Internal Monologue

Some thoughts on Dylan's "Murder Most Foul"

2021-04-23T22:12:00.002+04:30

Originally posted on the Expecting Rain forum:

Some thoughts on "Murder Most Foul", after over a year:

It works on me. I'm in the "it's a masterpiece" camp. I can tell you a story about why I think it is, but I'm not certain that would be the real story. ("Key West" on the other hand, does not bind me with its spell--somehow that one I look at from the outside, rather than get pulled in.)
I think the central conflict in the song is between overwhelming cynicism and evil, represented by the killing of Kennedy, and the power of music to heal wounds and offer solace in the face of despair. I think Dylan has music "win" the battle, but it's not obvious. But at the end, "Murder Most Foul" no longer refers to the assassination so hideously depicted earlier in the song: it now refers to the song itself, and it is the last shot fired in Dylan's barrage of DJ Wolfman Jack invocations against hopelessness. This is a great bit of sleight-of-hand as well as a bit of braggadocio, but who's gonna argue that Dylan can't put himself in that cavalcade? Not me.
In the first group of lines ("Twas a dark day in Dallas" through "Rub-a-dub-dub...", the assassination dominates, and the Wolfman (who often began his show with a howl) is invoked for the first time, but does not get any requests.
In the second group of lines ("Hush lil children..." to "business is business"), the theme of music being a balm or comfort is invoked, but it doesn't seem fully up to the task. The Beatles holding your hand can't possibly console us for this death, the optimism of Woodstock segues quickly to Altamont and its notorious killings. The Wolfman doesn't show up here, but the song invocations are beginning to slip in. But the Kennedy assassination imagery still dominates.
In the third group of lines ("Tommy can you hear me..." through "It is what it is...") the dark imagery dominates as we enter in and out of Kennedy's point of view. We do manage to get the radio on, but that's about it. There are a lot of song allusions, but they are in the service of the depiction of the grisly events; they don't offer solace.
In the fourth and final group of lines ("What's New Pussycat?..." through the end), the battle is really joined. After the first line, we get three lines of bleakness: I said the soul of a nation been torn away /It’s beginning to go down into a slow decay / And that it’s thirty-six hours past judgment day. In response, the Wolfman reappears, "speaking in tongues", perhaps infused with divine power. At last, the invocation is made explicit: "Play me song, Mr. Wolfman Jack..." Now the musical invocations begin to dominate. They don't dispel the pain or drive it off: many of the selections are clearly infused with the grief and violence of the situation. And the lurid, grotesque imagery still interjects itself, e.g. "Stand there and wait for his head to explode". The personification of the assassins get in one more couplet: "Brothers? What brothers? What’s this about hell? /Tell ‘em we’re waitin’- keep coming - we’ll get ‘em as well". But after a few more lines about the aftermath of the killing it's almost all song requests, and the overall balance of the final section is very tilted towards the musical invocations. The tone of the background instrumentation shifts as well, sounding more hopeful. The musicians get the last word, even if that last word is a reference to the heinous act that we've been trying to console ourselves about.

Other thoughts:

Was Dylan thinking, "Hmm...the first original song I release after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. Better be a good one!" I'd be really nervous if it were me.
I think the narrator of the song is clearly immersed in Kennedy assassination conspiracy lore, and seems to believe sinister forces were behind the act. Whether or not Dylan believes it, I don't know. Dylan is a great channeler of the American spirit: he could be just representing that angle because that's what the despair and bleakness of the act requires for the song: it's too big and catastrophic an act not to be part of something scripted by a powerful "they" (into whom the point of view sometimes steps, becoming "we"), think it's always tricky how much to identify Dylan with the narrators in his songs. But if I had to guess, it does seem that Dylan gives credence to the idea of a wider conspiracy.

Where is 56th and Wabasha? "Meet Me in the Morning" Dylan Mystery Solved

2021-02-21T08:30:00.057+03:30

Short version

The lyric is not "Fifty-sixth and Wabasha", it is actually "Fifty-six and Wabasha", referring to the intersection of old Minnesota Highway 56 and Wabasha Street in Saint Paul, Minnesota. If you listen, you can hear Dylan sing "fifty-six", rather than "fifty-sixth", particularly on the take that was released as the B-side to "Duquesne Whistle". Minnesota Highway 56 no longer intersects Wabasha Street, but from 1963 to 1974 it did intersect Wabasha Street, at what is now (in Feb. 2021) the intersection of George Street and Cesar Chavez Street in St. Paul, or possibly South Wabasha & Cesar Chavez.

Long Version

"Meet Me in the Morning" is the first song on side two of Bob Dylan's celebrated 1975 album Blood on the Tracks. In the opening lines of the song, according to the lyrics on Bob Dylan's official site (https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/meet-me-morning/), the narrator invites the listener to a rendezvous at a specific intersection:

Meet me in the morning, 56th and WabashaMeet me in the morning, 56th and Wabasha

Numerous Dylan fans have naturally wondered where 56th and Wabasha is, or if it even exists. If you do a Google Maps search for "56th and Wabasha", nothing comes up: you get sent to the town of Wabasha, Minnesota, which does not have a 56th Street.

