Top Twelve things that the US Does Better than Europe Besides Jazz, Cowboys, and Pizza: (It should be noted that it took Tripp and Kady all of ten minutes to come up with their weak ass list, it took me less than half that to come up with mine).

12. Beer - yeah, I said it. I’ll put a pint of Rogue Dead Guy, Saranac Adirondac Amber, or Brooklyn Brown up against any swill from Germany or Prague (I’m stretching here, but I wanted a list of twelve for symmetries sake. (In fairness we really have no answer for Guiness as well).

11. Space Travel/Exploration – How many motherfucking Frenchman have been to the moon?

10. War – We fought the French (French and Indian War), the British twice (the Revolution and 1812, the Spanish (Spanish American War), Germany twice (WWI and WWII), and Bosnia. By my count that’s USA 7 and Europe 0. Did I miss any?

9. The Blues – I’ll give the English Eric Clapton, but after that every bluesman ever was a Black
American. And shame on you for sleeping on this one during the same week that PBS is airing Martin Scorsese presents The Blues. Am I the only one watching this?

8. Surfing – Can anyone guess what the shittiest continent in Endless Summer was? I’ll give you a hint – it wasn’t Africa, it wasn’t Asia, it wasn’t Australia, it wasn’t South America, it damn sure wasn’t North America, and they didn’t go to Antarctica.

7. Skateboarding – How many European kids were emptying swimming pools in the late seventies to go skateboarding in them?

6. Movies – Don’t even give me that whack “it comes down to taste” bullshit because since the early silent days through the present the US has the best and most prolific film industry in the world and that’s coming from someone who has seen (and loved) a whole lot of German Expressionist, Italian Neo-Realist, French Expressionist, and Spanish Surrealist films. In fact those movements only got on the map due to the way they either emulated American genre films or reacted against them.

5. Theatre – I hear great things about the London stage, but there’s only one Broadway and it’s world famous for a reason.

4. Bacon – Ever ordered bacon and eggs in London? I have and take my word for it it’s not a pretty sight.

3. Hip-Hop – On one side of the Atlantic we have Slick Rick (originally English I think) Soul II Soul, The Herbaliser, and MC Solaar and on the other we have (off the top of my head)(brace yourself) (working roughly south and West from NY) The Cold Crush Brothers, Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five, the Treacherous Three, the Sugar Hill Gang, Run DMC, LL Cool J, Mobb Deep, Audio 2, Doug E Fresh, the Fat Boys, Salt N Pepa, UTFO, Queen Latifah, Boogie Down Productions, JVC Force Crew, Pharoah Monch, Leaders of the New School, Tribe Called Quest, Ultramagnetic MCs (and later Dr. Octagon), Kool G Rap, the Jungle Brothers, De La Soul, MC Shan, Marly Marl, Public Enemy, NWA,EPMD, Eric B and Rakim, Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z, Nas, Bahamadia, Big L, Big Pun, Fat Joe, Gang Starr, the Beastie Boys, Mos Def, Talib Qwali, DMX, Wu-Tang Clan, Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock, Capone N Noreaga, Naughty By Nature, Schooly D, The Roots, DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, Missy Elliot, Timbaland and Magoo, The Neptunes, Bone Thugs N Harmony, Eminem, D12, Outkast, Goodie Mobb, Ludacris, Bubba Sparxx, the Hot Boys, Nelly, the Ghetto Boys, Cypress Hill, NWA, Compton’s Most Wanted, Snoop Dogg, Latyrx, Xzibit, Blackalicious, and Del the Funky Homosapien.

2. Basketball – See any NBA stars entering the European leagues lately?

1. Computing – and I’m not just talking about that guy in the late night infomercial promising that he can teach you how to operate the computer or your money back. How dominant has American computer technology been? Well let’s make a list: Mainframes (IBM), the personal computer (IBM), (the operating system on 98% of the world’s computers (Microsoft), the operating system that it ripped off (Apple), the iPod (Apple), and the internet (Al Gore).

