"Writer's Block" aka Random Junk

I've been spending alot of brain power last few days trying to come up with a topic for my next post, and have been batting a lot of zeros with regards to actual ideas. Its mostly been bits and pieces, random thoughts that haven't coalesced into a meaty honest-to-God blog post. So in the interest of actually posting *something* I am throwing a bunch of ideas out there, in the hopes that it will add up to...something.... Do with it what  you will.


I am a Internet Plumber.
For my job at the ISP, who's name will remain unknown, I am titled "Network Engineer". As such I monitor the relative health and working state of the different networks that my ISP is in charge of. If any break I try to fix and if am unable to fix I escalate to a more knowledgeable individual or team. Now as the conglomerate networks, grouped together to form the "internet" as we know it, is at its most basic, a group of circuits of various sizes (1.44mb, 100mb, 1GB, 10GB, etc), capable of moving traffic from point A to point B, it seems to me that this setup can be seen as a group of pipes, in the same way that plumbing moves water from different points, thru pipes of different sizes. So when people ask me what I do for a living, and I try to explain my job, and when their eyes begin to glaze over....I say "I am basically a Internet plumber, keeping the pipes open". They get that.

I hate driving in traffic.
Seriously. Hate it. Mostly because I think other drivers are a gang of criminally insane idiots. Gentle readers, you of course are all excluded from the above grouping. I just get really tired of the casual way drivers treat each other, bicyclists, and pedestrians, rudely tail-gating, cutting each other off, changing lanes without signaling, etc etc. Its scary because we dont know what the other person is thinking, and when you see people chatting on their phones when they should be driving, well you think the worst. And when thru a combination of bad driving, erratic driving, drunken driving, or just plain bad luck, we end up in accidents that can change our lives in a instant, it feels as if we are letting strangers have too much of a "impact" upon our lives. Then having to spend time sitting in traffic, with little or no forward movement, feels as if my soul was dying, little by little.

So at some level I have to trust complete strangers that they will be paying attention to what they are doing, that they will obey the rules of the road, that they will responsibly drive these multi-ton behemoths....and I don't like it. I don't like having to cede that much trust to people I don't know. And when I see how casually rude drivers are to each other as a matter of course I like it even less. If I had my druthers I wouldn't be driving all that much at all, but since we have a terrible lack of good transportation alternatives here in Seattle, I don't have much choice except to drive most places. Its sad because I actually love to drive; the act of driving is a lot of fun and when you are wheeling down an open road, blasting the music and watching the landscape roll past, it can be a time of sublime clarity and lasting memory. But city driving, dodging potholes, traffic jams, other drivers, it all adds up to a painful experience. I wish I had another choice.

I love peanut butter.
Seriously. I love adore peanut butter. Its creamy goodness, the peanutty smell, the thick taste. And it has to be crunchy peanut butter, none of that wimpy non-crunchy butter for me thank you very much. Is there a better snack food? I think not. Peanut Butter should be carved into Mt Rushmore. When I die just immerse my body into a 6ft jar of peanut butter and bury me.

I spend way too much time re-living past embarrassments.
Does anyone else do this too? I hate it. My brain will be humming happily along, thinking about this and that, and then alluva sudden.....I am back at that time when I, without meaning to, picked a verbal fight with my friend's dad, at my friend's wedding. This happens to me all the time, that my brain (stoopid stoopid brain) will suddenly (surely laughing the whole time) lurch over into Embarrassing Memory Lane and I'll be reliving that time when I said that...."thing"...when I shoulda kept my yap shut. I know I know! Its a waste of time and energy, I cant change the past so why fret? Especially when there is so much peanut butter to eat!

I like Rock 'n Roll.
Still. Its been a almost 50 year obsession, ever since I heard "I want to hold your hand" on the radio, as a 4 year old. I still love the passion, the angst, the tension and release. Right now I am cranking Queens of the Stone Age, loving the dinosaur stomping riffs, sounding all the world like some primeval beast climbing out of the tar pits. I also love the more "sensitive" artists such as Beachouse, Elliott Smith, Sufjan Stevens, Devotchka, Ereykah Badu, and the hysterical weirdness of Tom Waits (he is really funny live). I love the blues, my appreciation for Jazz grows daily, and I oftentimes fall asleep listening to classical music. But I still come back to the rock. Recently I stumbled across this vid, a live clip of the Faces doing "Stay With Me", and it seems to capture alot of what I love about rock music: the want of artists to be recognized, and at its most basic level the boy wants the girl to notice him. And here is a band, the Faces, who in their salad days of 1972-1974 were one of the best (some peeps say the best, but....Rolling Stones) live bands ever. And surely what comes across in this vid is 5 guys who are really enjoying playing with each other, kicking out a loose, sloppy, and oh-so-tight song that would do any backwoods roadhouse proud. As Rod Stewart says at the beginning of the song, "Slow down...Play it dirty". Indeed.