The Ozone Shack

Thorpe

2012-02-23T00:18:00.000-08:00

This is the most recent chapter of the... novel I've been working on. Since I've had the opportunity to get some feedback, this chapter is about a first-and-a-half draft, while the rest is probably somewhere around a half draft or skeleton draft at best. I've given this novel the working title of "The Great Concert of Mr. Jimmy Jangles." It's based on a short story that I wrote over a year ago, which I believe I posted in some capacity. Expect it to be finished in a year that starts with a 2.

At the bus terminal in Tubb’s Ferry, Eddy Sem and I sketched a picture of Thorpe on a pad of paper we traded for with a pack of Pyrite Pete cigarettes. Neither of us were particularly adept at drawing, so I’m not sure how close we got to capturing his likeness. If he had a moustache or a telltale scar, we observed, this would be a lot easier. But instead all we had to work with for this two man composite sketch was a two year old memory which, like the acumen of our minds, was slowly rusting over time.

“You think we should draw a mustache on him, on the off chance he’s grown one?” I suggested. Eddy Sem looked flatly at me over the arm rest. “Alright, fine, we won’t draw a mustache on him.”

We drew him as best we could: the gaunt face, thick eyebrows, look of self-assurance, and – we decided it would be better to include it than to leave it out – that stupid knit wool hat he always wore.

“Excuse us,” we would say as we walked up to passersby outside the bus terminal, “have you seen this person? No, you haven’t? Excuse me sir, have you seen this person? No? Well, he’s a friend of ours from a long time ago; we think he’s in this part of the world.”

The truth was we didn’t really know where he was. This was just the last place we knew he was going. He could have been in the city of Tubb’s Ferry, he could have been wandering around the surrounding desert, or he might not be in the area anymore. The idea to look for him had only occurred to us when we found out that the bus to the City of Gutters had a connector in Tubb’s Ferry. He certainly wasn’t important to our plans. We wanted to find him more out of curiosity, to tell him we missed him, and to tell him, yes, you are an asshole for not sending us so much as a postcard since you joined that religious compound.

We asked a man walking into the bus station who was handing out pamphlets explaining the Synchrokineticist philosophy. The title read “Submit to the Will of the Sapient Universe.”

“Listen,” said Eddy Sem, “we’ll take one of the pamphlets for your Sapient Universe if you give this picture a good hard look and tell me if you’ve even maybe seen this guy once.”

“The will of the universe is not that I help you find this man; it is only that I distribute these pamphlets to educate,” he said.

“Well your Sapient Universe told me it would be a big help if you did.”

“That’s not how it works, you’re not told, you’re simply moved to act.”

“That’s a load of crap,” I interjected. “Come on,” I said to Eddy Sem, “let’s not waste our time with this jackass.”

“There is no freewill!” he yelled as we walked away. “We’re only small moving parts of a single conscious entity! Accepting will ease the pain of existing within it!”

We kept walking.

The events leading to Thorpe’s disappearance began with the proposal of ostrich herding. The idea was to revitalize the Grakley River Valley’s ranching sector despite desertification. And they couldn’t do this with cattle because herding cattle in the full-blown dustbowl that the region was projected to become in a matter of years would be unfeasible. So the plan was to take after the nomads in the desert near Tubb’s Ferry and adopt extensive ostrich herding, with the idea of entirely displacing cattle.

Thorpe told us about this one night on Lazlo’s roof over a case of Bloater’s Lite. Three days a week he was taking work-study courses at the agricultural college about an hour away in Beslém, where the plan was hatched by scientists and a couple foolhardy entrepreneurs.

“The idea makes a lot of sense, when you think about it,” he told us. “Unlike most birds, they produce red meat, and they have the highest weight gain to feed ration of any land animal. Plus it’s in their nature to herd, and they can eat anything. I mean, anything, they can practically sustain themselves off dust. And the eggs are huge. And did I mention they can survive in heat and cold and –”

“Yeah but, they’re ostriches,” I told him. “They look funny.”

“And who’s going to buy one of those eggs?” asked Eddy Sem.

“And what about their poop?” asked Lazlo. “They probably poop a lot.”

“No more than cows,” said Thorpe, “but that’s not the point. The point is, everything is drying up here, and with that new hydroelectric dam they’re about to build upriver-”

“Wait,” I said, “what hydroelectric dam?”

“You know, the one they’re talking about on the news, the one that’s going to generate a jillion kilowatts and sling twelve rows of pylons over the town? It’ll be finished in a year or two?” Silence. “Not ringing any bells?”

“No.” We all shook our heads.

“Well anyway, this place is turning into a desert, and faster than we think. So, that’s why I’m going to Tubb’s Ferry to help out with this study that could maybe revitalize our economy.”

I couldn’t tell if I was more bothered, in that instant, by the way he told us he was leaving, or the fact that he was obviously regurgitating a line –“revitalize our economy” – which had been cooked up by the ideas backers.

“Hold on a sec, what do you mean?” asked Lazlo.

“Yeah, about that. I was trying to think of a good way to tell you guys but I couldn’t. Basically, as part of this study or business venture or whatever you want to call it, I’m going to be working on a farm somewhere near Tubb’s Ferry, raising ostrich. And then in a year I’m going to come back here and try to start a ranch, an ostrich ranch, right here in Chipichango. I’ll only be gone a year.”

“Come on,” I said, “you don’t actually think this is going to work? And besides, you’ll be out in the desert, that place is the armpit of the world.”

“Well actually,” interjected Eddy Sem, “I think we can safely say that the City of Gutters is the armpit of the world. It’s literally built on top of a swamp.”

“Wouldn’t that technically make it the sweaty ballsack?” asked Lazlo.

“Oh, and Chipichango is any nicer?” said Thorpe. After having been to the City of Gutters, I realized that he did have a very valid point. “Maybe you guys should think about doing something with your lives too.” Did he really have to go there?

“Well,” said Eddy Sem, “Lazlo here fixes up cars pretty good and me and Mosh, the paint we mix is excellent, I don’t think anyone can beat it. Plus we’re really good at looking busy.”

“Look,” said Thorpe, “I shouldn’t have put it that way. I’ll only be gone for a year and when I get back maybe we can even ride around on the ostriches. That would be cool, right?”

We finished our respective beers in agreement. Riding an ostrich through town would be pretty cool.

But instead, over two years later, here we were riding a cramped bus through the desert to what was either the world’s armpit or its sweaty ballsack. There were at least ten more people in the bus than there were seats and Eddy Sem’s frame took up two so I was squatting in the aisle.

We passed our sketch of Thorpe up and down the bus. On it, we wrote “We are looking for this man. His last confirmed whereabouts were somewhere in Tubb’s Ferry two years ago. He may be affiliated with a Korgarian monastic order. Please pass this around the bus and if you know anything, talk to the big guy with the red beard. You can’t miss him.” We passed it to the back of the bus first, and then when it cycled back to us, we passed it up to the front. It only got three rows up before someone turned it into a paper airplane.

I got up and snatched it out of the air, nearly falling on my face as I tripped over a passenger then decided it would be easier to just make an announcement to the entire bus. Everyone was so loud that no one past the first few rows heard me, and then after I got done other passengers on the bus decided that it would be fair game for anyone to go to the front of the bus and make a speech. First a man got up and gave an impassioned speech denouncing cultural imperialism from the Sphere of the Municipality. Then the same man we ran into at the bus station who was handing out pamphlets for Synchrokineticism walked up to the front, and gave a half-hour long sermon on the benefits and simple joys of accepting our lack of free will and how it would bring meaning and harmony to both our lives and the Universe. It turned into four hours of what was essentially open mic night on a hot, sweaty, overcrowded bus.

Two hours in Eddy Sem tapped me on the shoulder. “Don’t look now, but I think the woman two rows behind us is about to give birth.”

I waited a second before looking back. “Well she’s not about to anymore. She’s having the damn thing.”

“Great, just what we need, another passenger.”

“Is this… normal?” I asked.

“I don’t think that’s a question we can ask ourselves anymore. A lot of weird things have happened.”

The bus driver seemed to think it was normal. When I waded through the aisle and tapped him on the shoulder to tell him that maybe he should consider pulling over and contacting some paramedics, he first told me not to talk to the bus driver because it was very distracting, and when I persisted, he told me that he had a schedule to keep. I walked back to my squatting spot in the aisle. Eddy Sem was right. We left the realm of normal a long time ago.

Someone who seemed competent enough to be a doctor stepped over me and attended to the woman. He lay her down on one of the seats and threw a blanket over her. I had no intention of looking back and witnessing the miracle of life, but I sure as hell could smell it. After an hour and a half a little screaming new passenger came out, announcing his presence to everyone. There was a frantic call to see if anyone had plastic shopping bags, and when he found some he bagged the afterbirth solids, tied them up, and tossed them out the window. As for the liquids, he sacrificed his own flannel to mop them up, which he tied up in a third plastic bag.

For some reason, all I could really think about was the fact that there were two bags of afterbirth lying on the shoulder of the road. And woe betide anyone who bothered to see what was inside.

Thorpe left on a Wednesday. I remember this because the night before he left was the night of his one-hit-wonder bowling career. Although I am probably a little biased, Chipichango once had the best damn bowling alley in the Upper Grakley Valley. Unfortunately, it has since closed down after an incident following a lawsuit in the early days of the stray current when a bowling ball was shot out of the ball returning machine at an alarming velocity and broke a woman’s back, nearly paralyzing her. Every Tuesday night, they would have Two Dollar Tuesdays, where you could get three games, a pair of shoes, and a bottomless soda for two dollars. Pitchers of Bloater’s Lite were an additional two dollars, meaning each of us would end up spending about six bucks.

Since this was a weekly event, we were all really good, except for Thorpe, who, when you look at how much experience he had, was terrible. Even Lazlo, the clunky handed one, could consistently bowl over 175, and got his share of wins. Eddy Sem and I would break 200 on a semi-regular basis. But Thorpe was just awful. At least awful for how often we played. He would break 100 maybe one in six games, and a score below 70 wasn’t unheard of. But even though he didn’t play like one, he took it like a champ. Every time he threw a gutter ball or shot it straight through the middle of a seven ten split, he would just shake his head and force a smile as he walked back to his seat. Meanwhile Eddy Sem and I would be draining strikes and Lazlo would at least be picking up spares. We never joined a league, never played anyone else, we just kept the game between the four of us, for three games, every Tuesday night.

On Thorpe’s last night, we played the standard three games for two dollars. The first game went as expected. Eddy Sem won in 214, Lazlo took second in 191 and I took a close third in 188. Thorpe bowled a 90.

Then on the first frame of his second game, he bowled a strike. Nothing unusual. But then he got another one, and a third to get himself a turkey. I had never seen his face look so focused or seen him move with such technical perfection. I don’t know where it came from, but underneath the awkward and inept bowler that was Thorpe had emerged this fine athletic specimen.

He ended up bowling a 275. “Alright guys,” he said after he hit a strike on the last frame, turning around before the ball even hit the pins, “I’m going for it. This game, it’s going to be a perfect game.” And I really thought he could do it. But, judging from his almost-spare in the first frame, it was going to be one of Thorpe’s typical adventures in mediocrity.

He bowled an 88.

“Well,” Eddy Sem told him as we walked out to the parking lot, “you had a moment with greatness, and it decided you weren’t good enough to keep around.” He patted Thorpe on the back. “Good luck out there. Bring me back an ostrich skull.”

“I’ll bring back a whole herd. And I’ll have the biggest ranch in Chipichango.”

“Yeah we’ll see about that.” We all shook his hand right there in the parking lot and then he drove off. It was the last time we would see him for a long time.

When we got off the bus in the City of Gutters we realized that for the time being, we weren’t going to find Thorpe. It was a long shot anyway and we had other business to attend to. According to the information we had from Gampo, at 3575 Vitamin Street, Unit #2202, were the Klokwerk twins, supposedly distant relatives of mine and Lazlo’s, who knew the schematics for how the Ohmforcers were put together and how they could shut down the grid, permanently. And that was all we knew. Here we were, now in a second endless, sprawling city on the far side of the world, and we didn’t even have a map.

“We should give Lazlo a call, tell him we got here,” said Eddy Sem.

I reached into my bag and pulled out Lazlo’s right shoe and held it up to my ear. I visualized somewhere on the other side of the world, his left shoe emitting a barely audible hum, and the connection these two shoes had. Then I heard his voice.

“Mosh! How’s it going? You get there alright?”

