Aitch-Bar

Writing About (Mostly) Not Astrophysics

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Midwestern Exposure

I’ve presented myself stark naked in front of hotel windows several times, because, you know, YOLO, and few people have ever made a thing out of it. Which is a shame. I can think of no greater lot in life than being at the epicenter of a quake that tears the news media apart, debating over whether one man’s junk is another broadcasting corporation’s treasure. I side with Prince Harry on this one, though it’s not even clear which side that might be, although certainly front side. Thus opens and closes my riffling through CNN for the month of August. Also, add breaking-and-entering to the list of things not to do around LL Cool J, right after fronting in your ride and declaring the unsexiness of fisher’s hats.

There are multiple correct ways to go about painting a classic car, and then there is the way shown at right. Unless Ford is rebooting the franchise and this is a 2013, someone dropped wads of cash on parts and took a long time on painstaking construction. The closest analogy I have is bodybuilding for a year straight and then joining Blue Man Group. Who gives a shit about what’s underneath. You’re blue. This car looks like it has liver spots. It’s the perfect vehicle for hunting senior citizens.

If there is a central theme of Kool Deadwood Nights, it is “old.” It seems as though it was supposed to be “cars;” a swing and a miss. This sounds heavy-handed, and indeed I judge them in their own house. I hypothesize that the age distribution in the area is a rising exponential. But the Jumbotron was like 30 feet from the stage, and the entire two block stretch was filled with orderly rows of lawn chairs. The concert ended by 9. Come on. Block parties themed in the 1900s have been done, and then, they’ve been done again. You’ve got real roots; try an 1800s weekend.

Tangentially related, something about music where all the words have a “yyrrah” sound at the end makes me want/need to windmill. Not because I’ve been seized by some idiot mosher’s version of the Spirit and now, oh, watch out other concert attendees, the Lord has called on me to testify. I assure you that it is strictly a murder response. I would never publicly admit to being inspired by things that annoy me, though I do syphon massive amounts of creative power from my rage font, which, like the rest of my body, runs dry in this environment. I attempt to fill it when I can, squeezing little out of littler still. Even so my mind has been a blank slate lately, with serenity and majesty or whatever everywhere I look. There are mountains fucking everywhere. There’s one right there. And deer and rabbits and giraffe. I forever face the dilemma of taking in the scene with repose or slamming a Dew and tearing up on some motorchair with wheels. I usually do neither and try to run; within a mile I begin to wonder if I have lungs constructed entirely out of asbestos, and then I remember that there is no oxygen at this altitude. I better be Superman when I get back to sea level, or I will be pissed and creative.


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… and Put Them Down

Motorcycles, anathema to the typical person, are a thing here in western SoDak. Like, a thing thing. Nine days after the end of the Sturgis rally, the streets are still ruled by a synergistic mix of oversized bikes and deer. Like a germophobe in a Kmart, one must be careful in these parts when stretching one’s opinion muscles vis-a-vis two-wheeled annoyance machines. While locked in a literal 10-minute elevator ride, Jeremy let slip his true feelings and managed to offend someone whose father is a motorcycle, I guess. I assume that individual wished he was on his bike right then, able to drown out the conversation in a deluge of noise and unburnt fuel-laden exhaust, a smile creasing his sandblasted sunglasses-tanned face, behind him a skinny toothless woman with a quarter pound of Mascara, her weighing down the back wheel for traction as they get all the way up to 10 mph under the speed limit.

By the way. Anathema? I am a complete asshole for using that word, and more deserving of a wedgie no one has ever been. I enjoy pretending that my delete key is broken, which pushes the writing process forward in new and spectacular ways. All progress is forward progress. My destiny is made manifest by filling this computer screen with the rawest of prose.

I’m told the rally went off well this year. I heard the death toll was in the single digits, though not by much, but that’s still an improvement. From what I saw, I believe the theme this year was “America.” Apparently, in the ~50s, the rally was a family-friendly event, oriented toward people who zen out on having to stand up at red lights and pretending that they aren’t constantly eating bugs. Today one cordons off a three-block stretch of Main Street, lines up the Sons of Silence on one side and Hell’s Angels on the other, and then lets them hit each other with bats. Details ensue, and out comes a motorcycle rally. Toward the end the bars actually run out of Bud Light. Yes, that is possible; even with the backs of everyone’s fridges inexplicably and perpetually generating five-year-old cans of it, supply still can’t keep up with demand.


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We Pick Things Up…

Taking a month-long trip to a location 6,000 feet above sea level may lead to thorough desiccation of the body, but fortunately it doesn’t have to mean loss of muscle tone. Twenty eight years ago an egg was fertilized; this egg eventually produced Carlos, who would end up tracking down cheap second-hand free weights and a bench, and arranging them on a mat in our cellar. I try to attend religiously. Atrophy and mountain lions are the largest persistent threats in this area. The former, leading to a condition colloquially known as “physics body” or “the N-body problem,” is preventable in principle. The latter is not. After dark we huddle in the cellar, admist our weights, and pray that they only take our livestock this night.