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Thank heaven for the business trip ending early. I thought I was going to go insane. Thankfully, I only had to work eight days in a row instead of the original twelve days.

Being on the road does strange things to your head, especially when you are working long hours and have little free time. You start to think up crazy things. Take for example my new hypothesis: the half-life of getting over a relationship is .25 times the number of months that you were together. So if you were with someone for 8 years, it will take you 2 years to just get half of the damage done to you out of your system. As with all things, the pain never really goes away, hence the use of the half-life system. Think about it. It almost makes perfect sense.

Why the hell do I think about these things?

I think it all has to do with San Francisco. In the novel of my life, San Francisco would be personified as my antagonist. I tend to lump a good portion of the last few years and throw it all into my hatred of that city. Is it justified? Certainly not, but it works for the time being.

But when I went to San Francisco last Saturday, on the drive in I started to appreciate certain aspects of the buildings, certain secrets that I knew about the city, and the way it feels to walk around it. My rush of hatred soon followed, as the people were as awful as ever, and I was frighten by the shear number of people who panhandled with signs that basically said “I have AIDS, so give me money.” (I counted at least 20 people with these signs in an hour and a half. I’m not debating whether or not they had AIDS, because I’ll never know, but it seemed too high of a number for it to be a coincidence. It reminded me of a few years ago when many panhandlers had signs that said something like “Why lie, I just want to get drunk.”)

So anyways, I was again put into a bad mood, which quickly became a terrible mood when the Hot Hot Heat show I was going to that night was moved from the Crest Theatre in Sacramento all the way across town to the Boardwalk in Orangevale. On the extended drive my mind moved even closer to insanity, as I started to think that there was no place for me anymore in Northern California. I mean, almost all of my good friends from the area either moved somewhere else or else we don’t talk anymore. Sacramento started to look different to me. It wasn’t my home anymore.

But much like the Promise Ring show last year changed my view of LA and Gameface’s album Always On saved my life last Christmas, the Hot Hot Heat show saved my perspective of Sacto. After the fifth song, the lead singer professed his love of my humble city, saying something like “Sacramento isn’t like other cities, where people act like they own the world and are pretentious fucks. You people are laid back. You guys are cool, and don’t give a fuck what everyone else thinks of you.” And that put Sac back into perspective for me. Sanity was regained. I was proud again of my hometown. If Canadians who travel in and out of cities every night can pick up the vibe of Sacramento that quickly, then my belief about my hometown has been true all along.

?Viva Sacramento!

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there are just some times when you dread. when you end up with some sort of lump inside somewhere and you cant think about anything until whatever is causing the lump is gone.

focus. gone.

well, that was me this morning. im better, im moving on with my day. and before i start getting emails and ims about people worrying over me – its not me and it seems things are mostly ok.

but i hate that kind of pause on your day.

and i refused to let it creep by without making a note of it somewhere. (somewhere? here. there is no other place.)

in other news – you wanna be smarter? check this out – mit’s open course ware. over 500 courses from mit, free on the web for you to wade through and learn from. uber-cool. as if i need more resources to learn from…

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so its orientation week. man am i eating good. well, that is, since i have to teach the language now. had pizza for the first time in a year yesterday for lunch, a lot of it. and today a ton of chinese, the first time since the two times i got to eat it in madrid in the past year. i just hope my stomach can take the oldschool.

so we were talking randomly during lunch, and a couple of the guys and myself mentioned how we’ve lost weight here in morocco. yeah. i have zero percent body fat. not that i was ever chubbsy, but now i am a freaking desert warrior, a lean, lean, lean killing machine. or teaching machine.

i finished getting my second episode of fraggle rock. i love this show, especially because it hasn’t lost its magic. thundercats and he-man… not so good from my twenty-something perspective. fraggle rock, still suh-weet.

other than that, travis talked me into doing friendster last week, and now its almost more fun than dragonrealms. almost. its fun.

peace

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an e-mail i wrote today:

i’m not quite sure if you’ll remember me; in your line of work i know you deal with so many people. it’s petunia – i went through counseling with you for i think about 1/2 a year when i was doing grad school at w&m. my mother is a cancer patient and i was having a hard time dealing with it, and had panic attacks. you got me started on paxil, which has truly been life-changing to me.