There is a Wabasha Street in St. Paul, Minnesota:

But as you can see, it dead-ends into the state Capitol at 12th street, and never intersects a 56th street. Indeed according to Google Maps there is not a 56th Street in all of St. Paul, MN. There's also a Wabasha in Duluth, MN, where Dylan was born, but it, too, doesn't intersect a 56th street. This has lead most Dylan fans and speculators to conclude that the location of the proposed meeting is fictional, and that "fifty-sixth" was chosen for metrical, phonetic, or other reasons.

The Highway 56 Thesis

However, my colleague Brendan Dunn, a specialist in the urban geography of the Twin Cities, provided a key insight that allows for a much more literal reading:

Are you sure it’s “56th” and not “56”? From 1963 to 1974 Minnesota State Highway 56 would have intersected with Wabasha St at what’s now the intersection of George St and Cesar Chavez St in Saint Paul.

Here's the intersection in question:

And indeed, a quick checkup on the history of Minnesota Highway 56 confirms that its route has changed (http://www.steve-riner.com/mnhighways/r51-75.htm#56):

[Minnesota 56] Constitutional Route between I-90 and U.S. 52, rest authorized 1933. Formerly extended far north of its current terminus at U.S. 52. It followed U.S. 52 to Concord Avenue (now Dakota CSAH 56 and MN-156), then followed Concord Avenue into St. Paul to Wabasha.

A fire insurance map (1904-1950) showing Wabasha intersecting with Concord (thanks to dbernsey_uno at Expecting Rain for finding this):

Here's an old map (from Interstate Guide: https://www.interstate-guide.com/i-494-mn/) showing the route of Minnesota Highway 56:

And another from the same source:

And here's a map from Minnesota Digital Library (https://collection.mndigital.org/catalog/mdt:1240?pn=false#/image/1?searchText=&viewer=OSD_VIEWER) with Wabasha Street and Highway 56 labeled, and the intersection visible:

So clearly, around the time of the recording of Blood on the Tracks (September 1974 for "Meet Me in the Morning") there was an intersection of Minnesota Highway 56 and Wabasha. Could Dylan have been referring to this St. Paul intersection in the opening lines of "Meet Me in the Morning"? I argue that the answer is yes, and that the standard interpretation of the lyric is wrong: it should be "fifty-six and Wabasha", not "fifty-sixth and Wabasha", as most sources (including Dylan's official site, (https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/meet-me-morning/) have it.

What did this intersection look like?

This image, via Minnesota Historical Society, from 1969 is Wabasha Street and Channel Street, which is about about block northwest of Wabasha & Concord. Unfortunately, the image looks northeast, rather than southeast towards our meeting spot:

Would you meet Bob Dylan in the morning here?

Subsequent analysis shows it is possible that the Highway 56 & Wabasha intersection was a few blocks northwest, at what is now South Wabasha and Cesar Chavez: the streets were renamed quite a bit and there was a good deal of building re-designating going on throughout the era. If this is the case, then this 1954 image from the same source shows the intersection: we're looking south along Wabasha; Highway 56 would come in from the left about 4 blocks in the distance from were the viewer is standing:

Any blood on these tracks?

So, certainly Highway 56 and Wabasha exists. Now the question is, is Dylan singing about this junction that exists, or is he singing about an imaginary intersection on a very real street?

What is Dylan actually singing on the recordings we have available?

The most striking piece of evidence in support of the Highway 56 thesis the sung lyric from the recordings themselves. If you listen to what Dylan is actually singing, you can hear he's singing "fifty-six", not "fifty-sixth". While this is somewhat hard to discern in the version on Blood on the Tracks (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE6-uc1zr3s), it is clearer in the alternate take that first appeared as the b-side of "Duquesne Whistle" and later appeared on the 6-disc The Bootleg Series, Vol 14: More Blood, More Tracks compilation: https://vimeo.com/180303449#t=54s.

From my colleague Kevin Feely:

I’ve listened to all of the takes of the song on More Blood, More tracks and . . . I can’t hear a “th” sound for the life of me. To me it sounds very clearly like he is saying “56” especially on takes 2 and 3. I always assumed before he was saying “56th.” Amazing how Dylan can continue to surprise and delight us all of these years later.

In addition, we know that Dylan is willing to sing about highways and refer to them by number: the song and album Highway 61 Revisited attest to that.

Didn't Dyan write the words down somewhere?

Unfortunately, probably not, at least not in any source I have come across. There's a famous Blood on the Tracks notebook, but "Meet Me in the Morning" is one of the few songs not in it, according to the book Still on the Road by Clinton Heylin.

