When I am king

That's it sir
You're leaving
The crackle of pigskin
The dust and the screaming
The yuppies networking
The panic, the vomit
The panic, the vomit
God loves his children, God loves his children, yeah!

Hey kids, shake it loose together
The spotlights hitting something
Thats been known to change the weather
Well kill the fatted calf tonight
So stick around
You're gonna hear electric music
Solid walls of sound

Say, Candy and Ronnie, have you seen them yet
But they're so spaced out, Bennie and the jets
Oh but they're weird and they're wonderful
Oh Bennie shes really keen
Shes got electric boots a mohair suit
You know I read it in a magazine
Bennie and the jets

Hey kids, plug into the faithless
Maybe they're blinded
But Bennie makes them ageless
We shall survive, let us take ourselves along
Where we fight our parents out in the streets
To find who's right and who's wrong

"Hi my name is Leann Anderson and I'm from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. These are my kids Abbot and Maya. Maya's from China, we adopted her to give her a better life. We never dreamed she could be exposed to lead after leaving China, and now we find trains like this, that are covered with lead, in our home. My question for the candidates are 'what are you going to do to make sure that these kind of toys don't make their way into our homes, and that we have safe toys that are made in America again, and we keep jobs in America.'"


What are you going to do Mr. President? Maya's from China, she needs a better life.

China is cheating on trade and they're using that $200 million dollar trade deficit over the United States to buy ships planes and missiles. They are clearly arming and its in the interest of the United States to stop China's cheating.

Buy American, it might keep your neighbor from losing his job and it might help that young person coming back from Afghanistan or Iraq in uniform to have a job when they get back. Lets buy American this Christmas season!

I had tons of those Thomas the Tank Engine trains when I was little and it sucks that they are covered in lead because they good to play with.

There is no other pill to take

I am the Nina, the Pinta, the Santa Maria

The noose and the rapist, the fields overseer

The agents of orange, the priest of hiroshima

The cost of my desire


Sleep now in the fire

How bizarre

Destination unknown as we pull in for some gas
Freshly pasted poster reveals a smile from the past
Elephants and acrobats, lions snakes monkey
Pele speaks "righteous" Sister Zina says "funky"

Fleetwood on the stereo, the groove is pretty tight
Zina reaches over turns the volume to the right
Out the window's Meriwether and his buddy Clark
Wandering off to Oregon by the freeway in the dark

Hit the shoulder, four way flash, "hey guys want a ride?"
Hitchhiking's illegal but this time they let it slide
Trekking cross America with the finest buckskin on
William Clark is wide awake but Meriwhether's gone

Get to Oregon finally the rain is coming down
Stereo plays this goofy song 'bout elephants and clowns
Clark remarks that this whole trip feels like '93
Getting patriotic with TJ and John Quincy

"And then the law came"

