well, back from the ol' homestead and haven't had enough of a moment since my return to do an update. almost as soon as i returned on Saturday night, i went out with Paul & Brax, and had a bit of an adventure.

on the home front though, to complete the story of my recent visit, Friday was political discussion day. dinner rolled around and mom provoked the whole thing. dad had been amazingly quiet about the emails we'd exchanged ( read them here: first email & second email ) and only my mom & my little brother had talked to me about them. well, after mom brought it up, then it started. i think dad & I were talking for about an hour and a half, not really making any progress at all, just talking around each other's arguments. we pretty much covered everything. he's a pretty stubborn man, and i conceded a few points to him in the hopes that he'd realize i wasn't arguing just to argue and ignoring my logic on that basis.
      i was disappointed by my father's selfishness and narrowmindedness. he's a very intelligent, thoughful man–generally–and i hold him in high esteem. but the struggles that he has had to face in his life, from the time he was a little boy growing up in the "hollers" of virginia, while building his character and intellect to such an enviable level, have also contributed to and molded this mindset that prevents him from automatically thinking of others (far removed from himself) before himself. his arguments were pretty much all concerned with the immediate impact of some of the ideas that–of necessity–must be considered for their long-term advantages or the advantages they will provide to others who may not currently have them.

thankfully our talk(s, eventually) never grew to the argument stage, but i think we both got flustered at some points when we thought the other was just not listening or understanding. it's frustrating to attempt to explain these abstract concepts you've got buzzing around your head, to not be able to sufficiently explain them with the language we're given. hell, i run into that all the time here on this weblog.

overall, i had a wonderful weekend with my folks and little brother (who ain't so little anymore–he's 13 and his shoes are only a half size smaller than mine… ). much more pleasant than i'd thought it might be. sometimes, though, i think my dad just puts up with my shit because he knows it would break my mom's heart if we were to truly have some kind of split. don't think i've written about my relationship with my dad here, perhaps that'll be a subject for a different time.

      in other news

www.mchawking.com has updated finally and have a new song by that hip-hop master–MC Stephen Hawking. The new song e=mc hawking isn't quite as good as the previous tunes, but still worth a listen. If you've not visited the site before, my two favorite songs would have to be entropy, and fuck the creationists. where else are you going to get a healthy dose of humor, hip-hop, and theoretical physics in one go? nowhere, baby, let me tell you.

well, thanksgiving went off without a hitch. my parents did their normal thing of having several families over for breakfast in the morning, so i got to see all those people that i only see once a year. and no sooner had i gotten out of the shower and dressed, than i realized that i was almost completely uncomfortable around most of them. these are the people that i grew up around, and i'm so different from the person i was back then. i mainly just filled my plate with all that good food, sat down in the livingroom away from all the people, and just quietly stuffed my face. i don't even really feel bad about it, 'cause i didn't come home to see them. i came home to be with my family, all this extra thanksgiving bullshit is just an excuse and a couple extra days off work to make it possible.

it has been amazingly calm around here today though. i was worried that my dad & I would get into a big argument over politics, but he hasn't even really said anything to me about it. in fact, i've had more discussions with my mom and little brother about it than with my dad. maybe he's just biding his time.

i am planning to post–for your reading pleasure–the emails i sent my dad about my political feelings. hopefully i'll be able to get those formatted and uploaded tomorrow (er… today…)

i was also very happy to talk to my sister, who called from france. she's planning on coming home for christmas, so i'll get to see her then.

well, i've been up since 8:00, my brain & body are about to shut down from the food overload.

good to hear the puffin had a decent day as well.

well, i'm at home now. thankfully i had enough foresight to find out the 800 number for my ISP before leaving the 'ville, so i can post for all you lovely people to read.