But actually, there are three Blood on the Tracks notebooks, and the answer we are looking for might be there:

The two Tulsa notebooks, catalogued simply as Notebook 5 (the coverless one) and Notebook 6 (the blue one), are undated, with few clues as to exactly when or where they were written. Almost every page of them is heavily revised, with sometimes scarcely legible scribbles above, below, and in the margins, next to the lines in the middle of pages that were presumably written first. Dylan returns to everything, writing up the sides and adding words in parentheses, or not, between the lines. He uses plain black or blue ballpoint most often, with corrections and changes in the same color. Sometimes he uses a pencil, and the legibility worsens. His words, phrases, parentheticals spill out in the same thought-go, or were maybe added an hour, a day, or months later. There is no way of telling, other than to ask him. The extent of his revising is staggering; one thing pouring out of his songwriting is the perfectionism. Even his fellow Nobel laureate W.B. Yeats’ convoluted drafts are not so ubiquitously utterly changed.
In places Dylan’s tiny printing is as tidy as if he had already planned the lines in his head, while in others he veers into a swifter, far harder-to-decipher semi-cursive. What is clear, however, is the astonishing fact that Dylan was conceiving and composing multiple songs at the same time — in the same breath, same thought. In many instances, he does not separate songs, or will do so rudimentarily, with a dash or in a parallel column on the same page. He veers from “Simple Twist of Fate” (a song initially called “Snowbound,” then “4th Street Affair”) to “Tangled Up In Blue” (also titled “Blue Carnation I” and “Dusty-Blues”) to “Meet Me In the Morning” and back again. Everything is happening in his head at once.

Oh hear it is, folks: The Dylan Archive Finding Guide! It mentions "Meet Me in the Morning" three times:

Box 18, Folder 06: “Meet Me in the Morning” typescript copyright edits (1974, Blood on the Tracks).
Box 65, Folder 01: “Meet Me in the Morning” original sheet music
Box 99, Folder 06: Small notebook 6, circa 1974. Includes lyrics to “Meet Me In The Morning,” “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go,” “Idiot Wind,” “Simple Twist Of Fate,” “Tangled Up In Blue,” “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts,” and “Shelter From The Storm.”

I'm pretty sure that compelling proof or refutation exists in these three archive items.

Oh dude, it turns out that Harvard Dylan scholar Professor Richard F. Thomas, author of Why Bob Dylan Matters, has contemplated the 56 & Wabasha crux, and he has had access to the archival materials mentioned above. Here’s what he says in his book:

Finally, for more than forty-two years, like countless others I have had in my head this version of the first verse on the album’s song “Meet Me in the Morning”:

Meet me in the morning, 56th and Wabasha
Meet me in the morning, 56th and Wabasha
We could be in Kansas By the time the snow begins to thaw

In those days before Google Maps or any Internet at all, I had no idea where Wabasha might be, not that it really mattered. It in fact turned out to be in Minnesota, where it runs through downtown St. Paul, south across the Mississippi. There is no Fifty-Sixth Street in St. Paul, but Wabasha does intersect with Fifth Street and Sixth Street, a few blocks west of Highway 61 and eight miles east of Dinkytown, the place Bob Dylan spent those sixteen months honing his musical skills before heading to New York City in January 1961. On page 1 of the blue notebook there is a different beginning to the verse, with only the ending surviving the process of rewriting:

Meet me in the morning [illegible] we could have a ball
My grandfather had a farm but all he ever raised was the dead
He had the keys to the kingdom but all he ever opened was his head
Meet me in the morning, it’s the brightest day you ever saw
We could be in Kansas by the time the snow begins to thaw

There are currently hundreds of books on Bob Dylan, the best of them clocking in at six hundred to nine hundred pages. We are only started on the long road that is the phenomenon of Dylanology. As Dylan sang on “Mississippi,” “Stick with me baby, stick with me anyhow / Things could start to get interesting right about now.”

Summary of Email Correspondence with Harvard Professor Richard F. Thomas

Unfortunately, according to Thomas, the answer is probably not in the archive, at least not in the notebooks mentioned. He thinks that the only "Meet Me in the Morning" lyrics in the archive are the ones quoted above, so probably no resolution to "56" vs. "56th" will be forthcoming from Tulsa. He did recommend I write to the archive and ask about this.
Professor Thomas agrees that you do not hear a "th", but that we can't base too much on that, because it's very possible that the "ksthand" sound of "sixth and" shifts to "ksand" in a "linguistic glide". I agree with him on this: hearing "th" would be fatal to our hypothesis, but NOT hearing doesn't prove it. Unfortunately, according to an online Dylan concordance, Dylan never sings "sixth" in any other lyric, so we can't listen and compare. (If you know of an instance, point it out!). He does sing "fourth", "fifth", and "seventh", but the consonant combination is different.
The "We could be in Kansas" line does appear as it ends up on Blood on the Tracks. This implies that the Kansas line was written first, and that "56 and Wabasha" was chosen partially to rhyme with "snow begins to thaw". If anything, this strengthens our hypothesis, because "56 and Wabasha" has a stronger Kansas connection than "56th and Wabasha".
Professor Thomas thinks calling the intersection of Highway 56 and Wabasha Street "56 and Wabasha" is weird. He thinks it would be more like "Route 56 and Wabasha". But Professor Thomas is British, grew up in New Zealand, and lives on the East Coast of the US, so I don't think he's familiar with this way of referring to roads. As a Minnesotan, I'm going to say that referring to intersections in this way is pretty typical: My high school is near 100 and Glennwood, meaning Highway 100 and Glenwood Avenue. We wouldn't say "highway" or "route" necessarily. The Mall of America is at 77 and 494 (Highway 77 and Interstate 494). The airport entrance is near 5 and Snelling Lake Road. The United States has a lot of regional variation in how roads are referenced. (In LA, Interstate 5 is "The Five", while in Seattle, it's "I-Five" and NEVER "The Five", at least when I was there in the 1990s.) (I'd be interested in other Minnesotans chiming in on this; the ones who have done so thusfar have backed my position 100%.)
The biggest blow to the theory is that Dylan's official lyric books (which have the "56th" reading) were not 100% done by others. He "had a hand" (Thomas's words) in editing them, particularly the 2016 edition, and he let the "56th" reading stand and didn't correct it. Now I don't know how "big a hand" Dylan had in the editing, so this isn't fatal to the theory. And Dylan hasn't played this song live EVER, except when Jack White came on and sang the song as a guest at Dylan's show in 2007. The audio is not of sufficient clarity to distinguish 56/56th, and in any case I would expect Jack White to sing the standard "56th" interpretation. And the lyrics on the official site do contain some huge differences from the released versions, e.g. "If You See Her, Say Hello": "If you see her, say hello, she might be in Tangier / It’s the city ’cross the water, not too far from here"