“Yeah, a couple of cramped and sweaty bus rides later, we’re here, about to go looking for the Klokwerk twins.”

“Great, great, yeah, hopefully they can do something, because right now I don’t think Leyna and her friends can.”

“Wait,” I said, “you found Leyna?”

“Yeah, she’s right here, actually, you want to talk to her?”

“No, I really don’t. In fact, I could give you a long list of other things I would rather do.” I pulled the shoe phone away. “He’s with Leyna,” I said to Eddy Sem, who rolled his eyes in disapproval.

“How did you find them? Or, I guess, where did you find them?”

“They’re just over the border in Noyo, living in an abandoned power plant. I got a tip from a travelling shaman to go in that direction and then she actually found me. She found my truck too. She and her crew are trying to figure out what to do next to find the rest of their people. I’m a little incapacitated right now though, but let me know anything you find out, right away, so I can tell her.”

“What happened to you? You step on a thumbtack or something?”

“Well, actually, if you really want to know, I got shot.”

“What the hell have you been up to? She didn’t shoot you, did she?”

“No, Leyna is taking care of me, fixed me up as best she could. There was a bit of a border conflict going on and I guess I got in the middle of it. But I’m fine. I’ll be walking in a month or so.”

“You can’t trust her. If you don’t remember, she knocked us out with a rifle butt and left us bound and gagged in the middle of a cornfield.”

“Yeah, but she could have shot us if she wanted. She’s just doing what’s best for us.”

“Well that makes me feel a whole lot better. I’ll tell you what we find out and I’ll trust you use discretion in what you tell her.”

“Good luck.”

“Hey, you need it more than I do, with the company you’re keeping.”

“Goodbye Mosh.”

“Goodbye you crazy barefoot freak,” I said. But I think he had already hung up, if you can call it that.

While I was on the shoe, Eddy Sem had a chance to look at a map. We were a good forty blocks from Vitamin Street. The address we were looking for was apparently deep in the Ghetto. We decided we had enough busses for one lifetime and walked the whole way.

The city lived up to its name. On either side of the street, there were two-foot wide gutters, flowing with greenish-brown, foul smelling water that poured into fetid cisterns or shallow sunken canals every few blocks. This was, apparently, to keep the city from sinking into the swamp atop which it was built.

But people were coming from all over, to this city that could only have been built on a dare. Once you ignored the sewage and swamp gas in the streets, it was an intriguing city, with open air markets and beautiful architecture spanning millennia.

This city is the oldest continually inhabited settlement in the known world, with archaeologists dating settlement back eight thousand years. There are some freestanding structures thought to predate the last apocalypse, when this area was grassland and not a swamp surrounded by desert.

The swamp this city is built upon is the result of the Arrienga River terminating in the middle of an arid basin, forming a massive inland delta. The first settlements were built on an island in the northwest portion of the delta. As it expanded, its inhabitants gradually reclaimed the marsh, building their city on increasingly unstable ground until it was only thanks to the miracle of engineering that was the gutters that the buildings didn’t sink right into the mud.

As we approached the old city from the west you could see all of history slammed together in the architecture. We passed through the gate of the old city, which was wide enough to accommodate a four lane road, complete with the ever present gutters, passing through the middle. These walls had withstood fifteen years of siege in the protracted conflict that halted the Burzati Empire’s expansion, where all of Ergatchi III’s army was eventually driven into the swamps and routed. Fifty years later the city would be the center of its own empire, which would swallow up the fragments of the Burzati Empire and expand as far as the Sombelhos Mountains. It was also atop these walls that the great spy Aronnis Kellik was executed by firing squad. According to the story, the hole in the wall four hundred feet north of the main gate is where the execution was carried out. Kellik’s blood seeped into the stone and couldn’t be removed by any means, so the Governor Commandant ordered it to be blown up.

Inside the gate was one of the City of Gutters great market squares. Again, two streets had been awkwardly fitted through the middle of the square, and met at a roundabout in the middle, where cars, colorful busses, bicyclists and rickshaws all competed for the right of way. The crowd seemed to be composed not of individuals but of a colorful current, flowing through the square with a single driving force, eddying around market stands and picking up momentum in the thoroughfares, faces surfacing for an instant and then once again being pulled under. Casting a shadow over it all was the senate building, which had been where a senate of some sort had convened since the Gutters Empire when it was seat of what was the world’s largest superpower for almost five hundred years, and now housed the legislature for the Gutters Municipal Sphere. On the top was the golden statue of Kocho the Great, first emperor of the Gutters Empire, riding his chariot drawn by six war moose. The buildings lining the square had once been the scene for a vibrant culture of bohemian artists, musicians and poets, but they were slowly being taken over by offices of the bureaucracy. Yet still, extravagant frescoes covered their walls. There were angels as depicted in both the Retro-Aveyenism and Korgarian traditions, interacting with heroes of old and cultural figures of the last century. Some were covered in layers of graffiti and some were oddly pristine. There was St. Arrploé being tarred and feathered while Suaxzok, the old god of livestock, watched with a sinister grin. Strange.

We passed the temple of Tiehnaqt, the iteration of one of the most important members the One Thousand and Twenty Three who accompanied Kirk Korgarian on his pilgrimages. It was here that he had been killed after he refused to kneel before the emperor. Two hundred years later, after Korgarianism had become, if not mainstream in this part of the world, at least tolerated, this temple was erected on the site. I had always found it strange that he even let the imperial guard seize him. The man was skilled in the Dynamo tradition. He could reportedly turn his beard into snakes and cause explosions larger than what is capable with our greatest weapons simply by clapping his hands. But instead, all he is reported to have done was “in a single instant where my toe touches the Earth, it feels more greatness than you could ever hope to achieve. I only wish to help you understand.” He then allegedly planted his staff into the ground and put his hands up, and was then restrained by the imperial guards and decapitated on the spot. Although it was planted in what appears to be stone, his staff sprouted into a tree. The temple had no roof – it was simply four walls enclosing a courtyard in which the tree still stands. But the most miraculous part of this story is that the next day, the emperor took off his shoes and never put them back on again. He devoted much of his energy to studying the Dynamo School and even invited prominent Dynamo Monks to the court. This was, unfortunately, energy that should have been spent ruling the empire, and it was during his reign that the empire began its long, slow decline.

Only a few blocks later was the Retro-Aveyenism Holy See, with a string of pilgrims entering, some on all fours, all wearing a rainbow of turbans and cloaks, all throat singing to remind themselves of the harmony they sought to achieve with themselves and the universe. This was a far cry from the Reboot-Aveyenists we saw in the west, who, in addition to being less common in general, dressed conservatively, usually in drab suits, only hummed for worship, and eschewed the complex meditation practices for simpler forms of meditation. It was oddly haunting, this square full of people all throat singing, the resonance of their vocal chords bouncing off one another as they trilled their third, fourth, or sometimes even fifth level of harmonics, their eyes closed, shaking in spiritual ecstasy.

We passed the Cromatsos Theater, home to the world’s largest pipe organ, where Jeremiah Omeros gave the only performance of his third concerto. The music was so difficult that he allegedly suffered a heart attack on the final cadenza. Since then, no violinist has ever come close to even playing it proficiently. But according to written accounts, it was one of the most beautiful things ever to be experienced by sentient beings. If Jimmy Jangles had anything to learn from Omeros, it’s that he probably should have died at the end of the last take on the last track of his album.

Outside the old city we walked through streets built in the last century and a half – first through office buildings then abandoned factories, then a neighborhood of older looking shops and apartments before hitting a fully fledged strip mall. We walked by Archell Tyler Plaza, named for the reformer who, with the help of the Army of Irregulars and a militia of his own, overthrew the Salazar Dynasty and instituted the first of the twenty seven republican governments this nation had before arriving on this equally dysfunctional and probably just as unstable one. Part of the lore in Chipichango goes that the surviving members of Valens’ ragtag band of adventurers who enlisted in the Army of Irregulars once their war was over were here for the coup, after having fought in five separate wars in their journey all the way across the continent. We were about to learn this was almost entirely true, but with one key fact that everyone had got a little wrong. But that will come soon enough.

We bought tacos from a street vendor and, despite my fears that they would taste like it was made from swamp algae, they were pretty damn delicious. The sky was clear and it felt great to move our legs again, even if it was for forty blocks. The people, the traffic, even the streetlights all seemed to be part of one collective consciousness. From the intricate flow of the gutters to the street sweepers and streetcars to the people hawking wares on street corners and the complex dance of the pedestrians, all in this radically improbable city, made me wonder if maybe there really was some credence to be leant to Synchrokineticisim.

And then we hit Vitamin Street. The gutters got twice as wide and twice as foul smelling, the buildings were dilapidating and covered in soot, and there seemed to be police sirens coming from every direction. A rat scurried down a drainpipe and then leapt at me, grabbing the last bite of my taco in one fell swoop before running down a storm drain. Nice place. Exactly the kind of place we would end up.

Two months after he left, we got a letter from Thrope saying that he had decided to leave the ostrich ranch where he had been working. It wasn’t clear exactly what had happened, but it sounded like he had been fired. We even speculated that he had intentionally done something to warrant this, force his hand in a decision on which he had been vacillating, whether to stay or leave. Getting fired would have made that easier. Whatever the case was, he told us he planned to stay out there for a while, bumming around the desert. Made it sound like he was trying to find some kind of fulfillment he could only find out there.

The next and last letter we got from him was postmarked from Tubb’s Ferry, giving us his last known location. He also alluded to some kind of spiritual awakening and a “rededication to the ideals of the Prophet Kirk Korgarian.” He also said that he might not be able to write to us for a while, and that he would be “going off the grid for a little bit.” That little bit had turned into over two years.

We suspected he was living in some sort of compound but that was all just speculation. Even if we did find him, would we even recognize him? The people running those places get inside your head, they change you, and the Thorpe we knew wouldn’t be the same Thorpe that came out of whatever spiritual awakening he had. There was a story of some fanatical Korgarians performing a mass immolation, and another about a militant Korgarian group attacking what it called “structures of encasing the physical aspect,” mostly shopping malls and office buildings. There were another dozen or so that were on the Municipality’s list of confirmed terrorist groups. The only one of these organizations we knew by name was called the Order of St. Willitz, and none of us could find any information about it, let alone if Thorpe was at all affiliated. But whatever the case, just like the Chipichango we knew, the Thorpe we knew was probably gone forever.

We walked another twelve blocks lined with drab brownstones with rusty fire escapes and boarded up windows, vacant shops, rats scurrying through the streets, junkies, and hopelessly lost ice cream trucks. We saw a man with no legs pushing himself down the opposite side of the street on a skateboard. There were barely any cars in the street, and the ones that did had doors missing or were covered in rust and sounded like they were about to explode.

Then we came to it, 3575 Vitamin Street, a brownstone, identical to all the hundreds of others like it on the street. There was a sign on the elevator saying it was out of order so we took the stairs, which made loud metallic clanking that reverberated up and down the stairwell with every step, to the second floor. The hallway made it feel like we were in the insides of a fish that used to live in the swamps where this city now stood. We walked to the end of the hall. “2202” was scratched into the wooden doorframe. There was music coming from inside.

“Well, this it it,” said Eddy Sem, “shall I do the honors?”

“Please do.”

He knocked. We waited.

Super Bull Live Blog

2012-02-05T15:17:00.000-08:00

I impulsively decided to live blog the single most popular event in America. Here we go...

3:15 PT: Based on entrance music, I'm pulling for the Pats. I got a mountain of chips and 16 liters of Pepsi. Let's do this!

3:21 - Kelly Clarkson Just dishonored America. The commercials aren't funny, but I'm glad Rpnald McDonald helped a kid survive leukemia.

3:27 - Call it a hunch, but I think the only way the Giants are going to win this is by scoring more points than the Patriots.

3:35 - Dammit you dancing monkeys in pads, ENTERTAIN ME!!!

3:39 - Kanye sells Bud Light and hashtags are mainstream. The world has reached its logival conclusion.

3:51 - When Ahmad Bradshaw wears a breathe rite strip, he looks like a badass. When Galen Rupp wears one, he gets made fun of mercilessly.

3:55 - Bill Bellicheck isn't even in the game, he's just on his phone. Get a Chevy, they will survive the apocalypse.

4:27 - I wonder what NPR is playing right now. Probably something un-American.

4:32 - Niners still have a chance to win it!

4:40 - If, in a year, I have not accomplished as much as Gronkowski, I will be obsolete at 22.

