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2001-07-25 - 6:52 p.m.

Last night I was downtown in the rain at, believe it or not, 9:30 on a Tuesday night. Only I don't drive, and I was at a bar rather than a record shop.

Interesting. You could write a song about that.

I think someone already did.

NO, you could write a song about how much your life is not like a Barenaked Ladies song.

Hmmm...could have potential. But what is my life like?

Your life right now, Ken, is like a Far Side cartoon.

Any one in particular, or are you just saying I'm really f***ed up?

Well, you are really f***ed up, but I do have one in mind. The picture shows a family of porcupines sitting in a living room. A mother, a father (or, at least, two parental units of some kind) and a little kid porcupine. The kid porcupine is playing with a balloon, with a very delighted look on his face. One of the parent porcupines looks at the other one and says, "Well, this shouldn't last long."

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On Monday I got caught in the rain. It was pretty interesting. I broke into Mapes, as usual, to do my laundry, but only after I got there did I realize I had no laundry soap. No problem. I walked down to the Pig. On my way back, it suddenly went from slightly dark clouds to "My walk back took all of two minutes and I was still soaked to the bone." Luckily, I'm resourceful. While my laundry was going in the washer, I broke into the library and grabbed some clothes that were left over from the last charity drive, and for some reason hadn't gotten turned in (Apathy Rules!!!). There was even a towel, so I was able to go upstairs and dry off in the bathroom, and then take my wet clothes down to the dryer and dry them off.

Why do I mention all of this? Why is it important? It was the first (and probably only) time I've ever gotten to stand naked in front of the full-length mirror in the bathroom on second floor.

Why is that important? You tell me.

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No, I'm not going to talk about it here. It's too important for that.

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Okay, so I did promise I'd give a little summarization-action for what I did on Saturday, since it did mark the anniversary of my birth (which, for some reason, people tend to notice)

I woke up in the morning, destroyed something important to me, had some breakfast, and then Tammy and I and Wej went shopping in Appleton. I bought a new frisbee (a lot of my old ones have worn out.) and a couple CD's.

Which ones? You're being Hemingway-esque in your level of detail here, Ken.

Uhh...Best of Buddy Holly and the Best of Hank Williams.

Hank Williams?

Hank Sr. The talented one. Not his worthless bearded lady of a son. Hank Sr. was a very sad man. His music was very sad, generally. It makes me want to sit alone in the dark drinking liquor out of the bottle and wailing along.

Which is interesting, since that's pretty much how he spent the later years of his life, in a depressed alcoholic haze.

Hey, he lived his music.

Then that night we went to the Fond Du Lac County Fair, which, for those of you with the benefit of flash photography....wait, wrong line. I mean, for those of you keeping score at home, marks the second consecutive weekend I've been to a county fair.

How was it?

I went to my first tractor pull. Let's just leave it at that. Oh, and I know stereotypes are wrong and all, but they exist for a very good reason. In this case, every stereotype you've ever encountered about rednecks and hicks is 100% true. I saw people with less than a dozen teeth. Repeatedly. It was quite a boost for me, actually. I could honestly say, for possibly the last time in my life, that I was one of the best looking men there.

True. Usually you can only say that if you're alone in the room. And then only if there are no photographs of other men on display in said room...or drawings...or action figures...or manly women....

Oookay, I think we get the idea. Anyway, that was my birthday. It was actually one of the best birthdays I've ever had.

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I read somewhere that the band Chumbawumba (yes, they're still alive) was doing a track for a promotional CD in Germany that was meant to raise money so that kids could swim with dolphins.

How nice. They asked some kids in Calcutta what they thought of the project, but the kids were too busy starving to death to comment.

Can the world be saved?

Sure.

Will it?

Probably not. It's a horrible attitude to take, I realize, and it's gotten me accused of being a worthless human being and part of the problem, but the fact is that we can be facing down the worst global crises imaginable, and Middle Class America simply won't care, nor will they lift a finger to do anything about them until it becomes a matter of life or death for them directly. One person in a million is like Bryan and both understands what needs to be done and tries to live up to it (although I always take environmentalists more seriously when they don't drive cars.)

We live in a rich, powerful country, one that has proven in the past that it will do whatever it takes to make itself come out on top. Take the impending water shortages Bryan railed about. The guy doesn't care how many people in other countries die of thirst, as long as his grass is green. He doesn't even care how many poor people in his own country die of thirst, as long as his grass is green. It is only when the problem has crept so far that he goes to water his lawn one day, and nothing comes out of the hose, that he will begin to think maybe something needs to be done in the way of conservation. And no amount of ranting or effort on the part of anyone else will change that. America way of life first, and to hell with anyone who can't afford it.

It's like being caught in a sea of lemmings, marching over the cliff. Actually, it's like being handcuffed to a group of them. YOu can't get away from them- where they go, you go. You can't convince them that what they're doing is suicidal and that they should stop, because that would require change, and no one wants that.

Best you can do is enjoy the ride up, and the view on the way down. And maybe get to sit back in the afterlife and go, "I told you so."

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I went to the theatre on Monday night.

What did you see?

A dark room with a couple chairs and a podium on the stage.

No one was there. The summer production is over, there are no classes there. It's just a big, empty, dark room with a podium on the stage. I left the house lights off, and I just went and sat on the edge of the stage and looked out into the audience. I thought about private things for a long while, like the conversation I'd had earlier that day, and I shredded the inside of my lower lip, just chewing on it and thinking.

As the blood was dribbling out of my mouth, I realized that I needed to do something else to take my mind off of her. So I did some stand up.

No, I don't have a prepared routine. But I do have a tendancy to rant about things, and others find it funny, so I just started going off on Wheel of Fortune. It was pretty good. I vented about literature. It was good, too, but much fewer people would get a lot of the jokes. THen I did some regional humor, taking time out to verbally tear a new hole for an imaginary heckler.

I didn't even have an audience. I just talked, alone in the dark, walking around the stage. And my mind was at peace as I vented my spleen.

Dunno what to make of all that, but I have decided that next year, my one and only goal will be to do a show for a live audience, not censor myself or my language, and generate so much controversy I get asked never to do it again by the administration. Then I'll go and do the same show over the radio. That would make me happy.

Ken

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