The Rail Connection

Another piece of supporting evidence: Heading south on Minnesota Highway 56 would be a plausible start to a journey from St. Paul, MN to Kansas. Though why the speaker wouldn't want to take Interstate 35, I don't know. It could be because I-35 was not yet complete.

Brendan Dunn again:

Highway 56 is more a local connector than a through route, and all the highways in that area lead generally southeast following the Mississippi. But after talking to my son, I think you’re thinking of the wrong form of transportation. The album is Blood on the Tracks, and the alternative version [is] on [the B-side of] “Duquesne Whistle”. The intersection is within a few blocks of a Union Pacific train yard on a line which leads eventually to... Kansas City, Kansas.

So one possible reading is that the narrator is inviting the listener to meet at the small business district at Highway 56 and Wabasha to get some breakfast, coffee, and supplies before hopping a freight train to Kansas.

Some Google satellite imagery shows how 56 & Wabasha would be a good meeting place if you wanted to meet in a business district before hopping a train. Google maps says the track is a 10 minute walk away, but the Wellstone Center didn't exist in the 1963-74 timeframe when this intersection existed, so it was probable a more direct route could have been taken, resulting in a 5 minute walk:

The building just northwest of the old rail yard is actually still a Union Pacific building as of Feb. 2021.

I have ordered a 1969 paper street map off of eBay. We can examine it when it arrives and perhaps see in better detail what this intersection looked like, and which of our two intersection candidates is the actual 56 & Wabasha. (Anyone with any photographs of the intersections from the 1963-74 time period, please share them!)

And where do the railroad tracks so close to the intersection of MN Hwy 56 and Wabasha St. go? Again, we turn to our American railroad history expert:

That track is part of the "Spine Line" that runs from the Union Pacific yards in Saint Paul to the Armstrong-Armourdale Yard in Kansas City, Kansas.

This strengthens the interpretation that the narrator is choosing this spot specifically because it facilitates the travel to Kansas mentioned in the next line of the song ("Honey we could be in Kansas / By the time the snow begins to thaw").

Here is a map of freight rail lines in the Twin Cities. You can see the blue Union Pacific lines (in blue) going through the St. Paul neighborhood we're focusing on:

Here's a larger map, showing the Union Pacific "Spine Line" connecting to Kansas City:

Note that at the time of the recording of Blood on the Tracks, these tracks were owned by the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railroad. They were sold to the Union Pacific Railroad in 1980.

Unsung verse in the published lyrics:

The lyrics on the official site contain an unsung verse, which contains a reference to a "station". It's not clear what kind of station, but it does suggest a possible link to railroad themes:

The birds are flyin’ low babe, honey I feel so exposedWell, the birds are flyin’ low babe, honey I feel so exposedWell now, I ain’t got any matchesAnd the station doors are closed

What about all the "official" sources that have the lyrics listed as "56th and Wabasha"?

I contend that they are in error, and that the usual convention of listing street intersections in this way has just caused people to assume that the "th" couldn't be heard. Probably there was an initial transcription error which was later repeated and has since spread to all sources (I have two official books of Dylan sheet music that both say "56th").

Also, sources like the official Dylan site have some whoppers. Take a look at "If You See Her, Say Hello" lyrics on the official site:

If you see her, say hello, she might be in TangierIt’s the city ’cross the water, not too far from here

Obviously, this is far from the "She left here last early spring, is livin' there I hear" that we actually hear sung on Blood on the Tracks. If discrepancies this large can exist, certainly we can't expect them to capture a difference as subtle as "fifty-six" vs. "fifty-sixth".

Do we have any evidence that Bob Dylan knew about Highway 56, or this intersection?

I don't have any direct evidence Dylan knew about this intersection. There are numerous places in St. Paul we know Dylan has been. In 1956 when he was a kid, Dylan and his friends recorded some songs at Terlinde Music shop, which was at 184 West 7th St., St. Paul MN, according to one of the labels on a record made there at about the same time. Google Maps says this is a 6 minute drive/27 minute walk from Wabasha & Cesar Chavez.

