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ical is just the best app. I think i’ve sung the praises way too much in these pages. Now with icalshare you can make and share your calendar with the world. People are even using it to find dates with one another. My newest subscription is Space Shuttle Launches. If you want to get everyone on the same page ical is the way to go, or if you just want to know when all the Packer games are and when the Promise Ring is playing, it’s the best.

Also, sometimes McSweeneys author Gabe Hudson is reading at Ruminator on Monday September 30th. And according to Elizabeth who spent the day with him yesterday before his Portland reading, ” Soon you will want to be his best friend,
as that is just how much he will endear himself to you…I want to be related to him so I can see him at family gatherings. I
can’t even say that about most people I am actually related to. Amazing.” You heard it here first. Read him. See him!

I went and got a 5X10 storage unit to hold all my records yesterday and right next door was this goodwill, so I went in and found one of these Lane Cedar Chests for only 12 bucks. It’s all cedar inside. All my sweaters are going to smell real swell for winter.

Lost post
Drat. I just tried a giant post from blog app and it failed and now i can’t retrieve it. Double drat.

Speeding through uptown on the two-wheeler this morning I smelt someone cooking tamales. Real meaty. Spicy. Pulled up to Olsen Memorial Highway…Man opens his delivery van door and zooked all over the road…ahh! It’s going to be a great week!

Michael Chiklis rocked an Emmy for his portrayal of Vic Mac in the supra-tuff drama “The Shield” last night. Go Vic! If you haven’t acquired a taste for “The Shield” yet, you should get to it. Unfortunately you’ll have to wait until January, when the new season starts.

You can check out all the Vic news and other things newsworthy on Googles vastly improved U.I. for news searching. Simple and Slick.

I played a rousing game of Croquet Saturday night in Hugo-Centerville. I got too competitive and sent the homeowners ball into his backyard river. Last we seen, the buoyant ball was bobbling down stream on its way to Seven Lakes.
Now I have to find a discount croquet set and send the kind man a replacement black ball. [Update: the ball was found! I just got word that it was “hunted” down the next day. I’m off the hook.]

T.G.I.F.
Survivor Thailand looks like a winner. Beautiful Islands. Shii Ann rocks. They should just give her the money right now. The way she put that little tool Robb into place was the highlight of the opener. As was her line, “ain’t no one going to see my ta-tas”. That Robb guy needs to go now. Off my television set forever. I’m all for skateboards, but what bone-head brings a skateboard to a deserted island filled with sand and rock? A Tommy Lee wannabe bone-head that’s who. I hope Shii Ann puts sand in his trucks and renders his skateboard paralyzed.

The white stripes have been embodied as ipods.

Lots and lots of books.
On the book circuit at Barnes and Noble last night, I saw the stoic Joe Seliga celebrated for his new book The Art of the Canoe with Joe Seliga. Joe’s words were brief as his 90 year career of building wooden canoes in Ely Minnesota were celebrated by the REI crowd and various Camp Widjiwagen Alumni. many people spoke very highly of Joe and his canoes at the event and many shared excited stories of their adventures aboard their very own Seliga Special. I was going to tell the story of the time a horrible storm came through our camp in the Canadian Quetico and knocked over a huge douglas fir that snapped one of Joe’s canoes in half like it was made of toothpicks, but it didn’t seem appropriate. Deborah Sussex took some amazing photos for the book. Somewhat Ironically, it was brought to my attention that the publisher of the book is Motorbooks International, who normally publish books about race cars and supra sleek Italian Roadsters. Checking out their site I found what must be a gem of a book and will have to be dialed in at the library immediately – “Everything I Learned About Women I learned from My Tractor”.

Also finished last night Carl Hiaasen’s “Basket Case”. Carl writes a terrific column for the MiamiHerald and is a master of Broward-Dade County Mystery novels that have more bumps and warts than all their crazy voting irregularities down there. My guess is it’s a great part of the country for gathering book material. Not a dull moment for the thinking investigator. Basket Case is a VH1 behind the music novel- dade county style. It involves the death of an aging fictional rock star and the youthful jealous rising star wife, who is looking for a hit song in the acoustical everglades of her husbands ‘b-sides’. The best part is Carl actually co-wrote a song with Warren Zevon called “basket case” for the book. I can’t wait for the next one.

