El Burro Volador

“These times are so uncertain, there’s a yearning undefined

And people filled with rage

We all need a little tenderness, how can love survive

In such a graceless age

And the trust and self-assurance that lead to happiness

Are the very things we kill, I guess

Pride and competition cannot fill these empty arms

And the work they put between us, you know it doesn’t keep us warm”

- from “Heart of the Matter”, sung most beautifully by India Arie, but written by Mike Campbell, Don Henley, and J D Souther

That’s all for today.

Today is just a swirling funnel cloud.  The first and gravest source of suction is Rebekah’s court appearance.  She is testifying at a hearing (possibly as I write this) in her parents’ divorce, and I just worry about the kinds of scars this is leaving.  I can only feel a strange gratitude towards my own parents who divorced each other so cleanly, and really minimized the trauma for Sarah and I.  At the time, it was still the biggest shock in our lives, though, and with Rebekah spending a couple hours at ground zero of a much uglier proceeding, today was kind of doomed to be a bad day.

Although the adage goes that misery loves company, I do not find it so.  It seems like things are going badly today for many of my friends and family, and I  am worrying and feeling down on their account as well.  Sarah has to present her portfolio, and I know that is a mega-dose of stress for a first-year teacher – a caste that is hardly hungry for more of that particular quality.  Likewise, my friend Ezekiel’s feeling real down lately, and talking with him last night just made me realize how tough life is and is going to be for him for a while.

I have been a bit depressed myself, lately, though my troubles are not as bad as Rebekah’s or Ezekiel’s or even Sarah’s.  I have been thinking a lot about my cousin Laura, lately, for reasons I can’t explain.  And today in particular, I am riding my usual Wednesday gaming hangover – made worse because last night’s session went sour, which combines with crushing fatigue to be a real downer.

I’ll try to rally back tomorrow, which will be a lot easier if ‘Bekah’s hearing goes well.

No, smart@$$, that isn’t another one of my nicknames.  I am actually referring to a movie I watched recently.  With a title like 21 Grams, you would expect it to be lighter – or about drugs, perhaps.  It is neither.  It is one of those multiple-interweaving-narratives movies.  As is common for the type,   its perspectivewas bleak and existentialist and I found that the film ultimately left me with a sense of the futility of human endeavor, morality, life itself…

Rebekah and Z’nah stopped by yesterday, ‘Bekah more-or-less to stay and Z’nah for a nice long visit.  Clem and Z’nah had a grand old time together, parties interested in a photographic record of these canine revels can find one here.  I hope that Clemmy’s throng of South American fans won’t crash the server.

At some point, Rebekah realized that she was out of Ambien.  Since her insomnia is no joke, and since she is grouchy as all get out when she doesn’t sleep, she headed out to the pharmacy to replenish her supply, Z’nah in tow.  Out of idle curiosity, I asked whether she intended to leave Z’nah in the car or take her into the store.

“Oh, I always take her in with me,”  she replied.

I wondered if there were stores where this was not allowed, and asked, half-jokingly, whether, since Z’nah is a German Shepherd, she ever pretended that she was blind, and Z’nah her guide dog.

“No, I just try to look really pathetic.  I figure that way, people will wonder what’s wrong with me, but good manners will keep them from asking, so they’ll just leave me alone.”

Oh, that Duck of mine!

I have not had much time to tinker with my ipod recently, but it never stays the same.  The most recent changes:

What’s In

The Return of the King, soundtrack – All of those movies were truly well-scored.  It’s kind of fun to hear the film’s heroic theme as try to remove dog hair from the upholstery of castoff minivans.

A handful of Hendrix – Just the tracks from Are you Experienced? that hadn’t already made it when I added that “greatest hits” collection.

Boston by Boston – Great debut album.  Back when I was playing Guitar Hero I gained a new appreciation for “More Than A Feeling”.