It is likely that Bob Dylan was familiar with Highway 56, as at the time it ran through Dinkytown near the University of Minnesota, where he was known to hang out and perform in 1959-1960. (It ran along University, one block away from the 4th Street often associated with "Positively 4th Street".) According to this, Dylan actually lived at a frat house at 915 University Ave/Hwy 56 when he started at the U of M. Here's a 1957 map showing Hwy 56 going past the University of Minnesota and through Dinkytown:

More significantly, on July 22, 1974, before "Meet Me in the Morning" was recorded or written, Bob Dylan was at the St. Paul Civic Center at a Crosby, Stills, & Nash concert. He was also at the St. Paul Hilton across Wabasha Street. Both these sites are within a couple blocks of Wabasha St. and near the candidate intersections for 56 & Wabasha. Dylan would have had to cross Wabasha Street going from the hotel to the concert and back. So it is very likely that Wabasha Street could have been fresh in his memory when recording "Meet Me in the Morning" in New York in September 1974. By this time, Highway 56 probably didn't come into downtown St. Paul, but if he took a stroll a few blocks across the river he might have seen it.

So why did nobody figure this out before?

The strength of the "ordinal + street name" shorthand convention for naming intersections is powerful, and makes the erroneous "fifty-sixth" hearing very compelling.
In the released version on Blood on the Tracks, the raucous instrumentation makes it hard to hear the "fifty-six", and listeners easily fill in the "missing" "-th" sound due to reason #1, above.
The fact that Minnesota Highway 56 was re-routed in 1974, right before Blood on the Tracks was released, effectively erased this intersection before listeners had the opportunity to come to this "Highway 56" interpretation of the lyric.
Minnesota Highway 56 was already fairly obscure at the time of the recording of this song. According to my colleague Brendan Dunn, it was likely that traffic on 56 decreased once the Lafayette Bridge opened to traffic in 1968. Indeed, I wonder if Highway 56 was obscure enough by 1974 that it could be considered one of the "back roads heading south" mentioned in "Idiot Wind".
An alternate take with a clearer vocal was not released until 2012, as the B-Side of Duquesne Whistle. By this time, the Highway 56 and Wabasha intersection was decades in the past, and the "56th" reading was firmly entrenched. The additional takes with clearer vocals on More Blood, More Tracks weren't widely available until November 2018.
I suspect that "Meet Me in the Morning"'s relative lyrical simplicity and lack of identifiable biographical detail has caused most Dylan sleuths to focus their energies elsewhere.
Uncovering the "fifty-six" hearing of the lyric requires both a great deal of Dylan enthusiasm and minute knowledge of the layout and history of minor St. Paul roads and their nomenclature. (That being said, I'm surprised no Dylan fan had looked at the 1974 map shown above that shows Wabasha and Hwy 56 plainly intersecting.)

Implications for Interpretation

As to the implications this reading has for interpretations of the song, that will be addressed in a subsequent post, (or added here later).

Additional Links

The discussion of this topic on the Expecting Rain Dylan forum

A shorter thread on the topic devoted to this particular track

Wikipedia article for Meet Me in the Morning (which as of Feb 22 2021 contains my edit with a very brief version the "Highway 56" theory.)
A history of Minnesota highways that shows Highway 56 running through the neighborhood we're examining.
The Wabasha Street Caves, a few blocks northwest of our intersection (or possibly only one block, if it turns out the South Wabasha & Cesar Chavez is the one we want). This was a cave network used by gangsters, and was also a disco in the 1970's. It is possible Dylan had these caves in mind, with their criminal connotations, when he put the meeting spot here. The actual official Wabasha Street Caves site is so retro. Serious 1994-made-with-Microsoft-Notepad vibes here.
A list of Minnesota Dylan landmarks. Neither of the St. Paul locations are particularly close to 56 & Wabasha.
An essay on Meet Me in the Morning, to which I responded in the comments with this theory.
Speculation about 56th & Wabasha on the Dylan Atlas. No way to respond with this theory.
A blog post about this topic. Back in 2013, a commenter mentioned the existence of Minnesota Highway 56, but doesn't go on to explore the implications for the song. I've submitted a comment linking to this post.
An old Google Answers session on this topic. I don't see any mechanism for adding an update.
The (wrong, according to this theory) lyrics on BobDylan.com.
I am trying to expand my search on this topic to the world of formal Dylan scholarship. Fortunately, "Wabasha" is a wonderfully distinct search term. Here's a Google Scholar search for "Dylan Wabasha". So far I haven't been "scooped" by anyone. And a lot of people might have to revise their work in the light of this new interpretation.
A brochure describing the neighborhood (see section #3 "Where Wabasha Turns").
A long thread of train enthusiasts arguing about who had the best freight line from St. Paul to Kansas City.
A train hopping story that includes going from Kansas City to St. Paul.
A video of a model railroad journey from St. Paul to Kansas City.
Pictures:

Flash lit: Battle Scars

2020-02-25T10:22:00.001+03:30

His skin was covered in old scars and bright tattoos, and he reclined languidly on the cushions as I cleaned him up. The history of his skin made no sense: The colors and lines of the tattoos were vivid and sharp, like they'd been done last week. But the scars that defaced them looked decades old: cruel and terrible, but faded with time. I couldn't figure out how and old scar could deface a new tattoo. In the warm lamplight, he looked like the vandalized portrait a saint. Vandalized first by a brilliant graffiti artist who liked trolls and turtles and runes and fire. And then again by some sick flayer with the dark art of hurtling wounds deep into your past.