I just had one of the more bizarre experiences of my life. I was walking home from my friends place at about 10:30 PM, a short walk through the student neighborhood by campus. Eugene is as safe as anywhere in the country, I pretty much feel comfortable walking anywhere at anytime of night. Sometimes you will get hassled by drunk people but I had never experienced anything threatening until tonight. When I was about 3 blocks from my house, some guy started yelling at a girl walking about 20 feet behind me. I just ignored (as always) but he kept yelling and then ran across the street so he was next to her. He was asking her directions to the bus station downtown. He looked pretty sketchy, looked and acted like he was on some sort of drug or just really drunk. Either way he was harassing her to a point where she was obviously uncomfortable. She did her best to ignore him and then said she didn't know where the station was, so he jogged ahead and started asking me where the station was. I told him that it was downtown and that he needed to go about 5 blocks straight and 5 blocks right. Moments later, at the next intersection, the girl turned left (away from the station) and he turned left right behind her, saying he wanted her to show him where the station was. At this point I felt like I couldn't leave her alone with him, since she was obviously pretty sketched out at this point, so I explained to him that "hey man, the bus station's that way" and after a couple of repeats of that he left her alone. Problem was he was now following me and I was still two long blocks away from my house. I kept walking and trying to ignore him; he kept talking constantly like sketchy people always do, talking about how he was coming from Seattle and Portland and how he was a city kid and asking me for beer money and that kind of thing. Then he started harassing a guy and a girl walking the other way, asking for "beer money for me and my buddy" I told them to ignore him and kept walking. Now I was one block from my house and he was a little ways behind me. He was still following me and still yelling about whatever. By now my heart was beating pretty good and I was walking about as fast as I could without breaking into a run. I got my keys out of my pocket and got the one for my door ready. Sometimes our door doesn't unlock on the first try and I was pretty nervous that I would be struggling with the lock while he caught up with me. Fortunately I was able to open the door quickly and locked it right behind me. He was still yelling outside and about 5 or 10 seconds after I was inside he got to the door and started pounding on the glass and yelling. I yelled that I would call the police if he didn't leave right then. He called me a "fag" and "dickface" but after I repeated this he left the door. I could now hear him yelling (aggressively) at other pedestrians passing by so I went upstairs to my room, where I fortunately have a BB gun, looked up the non emergency police number online, and called. By the time I was on the phone I couldn't hear him any more, so I assumed that he had moved on. My heart was still pounding and I was still completely on edge. Talking to the woman on the phone calmed me, she asked me all these questions about his appearance and I felt like I was on CSI or something. Moments like this give me faith in our law enforcement system; its amazingly comforting to know that at any point throughout this whole incident I can call the cops and they are there in 2 minutes to throw this dude in jail and make me feel like some sort of hero. The threat of cops is what made him leave in the first place, being able to say "I'm going to call the cops" is a lot more effective than anything else I could say to this guy. After he left, my heart was still pounding and I called my friend Eric because I wanted to tell somebody what had happened. Abnout 15 or 20 minutes later I heard the doorknob shaking; I said hello and got no response, then I heard the door open and said hello again and it was my roommate Beard. I was so relieved to have the whole incident over with, my heart finally slowed down.

This was the first time I have ever called the cops on someone. There have been times when I thought I should but didn't, probably because I didn't have the number. This makes me realize that its a good idea to have the non emergency line in your phone because situations like this aren't that out of the ordinary, even in Eugene. This is the second time in the past couple weeks where I have been really happy with the police, as long as you are on the right side of the law then they seem like a pretty good idea.

Sketchy people suck, that whole situation was so unnecessary and stressful for all involved. I'm sure there are good reasons why this guy was sketchy, but I don't want to hear them. I don't want to have to think about you in any way at all. You made my night that much more heinous and stressful than it needed to be and I hope you get arrested.

The Big Dog

"Dude Eugene is so boring"
"Class sucks, weather sucks, everyone sucks"
"Lets take the Greyhound Bus across the country"
"Ok"
"Dude I'm serious"
"Yea so am I"
"Lets take spring term off and take the greyhound across the country. We'll write about it and become the next big thing in 21st century literature"
"This is exactly how it feels to be 20 years old in America. Not how we're supposed to feel, but exactly how it is"
"And look at black people"
"Duuuuude, BLACK PEOPLE"
"dude I know"
"and everyone will be poor and we'll just kind of look at them"
"And kick with them"
"and just talk to them and get a feel for them"
"just get a feel for every different place"
"and be like 'whats up, I'm from Oregon, lets kick a little bit'"
"The Mississippi delta is shining like a national guitar"
"and we can see Regina Spektor in Savannah"
"Hell yea"
"And just get a feel for America"
"Cuz America's a pretty chill place when you actually think about it"
"Seriously lets do it"
"Seriously I'm down"



Yea what up America

One Hundred Years of Solitude

For the past year or so, since I've actually started reading and attempting to understand literature, I've wanted to read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Based on everything I have heard, this is as good as anything written in the past 50 years and among the best 20th century literature. Since I generally agree with the consensus and because Marquez writes in a style that I usually find interesting (although I don't know that much about) I had high expectations.