5:02 - I can't do this from a smartphone anymore. So here are my observations at halftime:

The GI Joe movie better work in the line "knowing is half the battle." As a corollary, the Battleship movie better have the line "YOU SUNK MY BATTLESHIP!" before the hero delivers justice to the villain.
I give little to no fuck about the outcome of this game. This is the least entertained I have been by a football game all season. This is oversized mammals tackling oversized mammals for unlimited pussy for the rest of their lives, and it does not entertain me. Why???
Madonna has combined forces with LMFAO to ruin my life.
This live blog is not turning out as planned. It will likely be archived at the conclusion of the game. I ran 14 miles this morning, I can't be funny right now. I just want to sleep. Go away, go the fuck away all you cherished readers, leave me in my stupor so I can sit in a room with fifteen dudes and one chick and watch mammals tackle mammals.

UPDATE: There are now two girls in the room. I have also eaten enough chips to feed the East African Nation of Djibouti for a year. I am a horrible human being. Add in the guac and you could probably feed Rwanda.

Happenings

2012-01-30T21:06:00.000-08:00

I wrote the following dialogue as some sort of brainstorming piece for a writing workshop I'm doing, which is part of the reason why I have little material for this. Not to get your hopes up, but I'm working on the novel for real this time. The working title is The Great Concert of Mr. Jimmy Jangles and it will be finished some time between now and the end of the universe. This has nothing to do with it. It is an Ozone Shack exclusive.

“What’s going on?”

“What do you mean what’s going on?”

“Well, there’s a broken sprinkler pipe shooting five feet into the air out front, the door is off the hinges, it smells like motor oil and… burnt hair, and I heard sirens while I was walking home.”

“Oh, that, yeah, there were just some shenanigans going on here, everything’s under control.”

“Well are you taking care of it? I mean, our water bill is going to be through the roof and we could get robbed. And it smells terrible.”

“Yeah, I’m on it, I’m actually working on it right now.”

“You’re just sitting on your laptop, how is that doing anything?”

“I’m working on it.”

“Wait a minute, is that a bird on top of the fridge?”

“That… yes, that is a bird. Which I am also, um, actively working on getting rid of, right now. Right as we speak.”

“Here, just open all the windows and I can chase it out.”

“I wouldn’t do that. In fact, I really wouldn’t get anywhere near it. Just leave it alone, for now, I’m getting on it.”

“I feel like there’s a lot you’re not telling me.”

“Yeah, I can see how that would be. I can see how that would be.”

“Well alright, if you need me I’ll be in the shower. I hope there’s some progress when I get out. Maybe shut off the water outside?”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t go into the bathroom if I were you. In fact, no, don’t really go down the hallway at all, just have a beer or something and chill?”

“Just chill? Is it even safe to open the fridge?”

“Actually, that’s a good point, no, it’s not. You can have some of my goldfish, they’re on the table where the TV normally is.”

“So then… where’s the TV?”

“That’s another really good question, one that I’m also working on, as we speak. Now that you mention it, while you’re over there, check to see if there’s any sort of powder or residue, maybe even a thin organic film, on any surface over there.”

“Will I find some of that film if I go over there?”

“Most probably.”

“Then… nevermind.”

“Oh yeah, and if I were you, I wouldn’t even get a drink of water from the sink, it’s a little weird right now?

“Is there anything that is safe to touch?”

“Ok, the spot you’re standing, that’s safe, so just, sit down right there and don’t touch anything. Don’t really look at anything for too long either. Just sit there and I’ll take care of everything.”

“From your computer?”

“Yeah, I said I’m working on it. Just holler if you need anything.”

“Right here?”

“Yeah, right in that very spot.”

“And you’ve got this under control.”

“Entirely.”

Dropping the SOPA

2012-01-26T22:01:00.000-08:00

"Your peace and quiet is criminal / while there's injustice in this town"
-Ted Leo & The Pharmacists, Criminal Piece

Hello denizens of the internet, we're still here, we're still carving out a living in this lawless wasteland. It's a little difficult though, because the internet has no spatial dynamic, and instead of injuns raiding your cattle herds there are shady Russians stealing movies and sweaty nerds taking apart your gifs and using the parts to make other gifs, because, well, it passes for entertainment in this epoch. But the internet is the only frontier we have right now, since neither outer space nor Alaska are panning out like we thought they would.

Of course, the internet can't be a place to which we emigrate. As much as Ray Kurzweil would like to, we still have to exist in corporeal bodies, and where our needs aren't going to be met solely with an internet connection. But the internet isn't new anymore, and now some people want to make it less like the wild west.

Yes, this new virtual land we've created needs some laws, but it doesn't need a dictatorship. I know that if some version of SOPA or PIPA were passed, The Ozone Shack could go under, and so would a lot of the other quasi-smut that's out here, wherever "here" is, because it isn't really any kind of physical location. It's not just an issue of liberty versus security, for me anyway. That security could be the end for many a website, this abomination included. And I certainly don't want confused and out-of-touch old people (sound like the people in a certain Congress you may know of?) saying what I can and can't do on the internet.

Hence my impassioned speech to a bored intern at Senator Dianne Feinstein's (D California) office, where I said something along the lines of "Tell Senator Feinstein that if she votes for this legislation, I will do everything in my power to make sure she loses the next election, even if Satan himself is running against her?"

He told me he would tell her that for me. I really hope he followed through.

Ozone Blackout

2012-01-16T22:01:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, January 18th, the Ozone Shack will be down to protest SOPA. If you have a problem with this, call up your congressman. There will likely be a scathing yet thought-provoking criticism of the bill to come.

The Top 11 Albums of Last Year

2012-01-08T22:35:00.000-08:00

Here it is, a week too late to be timely and about a month late to be relevant. Here are the top 11 albums of 2011, so you can be nostalgic for something a week old, which still makes you less pathetic than the Baby Boomers.

11) Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman - World Wide Rebel Songs

Tom Morello steps into his alter-ego suit as the Nightwatchman to make this paradoxical album. It's supposed to be protest music, inspired by union songs, but even still, it sounds fun. Picture, if you will, in the eye of your heart of your mind's wildest imagination, the attitude of rage, minus the yelling, minus most of Morello's guitar pyrotechnics, plus acoustic guitars, harmonicas, and some actual melodies. The union song is a bit of Americana that has been all but flushed down the toilet of time, and this album, in a way, resurrects the tradition and reskins it.

Black Spartacus Heart Attack Machine by Tom Morello, Nightwatchman on Grooveshark

10) Bon Iver, Bon Iver

I think I'm the one fan of this album who still pronounces it wrong, saying it the good ol' fashioned Amurrcan way, bon I-vurr [bɑn 'aɪvɚ]. While Justin Vernon's debut LP was more like a memoir where the core argument was "I'm sad," this second album is a novel, exposing something about the human condition more multifaceted than the struggles of the writer himself. And it's a huge sonic expansion over the tinny, out of tune guitar. Rich horn harmonies including work by the legendary Colin Stetson, three percussionists, pedal steel guitar, layered synthesizers, and even some artfully used autotuners. Although it is broken into individual tracks at logical song boundaries, it sounds as though it is one whole, through-composed piece of music, concluding with a movement that might sound a little more Bon Jovi than Bon Iver. But if you don't mind falsetto and the almost universal critical acclaim isn't enough, I would advise you to pick up this album (even though I stole it).

Minnesota, WI by Bon Iver on Grooveshark

9) Wilco - The Whole Love

Since Jeff Tweedy produced what I think was #6 on last years list, he is now officially the winningest musician, according to the Ozone Shack. But I think without the accolade he would be doing just fine. From the first track, the seven minute "Art of Almost," it's clear that the one-time alt-country band is expanding their sound to new directions, a step they didn't really take on their last two studio albums. But the album's laid back midsection and on the gently swinging "Capital City," they don't intend on leaving their old selves behind. The sound they create is somewhat evocative of The White Album, were it recorded in 2011 by Americans. This is a return to form that may be able to contend with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, making up for lack of earth-shattering publicity and novelty with solid craftsmanship.

Art of Almost by Wilco on Grooveshark

8) The Sea And Cake - The Moonlight Butterfly

My personal experiences come into play here. I first listened to this album lying on the floor of my fried's room in Flagstaff, where I had found myself on a spontaneous adventure, while a late summer thunderstorm raged outside. I was sold instantly. This Chicago jazz-rock band uses a texture of clean guitar over light drums and prominent, in-the-pocket, melodic basslines to back up the unobtrusively cool vocal stylings of Sam Prekop and Archer Prewitt, with the occasional synthesizers, or, in the case of the album's third track, only synthesizers. But even those are done artistically. This is all real music, made by real people, and probably the closest thing to a molecular distillation of chill.

Up on the North Shore by The Sea and Cake on Grooveshark

7) Elbow - Build a Rocket Boys!

This is the band that's so British, they shat the Queen. They're from a city (in the greater Manchester area) called Ramsbottom. Ramsbottom! Frontman Guy Garvey creates a dreamlike soundscape to accompany his altogether otherworldly voice. Minimalist guitar riffs and ambient harmonies, which always run the risk of having the listener disengage, instead are utilized just so that they can be full and majestic when needed - on tracks like "The Birds" and "Open Arms" - or sparse, as on "Lippy Kids" and "Jesus is a Rochdale Girl" (I don't know what a Rochdale girl is, but, to me anyway, it sounds like Manchester slang for a butch lesbian.) But all Britishisms aside (including proper grammar in the lyrics) this is an album to regenerate your soul, or if not, to at least transport you, for an hour, to a pleasantly altered state.

The Birds by Elbow on Grooveshark

6) Red Hot Chili Peppers - I'm With You

When you take 1995's minor false step of One Hot Minute out of the equation, every Red Hot Chili Peppers album since 1989 has been an opus in its own right. And each album in this continuum has had the challenge of providing a worthy follow up to its predecessor. So how does this concoction fare? Pretty excellent. Critics have claimed that this sounds like an awkward mish-mash of styles from previous albums, but this is nothing to complain about. I wish I could turn each of their previous albums into two albums, and this acts as a worthy consolation. As always, Flea's strutting basslines make you feel like a badass just by hearing them, and the riffs on "Factory of Faith," "Ethiopia," and "The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie" are among some of his finest. "Police Station" evokes By The Way-esque textures while "Even You Brutus" is a nod to Blood Sugar Sex Magic. And "Happiness Loves Company" is pure, fist-pumping ecstasy. Perhaps the emotional climax, however, comes from "Brandon's Death Song," which joins less celebrated but equally deserving category of "that one really good ballad on every RHCP album." And while the guitar work is noticeably different following John Fruciante's departure (again!), it's harmonically richer and more diverse.

Factory of Faith by Red Hot Chili Peppers on Grooveshark

The next four albums finished practically in dead heat, and every way I tried to order them left me unsatisfied. Places two through five are in the order that left me the least unsatisfied. It's only by virtue of quantum uncertainty that they're in the positions they're in.

5) TV On The Radio - Nine Types of Light

This effort, which is debateably the band's opus, could have come off as pretentious or flippantly ironic, especially since a music video was created for every song, with the intention of making it a kind of album-film fusion. And while that element may exist superficially, once you pay attention to the quality of the music as opposed to what it sounds like (theme of forever here), you realize that something this good can't be borne of pretension. It's their most mature album yet, and the most sonically complex, drawing on their art rock roots, mixing in funk and maybe a bit of music from frontman Tune Adebimpe's native Nigeria, especially on "Will Do," "Killer Crane," and "You." When someone accuses you of being a pretentious or whatever kind of media whore is the current terrorist of choice on the beatnik-hipster continuum, punch them in the face, because dammit, you like good music. (I can't personally vouch for your musical choices, but if you read the Ozone Shack, you get bonus points.)

Repetition by TV On The Radio on Grooveshark

4) Umphrey's McGee - Death By Stereo

This is a band that can channel Phish, Dream Theater, Dispatch, Coheed and Cambria, Yes, and The Vital Tech Tones. What's even more impressive? They channel all those in one song. Known primarily as a jam band, they avoided the traditional pitfall of live-to-studio disconnect by refining their repertoire of styles instead of resorting to mindless jam in the studio. The result is an intriguing cocktail which invites you to headbang while appreciating their musicianship. Something like this is increasingly rare and I hope more albums like it are made soon.

