And So It Goes

So I’ve been carrying on this semi-relationship with this girl Jamie since about October. She’s amazingly great and we’ve turned each other on to so much great music (notably, Spiraling). Context here. The only problem is she lives in Indiana, and so I’ve only been able to visit her once. Then about a month or two ago, her computer died so we’ve been communicating a lot less. Then she lost her phone for three weeks and we had no contact because my number was in the phone and her house phone doesn’t have long distance. But last week she came back online, explained everything, and although she’s not online as often as she was, I thought there still might be a chance.

Now I know there’s not.

For those who don’t know, the girl in the picture and the comments is Jamie. She’s got some other boy to play with now. Wisconsin is closer and I’m sure he likes Morrissey more than I do, so he’s probably a better match for her. I’ll assume that he’s what she needs. Really, I’ve been expecting her to tell me something like this for a month or two, but under no circumstances did I want to find this out for myself. Girls, if you’re ever looking to break up with someone, then please get over the fear of the thing and just let your boy off the hook.

Tragic irony of tragic ironies, I’ll going to be hanging out with Natalie tonight, who’s just recently moved back to town from LA. She left last February. She’s probably back because of her successful long-distance relationship with a great guy. If that’s the case, I’m going to try not to be crushed by jealousy.

The weather has just turned dark and stormy as I type this. I’m going to go stand in the rain and do my usual John Cusack in the rain impression (see heartbreak scenes in Say Anything and High Fidelity, what is it with that guy and the rain?). “The rain on my car is a baptism. The new me. Iceman. Power Lloyd. My assault on the world begins now! Believe in myself! Answer to no one!!”

Inversion of Priorities

One thing I’ve learned recently in a management course I’m taking at the office is that the goal of management (and business in general) is to train to a standard and manage the exceptions. I realized today that perhaps one of the main reasons why art and commerce don’t mix well is that the goal of good art is to be exceptional while having some standards and common points of reference.

It would then seem that art and commerce are diametrically opposed to each other. Polar opposites. Matter and anti-matter.

For Improved Cat Hoarding Awareness

Fark.com, as hopefully everyone knows, is the best place to get news. Fark allows odd news stories from various regions to be concentrated into a central location. These stories are the kinds of things you might read in your local paper but almost never see on national news. Something I realized today is that, as a result, Fark makes us aware of human behavior patterns that we might otherwise miss. For example, cat hoarding.

Headlines like “today’s house with 300 cats brought to you by X” show up on Fark with remarkable regularity. On a local level, cat hoarding might seem like a peculiar, isolated incident, but with the advent of Fark, we can see that it is in fact something of a national mini-epidemic. People hoard pets all the time. There are hundreds of pet hoarders out there. It’s a legitimate psychological disorder.

So there’s another benefit of the Internet. It allows us to discover how truly freaky we really are. Pet hoarding just scratches the surface if you consider that the Internet also allows people with niche fetishes to come together more easily.

Linguistic Inequities

Why is it that we still have no word for strings of initials (HTML, NAACP, BFE, FCC) yet we have a term for the reversal of logical phrases? Ladies and gentleman of the jury, I present to you hysteron proteron, an overly lengthy phrase describing the inversion of a logical statement or clause. For example, saying “bred and born” instead of “born and bred.” This particular term was brought to my attention by my drummer and fellow language nerd, Steve Chapman.

Ah, but you say “acronym” is the term for things like AFL-CIO, DEA, and AARP, but it’s not. An acronym only qualifies as such if the initials create a word like “radar” (RAdio Detection And Ranging) or maybe even “SCSI” (pronounced “scuzzy”). Given that the Internet has created an unprecendented glut of what I like to call “initializations” (ASP, IIS, AOL), we really should get ourselves a word for this phenomenon. I vote for “initialization” if only because it has only slightly fewer[1] letters than “hysteron proteron.”

1.) Let it be known, mom, that I said “fewer” and not “less.”

Unlikely Developments on the Marconi

Jason added a comment to one of my older entries about the format of FM101.1 here in town. He gave a link to an MSN story entitled, “Increasingly, stations move toward variety.”