More fun with books. maxprotetch, NYC gallery owner has released a thoughtful book of architectural ideas for rebuilding the World Trade Towers.

What a morning it has been! Already I have concocted a new word for everyone – my morning bike ride was real heady, you dig? The new word is Humanical, or Humanicle, I’m not sure which spelling I prefer. I haven’t come up with a definition for it yet. I suppose I’ll save that for my bike ride home. But If you have any suggestions please don’t hesitate to offer your linguistic analysis.

Inspired by legions, The Missis quit her job last friday. She’s as happy as a priest on Sunday. My new name for her is “pajama girl” as it is a goal of hers to try and get through a whole day without getting out of her PJ’s, A very ambitious goal for the newly unemployed if you ask me. She even has an unemployment mentor, Tony, who may have helped in the inspiration of the cause. I suspect she wont be the last, just about everyone she breaks the news to says one of two things, “Damn that is so cool”, or “I wish I had the guts to do that”. I suspect only good things will come from this change and hope that anyone else contemplating the move does so with grace. If you need a mentor I could probably hook you up.

People keep asking me, “yo ‘jets where are the online spots for finding things out about this WAR deal that we be heading towards?” And so I tell ’em: Well you can’t get it all from one source, but lately I’ve been addicted to watching satellite snaps of US Airbase build-up and the supposed satellite images of nuclear sites in Iraq, which after being investigated by actual people on the ground turn out to by mushroom growing plants. That makes sense. The sanctions probably don’t allow for the importation of tasty fungi, and so they have to manufacture their own, which we then bomb, cause we think the ‘shrooms are like missiles or something. So, yeah, I’m a visual learner and the Satellite images are a godsend for people like me. I also like this War on Iraq page o’ links, mostly because I like to read what Jimmy Carter has to say on just about any subject. I wrote a note to Jimmy Carter when he lost to Reagan in 1980. I wrote it on that paper with one inch tall rules on them, so the letters were really big and painstakingly thought out. I remember being really bummed when my letter was answered not by Jimmy, but by Reagan. It was a crass form letter from the white house with the presidential seal on it and a unconvincing 2×3 glossy of the jelly bean actor himself. For better or for worse, I think this was really the pinnacle event in deciding my political affiliation for my remaining days. It also left me with a warm feeling for the ‘loser’ the ‘underdog’ and the ones who get beat.

Other times people ask me, “yo ‘fro, where do you go to get the latest news on J-Lo and Ben’s budding love affair, and where can I find out more about Kevin Smith’s new movie?” And so’s I tell em: Yo concerned citizen, I get all that and more from Kevin Smith’s own ruminations on his site for his new movie Jersey Girl.

Here is my first post experimenting with blogapp publishing for Jaguar. Shall we see if this works?

Although I haven’t’ even tried to incorporate it yet, I am as excited to try blogging through ical as I am to try blogapp. Now that Tim has made it smoking and amped up for Jaguar. I will try running blogapp tonight and hopefully will use it to post tomorrow. Also trying to embody myself as an Apple Icon. Ok, really, I’m not, but you can. It’s only $15. It’s hard not to get swept up in the MAC madness. The recent midnight release of Jaguar at the Apple store in the Mall of America was attended by more people then the grand opening of the store. It even drove women to wear feline mini’s. This is odd. Jaguar is just a product. An update to an already existing OS. It’s like sports teams for nerds. Did You watch the Bears vs. the Packers? No I was too busy watching Apple vs. Microsoft. Some even feel their corporate allegiances so hard they get a permanent Apple Tattoo; they get so wrapped up in it that they download desktops of the stoner-switch girl, and feel a twinge of betrayal when their belovered ipod is made available to Windows users. How strange.

The Twins take the Central and the playoffs are coming!!