If the scars still pained him, he showed no sign of it. Spent and drained, he looked beautiful through my bloodcrush eyes. No doubt when his blood wore off he'd be all dopey grins and stooped posture and middle age again. No doubt he still was all that; I just didn't have to notice it for a while, not with his blood so fresh inside me. I was regretting making him pay a quarter of my price in gold. The coins, still sitting on the sill in front of the two Hekatomb party masks, looked so paltry and dull.

The Roostnook loft was quiet in the afterglow of our session. It was my favorite room in the Velvet Den, a leftover piece of fortress from the Margavian Colonial castle that once stood here. The old crossbow slit looked out over what is now the music lounge. The entire octagonal floor was a mattress, with only one hole in the center where a ladder provided access. It was late, and the raucous Hekatomb party songs had given way to solo ballads and quiet lute instrumentals. The shiny, button-tufted leather ceiling was low enough that you couldn't stand upright.

He gently brushed my hair aside to get a better view of my face as I finished licking him clean. He was grinning the same grin as when he first saw me. His long hair looked like it had been black a decade ago. I remember he called himself Kyle, and he had said it as if I might recognize who he was. But I didn't.

"You look so beautiful doing that," he said.

I suppose the same lamplight bathing him was working on me as well. The other girls tell me I'm beautiful. Even the Mistress has said it. And I remember myself that way. But I haven't seen a mirror in years, and I hope I never do again. I can't explain the terror of that emptiness where my reflection should be. Please don't ask me to.

"I'll have to take your word for it," I said, giving him a wink. The man clearly knew his way around a vampire, so I'm sure he knew that I couldn't check for myself. Simple compliments like "You look beautiful" mean so much more now. Of all the changes since my nightbirth, this has been the hardest to get used to. I started putting my underthings back on.

"You don't have to," he said.

"Are you going to give me more of that blood?" I asked. I wasn't going to spend time with him for free, bloodcrush or no. This is a business, after all, and the Mistress looks poorly on those who let such things affect their judgment. I was pretty sure his answer would be no. I can tell when the ardor has gone out of a man.

"No," he said, "I meant you don't have to take my word for how beautiful you are. I could show you."

[I sent this from my iPhone, so please excuse any excessive brevity or typographical errors.]

--Zachary Drake

After Dinner

2019-10-02T06:24:00.000+03:30

BOOM BOOM BOOM. The knock was coming from the floor, from under one of the worn Cathyssian carpets Kyle used to try to give his Spiretonian loft some kind of coziness. Sometimes the goblin drugmongers downstairs pounded on the ceiling if he was making too much noise, but Kyle had been having a quiet evening too himself. He was sorting his latest Beastclash card acquisitions and stuffing his face with food so he’d have enough blood to feed his newly adopted vampire daughter, who’d be waking up in an hour or so. He couldn’t think of anything he’d done to annoy them. They’d been friendly since the Loot division several days ago.

BOOM BOOM BOOM. The knock came again. It sounded like they were trying to get his attention. Why didn’t they come to the door? Kyle got up and walked over to the spot on the carpet where the knock was coming from. There was a slight bump, as if there was something under the rug. Could that somehow be what was annoying them? Kyle grew suspicious. There definitely shouldn’t be a weird lump under his carpet. Had one of his magic students left something behind? Had the Inquisition installed some kind of magical eavesdropping device in his loft, but botched the job and left this lump under his carpet? Had Vile, his cat familiar killed something and left it under there for him to find?

“You know that thing where if you terrorize a mouse, you can get it to eat its own babies?” The aforementioned familiar sauntered into the room, summoned, perhaps by Kyle’s thoughts. “It’s not true,” said the cat, slipping its words directly into Kyle’s mind. “I spent all afternoon terrorizing a mother mouse, but it wouldn’t eat its babies at all. I had to eat the babies myself. They made a decent dinner. I left the mother mouse alive so I can try again later.” The cat leapt onto a bookshelf and snuggled itself between Artemesia: Divine Suzerain of Margava and The Illustrated Compendium of Couplings with Creatures Mythical and Fantastic.

“Vile,” asked Kyle, “would this mouse-baby eating have anything to do with this bump under the carpet? You know I don’t like it when you bring your torture victims in here.”

“Torture victims? Mice are pests.” Vile began nonchalantly licking his paws. Go ask the Bureau of Quarantine or the Ministry of Sanitation what they think of mice. The City should pay me a bounty for my actions this afternoon. And no, that bump under the carpet has nothing to do with me. I could tell you what it is, but you could just as easily lift up the carpet see for yourself.”

Kyle immediately stepped back. If his cat wanted him to lift up the carpet, what was underneath couldn’t be good. He climbed up on his enormous, ogre-sized sofa, extended his tattooed left index finger, and telekinetically rolled the carpet away.

Underneath was a newly installed trapdoor.

