks and interrupt nature's symphony, my brother caught one and I found myself reading through Kentucky's animal captivity laws this afternoon (link to laws).

It was actually a pretty rewarding experience.

Section 1. Definitions. (1) "Circus" means a traveling public entertainment show consisting of acrobats, clowns, and trained animals, but shall not include a show including wrestling bears or other direct contact between members of the public and inherently-dangerous animals.

2. Fifteen (15) per night limit on bullfrogs; and

3. Possession limit of twenty-five (25) dusky salamanders (spring lizards) of the genus Desmognathus.

You'd best have a good excuse for that 26th dusky salamander...

(m) Animals that are compatible with one (1) another may be held in the same enclosure if the required floor space is provided; and

(n) Common walls shall be constructed between animals that are not compatible so the animals cannot interact.

I dig the unnecessary numerical clarification in (m).

1. A single bobwhite quail enclosure shall be a minimum of 100 square feet.

2. There shall be an increase in one (1) square foot per additional bobwhite quail.

Man, that first bobwhite quail is lucky...

3. Otters shall have a slide and a dry place for sleeping and retreat;

If only the law mandated me a slide...

Mission Trippery

We survived the Georgia mission trip! Thanks to the generosity of the church we stayed at, our mission trip took the form of a mini-fuge by the time things were wrapping up.

Here are some photos from the trip. I'm dead tired, so they'll have to do the talking. =)

Summer's Here

I've been doing a lot of thinking about how the next couple of months are going to pan out. My summer's going to be pretty limited this year, what with time-munchers such as a mission trip, a leadership conference, Governor's Scholar Program, and, potentially, work.

For the moment, however, I'm listening to music, reading books, and spending time with friends, since it appears that those activities will be the first to get cut once I set foot into the gauntlet of my summer events.

I've been fingering the flame
like tomorrow's martyr.
It gets harder to believe.

-Over the Rhine "All I Need Is Everything"

I really can't complain though. I think everything will be a blast once I get into the swing of things.

...Once I get into the swing of things...

First thing's first... Thursday, most of my church's youth leave for a mission trip in Atlanta, GA. I was almost dreading it at first, but as it's gotten closer, God's been slowly revealing to me that I can handle it. A smaller, though still superficial, note to this event is that I'm really looking forward to spending time with some of my friends from my church. It seems like I see them less and less...

Secondly is the leadership conference in Louisville. I'm not exactly sure what all this entails aside from me getting to know my fellow KY TSA officers, but I'm looking forward to it as a sort of distraction nonetheless.

Thirdly is the Governor's Scholar Program. This monster is going to ingest five weeks of summer and desert me in a small town across the state. It's not so sinister as I may be making it out to be though. I get to study "Creative Writing and Literature" which is something I'm sure I'll enjoy, and it's a sample of how college away from my hometown is going to be, which is how I believe I'll prefer college, to be honest.

Nothing against my hometown, but a change of scenery would be nice.

My only real apprehension, really, is that it will be my first taste of independence. Doing my own laundry, going to church without my family, sharing living space with people I've never met; It intimidates me a little bit.

Lastly is work. I have nothing against my place of employment or the people there, but my role as a worker there is to exact thoughtless labor. I'm not saying I'm above that, it's been my job description for the last two summers, but it makes me feel terrible. That's just my personality; if I'm going to bother doing something, it has to be something I think about or I just feel incredibly hollow the entire time and end the day miserable.

...Maybe I'm just being a baby about it...

Problem with finding a different job is that my grandfather got me this one and I'm afraid he'd take turning it down personally; and it pays well, so everyone else would also point, stare, name-call, etc.

Thankfully though, I only have a cumulative of three weeks this entire summer during which I can work (supposing I don't figure something out).

Why to Periodically Clean Your Keyboard

I started noticing some fuzz growing in between the keys, so pried the keys off and found three years worth of lint and hair... pretty disgusting... click to check out the full-rez grossness.

War and Seats

Shift your attention to the folded bleachers surrounding you the next time you find yourself chilling in a stadium. Thousands and thousands of individually numbered seats their own sections and their own areas. In effect, these seats each have a name, a consecutively numbered name, but a name nonetheless.

I wonder if each of these seats have ideas? They must have memories! They’ve been sit on by a whole gamut of individual sports fans for years! How can you go through something like that without having some bizarre memories!

I wonder what seat 15 row 12 section 103 wall AB would think about all of this nonsense? Maybe it’s best friend is seat 14. Perhaps it has a crush on seat 8 in row 11, but that seat is madly in love with some chair seat way over along wall BC... C’est la vie 15-12-103-AB... C’est la vie...

I can see him from here, way up there from the floor... surrounded by, as I said, thousands and thousands of other seats. What makes him so special? They’re all the same... one big homozygous society of bleachers who realize that the chair seats will never truly accept them as equals.

But what makes them unique is their experiences. For instance, the seats along AB and DA are used to home team fans taking root in their personal space during basketball season, whereas BC and CD are used to a more diverse set of game-mates. This results in the ABDA seats obtaining a conservative mentality, far removed from the idea of rooting for anyone but the Racers and who detest the thought of any two colors aside from gold and navy coming into contact with one another.

Conversely, the BCCD seats have adopted a more liberal mentality, accepting any new radical idea that comes across their path. Being that they can’t exactly move to experience life for themselves, they just accept every radical color combination that’s thrown at them.

This results in a red-state/blue-state phenomena. Inciting poor national relations within the stadium. Fortunately for us all,
however, their aforementioned lack of mobility has prevented civil war, and they just shout at one another when the security guard goes to sleep.

Interesting place, stadiums... I’ve been awake too long...

goodnight again

It’s May again.

The only association I should make is that you’re getting ready for prom.

If your dropout plans don’t go through, right?

She does look like Shrek!

Just jokes.

I'm ahead of you… you should see things from where I stand.

By all means, take the lighter.

What if our parents hadn’t screwed up our lives? I’d sooner not known you than have things as they are.

For what it’s worth: You are right, I was very immature.

Does the number thirty-seven stay with you as it does me?

I’m sorry for making fun.

I suppose we’re proficient secret keepers.

She misses you.

So does she.

And him.

And even him.

And I think about you every day.

Three years… Time flies…

Ouch...

The truck began as a Frankenstein project... A billet grill, chrome lights, a new hood, a new paint-job, some bucket seats, a ton of work and a money transfusion later: the beast transcended to hotness...

Then the truck met a seemingly happy-go-lucky Pontiac Grand Prix. They got to talking about seeing other vehicles... it didn't end pretty.

It actually got pretty ugly...

Brain surgery. It'll need nearly an entire front end from a clean donor...
(an intense money transfusion.)

(That used to be my turn signal)
Alas, poor Yorik, I knew him, Horatio...