The Essential Johnny Cash, Disc 1 – Where the hell is disc 2?  Anyway, this disc has lots to love.  It shows the full range of Cash’s virtues, from the playful (“Five Feet High and Rising”) to social criticism (“The Ballad of Ira Hayes”), to simple, unsentimental love songs (“Ring of Fire” and “I Walk the Line”) to the cowboy ballad (“Don’t Take Your Guns to Town”).  I’m also fond of  “Get Rhythm”, and “Cry,Cry,Cry”, so this was a good addition.

Hero, soundtrack – I recall enjoying Tan Dun’s beautiful, dreamy score to this movie, but I didn’t remember that I’d bought it ’til I found it in a stack of cds.  Intrigued, I threw it on the playlist.

What’s Out

“Sharing the Night” by Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show – I had just added one of their albums recently, mostly on the strength of the first few songs (“The Millionaire” cracked me up).  I guess I should have listened to the whole thing, and weeded out this piece of pop-country schmaltz.

“Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover” by Sophie B. Hawkins – I guess Ty was a Sophie B. Hawkins fan.  Thanks for “As I Lay Me Down”, not so much for this one.

“Dazz” by Brick – Off the recently added funk compilation.  Dazz apparently means “disco jazz” which was a name for funk which never caught on, probably because of this song.

“Mr. Cabdriver” by Lenny Kravitz – Snuck on in AJ’s mix cd.  Man, he sure looks like a rockstar, huh?  I guess you can’t judge an album by it’s cover.  I almost kept this for the sheer comedy value of  his “here we go now” which prefaces the most rudimentary guitar solo ever.  I mean, I remember Weird Al doing that something similar in one of his parodies – ecstatically calling out “Drum Solo!”, whereupon everyone stops playing but the drummer, who keeps playing the same simple backbeat for a few measures until the rest of the band joins back in.

“Sexy Eyes” by Dr Hook & The Medicine Show – Since I was now suspicious of them, I checked out the rest of their repertoire, and found this light disco dud.  No offense to the Beegees, who are instantly aware any time anyone anywhere in the world disparages disco, but it is a genre I have a difficult time enjoying, and this is the “adult contemporary” version of disco at that.

Well, those are the only alterations I’ve had time for recently.  If you keep coming around, I’ll keep you posted on stuff like this…

Rebekah stopped by yesterday morning.  Secretly, I think she enjoys the rockstar status accorded her when she returns after an overnight absence.  Clem and I follow her around like little puppies the whole time she is home.  Well, usually.  Yesterday she had Z’nah with her, of course, so Clem was a little preoccupied.  She has no fear of Z’nah, despite the fact that Z, a German Shepherd, has a size advantage, a reach advantage, is every bit as clever (I don’t say that about many dogs, mind you – Clem is an evil genius) and has a better fighting pedigree – can you think of an army that would use Boston Terriers as guard dogs?  Besides France?

Anyhow, little Clem usually does not fare too well in her tussles with Z’nah, especially when she attempts aerial maneuvers.  See, the difference in mass is such that Clem more or less bounces off of Z, sometimes in dramatic wipeout fashion.  Secretly, I think she enjoys the challenge.

Z’nah, for her part, apparently thinks Clem is a wind-up toy.  ‘Bekah noticed yesterday that whenever Clem, momentarily spent from her Sisyphean efforts to budge her larger playmate, would lay panting in the shade for a spell, Z’nah would catch her breath, then go over and touch Clemen, just once, with her forepaw, triggering another onslaught from the diminutive dynamo.  Z’nah did this again and again throughout the day.  Secretly, I think she enjoys the chance to abandon her dignity and frisk around a little bit.

In other news, it is spring, the season of misery and despair.  Well, dread at least.  Despair won’t set in until late June/early July.  Y’see, I am cursed every year to watch my lawn stay dormant and brown longer than anyone else in the neighborhood.  When it eventually does green up, typically after a grudging increase in effort on my part, things begin to go wrong.  Invariably, the sprinkler system is involved – I don’t think I remember a single year when it hasn’t stopped working at some point.  Eventually, my lawn begins to die while all the other lawns are healthy and green.  Secretly, I think it enjoys dying.  Secretly, I would be happy to watch it die.