Troll bard

2019-03-13T01:17:00.001+03:30

People try to cut me down (talkin' 'bout regeneration)
Just because I'm green and brown (talkin' 'bout regeneration)
I don't need no s-s-saving throw (talkin' 'bout regeneration)
Hack my limbs and they regrow (talkin' 'bout regeneration)

This is regeneration
This is regeneration, baby

Why don't you all r-run away (talkin' 'bout regeneration)
I'm really very hard to s-s-slay (talkin' 'bout regeneration)
Unless you've got di-s-s-sintegration (talkin' 'bout regeneration)
I'll come back by re-g-g-generation (talkin' 'bout regeneration)

Jeff Sessions and Special Needs Education

2017-01-10T00:29:00.001+03:30

My wife wrote an essay about our experience and how Jeff Sessions seems poorly suited to look after the interests of special needs education:

Many people in the disability community are concerned that Sessions may fail to uphold the educational rights of children with disabilities. In a 2000 speech to the U.S. Senate titled, Education Discipline and IDEA, Sessions argued that “special treatment for certain children…may be the single most irritating problem for teachers throughout America today.” He was referring to children with documented disabilities who meet the strict eligibility criteria for receiving special education services. The underlying message in the speech is that children with disabilities who exhibit behavioral challenges should be disciplined or segregated from their peers in general education.

Time to animate a dead horse

2016-11-30T12:04:00.000+03:30

We're gettin' necromantic folks. The calamity of the probable election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency is prompting me to dust off my old political blog. Let's do what we can to save our nation from this unfolding disaster.

Just seeing if this thing is alive

2016-08-30T09:45:00.000+04:30

I'm testing.

My Kerbal Space Program flag

2015-05-04T21:32:00.004+04:30

IN VACUUM, AD NIHILUM

Federal Reserve Chair

2013-07-24T03:44:00.001+04:30

Dear President Obama: Please appoint a Federal Reserve Chair who will take unemployment (i.e. the interest of workers) at least as seriously as inflation (i.e. the interest of banks with outstanding loans). The economy is still very crummy for a lot of people and the person in this position should have some sense of urgency about that.

2013-05-18T00:38:00.006+04:30

I will be performing Dust Storm at Theatre Esprit Asia in Denver on May 30th and June 1st.

PlayHaven is hiring!

2013-05-18T00:36:00.000+04:30

I'm half-posting this just because I'm afraid my blog will "expire" or something if I don't. But PlayHaven is hiring! I mainly post to Facebook now, so if you happen to be an Internal Monologue reader who isn't already my FB friend you should find me there. I like keeping this blog around because at some point I might wish to publish things to the world rather than just my FB community.

Finally, an Update to Storyteller Dice Roller!

2013-01-23T22:31:00.001+03:30

And this blog! Apple has accepted my update to Storyteller Dice Roller, my little tabletop RPG utility app. Wow, the Blogger interface has changed a lot.

We're not supposed to talk about the guns

2012-07-20T22:47:00.003+04:30

Digby:

So I understand from the twitter scolds that we are not supposed to talk about this mass murder except to share clinical details about what happened and express condolences to the victims. The shutting down any discussion of the social, cultural and political implications of yet another horrific act of deadly gun violence is becoming more and more successful after each event.

Amen. Let's stop pretending there's nothing we can do about this. I'd like to make gun control a politically respectable issue again. I think there should be a hell of a lot of red tape involved in owning a gun. I don't think the Second Amendment refers to individuals, but rather to a "well-regulated militia".

GREE International is hiring!

2012-01-24T23:05:00.000+03:30

GREE International, is a mobile social gaming and platform company. We are trying to double in size in under 6 months. We have A LOT of money and 73 open positions. These include Programmers (Android, iOS, Javascript, Ruby on Rails, Unity3d), Build Engineers, Sales Engineers, QA Engineers, Network Engineers, Product Managers, System Administrators, 2D Artists, Web/Graphic Designers, UI/UX Designers, Marketers, Studio Directors, Copywriters, Lawyers, HR Generalists, Recruiters, Japanese Technical Translators, and people who do Customer and Community Management, Data Analysis, Business Operations (whatever that is), Corporate Development, Business Development, Business Intelligence, Public Relations, and management (Director and VP level) for most of those kinds of positions.

Must be able to relocate to Bay Area. There is a giant sucking sound of people being inhaled into the company. Apply here.

Starz and Netflix in a spat

2011-09-02T22:08:00.002+04:30

I really hope Starz and Netflix work out their differences and come to an agreement. For their sake, more than mine. If people can't get their video legitimately, that will just bolster the illegal methods. Really, BitTorrent clients are not that hard to use (or so I've heard), and the more people figure that out, the worse it will be for people who produce and distribute video content and hope to charge money for doing so. Have they learned nothing from the music industry?

Yay! California joins the national popular vote for president movement

2011-08-19T23:32:00.003+04:30

Internal Monologue has long been an advocate of this:

A national movement aimed at sidelining the Electoral College in presidential elections got a big boost Monday when Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation adding California to the list of states supporting the drive.
Brown's signature makes California the ninth state to sign on to the effort, which would hand the electoral votes of all participating states to the presidential candidate who wins the most votes nationwide. Currently, California's 55 electoral votes go to the person who wins the most votes in the state.

Note that this law only kicks in if states with a majority of the electoral college votes have a similar law.

The Electoral College is a national embarrassment and needs to be sidelined. It is a vestige of anti-democratic forces that have no legitimate place in today's polity. This is a great way to get around the EC without amending the Constitution. The latter would be very difficult to do, because states that are over-represented would be very reluctant to relinquish their unfair share of power.