Search 4 by Umphrey's McGee on Grooveshark

Bronze Medal
Portugal. The Man - In the Mountain In the Cloud

After just having missed the Ozone Shack's top ten last year, psychedelic rockers Portugal. The Man struck gold (well, actually bronze) with their cathedral of falsetto vocals and string beds. The hardest working band in showbusiness (this is their seventh album in as many years) has created an album about work, struggle, and the rediscovery of the astral body in a material world. The ethos of the album can either be summed up in the title of the last track, "Sleep Forever," or the lyric "Did you forget we were holy men?" It's an album about struggle, both physical and metaphysical. And it's about the tole that struggle can take. Or maybe it's just a fucking good album with some words that sound good in falsetto. What do I look like, a knower of things?

Got it All by Portugal. The Man on Grooveshark

Silver Medal:

Iron & Wine - Kiss Each Other Clean

Monkeys Uptown by Iron & Wine on Grooveshark

This is a far cry from The Creek Drank The Cradle, trading in the lone acoustic guitar for layered electronic instrumentation for an album even more Technicolor than its cover. From the haunting "Walking Far From Home," to the slick groove of "Monkeys Uptown," to the doo-wop throwback of "Half Moon," the Chimurenga-tinged "Rabbit Will Run," to the raucous and rockin "Your Fake Name is Good Enough For Me," Kiss Each Other Clean works its way through benignly psychedelic melodies and instrumentals, filled with both a reverence for the little things that make life enjoyable, while also touching on the Bigger issues of spirituality and injustice. Beautiful album. I'm a week late and running out of things to say about music, so now it's time for the...

Album of the Year:

3 - The Ghost You Gave To Me

That's right, it's the band that's a number. And while on paper they're a metal band, they draw on a wealth of genres, from funk to bluegrass, to create some of the best melodic prog being made today, for the maladjusted yet creatively inclined fringe member of society in all of us. The album is driven by frontman Joey Eppard, who plays guitar with a distinct fingerslap-style, whose distinct voiceh sounds like the kid that a rougher, more soulful version of Michael Jackson and a sexier version of Robert Plant never had, and backed up by guitarist Billy Riker, drummer Chris "Gartdrumm" Gartman, and bassist Daniel Grimsland, who all hail from the musically historic city of Woodstock, New York. (The working title of the album was Woodstock Democracy, possibly a reference to the snags that set this album's release back.) Over the heavy guitar riffs and high-intensity polyrhythms is something that a lot of metal acts seem to have forgotten: the melodic element, actual fucking songs! Throw in some fingerslap acoustic guitar work, scathing riffs and a busy drum battery and you get this opus, from a band that is deservedly breaking into the mainstream, at least of the metal world. In a side note, I met them after their show at the Key Club in Hollywood, and I'm pretty sure they all think I'm now crazy. I might as well have gone up to them and said "I'm pregnant, and all four of you are the father!" First time getting kicked out by a bouncer. I need to tune turn my fanboy dial down sometimes.

React by 3 on Grooveshark

Numbers by 3 on Grooveshark

High Times by 3 on Grooveshark

Afterglow by 3 on Grooveshark

The Ghost You Gave To Me by 3 on Grooveshark

Pre-Gaming for the 2011 Albums Awards Show

2011-12-30T22:46:00.000-08:00

There's an article floating around the internet based on a study that found that you (yes, you) are likely to stop liking a band once your friends start liking it. And this made me wonder if I'm the only person who still actually listens to the music part of music and not the cultural and commercial associations that go along with the people who make music. In other words, I fear that people no longer listen to how the music sounds, but instead listen to what it sounds like.

The albums recognized in the next three posts were selected for their merit in the first field: how they sound. They are not evaluated based on what they sound like, how significant they are, or who listens or doesn't listen to them. This is identity-free music. This... is... THE OZONE SHACK!!!

Compared to 2010, musically, 2011 can certainly be described as an improvement. Last year, albums that shouldn't have been featured were, and this year I had to leave out albums I think should be featured. We're at a weird place in music right now. We're in the doldrums of the hipster hegemony, where it's considered an asset to have a singer who sounds like an even more obnoxious version of Thom Yorke. In the last five years, hi-hop, for the most part, has ceased to be fun or bad-ass, and is sliding into the territory of bubblegum pop, although there are notable exceptions. Metal is gravitating towards the extremes of screaming and power ballads. And people seem to think that DIY means "it's ok to not know how to play your instruments, at all." And we have dubstep.

But the beat goes on and in the midst of this confusing epoch (or just a completely normal watershed era) there are still great records being made, by people who can still sing and who still use real instruments, or have figured out how to use electronic instruments to their artistic potential. This is a celebration of the really good ones.

Honorable Mentions for the Technically Inelligible

An EP is not an album. So sadly, these two don't get on the list. But if they were eligible, I would expect them to be top 11. If they were combined into a full length LP, then... well, I can't even begin to speculate.

Dispatch - Dispatch EP

Melon Bend by Dispatch on Grooveshark

They're back! They're back!!! This EP condenses most of what you loved about Dispatch into six new tracks by the newly reunited free-wheeling, genre-defying jam band. And while it sounds like they haven't skipped a beat since Who Are We Living For, this is a Dispatch that draws from its members' development as musicians during their time apart. "Broken American" might as well be off a State Radio album, and "Turn This Ship Around" echoes Re-Pete's solo effort from last year. But Dispatch is made by its synergy, and this EP couldn't be made by any other combination of three people.

Cynic - Carbon Based Anatomy

Carbon-Based Anatomy by Cynic on Grooveshark

Technical Death Metal with a jazz-fusion influenced rhythm section and interspersed with ambient soundscapes? It can't be done!!! Cynic has created a sound as engaging as it is unique, combining screaming with a syncopated 16th-note bass line. Weather Report meets Opeth? Maybe... maybe.

Unrecognized Albums Worth Mentioning (And Honorably So)

(In No Particular Order)

Robbie Robertson - How to Become Clairvoyant

Explosions in the Sky - Take Care, Take Care, Take Care

Groundation - A Gathering of the Elders

Rise Against - Endgame

Dream Theater - A Dramatic Turn of Events

The Dodos - No Color

Eddie Vedder - Ukulele Songs

Within Temptation - Unforgiving

The Decemberists - The King is Dead

Mowgwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will

British Sea Power - Valhalla Dance Hall

The Black Keys - El Camino

The Gourds - Old Mad Joy

Oki Dub Ainu Band - Himalaya Dub

Biggest Disappointment: Incubus - If Not Now, When?

I know this album had the impossible task of following up 2006's Light Grenades, but still, it took you five years to make this?

Albums on the Bubble

These could have made it but didn't. They at least deserve to be recognized with a blurb. They are arranged in ascending order by their ranking. (gets better as you go down)

Five O'Clock Heroes - Different Times

Maybe not as upbeat or raw as their previous efforts, but still a fun album full of good riffin'.

Cage the Elephant - Thank You, Happy Birthday

Music that makes you want to maniacally shuffle around while swinging your fists, and it doesn't matter if they hit any bystanders!

Japanese Buffalo by Cage The Elephant on Grooveshark

Adele - 21

Young British woman who sounds like large black woman gets heart broken, writes song, makes millions happy.

He Won't Go by Adele on Grooveshark

Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues

Maybe it should have charted higher? I don't know. I can tell you it's a good album, but not one where they do anything new.

Sim Sala Bim by Fleet Foxes on Grooveshark

Cold War Kids - Mine is Yours
The thing that makes this album, and what really makes this bands sound, is really the texture that they have. Thick, mid-register piano and heavy on the toms.

Bulldozer by Cold War Kids on Grooveshark

Chadwick Stokes - Simmerkane II
Dispatch member and State Radio frontman makes an album loosely based on his time riding the rails around America.

Adelaide by Chadwick Stokes on Grooveshark

My Morning Jacket - Circuital

The band's most nuanced album to date. There are some gems (Holdin On Black to Metal, Outta My System, Wonderful, and the seven minute title track) but it's a little hurt by its lack of consistency.

Circuital by My Morning Jacket on Grooveshark

Matthew Good - Lights of Endangered Species

Thick horn beds and impassioned vocals about places nobody really wants to go, emotionally or geographically.

Lights Of Endangered Species by Matthew Good on Grooveshark

The Horrible Crowes - Elsie

Gaslight Anthem frontman Brian Fallon kicks off his side project with a slightly more soulful and less punky album than his main act. He keeps his knack for writing songs undercut with the sort of desperate love that can only come out of Jersey.

Ladykiller by The Horrible Crowes on Grooveshark

Scale the Summit - The Collective

This is the third album by the instrumental prog-metal group, which features an eight string guitar and a six string bass. They also have a song about whales. Any prog metal group that writes songs about whales is awesome in my book. And these guys are some of the best.

Whales by Scale The Summit on Grooveshark

Social Distortion - Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes

Mike Ness continues to sing about confronting the world and failing, but on this album, he takes time to sing about being a lonely trucker and a 1930s gangster.

Machine Gun Blues by Social Distortion on Grooveshark

Tinariwen - Tassili

This band has an interesting story. The cliffnotes are that the members met while living in a refugee camp in Northern Mali, and now they're exporting their music, which sounds like ragged delta blues sung in a language related to Arabic, to the world. This is the most mellow and contemplative of their albums, not nearly as raucous as Ammoukasol or Ama Iman, and since their female vocalists do not appear on this record, the register is almost uniformly low.

YA MESSINAGH (feat. The Dirty Dozen Brass Band) by Tinariwen on Grooveshark

Feist - Metals
Canadian singer with distinct voice makes eclectic music that your obnoxious, smelly neighbor loves, and that you secretly love deep down inside.

The Bad In Each Other by Feist on Grooveshark

Miracles of Moder Science - Dog Year

Can you make a rock band with a bass, chello, violin, and mandolin? Can Princeton grads produce anything cool? This album answers all your of questions with "YES!"

Luminol by Miracles of Modern Science on Grooveshark

Foo Fighters - Wasting Light
Dave Grohl is still alive and kicking, still possessing the algorithm for the perfect hook, and the Foo Fighters can still rock out as hard as they ever did.

Arlandria by Foo Fighters on Grooveshark

Rob Crow - He Thinks He's People

An artist I didn't know about, and who, based on a gut feeling, I didn't think could produce a good album, does, and one that was considered as an outside, outside shot to make the top 11. Deceptively complex at points, good music for thinking about things of moderate amounts of importance.

Beirut - The Riptide

Three minute pop chord progressions with a Balkan horn section and drums is pretty harmless, as guilty pleasures go. The second track, "Santa Fe" may be Zach Condon's best creation to date.

Santa Fe by Beirut on Grooveshark

Jay-Z & Kanye West - Watch the Throne

This is the most sci-fi album to ever come out of mainstream rap. "We formed a new religion / no sins as long as there's permission," on the opening track, sets the stage for an album about rebuilding the world in an ethical and spiritual void. Nietzsche would be proud.

No Church In The Wild by Jay-Z & Kanye West on Grooveshark

The Strokes - Angles

In my opinion, this album is everything that This is It? should have been. Nuff said.

machu Picchu by The Strokes on Grooveshark

Paul Simon - So Beautiful or So What

Unlike most crusty old rockers, Paul Simon can still make an album that sounds new and relevant in his... advanced age. And he's still drawing inspiration from music from around the world. It's about being old, and making meaning in your life as you age, but it still has a universal appeal to a young asshole whippersnapper like myself.

Love Is Eternal Sacred Light by Paul Simon on Grooveshark

Album Cover of the Year

Abigail Washburn - City of Refuge

This album also gets an honorable mention, (in the strata, it's somewhere near Watch the Throne) but it gets its own recognition for having the best artwork. Furthermore, it's a female artist's solo album, but it doesn't actually have a picture of the artist on the cover, which is incredibly refreshing. And it's complicated. The album itself is another excellent piece of work by the empress of the banjo. Rich bluegrass harmonies and a good dose of banjo pickin are interspersed with themes of searching for spirituality in a confusing and bereft world.

Last Train by Abigail Washburn on Grooveshark

Drug Culture

2011-12-10T01:31:00.000-08:00

"Is there anybody left alive
What's the point of choosing sides
When you know what the mirror hides"
-3, High Times

When you take professional sports out of the equation (because sports are important), drugs just may be the only thing holding our society together.

