Brian's quite remarkable blog of wonder.

Yesterday there was a woman riding my bus who could only be described as "belligerently insane." One of those cases where someone is so mad at the world because she sees what she thinks is the simple solution to everything, and is incensed that nobody else sees it her way.

This woman noticed that the front doors of my bus kept getting stuck open, and I was closing them by reaching over with my ice scraper and jabbing them. She started complaining to me about how horrible the University was for paying so much money for professors when they can't even fix the bus door. It turned into a political rant...she seemed to think this had something to do with George Bush. I just ignored her as she ranted about how she was going to write a note to the "bus department" to change the system. Then she began laughing maniacally. Now that she had the full attention of all the passengers, suddenly the diatribe became directed at ME. "Did your mother raise you to be so ignorant?" she wondered. She shouted insults at me until we arrived at her stop.

Me: "Have a wonderful afternoon."
Her: "You're a fucking idiot!"
Me: "Please go away."

She got out of the bus, and stood outside the door screaming at me and asking for my name as people got on. Normally I would have said something sarcastic like "Madam, you can go to the Parking and Transportation office and they'll give you a full refund." but I was seriously starting to worry that she was about to get violent. So I just closed the door dismissively and left.

So to misquote the punchline from Monty Python's "Dirty Fork" sketch, it's a good thing I didn't tell her about the broken spedometer!

Yesterday was Earth Day. Imagine my disdain at reading in the paper that the House passed an energy bill aimed ostensibly at "boosting domestic production;" but basically just includes huge tax breaks for energy companies, provisions for Alaska oil drilling, and a liability waiver for manufacturers of a toxic gasoline additive which contaminates the drinking water of 1,800 communities in 29 states. Attempts by House Democrats to add measures for higher fuel-efficiency requirements for cars, and for stripping that shit about the liability shield from the bill, were to no avail. Here's what really aggravates me:

1) Fuel prices may or may not drop a few cents, but at heart this bill just makes disgustingly wealthy people even more fantastically wealthy, at the expense of the general populace (projected cleanup cost for the gas additive contamination: $29,000,000,000)... not to mention public health.

2) 249 members of the House of Representatives, officials that you and I elected (or, given the usual level of election participation in this country, probably not), thought this was a GOOD, rather than BAD, idea.

3) Nobody cares. All I know about it is from a tiny two-column AP article in my college's newspaper. Most of the media in this country report endlessly on stupid symbolic issues like the Pope and Terri Schiavo. Imagine if corporations are no longer legally responsible for pouring toxins into your drinking water, YOU are in fact responsible for these chemicals, for cleaning them up if they bother you. This issue affects you and I directly a great deal more than Michael Jackson's trial. The environment is, like it or not, THE most important political issue, so why is it that it is not even considered a political issue in this country? Why was the environment mentioned ONCE, briefly, in the three presidential debates (yes, I watched them very closely).

I am very upset. Yesterday I drew this political cartoon.

I've been a big fan of T. Coraghessan Boyle lately, and was delighted to find out that he's coming to do a reading and a rememberance of Writers' Workshop director Frank Conroy on Friday at the UI. The only problem is, on Boyle's web site, he said that this event would take place on Thursday, so I had work signed off on Thursday, and NOT on Friday. What's more, it turns out that the event is not a normal event that happens in the evening, but in fact a weird event that happens in the middle of the afternoon when I'm going to be at work. There goes my chance to see T. C. Boyle. I'm not too happy about this.

I talked to an academic advisor yesterday. I'm starting to actually feel like an upperclassman. I have all of my gen-ed requirements out of the way (except for four semesters of foreign language) and a few Music requirements to boot. I'm 95% sure I've decided on being a Composition major. Education is fine in that it actually could equate to dollar signs after graduation, but honestly I can't see myself being a teacher, so Composition it is. Writing music is basically the only thing I really get excited about, apart from cartooning, but they only teach cartooning at expensive schools. I think Composition is the major for me. Yes. The big goal is to stay focused on it for two more years.

So, my foreign language credits: I've narrowed it down to French or Russian. Leaning toward Russian. Again, the problem is focusing on one thing for four semesters.

Well, we played "I, the Undersigned" at No Shame. It was a big hit. That was fun! We made a shitty not-very-good-sounding recording of it. One of these days I'll learn how to be comfortable performing stuff... or how to be comfortable doing ANYTHING I guess.

Tomorrow I'm going to my mom's house.

Well, life has been one disappointment after another lately, which I won't go into much detail about. But fuck it; if it wasn't for disappointment, I wouldn't have any appointments (to quote John Flansburgh).

Since I'd rather like this blog to be relative happy-land, I'll discuss the good things. For one, it's April, and I've been bicycling a lot. We're nearing the end of the semester. Danny and Dan and I have found a three-bedroom duplex on Governor St. for August that is really nice and incredibly cheap. I'm going back to the University in the fall, and I'm really looking forward to it. I think I may take Russian. I've been getting a lot of things done. Last night, inspired by Robert Clampett cartoons, I made a few more seconds of MNIJ2, now it's up to 11 seconds done.

I wrote a song called "I, The Undersigned." It's going to premiere tomorrow at No Shame, with Jake playing trombone and me playing guitar, and Danny playing a conga drum. It's good. Dirty Sixty's first actual live performance! The instrumentation is a little weird, and there are definite balance issues (which we are working on fixing with mutes and/or amps). We'll record it. I should get my Music page set up.

See? Happy-land!

Two movies that begin with 'S' that you should immediately run, not walk, to your nearest cinema to see: 1) Alexander Payne's Sideways. 2) Frank Miller's Sin City. My thoughts on the former: that was such an amazingly good movie, and not just because Paul Giamatti's character so uncannily reminded me of myself, but because it really was a wonderfully directed, acted, written and photographed movie that will make you sad and at the same time fill you with incredible glee. I've added Payne to my very small list of directors to make sure I don't forget the names of.

My thoughts on the latter: Bhgb? What the..? How did...? I was dumbfounded by this movie. It looks just like comics! It's like... not even a movie! And Elijah Wood is creepy!

1) I just bought the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Vol. 2 from www.deepdiscountdvd.com. Free shipping!

2) I have 33 hours and 23 minutes of Prokofiev on my computer! That's a day and a third! And probably only about half of his total composed oeuvre. Also, my HUGE Winamp playlist is now at 391 hours, that's right, half a fucking month of music.

3) It's a nice day outside and I am in a good enough mood to not want to make any attempt to self-censor my elitist ramblings!

4) I'm pretty sure I'm going to get some Dirty Sixty t-shirts made tomorrow!

5) I just changed the look of my blog!

Hi. I've had a very bad week.