There’s an unlikely headline. Everything I know about radio is seemingly refuted by this development. It’s a paradox, a conundrum, and I am flummoxed. Radio stations are experimenting with…diversity. Not the same old homogenous, bland formatting of the most chart-topping pablum, but a gloriously random mishmash of lesser-known favorites and hits. You say you want a revolution? Corporate radio, in a panic to compete with iPods and satellite radio, seems ready to deliver.

What are some other similarly unlikely headlines? “MTV Plays Video,” “Pope Promotes Prophylactics,” “Republicans Balance Budget,” “Michael Jackson Dates a Black Woman.” If you’re bored, make up some of your own and post them as comments.

Barry: “But I’m The Tick!”

So I’m now covered in tick bites. I haven’t had tick bites since camp. I’m sure I’ll get Lyme Disease now, as I failed to properly remove the seed ticks with tweezers as all the field guides tell you. Sorry but those bastards had to be removed in the car manually. I probably should have tossed my clothes into the wash before I took my shower rather than after…I wonder if I’ll have little ticks running around my house and onto my pets. Maybe I’m just being paranoid but Billie seemed to be scratching herself an awful lot last night. I have about 30-odd bites on me now as punishment for going into the woods unprepared. I guess I’m just glad I don’t have poison ivy. I’m such a dork.

The Unhappy Expedition to Glory Town

I had heard some months ago that the remains of an abandoned hamlet called Glory Town could be found in the woods on the west side of Lake Maumelle, and yesterday I finally had a free Saturday to go and search for it. I had directions provided for me by a guy who had been there, but after a few sweaty, seed tick-infested hours of exploring, I gave up. I did find the area where a small graveyard was moved, and took some pictures of that (moderately creepy), and I had a nice time sitting alone on some discarded concrete slabs by the lake, but mostly the day was a failure. Driving home I noticed the seed ticks on my arms, so I did my best to pick them off while driving quickly home so I could scrub myself thoroughly and shower. So far I’m not itching, so that’s a good thing. I thought for sure I’d end up with itchy tick bites or poison ivy.

While roaming the woods, I got a call from Elizabeth, who admonished me for going into the woods alone, but I’d hate to have brought someone along on such a dubious adventure (next time I’ll remember to bring Deep Woods Off!®). Plus roaming the forest alone is really quite pleasurable. The path was the old route of Highway 113, so it’s not like I was just lost in the woods with no compass. There are several old highway routes through that area, as Lake Maumelle is a manmade reservoir which required the evacuation of settlements and re-rerouting of roads.

I’ll get some more detailed instructions from my guide and try again soon. If anyone’s interested in coming along this time, let me know.

P.S. Yesterday VH1 Classic played Tears for Fears’ “Closest Thing to Heaven,” from their amazing 2004 reunion album, Everybody Loves a Happy Ending which is unbelievablly fantastic and everyone should own this album because it sparkles like the shiniest of gems and sounds like a million quid. I can’t remember the last time I sang along to the TV. It’s an amazing video featuring a curly brunette “long time Tear for Fears fan” Brittany Murphy. Yum.

More From Our London Bureau

Here’s an update from John and Susan, my expat people in London. You may recall them from last year’s vacation travelogue.

“We’re all good. Had to buy a bike to get home, but Susan wanted a new one anyway. The English are pros at this sort of thing — no one is freaking out, we kinda expected it. The response was, “let’s have a cuppa [tea].” They should re-open all the tube stations tomorrow morning. Wow. I’m very impressed. The incident is being treated like a crime scene, very cool and professional. It sounds like the Americans are taking it harder than the British – wacky. You changed to orange alert from yella. Very curious.”

Reality Upgrade

“Tube Blasts: Commuters Dead” read the Evening Standard headline placards across London. I can see them at Flickr, which gives me something that the traditional news media never quite deliver: firsthand perspective. With the help of Flickr tags like “blasts,” “bombs,” and “London,” I can get an idea of what my fellow photobloggers on the street in London are seeing. They become, in effect, a worldwide network of amateur news photographers.

So far, at least one of them was on the Tube this morning, and his cameraphone pictures are now making their way up to the major media.

So this morning brings to our attention not only that the Western world is still a terrorist target (lest we get complacent in our relative lack of post-9/11 trauma), but also that we have avenues of information that we didn’t have in, say, 2001.