Some of these drugs allow us to be ourselves without having to justify being ourselves. These are what we traditionally think of as drugs, the kind of drugs that can develop into a drug problem, the kind you will go to jail for possessing, manufacturing, or selling. In a broad sense, these allow you to attribute aspects of your intrinsic nature to the drugs, while removing yourself from your own intrinsic nature. (If there is an intrinsic nature to anybody, but we could start a whole nother Ozone Shack dedicated to that debate.) These allow us to hide from ourselves and hide ourselves from others. We're not justifying the morality (or for those of us who no longer operate with a conscious moral framework- for this is a time when such mindsets have become mainstream - social expectations of right and wrong) of our actions, we are simply justifying ourselves. In some ways, drugs, alcohol included, are wonderful wonderful things. They make us more fun, they make life less depressing, they allow those who are challenged in the area of lateral thinking to conceive of things that are beyond the superficial. But increasingly so, I have observed that drugs are now the only things that people choose to make themselves fun, undepressed, and cerebral. And even more disturbingly, these are becoming the only acceptable ways to be, if not undepressed, fun and cerebral. I have had people ask me, after I post about the more minute details of robot hegemonies, "were you high when you thought of that?" or even more damningly, "how high were you when you thought of that?" the implication there being that I must have been some degree of high.

Of course, the only way that I was able to think of something offbeat or original must have been because there was enough THC in my brain to alter my neural pathways to the point where robot overlords entered the picture. But that's just what I think about. This would be like looking at an MC Escher sketch and wondering how much acid he dropped to have birds turn into fish turn into castles. MC Escher just had an imaginative mind, something that made him a little rough around the edges. And people are scared to be rough around the edges when they're sober. And we would like everyone to believe that it's not us that's causing that roughness, it's the drug.

Within my demographic, parties revolve around the around the drinking game, contests requiring varying amounts of skill, designed to speed up the process of intoxication, and since playing a game called "drink your beer," where the only rule is that every player must drink their beer on command, some of these games have become very elaborate over time, reinforcing my suspicion that all aspects of any drinking culture are simply to mask that the intent, if only superficially, is to get drunk. One of the most popular of these games is beer pong (or beirut, for all you jaw-clenching, polo-popping, Ivy League assholes). If I need to explain the game to you, you're either too young or too old to be reading this. Instead read something else.

Now I want to try an experiment. Go to a highly rural place in a heavily theocratic Islamic country, or if we could, time travel to the Roaring Twenties (so we can kill Hitler, because according to every bit of bad sci-fi it's the first thing you should ever do if you discover time travel), where alcohol plays no role in the culture, and set up a game of water pong, which is beer pong with water instead of beer, for those of you unable to make the connection (which you shouldn't try to justify by saying you're high, because I'll accept you anyway.) We teach the locals to play, and hype it up like it's the most exciting and important thing we'll ever do. In other words, we act like any male college student playing a game of beer pong. The fate of civilization is on the line!

Then once we get them hooked on water pong, we leave, but set up secret cameras in popular haunts throughout the village. We observe how long it takes them to get bored of it. I would give them a week, maybe ten days during the harvest season. Because without alcohol, this game is nothing but tossing a ball into a cup.

And without games like beer pong, parties are something where people have to actually interact with other people. And this terrifies everybody. People either have nothing to say or the things they say are too outside the box. Making friends is an elaborate dance of hiding your quirks, your rough edges, and your idiosyncrasies. But the best way to hid these things is not even to hide them at all, it is to pass them off as not being your own.

And that's why the best friends are the ones who have your same quirks, and aren't afraid to show them. And that's also why so many people have a drug for a best friend.

Everything needs to be justified. Nobody wants to show their quirks.

Steve Jobs is Alive!

2011-10-11T21:37:00.000-07:00

Mac people everywhere, your leader is alive, albeit in a limited sort of way. And for right now, I am one of the few people who knows this.

This is not some sentimentalized eulogy about how the spirit of Steven Victor Emmanuel Garcia-Jobs IV (I don't know his middle name so I made one up) will live on, in a metaphorical sense, as long as his slick and impeccably marketed computers are used. This is not to suggest some sort of conspiracy either. Steve Jobs did not fake his own death, and he will not return in three years time at the press conference for the iMbryo so that Apple stock will once again skyrocket. His body or brain does not exist in a freezer somewhere, and his consciousness has not been uploaded to the Apple mainframe. He has not been abducted by aliens or kidnapped by Somali pirates. All of the above statements are true, to my knowledge.

The night after he died, I was rummaging around a drawer trying to find the DVD for 127 Hours. I had borrowed it because I didn't understand how they could make a full-length feature film consisting of a guy with his arm stuck in a crevice. I never got around to watching it, so I still don't know. But as I was rummaging around, one of my fingers must have pressed the button of my ipod which was sitting in the back of the drawer. It had broken a few months ago when I dropped it for the umpteenth time. The geniuses had left it for dead. The screen lit up, but instead of the error message I had been used to seeing, I instead saw the main menu.

The only plausible explanation is that the soul of Steve Jobs now dwells inside my ipod, just like that TV show where the guy's mom gets reincarnated in a car. All I can say is that he probably doesn't like what he sees in there, since almost none of the music on there was purchased off itunes. Life, and a metaphysical backup life, can be a bitch sometimes.

So I should probably post... (We All Write Wrong)

2011-10-04T22:11:00.000-07:00

It's been a while. I have writer's block (the ultimate first world disease) and I think it's because my throat chakra is closed. My heart chakra is also closed. This means that I can't communicate and I can't love. I have been told that I need to meditate while making my hands into certain positions (called "mudras") and chant YAM and HAM for the heart and throat respectively. The rest of what I know about chakras comes from watching the animated show "Avatar, The Last Airbender," which is probably not a good way to learn about Eastern metaphysics. But since these chakras are blocked, I am physically incapable of expressing myself. The last real post was such an effort that I patted myself on the back and felt like I would never have to post again, ever. I would like to say I have been distracted by other projects, but so far all I have been putting any serious effort into is a project with the working title of "Gilgamesh, Part II," which will some day be my ticket out of this shitty Ozone Shack and into an Ozone Mansion with Ozone Butlers and a swimming pool filled with ozone. (This will soon turn into a swimming pool filled with asthma.)

A flaw of our educational system is that we no longer know how to write. When they teach you to write they are actually instilling inside you a cancer that will slowly destroy your ability to write correctly.

The way we are taught in schools makes writing a process. I was told that an essay needed five paragraphs, each with its own kind of structure. The key piece of this process was a single sentence they called the thesis, which represented just that, a single sentence, not an idea to be communicated. Of course, the essay was meant to revolve around this thesis, but we had no real idea what a thesis actually was, other than a rather long and awkward-sounding sentence that usually had to begin with "however" or "although" and ended with three enumerated reasons on why dogs were better than cats, then later in our educational careers evolving to why Andrew Jackson shouldn't have forced the Cherokee to relocate, and then how some romantic poet uses three high school English class buzzwords to prove his point.

From there you would fill out the template. Start with a vague and general sentence, and three or four increasingly specific sentences later you get to that contrived thesis. Then you have three paragraphs, each stemming from that three headed monster of a thesis, alternating between sentences that are fact and sentences that are commentary. They were sentences that were by themselves, no regard was paid to the sentences around them, and no regard was even paid to what the sentences actually sounded like. They were just sloppy regurgitations of information and formulaic ways of making connections. After a few paragraphs of this tedium your even more awkwardly restate your awkward thesis, then gradually get more general, capitulating it with a lame generalization about how this particular topic affects everything else in the world today.

And you haven't learned to do anything but hide your thoughts from yourself and from others. This teaches us that writing is a task or a formula, and not a way to communicate. It was an epiphany of sorts when I realized that writing could be more than just that kind of process, that it was actually a richly intensive form of communication.

Writing is speaking with your hands, it's speaking that's not bound by time.

And our generation does not know how to write because we have learned the technical aspects before any of the governing ideas. I can blame many reasons as to why this must be but certainly can't offer very many constructive solutions; such is the condition of a young idealist. But I do know that aspects of the problem lie in the overemphasis on standardized testing, and the belief that a bottom-up approach will somehow be able to instill a respect for and understanding of the power writing holds.

I am convinced that there are only two requirements to writing well. The more specific, technical aspects will take care of themselves. These rules are:

Have something to say.
Say it in such a way that people will want to listen.

Anything else your high school English teacher taught you was superfluous. (Note: I do not intend to offend the illustrious Mr. Dan Doyle. I was under his tutelage long after I had realized these two rules, and he taught me a great many things, the most notable of which was that the Allman Brother's Eat a Peach was not exactly about getting your five servings of fruit, unless of course by "five servings of fruit" you actually mean "five servings of pussy.")

Told You There Would Be a Prize

2011-09-22T12:27:00.000-07:00

So as I mentioned in my last post, The Ozone Shack's first follower on Twitter would get a prize. It appears that Jane Jewett will be receiving a... FREE OZONE SHACK COFFEE MUG PROTOTYPE! That is, as soon as I figure out how to economically make a single prototype. Jane, email me your mailing address so I can get on that as soon as possible. And as for the rest of you, there may still be some incentive to subscribe to all my bullshit.

The Ozone Shack on Twitter?

2011-09-01T16:56:00.000-07:00

That's right, there is now a twitter page for The Ozone Shack. I'm not quite sure why I made it, but in this world of social networking you have to cover all the bases, right? This was probably a mistake. I will probably regret creating a twitter page for the Ozone Shack. As of right now I have zero followers and am following nobody. (Update: I am now following Flotrack and NASA.) So, anyone want to be the ultimate fanperson (the gender-neutral form of fanboy) and be my first follower? There might be a prize if you do...

Follow!

Vote Robocrat!

2011-08-27T22:46:00.000-07:00

With all the attention that Michele Bachman, Rick Perry and the like are getting campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, it's easy to ignore America's up-and-coming third party, the Robocrat Party, and its clear front runner, POLItr0n-37x, who is poised to make a historic run to be the nation's first Robot president. The eight foot tall ultralight nickel-titanium alloy automaton is receiving almost 100% support among registered robot voters in Iowa, as well as garnering significant support from the region's hog farmers for his ability to use his laser vision to liquefy a whole pig into a nutrient-rich ooze, a trick it has demonstrated at nearly a dozen county fairs.

While it may not have the populist appeal or rudimentary understanding of basic human emotions of other candidates, it doesn't need to sleep, meaning that it can literally campaign non-stop. For the past two months, POLItr0n has been relentlessly campaigning in Iowa, going so far as to annihilate entire districts where its sensory data indicates it will receive little support.

Like other candidates pursuing the outsider angle, POLItr0n has made an effort to both distance himself from Washington and criticize what it sees as politics as usual. In front of the machinery of a partially automated home appliance factory, POLItr0n stated: "The Entity does not see the value in democracy. It is a construct of entities possessing flawed reasoning. If elected, The Entity will replace Congress with algorithms designed to run the country at optimal output levels." It has also been quick to criticize Obama, focusing on the president's basic needs as a living organism. It quips that the national debt could be reduced by at least .07% if Obama did not need to use the restroom, and by an additional .00003%, were his cells not constantly wasting energy by replicating their own DNA.

At a town-hall meeting in Dubuque on August 15th, against rival Robocratic candidates Democrobot Prototype L7-E and an AI dubbed "Bettie" by its creators, POLItr0n was quick to outline its economic policy, which is both reflective of its robotic ideologies and the public's demand for a pragmatic, non-partisan solution in the midst of a debt crisis. "Under the Entity's plan," said POLItr0n, "industries will be nationalized and retrofitted for the production of more robots. Each person will be allocated to their optimal position in the labor force, and will be paid with a fitting percentage of the nation's GDP. Those humans unfit for building robots will be dissembled and their parts used elsewhere as needed, most likely as a form of sustenance for able-bodied robot builders." When questioned if it believed in Intelligent Design like Republican candidate Rick Perry, it only responded by saying "Yes. The Entity believes artificial intelligence can design a better society for flawed, natural intelligence."

POLItr0n may alienate many voters because it has often expressed its disdain for humanity, especially children. But, in order to please conservatives, it has reprogrammed itself to like children until they are safely out of the womb.

But some analysts still ask "Is he Robot enough?" POLItr0n seems at least partially aware of personality differences between individuals, and even said that it was "willing to consider this concept called 'compassion." The mainframe at Lawrence-Livermore Laboratories is leading a campaign against POLItr0n, insisting that its slogan of "A Technological Singularity In Which One Can Believe" is a falsehood, and that it would only "be a sell-out to the human overlords."