so i owe you a huge thank you. i probably said it then, but i’d like to say it again now. my mom began hospice care about 9 weeks ago, so basically the point i’ve been fearing all along is imminent. you taught me how to try to handle my panic – i still have the folded, weathered cream-colored piece of paper you gave me with the AWARE method on it. i still go through those steps.

i wish i could say i’m doing perfectly well coping with my life right now, but i am not. i haven’t been in counseling since i saw you during school, and am hastily trying to remedy that now. in a funny it’s-a-small-world twist on things, VL is now the schol psychologist at the high school, where i have been an english teacher for three years. it was talking to her yesterday and today that sparked the mention of your name, and led me to write to you tonight.

things that came out in counseling with you, and the introduction of medicine in the treatment of my depression have made all the difference in the world in the last 5 years of my life. it hasn’t been a bowl of cherries, but i have truly been able to grow so much closer to my family and enjoy the time i have had with my mother so much more than i would have been able to do without your help.

so with my heart i thank you for what you did for me, and what you have surely done for others, and what you are no doubt still doing now through your work. we did not meet for a huge amount of time, but the amount of positive change that has come into my life because of that time is truly an amazing gift.

i owe you more than you can probably ever imagine.

with thanks,
LH

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i took kady out for a drink last night, as she has just moved into town. i needed to get out of the house and try to stop spinning from the weekend.

we went to ‘good luck’ which is always nice. it good, we sat around for about an hour and a half and chitchatted.

the highlight was deciding that there were very very few things we did better than europe (which i forced her to agree included the uk).

it took us about 10 minutes to assemble the list: jazz, cowboys and pizza.

pretty pathetic. but everything else they either clearly do better or is so close it becomes subjective. (movies, literature, music, food, government, sex, art…these are just a few of the things we discussed to arrive at our above list.)

* * *

i would like to add that i have never ever seen smog like i see today. imagine waking up on a foggy lake, walking out of your cabin and watching fog and clouds roll down the mountainside. then take that same fog and clouds and pretend its smog and youre in la. its really gross. unbelievably.

also, someone new is vying for my spot of most hated in the program. i dont like naming names like this, so i wont. most of you know who the current recordholder is. now im just getting tired of someone who cries a lot to get things their way and then when they get them says ‘oh, that way wont work. see ya.’ its fine to get things to work out to suit you. but if youre going to fucking open your mouth about it, you make damn sure you will be there on the follow through. ill stop bitching, its not attractive. you can ask me privately if you really need to hear more.

* * *

i learned this weekend how its not just me that is addicted to checking the site. matthew and roxy check it over 5 or 6 times a day and i am reasonably confident that the three of us are not alone in this addiction. so im trying to provide more content for you to eat. read. whatever.

i figured out this afternoon how much i make hourly for my school position. factoring in my tutition reimbursement, i make roughly 100 an hour. damn im good. and lucky.

best thing read in the last 12 hours? first page of “the losers” #3. its a new vertigo comic series about a rogue bunch of cia operatives. jenson, the suave hacker, has entered an office to steal sercurity plans. this was done by pretending to be a mantainence technician. his cover gets blown and #2 ends with him surrounded by guards. #3 opens with him proclaiming to be telepathetic. he states ‘that kid in akira? got nothin’ on me.’ he then points his fingers like a gun and says ‘bang’ and a guard gets shot. repeat. then the rest of the guards lie down. turns out there was a sniper in the building across the street. very clever. and you cant beat funny situations and nods to akira.

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tripp, jokes about our ages will never go away. you will always be a dirty old man. and i will probably look underage until..well, until i’m at least your age.

glad the mraz fans keep on tracking you down. what i don’t understand is how they find you. did they search for ‘i hate jason mraz?’ i’ve still only heard a song of his once. my honest reaction was ‘this is bad, who listens to this shit?’ and the answer? the young girls, about my age.

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