If I could pass one wisdom nugget to the world, it would be to always read the label on protein mix before laying down monies. I ended up with a tub of a pink something, flavored with antibiotics and a hint of strawberry, which seems to be a mix of equal parts anabolic steroids and cocaine. The instructions recommend that body builders actually go eat other sources of protein, suggesting to me that their product foregoes this ingredient altogether. Normal humans: Add 0 scoops to milk and consume with eggs. Bane: Add 1-2 scoops to five tablespoons water and force down. Then consume eggs.

Friday night was the night for The Expendables 2: The Expendening. If you haven’t seen, The Expendables is based on the true story of a group of friends dealing with the realities of middle age, during which the world around them reflects on itself as they attempt to define what it is to have lived a “good life.” A masterfully constructed metanarrative draws themes from a rich body of works in psychology and classical literature. The first movie won two Academy Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Actor in a Leading Role.

We showed up 30 minutes early for the movie–an unprecedented show of force for a town of 10,000–and proceeded to stand at the head of a non-existent line for another 20 while the previous showing finished. Upon entering the theater I consumed a king-size bag of Whoppers and the world started to move much too slowly. My review of the movie is somewhat colored by this experience. There was not nearly enough action, and when there was, the guns did not spew bullets fast enough. Stallone enunciates too much. Chuck Norris told too few Chuck Norris jokes. Schwarzenegger isn’t old enough. More. More, damn you. This is escapism; I need a movie that doesn’t resemble my everyday life.


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The Miracle of Modern Dissatisfaction

I was on an aeroplane recently; certainly that distinguishes me somehow. I’ve been working on a theory for why people don’t like airports. To many this is apparent, and after putting such an obvious question, I have had people fix me with a pitying gaze and begin to speak a little slower for my benefit. You are jammed with a thousand other humans, standing or sitting around, guarding your possessions, paying unreasonable sums for food and drink after having to go through excessive security. I point out that this also describes a night club. The difference is that no one expects to get laid in an airport.

I sat down with Jeremy in a Fresh Air-style interview. I relate his story here, with minor embellishment. I envision it as would be portrayed by Zack Snyder; you may choose your own form of narration.

I got sneezed on, as that’s a staple of any air travel experience. I hate JFK. I was in a gate area about the size of this room [we are in a room which is not large enough to be a comfortable gate area]. On one side of the room there is the gate. On the other side of the room there is some restaurant or something. And the lines trail out from both of these, and they’re so long that they cross each other and block the entire room. Where the lines intersect, they are held together by people sneezing on each other constantly. There is this vapor, this fine mist, hanging in the air above them. And you hold your breath and put your arm out in Heismann pose and barrel through the snot fog but you’re still fucked in the end. Airborne is a placebo that tastes like old disgusting candy.

You have to get on those giant buses to get from one terminal to another because they couldn’t be bothered to plan things properly. You don’t even realize it’s a bus; you’re just following the herd. You and a bunch of other people pack into a room with no exit that reeks of gas, and you stay there because you’re an idiot with no sense of self-preservation. Then the whole room starts moving and you hold onto the railing that has snot all over it, narrowly dodging the largest planes in the world. By the time you get to the other side you’ve died from smog. The air is like being on Titan.

This all overlooks the positive aspects. The terminals are now a preserve habitat for the last few species of bookstore. You won’t be shot by anyone not wearing blue. If you don’t want a bag, just leave it somewhere conspicuous, and it will be disposed of in spectacular fashion. And, of course, you get to travel somewhere inaccessible by foot.


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Portation

Ryan and I are coalescing into this new, joint blog. We could have used the blog I originally created, but for some reason “davidm.wordpress.com” wasn’t seen to be properly capturing the spirit of community. All 2 of my old posts have been copied over to this site.

We searched high and low for an easy way to cross-post between multiple blogs, but failed entirely. Surprising and disheartening. Time was when we didn’t used to bother with this 3rd party hosting shit; we could code a site up by hand on our home computer, in a day, with all the features we needed, and it’d be bulletproof. That was 2000. Now you install some professional-grade software on a secure machine and within five minutes of going live you have a bug infestation of third world proportions. Or some acne-laden kid in the Netherlands steals your entire computer and repurposes it to spreading propaganda for kitten-eating Nazis, before going out and not getting laid. The Internet seems to have evolved into some sci-fi dystopia where, upon leaving the Google arcology, one quickly perishes from a combination of nuclear fallout and giant ants.

Launch time is always the roughest time for a new venture. Momentum has to keep up or you fizzle. Particularly difficult when you have “things to do” because you’re a “real person.” There is something about long stretches of left-brained work that drains inspiration, and words become the Enemy. I try to keep up because it’s good exercise, and my creative homunculus no longer fits into its going-out jeans. One can always fall back on actually writing about a topic, I suppose. I’ll try to avoid that to the end.