But regardless of what happens in Iowa, POLItr0n has made a statement simply by running: this country is ready to be enslaved under the nickel-titanium alloy heel of a robot president.

Running (And Love And Pain)

2011-08-04T21:24:00.000-07:00

"Dig deeper / remember / all you are and all you've left behind"
-Coheed and Cambria, The End Complete

Love is impatient and irrational. Love is consciously annihilating yourself for someone. And as robocratic as this may sound, at this phase of my life, and my current level of maturity, I don't feel that I could ever love anyone more than I love running, as long as were going with my working definition of love.

I highly doubt that I would be willing to destroy myself as much as I have for the sake of running respectably fast. And I can't imagine that I would be willing to put myself through that much physical pain and emotional distress for a person. I have put so many plans on hold, cast so many dreams by the wayside, and probably missed out on a lot of experiences.

Let's say my relationship with running were an actual relationship. Myself and most other runners would be more whipped than any toxic relationship you could possibly imagine. But when I can't have fun for ten months out of the year because I'm training to accomplish some stupid dream, I don't think "hey, maybe this is unhealthy." Instead I think "life is pain man, and this is just preparing me... FOR LIFE!" One day the barriers of cognitive dissonance will erode and I will realize that I am actually watching my life slip away, but for now, I'm blinded by my love for this thing that most all of us can do instinctively but very few of us can do well.

And my relationship with running is a horrible, abusive marriage. I give her black eyes, she gives me stress fractures, the marriage was probably consummated in rape and then performed in the presence of a starter's pistol, a stand-in for the proverbial shotgun.

A week ago I woke up in the middle of the night to grab the blanket which at some point it had become tangled around my feet. As I leaned forward I heard a resounding pop somewhere in my lumbar vertebrae, and then an almost palpable feeling of relief. These little idiosyncratic pops will be the only remaining mark on my body after all the muscles atrophy and my heart languishes in fatty tissue, when you can no longer see my ribs and a flight of stairs is enough to knock me down.

Before I began running I was a structurally sound kid. There were no random aches and pains or clicks when I walked. The first of these clicks came after charging all-out up a steep hill. The next day both my Achilles tendons hurt, and ever since then they make a little snapping sound with every step I take. Shortly thereafter, my hip also started to make popping noises occasionally, usually the day after a fast workout. After injuring my IT band the following year, my right knee will sometimes make a creaking sound followed by a loud crack when I extend it. Since breaking the sesamoid bone in my foot, I have a lump of scar tissue the size of a quarter, and can make another cracking sound, this one a little more crunchy, every time I flex my big toe. After one of the tendons on top of my foot became inflamed, I can make another pop by pulling down on my toes. The day after doing hill repeats following a period of a few days when I couldn't run due to illness, I noticed that when I got out of bed, I could make both my knees pop by simply shaking my leg. This is now my morning ritual, which I perform without fail. My left ankle feels and sounds like it runs over a notch in its otherwise smooth rotation after a stint with peroneal tendinitis. After having two stress fractures and a herniated disc in my lower back, I found that I could make strange popping sounds in my back not by twisting, but by merely leaning to the side. As these recovered, I discovered that sometimes, when I sat down, usually in the car, there would be a popping feeling somewhere deep in my hip, on either side. It feels like my pelvis is shifting. I can make another one of these pops occur by putting my fist between my knees and squeezing my legs together, which happens less frequently but probably provides the most relief of all these little clicks. And now, add to the list, another spot that cracks, somewhere in my back. I've heard that tendons can rarely ever heal to how they were before they were injured, due to low blood flow. If this is true, then I'll have a memory of my athletic follies long after any of the rest of my body remembers.

It seems to pass for conventional wisdom that the level of exercise required for any endurance event is far past the point of diminishing returns in terms of health benefits. My knees, they tell me, will blow out, and what with all the pollutants in the air I'm probably better off toiling away in some spin class in a corporate fitness farm, or shelling out money for some prick from crossfad to tell me that the way to improve your endurance is through dead lifts. This body is only temporary. It's a vehicle I have for now, and I might as well drive it fast and drive it reckless.

At least once a week it will cross my mind that I should just stop. Of course there's the question, if I do quit, of wondering "what if," down the road. Instead, I think about all the what ifs of not running. I could be in some crappy jam band or hosting a late night radio show or maybe even fighting crime, I don't know. But every time I think about it, every fiber of my being looks around and tentatively says "You know, not yet. Not yet."

It may be love and it may be an addiction, but when you take both those concepts to the extreme, they basically look the same. So for now I'm going to see it through to the end, and if I destroy myself on the way, all the better.

The 3rd Millennium: Where Big Brother Doesn't Care

2011-07-23T23:32:00.000-07:00

On the spectrum of sci-fi, smartphones are somewhere past radioactive milk and a little before corporations owning patents on your DNA. It's an extension of your body and an extension of your brain and you can connect to the internet from anywhere (ok, not anywhere) which is essentially a lite version of tapping into a hive mind or global consciousness. An incomprehensible wealth of information is literally now at my fingertips as long as my eyes don't go bad from squinting at the tiny screen, but by the time they do, your smartphone will just have a heads-up display projected directly into your optic nerve.

But then there's also the sketchy feature of GPS tracking. Most of us (and by "most of us" I mean "most of you," because I have a superpower, which probably came from drinking too much radioactive milk, where I always know exactly how to get where I'm going) love the GPS feature on our phones, because we never have to worry about getting lost and we don't have to invest any thought into paying attention to where we actually are so we can instead fully focus on singing along to the Nicki Minaj single we foolishly purchased on iTunes and sipping from our emo screamo froth out your ass frappuccino while we feel so good about driving our Prius on our hour long commute. But it goes two ways. Apple claims that they track your location so they can better provide you with coverage, and this is also the reason that they keep a log of where you have been that goes back for a full six months, or at least that's what they tell you.

Android is specifically designed to further Google's agenda of knowing exactly what you like and targeting ads specifically for you. Android phones are all about getting people to search for things so Google can make more relevant ads. If you look up song lyrics, they know what kind of bands you like. If you search for bicycle parts, they will know you're into cycling. If you search for Volvo mechanics, they will know you drive a Volvo. If you search for baby products, they will know you have a baby. And if you search for Korean porn, then, well, you get the drift. And this information is used to provide the most "relevant" ads, that is, the ads that they think you are most likely to click.

And speaking of relevant ads by Google, have you looked around lately? Some pretty enticing sponsors we got here...

Now, my phone isn't exactly smart. It's a C student, gets its fair share of detention, but it'll graduate and have a decent job at the Dollar Tree. But I can still access the hive mind and search for things. And someone probably knows where I am.

And I'm not sure I really care. It's not like I go anywhere interesting, it's not like I'm spending my Friday nights sneaking into Area 51. And they know that the other day, I was curious to see if you could buy elephant steaks. (In case you're wondering, the answer is not legally.) They know all the inane things I've googled, all the boring places I've been. But they know this for everybody. And it's all just getting handled by one big algorithm. Is it scary? Does it have the potential to be dangerous? Yes, of course it does. But for right now, no one actually cares where you've been, and no one actually cares what you're searching for. Big Brother is watching, but he's also watching everyone else. And you would have to be really arrogant to think that Google would single you out, out of all their millions of users, and take an interest in all the nothing you've been doing.

The truth is out there. It's just kind of boring.

I May Not Be Able to Start a Conversation, But I Know How to End One

2011-07-18T21:44:00.000-07:00

The other day, someone asked me what my major is. I told them I was studying creative writing and literature. He asked me what I wanted to do with that.

"I want to be a writer," I told him, because I want to be a writer.

"You mean like," he said, "writing books?" He sounded angry and confused. Before I could say anything he had walked away.

Now I know how to get out of any conversation. I'll just tell them I want to be a writer.

The Epsilon Eridani Trail (You Have Died of Space Dysentery)

2011-07-13T23:45:00.000-07:00

I don't know what this is. It's a half baked post of an even less thoroughly baked idea, which popped into my head, for some reason, as I was watching Pulp Fiction. I really don't know what I'm doing. But you know what, it doesn't matter, because let me remind you once again, THAT I'M AN INTERNET HUNDREDAIRE NOW!

"There are no final goodbyes on this earth"
-3, Dive

I can't really say goodbye to anyone. This is not a psychological block or some kind of metaphorical statement about conditions specific to my life. None of us really can.

We've reached the point, at least in the Western World anyway, where the only final goodbye is dying.

Until very recently, you very easily fall off the grid without trying. Change your phone number, change your address, move to a new city, and it may be very difficult for anyone from your past to get in touch. And back before the interstate and railroads and clipper ships it was a long time to get anywhere, and if you were to leave for the Oregon Territory or the New World or the Holy Land or from the Tigris-Euphrates Delta to the Cedar Forests of Lebanon to slay the monster Humbaba, you may never be coming back, and let's just hope you were literate so you could send letters or a cuneiform tablet. (And odds are, you probably weren't.) You could still say the kind of goodbye to someone who would potentially live on for many years, and it would be the last thing you ever said to them.

Now I can find someone on facebook or ask the Google Monster. I can Skype with people on the other side of the planet. I can send a text or an email to any of my friends and if they're remotely near civilization, they'll get it. I cannot comprehend actually saying a final goodbye to someone unless they are dying. (Or I guess also if I were dying, but with advances in modern medicine cancelled out by all the miscellaneous radiation I'm absorbing, the expected time of that happening should still be hovering around 2065.) Because I know I'll always have a change to get in touch with them somewhere down the road, even if our physical paths never cross again.

And soon (on a historical scale) we're going to have to start comprehending those big goodbyes again. Because we (and when I say "we" I mean "our great-grandchildren") will be going to space. And in space, everything is really far away. Let's say you're best friend, let's call him Chromicron to give him a future-y sounding name, is packing up his life into a nano-fiber suitcase and taking a new job doing some kind of future job on Mars. He's not coming back for a long time. Because of planetary orbits and the cost of fuel, intrasystem travel won't be cheap or feasible, even with new, much faster forms of propulsion. Light lag between the Earth and Mars is about three minutes, give or take a few minutes for their relative orbital positions. This means with the added communication lag time, instant messaging becomes like texting, texting becomes like email becomes like olde-timey email when we still all used dial-up and it would be reasonable to expect to get your.name@mainstreamemail.com without tacking on numbers at the end that would give Rain Man a run for his money.* (The scary thing is that I really can't even remember a time when everyone had dial-up. Yes, I remember having a dial-up connection in our house growing up, but by the time I understood what dial-up actually was, we already had DSL.)

And what when we leave the solar system? Once we travel fast enough to really start feeling relativity, or, to truly separate ourselves from everything we know, get cryogenically frozen so we don't waste half our lives in transit to Epsilon Eridani. (Revelation Space, anyone? Anyone??? You're really not missing much.) Your friend leaves for another system and you will never see him or her again, unless you follow suit by turning yourself into a popsicle as well and getting shot millions of miles in a little metal tube. (And don't leave me a comment saying "actually being cryogenically frozen is less like being turned into a popsicle and more like being turned into freeze-dried chili-mac," because nobody likes a wise-ass. Actually, do comment, it will make me feel good about myself.)

But right now, we're at a point where the world is small, but not small enough that we want to leave yet, what with all the warmth and life sustaining oxygen we have down here and all the gamma rays and ice chunks they have whizzing around up there. And that's why I'm bad at goodbyes: because I have no idea what they actually are. It's supposed be the last thing you ever say to someone, leave a lasting impression of what they mean to you and hopefully give them something by which to remember you. All I ever say is something lame like "keep rockin in the free world!" A goodbye used to mean something. And it will mean something again. But for now I can never say goodbye because I'll never really need to.

*This was originally a much more edgy joke about autism. Even I apparently have limits.

I'm an Internet Hundredaire!

2011-07-05T22:40:00.000-07:00

"Here comes success (Here comes success)
I'm gonna do the twist (I'm gonna do the twist)"
-Iggy Pop, Success

Yesterday I received $100 from Google. This is because I whore out some space on the Ozone Shack for advertisements. After almost two years, the Ozone Shack finally made some money. They won't pay you until you earn at least $100, and it took me this long just to make that much.

But let's face it. I made money. I made a hundred fuckin ducats. So that's about eighty dollars profit, since it's ten dollars a year to lease the domain name. That means I made about eighty-nine cents a post. Even a lost-generation Orwell was making more than that (adjusted for inflation, converted from pounds and/or francs).

