On warm, dusky summer evenings, few things make Ohio natives happier than rowdy, beer-fueled sessions of cornholing with each other.

From USA Today's Top 10 Summer Beer Festivals

Oktoberfest Zinzinnati
Cincinnati

"The largest Oktoberfest outside of Munich, OZ draws half a million people to celebrate the city's German roots. Experience a keg-tapping ceremony, Bavarian brass band and German food and beer. The event, Sept. 18-19, is highlighted by the World's Largest Chicken Dance, led by Grand Marshal Eddie Money."

Just try and tell me that doesn't make you want to clear the calendar in September and start planning a trip to the Queen City. Try. You can't.

And I'll see you there.

Commenting on the news as I hear it from a small, lonely radio studio in upper Applachia, of a Sunday morning.

JonBenet Ramsay's dad is running for state office in Michigan, as a gun rights-advocating, small government Republican. He says he'll "run government like a business".

I cringe any time I hear someone tout that impossible, fools-errand of a position.

(my itals)
"One and the same object or event can be now symbolized, now pictured, now verbally intended, and now perceived; it can also be imagined, remembered and anticipated. Through all these permutations it remains the same thing. We do not see many different appearances that we just relate to one and the same thing, but rather one and the same thing is itself given in new and varied ways. In this flow of presentations, the same thing is recognized over and over again. Its own identity is increased and intensified. We could even say its being is enhanced through the enrichment of its manifolds of presentation, since the being of a thing is not unrelated to its truth, and certainly the thing enjoys more truth as its displays are enlarged. There is more to A Midsummer Night's Dream after centuries of interpretation and staging than there was before. There is more to an animal and to a human being after they have manifested themselves through the events of life than there was before. The actuality involved in truth perfects not only the perceiver, but the entity that is displayed as well. (Robert Sokolowski)


I'm just trying to get my head around this passage, to assess its validity in my own experience, as long as it implies what I take it to be implying - that one meaning of existence is the increasing and profound deepening of an object's identity or being-ness through the simple act of existing. I understand phenomenology has its share of adherents among the religious, and I understand Sokolowski is a monsignor. Here I think we see evidence of that.

Dear God, I can't just leave it like that, can I?
Banal beyond belief (that might be a better title for this blog, come to think of it). I should be delivering a trenchant, withering condemnation of something...a few things W-related spring to mind immediately...but I don't think its happening tonight.

Octopi of New York

I'm just too tired to do anything much tonight, including go out drinking, go see Fahrenheit 911, pass badly-informed and inchoate judgment on the news of the day, etc. I'm sitting here at home with a jigsaw puzzle and a phenomenology textbook to occupy me. Hence the title.

The second best Flash game of Euro 2004: David Beckham's Penalty Shootout Hilarious.

Against my better judgment, I'm starting an AIM account that I'll put on whenever I'm writing this thing - purely for the hell of it. Drop an IM to Parallelcampaign then - I'm interested in seeing who you people are that are actually reading this hogwash.

And that's about enough for me tonight.

Feeling semi-rough at work in the studio and just muddling through. It wasn't a late night last night...well, actually it was. Chalk that up not to staying out late, but spending an hour trying to get Real Player to connect so I could watch the Metro-Galaxy game in the wee hours of the morning. What proxy connections worked previously for me suddenly decided they didn't want to anymore, the impasse ending with me installing the whole frigging program all over again, to watch a game that I'd already (accidentally) seen the score of.

Talked to Dan R of Metrofanatic this morning about, among other things, the serial lack of perspective of Metro supporters, even in victory. Let's recap: last night the Metrostars went on the road and put together one of the most complete performances of the season, if not of the last couple years. Amado Guevara, always tenacious and soulful in his play, showed an all-too-seldom-seen glimpse of his offensive potential with his laser beam of a first goal. Not that he shoots enough for my taste anyway, but too often Amado's shots are still rising as they hit the stands around Row Q; this time he lashed it past a helpless Kevin Hartman. And Eddie Gaven....well what can you say? Two goals...two brilliant goals. The second, curling and Bergkampesque, only off his left foot and in traffic. He's 17 years old. Frightening.
But just because the Metro midfield ran the game and scored all three goals, is it really necessary to conclude that the forwards - Mike Magee and John Wolyniec - were at best ineffective, and at worst crap? That's what happens in Metrofanland - never mind the fact that Gaven and Guevara couldn't have possibly moved as freely as they did if Magee and Woly weren't buzzing around, pressuring the ball and pulling a shamefully poor LA defense all over the place? A small point, but one that exposes an unfortunate defect in the perspectives of some US soccer fans.

I don't feel any brighter after writing those five hundred words than I did when I began. I may just not wake up today.

Now that the ABC/NBA "Let's Get It Started" ads have finally, mercifully disappeared from our lives (hopefully taking the Black Eyed Peas away with them), is there a more hideous and hatefully annoying ad than the Pepto-Bismol 'Hey, Pepto Bismol!' monstrosity? And it's on all the time. As soon as I become king, I'm going to take everyone involved from the ad agency involved with that one, staple them to the outside of a rocket by their nuts, and shoot it into the sun.