enjoyed the ride down immensely, what with the new MP3 CD player I got and all. it's a little quirky, but it does well enough i suppose. earlier today i scoured through my mp3s on my computer at work and pulled out just enough to fill a cd, which i think came out to about 165 songs. slammed them all into the root directory of the disk, deleted the track numbers from their filenames, and pretty much wrote them to the cd in alphabetical order. the funny part was that, with the player set on random, the first hour was pretty much Billy Idol, Liz Phair, Chris Isaac, Beastie Boys, NIN, & Bloodloss, then when i see the first signs for Princeton, it suddenly becomes Kid A time. three songs from Kid A–almost consecutively–played me in on the last leg from the parkway to my parent's house. i was excited and amused by how appropriately the mood was set. another funny observation i made was that, despite the number of Mudhoney tracks on the disc, i don't recall any getting played. apparently hour four would have been Mudhoney hour if the trip had lasted that long.

walked into the house, gave my mom and my little bro a hug, then pretty much just submitted myself to my brother's always animated discussions. i see a lot of myself in him, and then there are other things that he's not managed to avoid like i did when i was his age. i walk back into his bedroom (which used to be mine, ages ago.) and hear Hank Williams, Jr. playing on his stereo. i informed him that i was going to take him to Wal-Mart (the only thing that passes for a record store in these parts–that i'm aware of) and buy him a cd or two. i've decided that Kid A is at the top of my list. (paul will love to hear this.)

after somewhat settling in, we set up the laptop, logged on, chatted with brian (& paul, very briefly) for a bit, started doing some remote setup of the new x:13 server (soon, soon), and had what was basically a warm-up round of political discussions with my little bro… a mini version of the large discussion/argument i'm likely to have with my father tomorrow night after all the guests leave. thankfully, my brother's only 13, and still has quite a few years to figure things out.

happy smallpox and genocide day to all you turkey (& mock turkey) eaters out there.

g'night.

there's something about the woods in winter. i'm not really sure exactly what it is that i like so much about them. i mean, i love the woods in summer too, the full trees, the waving green leaves, the birdsong filling the air, the feeling of closeness and solitude–connection with nature. but in the winter. hmmm. the cool air. the open sky. the trees bare, revealing their underlying structure. the silence of the woods, broken only by the occasional chatter of the last squirrels hoarding for the winter, the seemingly distant calls of the few birds that tough out the cold months, the crunch of dry leaves under your feet.

during the spring and summer months, i never really think about camping all that much, but as soon as fall and winter roll around, especially winter, i really get the urge to just run off into the woods and stay there for days. i would love to just take a weekend, hike deep into the woods away from civilization, spend my days wandering around, reading a book by a stream somewhere, writing whatever thoughts enter my head, building a fire and cooking up big pots of beef stew and strong coffee, staring up at the clear night sky counting the stars, watching the smoke and embers rise and disappear while one side of my body freezes and the other cooks. i wanna wake up and see the morning fog drifting through the trees as the birds sing to me.

the only thing i can imagine that would be better than this, would be having someone there to share it with. someone to sit close to, more to be near each other than to share warmth. someone to point out the little things that give me wonder, someone with whom to share my joy.

in an altogether unsurprising, but unexpected announcement yesterday, the russian government has said that it will deorbit the lame Mir space station, dumping it into the pacific ocean this coming february.

i say unsurprising, because as we all know, the station has been plagued by problems for the past several years; it's unexpected because i had thought the station had been purchased (leased really) by the russian MirCorp. apparently though, MirCorp has not fulfilled certain contractual obligations, leading the russian goverment to make the deorbiting decision.

so much for some "lucky" person getting a chance to spend a week in space. and i was so looking forward to humiliating myself on TV for an entire season, then dying in an absurd space accident involving cheese paste.

made an interesting discovery last night when i walked into one of my ex's former places of employment. we strolled in (brian & I) to drop off the cameras from our recent chicago trip, and the person behind the counter recognized me. i said hello, then asked if he'd talked to my ex lately. last thing he heard, he said, was that she'd just gotten married.