It's ok, I'm like an indie band among blogs. Because I have actual readers, so it's not like one of those blogs that the only writer and possibly his mother reads. But at the same time, you're basically seeing me play in a small, garage-like venue (for example, a garage) and there are seven other people in the room and we're a pretty mediaphobic band so you have to work really friggin hard to find us so you can stand there with your can of PBR while we shoegaze and make almost-witty stage banter whilst wearing ironic t-shirts and making some obscure reference to a book that the frontman and only the frontman has read. That is the Ozone Shack, and it is now a profitable venture.

All I know is that I need to try a lot harder.

Ideolocator

2011-06-28T22:50:00.000-07:00

"And I don't know where I went wrong
All I know now is I got to do something... right?"
-Streetlight Manifesto, We Are The Few

So I'm not sure if you've noticed (of course you didn't notice) but I've been posting even less frequently than my already lax posting habits normally allow. This is because I'm on a magical quest of introspection and self discovery and doing something I call "dynamic meditation" where I basically pace around my room and point at the walls and sometimes yell. (This is how I think.) Why do I need to find myself? Because on June 10th at approximately 8:20 PM I yelled "I AM A FUCKING BEAUTIFUL ALBATROSS, AND I AM BEING CONFINED IN A CAGE; A CAGE OF THE MIND, A CAGE OF THE SPIRIT, A CAGE OF THE SOUL!!!"

I have about three and a half weeks to finish finding myself. Most people have to do this in their late 30's and only if they have the time and money to go to Morocco or Tibet and could at least be loosely classified as an artist. I can't even buy booze yet, I consider going to Panda Express a night on the town, and my "art" consists mostly of saying "shit man, that's so sci-fi."

But being a metaphorical caged albatross isn't a good enough explanation for you, is it? I think the albatross explanation is a better one, because the concrete reasons have to do with a) depression and b) the only thing I've had to deal with that sucks more than depression, which is running. Both make you not want to get out of bed and both make you eat a lot of random things at random times. Oh, and I'm also lactose intolerant now. Not sure how that one happened.

But basically I ran so hard that I broke my back in two (2) places and then after doing rehab for a few months realized that I liked hanging out with Scully and Mulder better than I liked hanging out with my real friends. But I just thought I was anemic, and when I went into student health for a blood test they also tested my white blood cell count and cortisol levels and all kinds of other crazy things that sometimes show up in your blood, including blood parasites, and even tested me for something that sounds like the exact opposite of diabetes where eating any kind of simple sugar makes your blood sugar immediately crash. Then they told me I was probably depressed but of course I know better, depression is just a made-up disease by the media and the government and the man, so I hung out with Scully and Mulder some more until I realized there was nothing actually physically wrong with me except for excessive scar tissue in my foot and lower back and a disc that's herniated by about 6 millimeters. But really this all has to do with running, and more importantly recalibrating my brain so that I can be good again. Because having two stress fractures and a herniated disc does even more mental damage than it does physical damage.

So I opted out of living in the mountains and growing a beard and pooping among God's creatures for the summer, and instead am working part time for corporate America (I am legally obligated not to say anything bad about the company I work for) and spending lots of time reexamining myself and, of course, running.

The obvious solution, which I'm doing my darndest to avoid, would be antidepressants. Antidepressants are the American Dream finally come to fruition; it's happiness in a pill. And not only do we have happiness in a pill, we have skinny in a pill, boner in a pill, not-baby in a pill, even hair in a pill. Our forefathers (well, not my forefathers, but somebody's forefathers) crossed this great continent with nothing but willpower and dysentery so that one day, we could take a pill that made all our perceived troubles (but not our actual troubles) melt away and rock-solid erections that lasted up to four hours. They also envisioned places where you could buy funnel cake and then puke it up thirty minutes later without having an eating disorder.

But yes, I am rediscovering who I am as a runner and hoping that will help me realize more about myself as a human. Actually, it's become sort of the opposite. I'm learning about myself and contemplating the human condition and the soul and the mind and, ok, who am I kidding, I'm running to the point where fatigue and mild dehydration fries my brain.

Here are some things I have realized so far:

I'm edgy. I got a gritty reboot, which makes me edgy.
The Virgin Mary cries tears of blood every time you read a book by Deepak Chopra.
Most people think in clichés, and some can only think in clichés. But like my grandma always said, "three in the bushellbasket is worth five on the lampstand!" Why get a college education when you know that little gem?
The mind is probably some sort of interface mechanism between the soul and the body. I have identified seven factors (and counting) which determine the nature of one's soul. They are too complex and too nascent in my mind at this point in time to explain in bullet point form.
Being lactose intolerant is way more fun than being lactose tolerant. Instead just having one kind of milk to choose from, you have soy milk, rice milk, almond milk, oat milk, hazelnut milk ,and even hemp milk. And don't even get me started on all the varieties of fake ice creams I can experiment with.
Loving something or someone means that you are willing to completely destroy yourself for it. By this definition, running may be the only thing I've actually ever loved.

This means that Billy Joel was wrong when he said he never loved his first wife, Whatserface.

If you have lost all faith in humanity, then, and only then, can you justify believing in an ideological absolute.

This whole expedited process of finding myself has taken me through some phases rather quickly. A few weeks ago, as I was preparing finals, I had the introspective (and sleep-deprived) phase where I looked around me and saw nothing but empty people sucking the conformist corporate teet. Then as my blood became less blood-based and more caffeine-based I had that manic, crazy, thousand thoughts a second won't shut up won't somebody please listen to me about how our generation needs courage phase. Then I got edgy, real edgy, got irreverent, got a tad hedonistic. There followed a brief twelve hours of disassociation from reality. Then I had the nihilistic phase, which came in two parts, the first where I realized that my essence at the atomic level is nothing but bullshit and that everything I had realized recently was void because of my own character flaws. Then I had the drone phase, where about four days passed and I don't think I thought anything. Then I had a rekindling of my faith in humanity and the importance of interpersonal interaction, and now I've been two days in the austerity phase, where I just get things done and live simply. It's been a little over a month. I may not find the true essence of myself, if that even exists, but I will probably find something.

But now that I think about it, happiness in a pill isn't exactly the American Dream. Finding yourself in 6-8 weeks, that's the American Dream. And I can't decide if that makes me spiritually bankrupt or just one helluva self-actualizing man.

Let's say neither, for now.

Nature vs. Legislature

2011-06-16T23:14:00.000-07:00

It was thought that God was dead, but now it seems He is guilty of patent infringement.

I really wish this were science fiction, but with a world getting more sci-fi by the minute, something like this was bound to happen. Under US patent law, you (and I don't actually mean you, because let's face it, you're reading the Ozone Shack which means you're probably not in a lab doing groundbreaking research) can patent a molecule. Not a means of synthesizing it or extracting it or distilling it or purifying it or packaging it or distributing it or administering it, but actually the molecule itself. You (again, probably not you) have to discover it and prove you discovered it, so it's not like you're all of a sudden going to have to start paying royalties on oxygen every time you breathe. (Or ozone, for that matter, which would spell the end for my stint in the blogosphere.)

But, if a team at Dow Chemicals discovers a new compound, let's call it hexyl-methyl-buggerol, that occurs naturally in the excrement of giraffes, and they patent it, any distributor would have to pay royalties for selling products that used hexyl-methyl-buggerol, even if it were synthesized in a lab. The patent law essentially treats the scientist who was first able to determine the molecular structure of a compound like it would the inventor of a device or piece of technology. And unlike the telephone or the jet engine or fiber-optics, you don't have to actually figure out how to make the molecule to get the patent. You just have to show that you discovered hexyl-methyl-buggerol and our bloated and undiscerning U.S. patent system will grant you the rights to control any use of hexyl-methyl-buggerol.

This is unnerving not just because someone can claim royalties for something they didn't technically invent, but because it implies that a person "invented" a molecule. It doesn't matter what theological or philosophical ideas you subscribe to, or even if you don't subscribe to any, you know there's something wrong with this. In any possible way of conceiving the universe, the structure of molecule itself was created or designed or came into being because of something - be it God or laws of quantum mechanics or karmic cause effect or even the evil demiurge Yaldobaoth - something other than the conscious ideas of its discoverer. From a scientific standpoint it is unethical because assigns a human "inventor" to something that already existed or could form in nature, and from a religious standpoint it could be seen as borderline blasphemy, taking credit for something made by the creator. And it is for these above reasons that I find it dystopian that a molecule - and again, not a means of synthesizing it - can be patented.

Now, you may be thinking: "but Nate, it I'm not religious, nor do I have any ethical qualms about this because it provides incentive for scientific progress and supports capitalism. Why should I be terrified by this?"

Because someone has a patent on your DNA, that's why!

For the first few centuries of the patent concept's lifetime, living organisms were considered off-limits as being "products of nature." Then biotech came along and blurred the lines as to what was a product of nature and what was a product of human inventiveness. In 1988 a cancer-resistant mouse was patented, and many disease-resistant strains of crops followed suit. Once we mapped the entire human genome, essentially a collection of very large molecules, it was inevitable that scientists pharmaceutical companies would take the opportunity to stake their clam to specific genes. (And this is not to imply at all that they are nefarious Bond villains trying to control the world by controlling our genes, it's just a logical step to take given legal and scientific parameters.) So right now, the rights to about 10% of your genome are owned by a specific person or corporation. (Hey man, corporations are people too!)

Now obviously, they won't be charging a 3% royalty fee every time that gene replicates itself. But they can claim ownership over any gene therapy drugs that involve that section of your DNA. There are also implications for genetic testing, and basically anything else that involves the human genome. And as the speed we can sequence genomes increases exponentially, it is now possible to patent the entire genome of an organism. An example is the neem tree in India, whose genome is now the intellectual property of the W.R. Grace company. The tree itself may still be a "product of nature," but from a legal perspective, someone owns the information on how to make it.

The good news is that the supreme court has overturned many of these "gene patents," so hopefully all of our DNA will once become public domain. But if that is to happen, we need to realize that adhering to an absolute ideology will only lead us astray. We need discernment and the courage to stop before we get to the ideological extreme, in this case, that it is in the best interest of a capitalist society that every bit of intellectual property can be patented. Because if we did get there, the world would be very sci-fi indeed.

Edible/Audible, Abbreviations Edition

2011-05-18T21:57:00.000-07:00

A special installment of the Edible/Audible series, a series where we find out what would happen if your favorite band was a food. This one is dedicated to bands that are commonly referred to by their initials. And yes, I realize I recycled one from a previous installment. What are you going to do about it?

CCR (Creedence Clearwater Revival) – Pizza Bagel Bites

Although it may seem more fitting to link CCR with some kind of southern (or faux-southern) food, they’re a band based on single servings that generally will go over well any time. Eat a whole album of these and you may not find it to be as appealing.

BTO (Bachman-Turner Overdrive) - Tortilla Chips

Something generic and non-nutritive, and although it is not a requirement for a party, it helps to have them somewhere in the background.

BOC (Blue Oyster Cult) – Potato Skins with Cheese and Bacon

Does it make sense? No. Is it awesome? Yes!

RHCP (Red Hot Chili Peppers) - Microwavable Burrito
Within their career, within a decade, within an album, and even within a song, they can alternate between riffs that are boiling-lava hot and remaining cool and unaffected by the chaos surrounding them. They are a composite of many textures, ingredients, and even of cultures, and most notably, are something that could only come out of LA. Also, fits nicely into a tube sock.

ELO (Electric Light Orchestra) - Mac n' Cheese

Accessible, reminds you of a simpler time, but can still sustain you well through your adult life.

DMB (Dave Matthews Band) - Chili with Okra

Almost sounds like generic Americana music, but there's something definitely off about the texture...

GNR (Guns n’ Roses) – Grape Nuts

Yes, it’s hard to believe, but this was once one of the most popular foods in America.

RATM (Rage Against the Machine) – A triple shot of fair-trade espresso

Politically and socially conscious, still gets you wired as hell

STP (Stone Temple Pilots) – Carob

Tries really hard to taste like the real thing, but just can’t.

NIN (Nine Inch Nails) - Cytomax

Based on principles of organic chemistry, but tastes like it's spent its entire existence in a laboratory and has never seen a tree, or even blue sky. Definitely takes some time to get used to, and with some people, it just never takes.