Not that I have anything against a nice green lawn – it’s just that this particular patch of wretched sod has earned my thorough-going enmity.  Also, I think all residents of a thirsty state like mine should xeriscape – let’s save our water for things like nourishing crops or putting out our annual wild fires.  Unfortunately, my father is a lawn-nazi, and I have inherited a certain tendency to draw parallels between an individual’s ability to maintain a lawn and their competence/general worth as a citizen.

Even assuming that I could shake this off now that I am, after all, a grown-up, our thrice-damned Homeowners’ Association imposes fines for lawns that aren’t “up to code”.  Or at least they did last year, the pack of filthy crotch-pheasants.  It might be different this year, though.  As our little neighborhood of starter homes has withered under the economic downturn, young families have been replaced by renters, and a lot fewer of them are big enough busybodies to care what anyone else’s home looks like.

I recently finished A Clockwork Orangea meditation upon the relationship between the individual and society, and decided to lighten things up by reading a thriller by Frederick Forsyth.  Of the great thriller writers I have read, I think Forsyth may be the best.  Clancy is certainly the most accessible, but probably the least skilled stylist.  Ludlum is more proficient than Clancy, but not as good as he thinks he is when he launches into certain “writerly” passages – though his plots are perhaps the twistiest.  Le Carre is perhaps the best pure writer of them all, but his subtle, understated work can sometimes be short on action.  Forsyth seems to combine the lucidity of Clancy with more sophisticated plots and characterization, and indulges in more action than the subdued Le Carre.

Anyhow, I started digging into The Fourth Protocol which begins with a jewel heist and quickly spins into international intrigue (it’s cold war vintage, too, when all the best spying was done).  About 75 pages into it I got this nagging feeling of familiarity with the unfolding plot.  By 100 pages in I was sure – I had read the book several years ago!  ‘Bekah was unimpressed by this – she reads 100 books a year, and every couple years she rereads good ones, their plots having been blurred over by the hundreds of intervening books.  I read about a third that much, however, and usually retain plots excellently.  As soon as I remembered that I’d read this, I recalled just how it played out, right down to the memorable ending.

So I’ve moved on to Howard Cosell’s autobiography I Never Played the Game.   Hopefully, I won’t turn out to have read this one.  Heh.  I Never Read this Book.

It is happening again.  ‘Bekah is being tapped by an over-protective dog owner to dogsit overnight, leaving me lost, lorn and lonely.  I always feel abandoned when ‘Bekah has to sleep over at her charge’s place, which means that she will be home somewhere between seldom and never for the duration – in this case through Saturday.  What makes it even worse this time is that it is Merlyn’s dog Z’nah that ‘Bekah is dogsitting.  Z’nah!  That dog has more native intelligence, common sense, and responsibility than most latch-key kids!  Merlyn could probably just leave her his credit card and have her check herself into a hotel, where she would sit, quietly watching Telemundo to improve her Spanish when not preparing her own meals or going outside to potty.  This is the dog that ‘Bekah insists must be attended at all times, even if it means that me and Clementine must be left unsupervised.  Clementine!  Me!  With nobody watching us!  Last time this happened I was reduced to a state of howling savagery, roaming the neighborhood in makeshift garments composed of discarded bathroom mats and paper grocery bags and foraging for food – which has gotten a good deal harder now that Ella May has stopped leaving pies out on her windowsill to cool.  Clementine, meanwhile, had taken my wallet and clothes and disappeared for nearly the entire time ‘Bekah was gone, losing both before staggering through the front door in the wee hours of the morning smelling of cured meats and debauchery.

This is just an awful situation, just awful.  I certainly hope you are happy, Z’nah, you homewrecker.