WHOA! married!? we only broke up this past February!

i somehow maintained my composure, saying only "well. that's quite a shock."

he said it pretty much was a surprise to everybody. no shit.

so basically, this girl that i was totally digging on at the beginning of this year, and who dumped me at least partly because i "fell in love too fast," is now married after apparently only dating her new hubby for (by my estimates) six months. that's pretty fucked up.

y'know. i had a whole novel floating around in my mind, but now that i start writing about it, i see it really isn't all that important. i cared a great deal about her, but she obviously didn't about me, so that pretty much absolves me from continuing to care about her, right?

i think i just deleted about 8 lines or so. guess i'll stop trying to write in circles. try to stop my head from spinning.

it's as bad as i'd feared. my father's influence still reigns supreme in my family's house. i just received an email from my (13 year old) brother today… he sent me a George W. Bush e-card. uggghhhh…

i know he'll grow up and learn things on his own the way i did, but it still frightens me that my own family is just as blind as they've always been.

one more quick update from the road.

another town, another kinko's. thought we'd drop in before we get fully involved in this whole driving thing, check our email, and the puffin-a-go-go for word from our boy Paul. don't know at this point if we'll be able to make it home in time for the x-files, but we'll damn well try.

had a great evening last night, getting trashed at Matty & Matt's house, where i sat around watching brian whupping both their asses (until he got too drunk and started losing). you've never heard more trash talk in your life. football players could learn a thing or two from the big monkey. thankfully, i think the Matts really were enjoying themselves (perhaps the alchohol had something to do with that, but i prefer to think it was our sparkling personalities).

then, of course, there was nanette, without whom this entire weekend really wouldn't have been possible. WE LOVE NANETTE! i'd just like to publicly thank her for being so cool, showing us around her city, and not being too afraid to introduce us to her friends despite our predilection for violent, disgusting, and otherwise offensive humor. we had a great time and look forward to coming back sometime when we have enough money to do something other than just walk around all those great shops and look at stuff.

well, 'bout time to get back on the road or we'll never ever make it back before Duchovny shouts "Scully!" again.

quick update from the house of the Matt's–nanette's friends who have been our kind and gracious hosts for the majority of this evening.

i just have to say that brian is my new hero. after last night's 25 minute discussion with Mark Arm, the single greatest vocalist in music today (my opinion) and subsequent picture taking… tonight he walks in from a quick trip to the liquor store with the thing we've been searching for since moving to Louisville–a 40oz Mickey's. all hail brian.

good to see Paul has been keeping himself entertained while we've been up here. also good to see he's hanging out with Brax, our frequently otherwise-occupied friend. as much as i'm enjoying Chicago, i miss my friends after only a couple days away.

we'll post much more later. i've got a fohtee to drink.

i think i may have a new monkeywrench convert on my hands. brian really seemed to enjoy the show as much as i did.

for those of you who don't know, the monkeywrench fucking rock. that's all there is to it. i was concerned since i thought the latest monkeywrench album Electric Children didn't rock quite as hard as Clean as a Broke Dick Dog… boy was i wrong. they brought so much out of those songs it was just amazing.

we had a great time earlier (before the show) hanging out with nanette who showed us around chicago a bit before we had to go to the show. looking forward to spending some more time with her tomorrow seeing sights and hopefully doing some (cheap) fun stuff. it really sucks that i had to spend all my money on my car, but, i suppose if i hadn't, we might not be here right now. luckily brian's got a buck or two, so we should be alright. if our luck holds out (it's been pretty good so far this trip) we'll have a place to stay tomorrow night that doesn't require money–if nanette can swing it for us. right now, my primary concern is finding our way out of chicago, to a hotel, and getting some damn sleep. i was so tired & hungry before we had dinner with nanette that i was starting to get dizzy. that doesn't happen too often.

there'll be more to write about, we're attempting to keep a trip log of some sort, so we'll probably have a lengthy update when we get back home.

gah. gotta get outta here. need sleep.