Emotion, Elasticity and Paucity

The last 45 minutes has been personally significant. I came home from work (which evidently is a bastion of out-of-the-loop-ed-ness and "what was that?"), fixed a snack (crackers and cheese) and a cocktail (The Fifty-Fifty Cocktail, from The Savoy Cocktail Book) and turned on a rerun of The Daily Show, as I am wont to do.

It was the May 3rd episode, featuring an interview with Peter Bergen, recent author of the book Manhunt: The Ten Year Search for Bin Laden From 9/11 to Abottabad.  As I sat and watched, I was in a pretty good mood - as I always am.  Jon Stewart is (no matter what he says about it) the foremost voice of critique of the 24-hour cable news culture in America.  Bergen, who is doubtless the most well-informed person outside of the current administration about the killing of Usama Bin Laden, pretty clearly stated that...

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Update: 1/10/13 - I have no idea what the Bergen interview clearly stated, but here - you should watch it, because i trust my then-self:

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The Daily Show with Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Peter Bergen
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Thunder...THunder...THUnder

THUNderSNOW! Whoaaaaaaaa....

Have any of you ever seen thundersnow? Last night on the news the weatherman was talking about it and i was sort of like, yeahsurewhatever, but this morning at 5:24 am Omaha was racked (wracked?) by thundersnow and it was truly a sight to be seen. Blizzard-like snow conditions alongside the booming and crackling of a thunderstorm.

Because Rex Grossman can only occasionally make it through the night these days without having to get up and pee i was up at 3:40 & 4:45 at which time there was literally no snow on the ground and minimal sleet. An hour later (after the thundersnow had started) there was at least a foot and a half of snow on my sidewalk and apocalyptic signs all around...

Seeing the thundersnow was like this world-altering sort of moment, where you sort of think you know how things work, but now rules are being broken and you just have to accept them. It was a big snow storm, but then occasionally, interruptively, the sky would boom & proclaim a thunderstorm... but the snow & wind would continue. It was a very strange thing. We're most of the way dug out, though tomorrow is another snow day for almost everybody... The sight was truly mesmerizing. Two natural phenomena that simply don't belong together working together to impress me... Man i'm a lucky guy...

Seeger Session

Tonight i went with my parents & brother Andy to what turned out to be, i think, one of the best five concerts i've ever seen in my life. It was Bruce Springsteen at the Bradley Center, playing mostly from his new Seeger Sessions CD, which is covers of Pete Seeger songs. The show was high-spririted, featuring 17 musicians onstage and one of the least cynical events i've ever seen.

Imagine a show where the closer is "When the Saints Go Marching In" and a group of 4 middle-schoolers in front of me (who entered normal, pissy, stupid middle-schoolers, not some home-schooled variety) unsarcastically singing along with a song whose 1st verse is:

We are climbing, Jacob's Ladder/yeah we are climbing higher and higher./We are climbing, Jacob's Ladder/We are brothers and sisters all.

A 12-year-old, with moppy hair, who when he first came in was only concerned with looking cool & looking bored, was up and down for every other folk song & loudly sang along with "We Shall Overcome". I knew a few of the songs (mostly i know Pete Seeger's Songs for Children), and could sing along with the rest, because like most good folk songs, you can catch on pretty quick. I loved how diverse a crowd could get excited about gospel music, civil right songs, and a lot of damn good instrumentation. The whole crowd continued to sing a chorus over and over when Bruce & Company left the stage before their encore... I half expected everyone to hold hands & sway when "We Shall Overcome" came on. I think if the Boss had suggested it, that's just what would have happened. It was such a great show. One of those brief moments of hopeful elation where you think maybe a mass of people as large as a stadium crowd can 'get it' all at once, can feel together, if only for a short moment.

Then, in the men's room on the way out a guy farts as he's peeing & 4 or 5 other guys, seemingly complete strangers make fart jokes at his expense for the next minute and a half. *sigh* . but at least for a moment...

Bad Umbrella Day

So, it's a swirly-winded, rainy day in Chicago. The walk home featured rain from all directions, and impassible puddles strategically placed to ensure soaked socks. All in all, it's a miserable day for walking home. To illustrate this (which i can't), two blocks south of my apartment i discovered the handle of an umbrella, with no actual umbrella attached (i imagine the cover section of an umbrella {a red one, i think} flying whimsimically through the treetops of Hyde Park, never again to deign to descend to earth...) and pictured the poor sot (sop?) holding just the handle as his umbrella top flies away. Sad rain stories all around.

My walk home featured several umbrella inversions, which, as it turns out isn't overly distressing for my newly purchased Walgreens umbrella. Evidently, my umbrella has an advanced technology that allows it to be inverted (converting it into a useful tool for water collection if stranded on a desert island), but easily changed back into an umbrella by closing and reopening it. Most umbrellas i've owned before this one seem to be permanently changed into a 'water collector' because the flimsy aluminum shafts are bent to hell by the wind.

Walking home also gave me an opportunity to show off my amazing leaping ability, from hopping over small puddles, to huge leaps off of curbs, to complex multiple jumps, kicking off of stoops & fences to avoid particularly long puddles. When i jump, i imagine myself floating gracefully over & landing eloquently (think Jackie Chan or Spiderman), but i'm sure the person behind me on the street sees Drunken Penguin or Club-Footed Gorilla... But i do enjoy it.

Random Momentary Elation (RME)

Once in a great while, a brief moment comes along in my life when suddenly everything seems alright... All my looming problems suddenly have solutions, the sun looks sunnier, my thesis has a thesis... Things seem great. Today this moment lasted from 4:36pm - 4:51, a longer period than such a feeling usually lasts for me, but i was biking home, waving at cursing motorists & smelling the fresh spring dumpsters of Hyde Park...

But now i'm home, and after delaying the Real for an hour with the first episode of Lost (thanks Eric & Bethany) i am rather back to feeling nervously content, happily trepidatious and not a little swoomy. But, this afternoon's RME is not utterly gone from my life, i still have the memory of it and the hope of another such moment soon... now, if i can just remember what the line after "Zombies are good to think with..." is.