Nursing my usual Wednesday morning gaming-group hangover (sadly, liquor is no longer necessary to wreck myself, merely staying out late is enough to thrash me pretty good these days), I find myself wanting to return to chronicling the adventures of our nerdy little band.  For those of you who are interested, but don’t remember the beginning of our latest story, I posted about it here.

A quick recap for the link-loathing.  Our heroes (Trellan the suave traveling musician and petty conjurer, Erasthmus the bloody-handed wanderer whose lineage bears an otherworldly taint, and Kaerdin, a gnome on the run from his own nefarious family ties), having come to Cauldron, a city in the caldera of a dormant volcano, for their own reasons, find themselves involved in the search for some children who disappeared from the local orphanage.  Their investigations lead them to the shop of Keygan Ghelve, the town’s only locksmith of note.  While there, they sense that Ghelve is hiding something, and responding to furtive signals on his part, they surprise a strange, chameleon-skinned man in his back room, and subdue him.

Our second episode, titled “Into the Darkness” picked up with their interrogation of the locksmith and their captive.  Ghelve, it turns out, had been coerced and intimidated by a band of kidnappers into providing them with skeleton keys for the locks he had made, and letting them use his shop as a means of coming and going between their underground lair and the city at large.  Ghelve’s shop, it seems was built over an entrance to the old gnomish enclave of Jzadirune (that was murder to say during our gaming sessions).

Decades ago, the gnomish artisans and magicians of Jzadirune crafted wondrous devices of clockwork and magic in their workshops below the Cauldron.  Half a century ago, however, their work became infected with a strange magical plague.  After it claimed the lives of several gnomes, the survivors abandoned Jzadirune and the entrances had been built over or forgotten.  It was into this mysterious ruin that the children had apparently been taken.

This brought us to one of the seminal moments in any chronicle, the moment when a handful of individuals, distinguished perhaps by certain unusual abilities or backgrounds, face a staircase leading down into darkness.  In that darkness lurk unknown dangers which threaten the lighted world above.  When the characters decide to descend that stairway, they become heroes.  See Joseph Campbell for more about “the mouth of the cave” in mythology.

Anyhow, our heroes decided to descend into the ruins of Jzadirune.  Within its walls they encountered remnants of strange magic, and very little was as it seemed.  At one point they stepped into what appeared to be a sunny forest glade -in the middle of an underground complex.  They encountered a fountain whose waters were illusory, a fact taken advantage of my a family of spiders, each the size of a spaniel, who attempted to prey upon they unwary.  In another room, stepping into the middle of it caused you to disappear from sight – though the novelty of this was somewhat overshadowed by the fact that one of the gnomes’ clockwork automata, gone rogue in their long absence, was trying to pulverize the heroes at the time.  Finally, they managed to corner another of the mysterious kidnappers, and used the enchantments at their command (Trellan is a worker of small magics, and Erasthmus has certain mystic abilities as well) to beguile him.  Their new “friend” willingly told them that the kidnappers were themselves mere agents for a slave ring based even further below, in the ruins of an old dwarven stronghold known as the Malachite Fortress.  After guiding them to an elevator (chains and winches – after all, this is fantasy) that descended to the fortress, their ensorceled guide found himself bound and quickly knocked unconscious.

Unwilling to descend in the elevator whilst leaving Jzadirune in the hands of dangerous kidnappers, our brave little band explored the ruins a bit further,  ultimately walking into a murderous ambush by the leader of the kidnappers that nearly claimed both Trellan and Erasthmus’ lives.  Fortunately,  the trio was able to rally and dispatch the villain, and we ended the night on a triumphant note.

I’m trying to really rock this week, but it’s hard.  So far I have made it to the gym (yay!) and I’m posting despite the fact that my home internet has crashed, so that’s a good start.  I’m trying to line up inexpensive phone service to go with the cool new cel phone I lucked into (thanks Mom!), and clean the house, and if I accomplish these things today then I guess I will have started the week off right.  If I can keep up my posting  all week then I’ll really be cooking.