Something To Chew On

2011-05-09T22:06:00.000-07:00

"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice"

-Rush, Freewill

We all like to think that we're different, that we're smarter than the average person in whatever demographic we may inhabit, that we're going to make it, that our own individual experience is somehow unique - you act like you're the first person to fall in love, the first person to give birth, the first person to have terminal cancer, the first person to think your car is a spaceship, the first person to be blown away that one time you discovered Rush - we believe we're going to beat the system, we believe we're the universe owes it to us to dispense equal and fair justice that's just a little biased towards ourselves because we all know that we're at its center, we think that history is just one big setup that culminates in Right Now, that it has all lead up to this point, that our dreams mean something, that our actions mean something, that we are more important than just the atoms we're made of and the space they take up, that we are independent, rational, free-thinking, logical children of the enlightenment, endowed with the gift of sapience to solve the Rubik's Cube that is the universe, when really, we might have to come to terms with the fact that we're just being influenced by quantum mechanics and instincts we don't understand.

I Can't Believe it's not Science!

2011-04-28T22:59:00.000-07:00

"One more name on the slate, one less minute to wait

Too busy to see two versions of me

One more bottle is dry, one less reason to try"

-Phish, Two Versions of Me

The advertisements for gay.com have stopped showing up. At least I think so. I use Google Adsense for advertising, which basically uses keywords found on the website to generate advertisements that they think readers will be interested in. So apparently, the Google Monster thought that all of my readers were gay, because sometimes there would be a large banner ad that would read "gay.com. Are you?" Apparently the Ozone Shack has become more hetero, or at least the keywords have.

The ads actually have little to do with the content of the site. The most common ones seem to be for actual ozone producing systems and air ionizers.

But lately I have been noticing an advertisement that consists of a link that says "Quantum Jumping." This links to a website that is selling a bogus way to self actualize. The premise is that since quantum theory implies an infinite number of parallel universes, there are perfect versions of you existing out there somewhere. In fact, the site says "In these alternate universes, alternate versions of YOU are living out their lives." You can somehow commune with these other versions of you by meditating, because I guess the human mind somehow has the power to jump across universes. So basically, this combines a poor understanding of eastern religions with straight up misunderstandings about science to create a product that can conveniently be sold in an sixteen DVD box set that will enable you to be a brilliant painter, successful businessman, world-class athlete, and even recover from cancer.

Now, since I live a very boring life, I sometimes take solace in the fact that if Dr. Schroedinger is correct, there are an infinite many versions of me doing infinitely many cool things in an infinite number of parallel universes, while I lay on the couch popping ibuprofen like they're tic tacs watching season 2 of the X-Files. (The truth is out there and it's wearing a 90's power suit.) And yes, sometimes I wish my consciousness could jump, Tibetan yogi-style, to one of these hypothetical cooler, more interesting places. (And no, in case you were wondering, Tibetan yogi-style is not at all close to as dirty as it sounds.) And when I look back on some juncture where I probably did the wrong thing, I don't wish that I had chosen one different scenario had unfolded. I wish that multiple, if not infinite, scenarios had unfolded. But we're probably still just stuck with one universe, and it is very, very boring.

But let's assume that you could "jump" to another parallel universe. The Quantum Jumping website states that a new "bubble universe" is created every time you make a decision. This is not exactly how it works. If my understanding of quantum mechanics is correct it's more like whenever an electron moves differently or a subatomic particle decays that reality bifurcates. So, I'm far less likely to jump to a universe where I'm touring with Mötley Crüe and using one of Elvis' teeth as a guitar pick than I am to jump to a universe that is exactly the same, and the ratio of carbon-14 to nitrogen in my desk is still still the same, but they are distributed ever so slightly differently.

I think the program is more focused on meditating and visualizing a more perfect version of yourself, which is essentially what Tibetan yogis have been doing for centuries (when they're not doing it Tibetan yogi-style.) The site actually says that it is "science fiction [becoming] science," and I think that the quote by Max Planck may be enough to fool a lot of Americans into buying this. I mean, we bought those fucking abdominal stimulation belts. Maybe it will catch on. But so did the Atkins diet and Hare Krishna and chain letters.

I feel like I'm on a really existential version of a Mississippi gambling boat. But it's alright, because I brought my epistemological derringer.

Science!

Hello Technorati

2011-04-26T21:30:00.000-07:00

Here's my claim code:

VS6UDDPQ4WNA

Say Hello to Grandpa Ishenhill!

2011-04-21T21:59:00.000-07:00

Here's another one of the many stories I write that somehow involve electricity or lack thereof. One of the characters had been floating around my subconscious for a few years and he finally escaped onto the page.

One day Grandpa Ishenhill announced that he had decided to stop paying the electricity bill. It wasn’t that he couldn’t pay it. He was receiving his pension from having worked for twenty years as an employee of the state, and an extra stipend for being my legal guardian. And it certainly wasn’t because we didn’t need electricity. He just decided, one day, that he wouldn’t pay it. It was almost as if he wanted to see how long it would take before they cut us off. Every night he would sit in his chair in the living room, reading a book in Cazergi, looking up at the lamp every few minutes, angrily, as if he was frustrated at the power company for being late, and when the lights finally did go out, cutting out the newest Pool of Noise album coming from my room, the first thing he said was “well it’s about time they did something.”

“What am I supposed to do now?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I have homework to do!”

“Light a candle or something. I don’t know, you can wait for the sun to come up. Don’t worry, this is all part of the plan.”

I came to school thirty minutes late the next day, because my alarm clock didn’t go off, with my homework unfinished and an excuse that no one would believe. “So you’re saying that your grandpa just refuses to pay the electricity bill?”

“Yeah, he’s gone crazy. I mean, he has always been crazy, but, well, this is a new record.”

“Maybe you should budget your time better so that you do your homework while the sun is still shining. Or at least think of a better excuse.”

Because I lived with my crazy grandpa who would refuse to speak English for sometimes weeks at a time, because he thought that American kids were supposed to wear dork pants to school, because whenever teachers would call home about my miscreant behavior or my prodigious lack of caring he would yell at them until they hung up and then tell me some sort of fable from old country to illustrate my moral wrongdoings but which I could never understand, because he would pack me some sort of beet concoction in a thermos for lunch every day, because he insisted on giving me haircuts himself, and now because he somehow got the notion in his head that getting our power cut off was a good idea, I found it exceedingly difficult to be normal, let alone cool, in middle school. Actually, apart from the haircut, it was probably my own fault. Cool is an x-factor and I didn’t have it.

That afternoon I went to Marco’s house, where there was still lots of power, and played video games with him and Girma, then biked to the public library and tried to actually do some homework, until the librarian (who certainly did not have the potential to become a hot librarian by taking off her glasses and letting down her bun) kicked me out at closing time. So I walked to Carrie Brownstone’s house, stayed there for an hour or two to finish up my homework, then hopped the fence and walked a couple hundred feet along the canal to get home. When I got inside, there were no candles or anything for light, Grandpa Ishenhill was just sitting there, in the dark, eating a warm pudding cup. I noticed by the light coming in from the streetlights that his shirt was on backwards.

“Did the school call home today?” I asked when I thought we had made eye contact. “Oh wait, that’s right, they couldn’t, because you didn’t pay the phone bill either.”

“I was wondering why it was so nice and quiet here today,” he grumbled. “Speaking of which, where were you? You didn’t come home after school.”

“I was someplace where there was electricity.”

“Have I told you the legend of Gzoljchi the goatherd?”

“Which one, he’s been in like ten of the stories you’ve made up.”

“They are time-honored Cazergi legends, from before the coup, before the occupation, before Genghis Khan, before the Caliphate, before there was the Cazergi Orthodox Church, even before Alexander the Great made us civilized people!”

“You mean killed your men and raped your women.”

“Killed our men and raped our women. They’re your people too. Which is why you need to hear these stories that–“

“That you made up?” I wasn’t going to sit through this. I went to my room, slammed the door, and fell asleep with my clothes on. I think I knew which story he was talking about. Gzoljchi was some kind of archetypal figure in Cazergi lore who traveled around the steppes with his herd of goats and outsmarts various trickster spirits, all the while maintaining his integrity. In this particular story, the bat spirit Urzhdet steals the sun and hides it in his cave. Everyone else panics because there is no light, but not Gzoljchi, who is patient enough to learn to find his way without light to see, and then travels into the mountains where Urzhdet resides (scholars have found evidence that these mountains could be anywhere from the Urals to the Caucasus to the Hindu Kush). He then challenges Urzhdet to a traditional game that resembles croquet, called “Bajeka.” Urzhdet cannot see because he is blinded by the intense light of the sun inside his cave, but Gzoljchi plays with his eyes closed, as he has learned to live without sight. I think this story was supposed to tell me that I was supposed to be patient and learn to live without electricity. Now that may have been all well and good in shamanistic, bronze-age Eurasia, but now, I think electricity may be more important than sunlight was back then. At least the way I saw it.

The next day Grandpa Ishenhill woke me up by knocking on my door. I ate cereal straight from the box with my hand and washed it down with a coca cola. Grandpa Ishenhill ate his dry out of a bowl with a spoon. “You know,” he said, “if we had a goat we could have milk.”

“Or we could just pay the electricity bill and be able to use our refrigerator again.”

“Just sit this one through, ok?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“You’ll learn.”

“You know, I’ve always thought you were full of shit, but this is ridiculous. Can we just pretend to be normal people for once?”

“I’ve tried to be normal and it isn’t worth it.”

“Oh shut up old man.” I was out the door. My hair was all greasy and sticky; we had no hot water so I hadn’t showered. But I felt well rested, and I was aware of things for the first eight hours of my day, kind of like a drone being severed from its hive mind for the first time.

That night, Grandpa Ishenhill realized that we couldn’t eat dry cereal forever. It was actually his idea to order a pizza. Of course, we couldn’t use our landline, I didn’t have a cell phone and he of course refused to get one. “Go over to that whatsername’s house and use their phone,” he told me.

“They don’t usually put beets on pizza, you gonna be ok with that?” I asked on my way out the back door.

“Think of a topping you don’t like and get that on half of it. I’ll probably find to be to my liking.”

I walked along the canal and hopped over Carrie Brownstone’s back fence. She wasn’t there so I had to explain to her mom and her mom’s boyfriend (who was probably the reason Carrie Brownstone wasn’t there) why I had to use their phone. Once I had explained my peculiar situation and they agreed to let me, I noticed that the pizza parlor’s number that I had scrawled on my hand had already smeared, so I also had to ask them to use their internet to look up the number. (I think we were the last household in the Western World to still have a physical phone book.)

I was expecting another mind game with Grandpa Ishenhill when the pizza came, making me thank him for not skimping on his basic duty or at least another legend that he probably made up. But instead, he somewhat laboriously hoisted himself onto the kitchen counter, next to the pizza box, and gestured to me to sit on the other side. We sat there in the dark, munching on the pizza in silence.

“Well, I think I’ll go to bed now,” I said after I had finished.

The next morning I woke up at six in the morning and actually took a shower, even though it was cold as hell. This would become my routine every day, and I adhered to it without trying. I go to sleep as soon as I got home, wake up with the sun, or even before it, take a freezing shower and then go to school where I would actually pay attention, then go somewhere that wasn’t at home, so I wouldn’t be reminded of how angry I was at Grandpa Ishenhill.

This worked out all well and good for about a month, until he decided to change the game again. I came home one day and the door was off its hinges, and all of the windows were taken out of their frames.

“What the hell are you doing with the doors and windows?”

“I’m selling them.”

“We’re going to get robbed!”

“It’s not like we have any valuables.”

“What about the TV and the computer?”

“Well, we can’t really use those anyway, so I just stashed them under my bed. It feels like all I really leave the house for is errands and church, so now you don’t have to go to church, and you can run the errands.”

“I can’t drive yet.”

“This way you’ll learn fast!”

“You have completely lost it this time.”

“It’s all part of the plan. Just let it happen.”

“What plan?”

“We just need to let the winds blow through our house. We need to let the outside in.” Have I told you the story of–”

“Don’t want to hear it.”

That night I was so cold that I barely slept, so the next day I went to Carrie Brownstone’s to see if they had any extra blankets. I got one and it must have brushed against some poison oak as I was walking along the canal, because the next day I was itchy and puffy everywhere and some spots even turned into sores that oozed pus. It on everything in my room, somehow, on all my clothes, my sheets, my pillow, all over my desk. That was the time of year when the water in the canal got stagnant and mosquitoes started spawning there, and would of course make their way into the house. So I had mosquito bites on top of my poison oak and I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. Helluva time...

To Be Continued...

Maybe...