The Electoral College is one of the political institutions that privileges rural, conservative interests over urban, progressive ones, because low-population states get proportionally more power in the EC than high power ones. If laws like this had been in effect in 2000, Al Gore would have defeated George Bush, regardless of how the small amount of contested votes in Florida were handled.

I do hope other states join us. It's good to hear some political good news for once!

You know patent law is screwed up...

2011-08-16T02:13:00.001+04:30

...when Google pays $12.5 billion dollars for Motorola, primarily to use its portfolio of patents in lawsuit wars.

This is a lame-ass state of affairs and doesn't benefit anyone except lawyers and patent trolls.

Invest in children

2011-08-14T08:39:00.002+04:30

The basic point of this TED talk is that at-risk children are woefully under-capitalized in our society. Early childhood intervention provides the public a fantastic rate of return that any venture capitalist would jump on immediately. This is exactly the sort of thing that will help our society be strong, and unfortunately it's exactly the sort of thing that gets cut, because the constituents lack political power.

Delightfully Morbid Statistics

2011-07-26T22:30:00.002+04:30

Here's a chart that shows what dollar value various government agencies assign to a human life when doing their cost-benefit analyses. Via Yglesias.

Some commenters reacted negatively to the very idea of cost-benefit analysis and human life. I guess my reaction to that is: "Grow up." Yes, it seems heartless and cold-blooded to place a dollar value on human life. But any safety decision we make (requiring seat belts, helmet laws, disease prevention, etc.) implicitly places a dollar value on human life. Indeed, many government policy decisions (health care, war, whether it is more important to fight unemployment or inflation) make an implicit statement about the value of human life. I think making those implicit statements explicit can help us make more just decisions.

Pros and Cons of smartphones

2011-07-25T21:54:00.001+04:30

The Oatmeal. A sample:

Sane conservatives on why we need to raise the debt ceiling

2011-07-22T01:48:00.003+04:30

The main fault line in American politics these days is not between liberal and conservative. It's between conservative and bat-shit crazy.

Conservatives have been raising the debt ceiling for years. Now suddenly right-wingers want to take the world economy hostage by threatening not to raise it. This is crazy, and weakens America.

Thank you conservatives, for speaking out against this nonsense:

Sane conservative economists recognize that not raising the debt ceiling on August 2nd would be a disaster. Sane conservatives understand that the ratings agencies will lower our credit rating if we won’t raise the ceiling, and that we have almost $500 billion in maturing treasuries that we need to roll over in August alone which, as UBS argues, is a problem [...]

Another Yglesias Quote

2011-07-16T00:05:00.002+04:30

If members of Congress think like partisans who want to capture the White House, then the smart strategy for them is to refuse to do whatever it is the president wants. The content of the president’s desire is irrelevant. But the more ambitious his desire is, the more important it is to turn him down. After all, if the President wants a big bipartisan deal on the deficit, then a big bipartisan deal on the deficit is “a win for President Obama,” which means a loss for the anti-Obama side. When Obama didn’t want to embrace Bowles-Simpson, then failure to embrace Bowles-Simpson was a valid critique of him. But had Obama embraced Bowles-Simpson, then it would have been necessary for his opponents to reject it. That’s why now that Obama has a position well to the right of Bowles-Simpson, his opponents are still against Bowles-Simpson.

-Yglesias

Quote of the Day

2011-07-13T08:08:00.002+04:30

[I]f you’re interested in labor and working conditions, you’ve got to be interested in full employment. Full employment gives workers meaningful leverage. Mass unemployment gives it all to the bosses. In strict dollars and cents terms, I think everyone is better off with prosperity than with sluggish growth. But in terms of power, mass unemployment is a boon to bosses.

-Matthew Yglesias

Amen. If the market value of a human being's labor is shitty, people will be treated like shit by their employers. If someone can say, "Take this job and shove it!", that's real power for the worker. If an employer can say, "I've got 30 people lined up ready to replace you.", that's real power for the employer. Everything else is fiddling at the margins. I'd take 4% unemployment and free agency over 10% unemployment and labor union backing me up any day of the week.

The Federal Reserve's job is to keep both unemployment and inflation low. Low unemployment benefits workers. Low inflation benefits banks and people who are holding a lot of cash. Guess which group the Federal Reserve seems to be serving better. This is one of the great moral travesties of our time.

(Yes, hyper inflation is bad for everybody. But 4% inflation might help get rid of some of our debt overhang at both the personal and national levels. Of course, as a mortgage holder, I'm not disinterested here: I'd love to have a %0-1% real rate on my home loan!)

Looks like Republicans are balking on holding the economy hostage

2011-07-13T03:54:00.002+04:30

This is a good thing:

For sheer cynicism it’s hard to top McConnell’s latest bright idea, which is essentially to pass legislation that will give the Obama administration the power to raise the debt ceiling, subject to a 2/3rds over-ride by Congress. The practical effect would be to raise the debt ceiling while allowing Republicans to vote “against” doing so with impunity.

Yes, it's a cynical ploy to make Obama look like a bad guy for raising the debt ceiling (to pay for a budget that Congress passes, of course). But it's a total cave on all the policy concessions they were trying to extort from Democrats by holding the economy hostage and threatening to let the US go into default.

I'm glad to finally see some movement on this.