Some solid jazz and spoken word descended on Minneapolis last night at the Illusion Theater. Baikida Carroll spoke mighty volumes with his horn in a “Prayer for Miles Davis” and the rest of his quintet wrestled urgently with their instruments to invoke a joyful noise. With Carroll’s Quintet getting free and loose, they invited spoken word artist Truth Maze to the stage with a stecato swing anthem. Truth answered the call with a hailstorm of side stepped responses that hyphenated the cadence of each sonic piece with literary allusions to Amiri Baraka and Sun Ra. One poem questioned the origins of the West Nile Virus and why nature gets blamed for nature, while the final piece “the whole world sounds like a jazz song…” echoed around my noggin as I climbed out of the theater and fell into the Saturday night swap of humans cajoling, cars bumping, and I new “This” was true.

Today I got to work and itunes played me a song that hit me in the right spot. It went like this:

“Did you ever have one of these days? This is a day like any other day. You are free to wake up and shave. Soapy hands fumbling on the porcelain. Hot, good coffee, and a good, good book. Bicycle! Bicycle! Breathing easier now. Tear the roof of your day. No one’s coming over. It ain’t written so don’t try to read it. Smell the hot rain on the street. Could be love. Could be alcohol. Cup my hands around your face. A little frame. A lot of pain. I can tell the tears from the rain. One tastes sweet, the other plain. And who am I to think I could hang such a precious life on a clever line? You’re in all the books I read. A hundred pages out of reach. And so I throw myself… hit the street. It’ll take some time to learn the lesson of the fall and begin another climb.”

– Penned by Blake Schwarzenbach

So I’m slowly coming to terms with the fact that I’m going to be moving into an Uptown Minneapolis Universe and into an apartment complex that is made up of some seriously slipped individuals, the majority of which believe they are in some open casting call for Melrose Place. The Den Leader, a 30 something lady, has delusions of grandeur that she is in fact running some sort of sorority house and that everyone should act accordingly. She’s either been watching way to much of that MTV show on sorority living, or sadder yet, I suspect she is just stuck trying to relive her loose, and conforming years of being a Delta at the University of Minnesota. Her new proclivity is to post daily scripted notes about such silly topics as music volumes, door slamming, and the mysterious disappearance of round candles in the hallway that when hit by stumbling drunkards at 3 in the morning make a loud “thump” and then roll like little wax bowling balls the rest of the length of carpet, coming to rest at the bottom steps that lead to the basement. I will be sure to post some of the notes as I get my hands on them.

Joining her in the cast of characters is the young militant jew, whose passion for all things jewish is only rivaled by his passion for all music that is techno and played at Ibiza dance floor volumes. He is planning to attack Palestinians with huge amounts of Bass and Low-End Theory. His music has resulted in a few of the Queen Bee’s literary stingers that hang on the wall. I should also note at this time that the Queen Bee has a thing for fake, deadly fake flowers and takes every opportunity to spread these plastic pleasures all around her palace. It’s almost as if they are growing.

Pictures, letters, empty coffee cups, and CD’s surround my desk and keep watch over a hundred little slips of insurgent papers. Those slips of paper which up till today were my calendaring system are now vanquished after a painstaking morning of manually importing them into apple’s new ical program. Maybe now I can start showing up on time to things again. I’ve even imported (subscribed to) all the american holidays and the entire fall television season premier schedule. Now I can make sure I keep my calendar clean for next Thursdays season premier of Survivor Thailand. And Kelly don’t make any plans for the evening of September 29th, cause that’s the season premier of Alias. Isn’t technology wonderful? I wish I could subscribe to some app that would allow me to set some preferences on the type of music I enjoy and am interested in seeing, and the app would then automatically comb the Ticketmaster database and others and give me concert dates in my calendar for bands and music specific to my tastes. I can never remember concert dates, and if I see someone good coming in the City Pages, while reading it over lunch, the information disappears almost as soon as the foods gone.

Tying to avoid all the patriotism on television last night, I stumbled onto a 1997 NOVA special about the building of the Super Bridge. The Super bridge is actually the new Clark Bridge, built in Alton, Illinois. It was basically a construction and engineering documentary on cable-stay designs for bridge systems with tons of great footage of the actual high-wire act construction crew and the problems they ran into along the way (which included a 500 years flood of the Mississippi River). The demolition of the old bridge was pretty good too. Excellent television.

Mandela calls Dick Cheney a dinasour.