Oh dear god I've got to read 30 pages of phenomenonology this afternoon.

The following was scribbled in lavender ink from a borrowed pen around midnight last night:

Stuck in an airport cafe writing on a napkin, surely approaching a state of extreme overcaffeination. My eyes starting to burn and my skin growing hotter, and we're nowhere near the end of this senseless ordeal. KS's plane, which was supposed to be here at 11:15 pm, hasn't left the ground in Pittsburgh yet, being 'broken' as he put it in a call from a borrowed cell phone. And you've got to love the sense of security you get, being put on a freshly-patched up airplane that they really want to get here at any cost; the last flight I took was delayed by a dent(!) in the airplane eventually deemed 'within the safety margins'. That delay earned me a hundred dollar voucher from Delta, which I'll be lucky to use while they're still solvent.

At least he's not stuck on the plane all this time - having been through a 3 hour ordeal like that once myself when a KLM shuttle had its gear collapse on landing at Heathrow.


It's an hour later and they still haven't off the ground in Pittsburgh. Cup o' Joe cafe is the only thing left open here now (and thank God there's no bar, considering my attitude right now). So I take a walk downstairs to baggage claim, eventually tracking down the sole remaining representative of US Airways - the left baggage clerk - who inhabits a small glass walled office like a solitary French functionary sweating his life away in a lonely outpost in colonial Morocco. He, like me, wants something to happen - fly it, cancel it, do something. We all just want to get home.

A fucking 25 minute flight. If he had rented a car at 10 pm, he would have been here by now.

I notice two things: I haven't passed a single security checkpoint to get here, and;
There's still quite a few left bags sitting on and around the carousels. No one around them.

Sure, they've all been checked, but it's somewhat chilling to realize how easy it would be for someone to come in from outside, carrying a case that hasn't been checked at all.

At 1 am, they finally cancel the effing flight. Great, but now one of us have to come back tomorrow morning.


Postscript: A tortuous hour and a half ride home ensued. Just about every aspect of my personality - especially the part that usually prevents me from becoming a cranky misanthrope - shut down in an effort to keep me going: Everything threatened to set me off - especially noise. With our driver exhibiting a stunning talent for finding Britney Spears and Lil Jon on the radio, I began praying for a short bout of hysterical deafness; when DS started getting hyper, her voice hitting a range of 'keening' that I cannot adequately describe, I began concentrating on swallowing my own tongue.

Two words I really ought to know the meaning of by now but don't:

"Phenomenology"
"Emo"

At least I'll have the first one down sometime soon after starting a summer course. A good definition or examples of the second would be appreciated, thanks.

It was a simply perfect day outside, and I spent every moment of it in a radio studio, one of perhaps two people in the entire godforsaken windowless building (so designed, supposedly, to frustrate molotov-chucking student radicals of the 60's-70's; that also explains the ridiculous main staircase that only goes up three of the six floors). Couldn't it just be nauseatingly hot, dank and muggy out, like it was all last week? That would at least make me feel a little better. So, too, would you tuning in.

My whole life's changed a lot inside of two weeks, having been taken into the doctoral program here starting in the fall. Quite a change, going from planning on three more months here, to three more years. Last week's graduation rapidly switched from being The Finish Line to something rather less climactic.

Spit with Totti! - The best internet game of Euro 2004

Mike Magee - hero. I've had a hard time saying who my favorite Metro is since Clint Mathis stopped being any good (in the Swamp, anyway - that means around 2002). I get the feeling Magee is going to be that guy. Amado? Love him as a Metro, but have to always hope he craps the bed when the US plays Honduras. Gaven? Great player, but does anyone think he'll even be here in 2 years? Clark? Let's see him get his form back first - and who ever cheered their hardest for a defensive midfielder? No, Magee's just the sort of player who might score a zillion goals for the Metros, but never be flashy enough to make the big move abroad (there, now I've jinxed it).

Now listening: The High Strung - These Are Good Times. Rockin show Friday night. Rockin band.

Now reading: Robert Musil and the Crisis of European Culture. Excellent stuff that I should have had down before I wrote a paper on Musil, technology and the destabilization of empire last week.

I've decided that the best way for me to get through the next three years of study is to work on my novel at the same time right through, starting this summer (see if I can finish it, even). Countering academe with art to strike a balance between the two, or, the idea that the easiest way to carry a 60 lb suitcase in your right hand is to carry another in your left.

While the U.S. is probably pasting Grenada in their away qualifier right at this moment, I'm sitting here running an episode of Living On Earth with pieces on house mold, human bodies now being more polluted than Superfund sites, and Chinese bears being milked for their bile. I'm sure these are very important stories, but...disgusting, disgusting, just wretchedly disgusting. I'm glad I didn't have much for lunch.