Car conversations

I'm not much for talking on phones. As such, being in Ecuador was a pleasant break from phone conversations. When you pay per-minute, you have lots of had-a-baby-it's-a-boy exchanges.

So I save my phone conversations for the road, and generally very much enjoy catching up with folks while I drive. Some of yesterday's New Orleans-to-Shreveport conversation topics:

• The parable of The Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky's The Brother's Karamazov, which wrestles with the theological problem of evil
  
• U2's new concert tour, which apparently has a fancy rotating stage
• How to Command a Room Like a Man
  
• Graduate programs at the London School of Economics
• The Hound of Rowan, a teen book about a boy whose mirror allows him to access alternate dimensions
• David Vitter's chances of winning the 2010 "Most Miserable Human Being on the Planet" contest. See this morning's Shreveport Times article for a recent example, completely unrelated to the very serious sin of this man "fighting for families in Louisiana"
• The Texas border wall, and the efforts of UT's Rapoport Center to combat it

Dallas, here I come!

Sternutation Inspiration

Things I like

• Honey Bunches of Oats. Are they the perfect cereal, or is my perception skewed from two years of off-brand corn flakes?

• That my niece Genevieve says "no way!" when she feels particularly strong about something.

• My niece Genevieve, even when she's sick.

• My brother's Michigander friends. "I was in Ecuador once on a missions trip," says one. "They said we could either dig ditches or organize books. I said, 'Heck yeah! I'm going to go catalogue, baby.'" He now works in the Calvin College Bookstore.

• Rhianna's "Hate How Much I Love You," the version with Spanish d.b. Davíd Bisbal. Yes, it's true. More about my lifelong love-hate relationship with very, very bad music, coming soon.

• Grand Rapids' best coffee at its coolest coffeeshop, The Sparrows. Please ignore that the link is to a myspace page; sometimes greatness and early adoption of technology don't coincide.

• Bulkagov's The Master and Margarita, which I finally found at a used bookstore in Grand Rapids. I have an inkling that this book is newly popular for some reason or another. Anybody else besides Seth, Dunc and Chris read it recently?

Kids these days

An article in the Huffington Post reminds our parents that while... "may listen to our iPods in public a little too much and fantasize over thin laptops," that our generation still has a lot of potential:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-hirabayashi/memo-to-our-parents-we-do_b_141911.html

The Ultimate Mark CD 2008

For the last couple of years, I and a few of my friends have been sharing music via The Ultimate CD Project, in which we make CDs of our favorite songs and swap. I now anticipate the UCD Project every summer like I used to wait for opening day at the swimming pool.

But I've never written a blog post about why I choose the songs that I do. For nothing else but grins, here is this year's playlist, with a bit of explanation.

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"Boy With A Coin" by Iron & Wine

I have two Ecuadorian friends here, Emilia and Dani, who are professional flamenco dancers. If you've never seen a flamenco show, go see one this weekend. If you can't, at least watch the youtube video, which is magic.

"Boy Named Sue" and "Man in Black" by Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash is a recent obsession of mine, and these two songs represent two sides of Cash - light, fun Johnny and Damn-the-Man Johnny.

"Seen It All Before" and "Black River" by Amos Lee

It doesn't get any better than black spirituals, and when you combine that with a little acoustic guitar, you've earned a fan out of Mark. Cf. previous UMarkCDs with Ben Harper and Martin Sexton.

"Mi Swing Es Tropical" by Nickodemus & Quantic and "Ojalá pudiera borrarte" by Maná

If you live in Ecuador, you've gotta end up with some Spanish music on your Ultimate CD. to be fair, though, I'm pretty sure that Nickodemus is from New York, and I picked them up off of an iPod ad.

"Three To Get Ready" by The Dave Brubeck Quartet

I didn't mean to inherit my father's love for jazz - it just sort of snuck up on me after college. Brubeck just sounds like home, even if he is from California.

"That's The Way" by Led Zeppelin and "Up All Night" by Counting Crows

Every year there are a couple of surprises that sneak their way onto the Ultimate CD, just because I happened to be listening to them when I made the playlist.

You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go - Madeleine Peyroux

Iduhwannatalkaboudit.

"Hard Sun" and "Rise" by Eddie Vedder; "Apertura" by Gustavo Santaolalla

Into the Wild and Motorcycle Diaries, two Kerouacian travel movies, will likely never fall out my top-ten (but they're up there with Batman, so I don't know how seriously I'd take the list).

"Trouble" by Ray LaMontagne and "It Ain't Me, Babe" by Bob Dylan

Raspy, acoustic, shouldn't-have-smoked-that-many-cigarettes music.

"Perpetual Blues Machine" by Keb' Mo'

On a blues kick these days. Can't get enough of it.

"Fever For The Bayou" by Tab Benoit

I miss home.

Second Brother on the Right

I don't even think he's that good-looking:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080812/od_nm/guard_dc

I'm beginning to think the Chinese are almost as weird as America.

Remembering free time

Having worked myself and the rest of MPI's volunteers to exhaustion last year, I am making a special effort to bring down to equilibirum the number of hours I devote to MPI. Slowly, and in fits and starts (I seem to be applying that phrase a lot lately), I am rediscovering what 'free time' feels like. I'm not sure I like it.

That said, I've discovered that the activities I gravitate toward during my free time involve building things. Below are two photos of things I am been particularly proud of building in the last couple of weeks: our first successful pit-fire and an easel for Holly.

When worlds collide

My political world and my actual world, that is.