I finished the book in about a week and a half, which for me is pretty good for a book of that length. Marquez is an incredible writer, he expresses exactly what he thinks through simple, gorgeous imagery that leaves the reader (at least me) stunned by its beauty. When I read a good but not great writer, I am impressed by their ability to express thoughts and emotions I know in ways that I am not capable of, or at least not capable of putting into words. What separates a writer like Marquez (or any other great) from writers like these, who are all talented but essentially interchangeable, is his ability to express thoughts and emotions that I have never had but make sense as if I had felt them all along.

What I mean:

"And Aureliano Segundo dying of solitude in the turmoil of his debauches (378)"

If I had somehow had the ability to write the entire book up until this point word for word as Marquez had, I would have almost certainly said,

"And Aureliano Segundo dying in solitude of the turmoil of his debauches"

Because this is how I would explain describe the death of Aureliano Segundo. And my description is wrong, it misses the point of the character and the entire book. If Marquez had chosen to write the sentence that way, it wouldn't stand out among every other sentence I read everyday. But Marquez switches in solitude and of solitude for the entire book, which is why he won the Nobel Prize and kids like me, along with any other person who has a soul, reads this book and are awestruck. But I could talk about Marquez's writing forever and never explain it, so it is better for everyone that I not try too hard.

Personally, I loved the book but can't quite consider it one of my absolute favorites. When I am reading a book like this for pleasure, I base my opinion of a book and an author on the extent to which the writing hits me; the moments when I am fully engrossed emotionally in the writing. With Marquez, these moments are frequent but interrupted by moments where I find my mind wandering and I need to pull myself back to the book. I can blame myself for a lot of this, since I often was reading at work or when I was really tired, which made it hard to lose myself in the book for long periods of time, where I can be awed by the smallest nuances of a writer's brilliance. However, a lot of the time I was reading in situations where I had no obvious distractions but still found my mind drifting as it usually does, which doesn't happen when I am deeply into a book. While nothing there is nothing that feels unnecessary or inefficient, the book at times felt overly long. Marquez's descriptions (especially of characters) are so lavish and deliberately extravagant that I found myself getting lost in imagery and forgetting what was actually happening. Once again, this is probably more my fault.

I also think that this is a book I should re-read every few years since it deals with so many characters at different stages of their lives. I'm sure that if I read it in a few years I will understand and relate to it differently than now.

Verdict:
This book is as good as advertised, if you are reading it (assuming you are reading this) and get bored STICK WITH IT because the last ten pages will give you goosebumps and the last page will give you tears.

Happy Halloween

In pitch dark I go walking in your landscape

Broken branches trip me as I speak
There's always a siren singing you to shipwreck
Stay away from these rocks we'd be a walking disaster
Just cause you feel it doesn't mean its there

Christian Music for Hippies

Tonight at a Halloween party I saw a guy dressed as a nun with gold teeth throw a wooden cross on the fire. Me and some other dude stood there without talking and let it burn. It was the first time in my life that I have ever seen a cross burn, and even if you are not Christian you cannot deny the power of the symbol of a cross in flames. The fact that it was by a bunch of random drunk kids at some random party just made it absurd, that heavy a symbol in a such a ridiculous meaningless situation made it impossible for me to stop watching. If there were actually black people in Eugene, this kind of thing wouldn't fly. As it was, people seemed to approve.


Its ironic that the one party that I volunteer to be the sober driver at, we get stopped by a cop as we get in the car and he checks to see if I have been drinking. Its a good feeling to be able to talk to a cop with complete confidence; it makes the idea of law enforcement seem much more reasonable. I bet this feeling is mutual, I can't even imagine how relieved that cop is to talk to one kid who has a shred of sobriety in him.

85% of a blog post

Hi I'm Chuck Klosterman. Check me out, I'm nerdy, I'm understated, I live in New York but deep down I'm just a country boy from North Dakota. My parents are Republican!!! I've got my favorite rock group KISS, I've got Ace Frehley, I've got electric guitar, I'm so clever. I can beat 85% of the population at any kind of rock trivia. I don't really have luck with girls, but its cool becuase I can write about each of the four girls I've been in love with and compare each of them to one of the members of KISS. Did I explain why I like Kiss so much? It has something to do with being a nerd in North Dakota. My editor wears all black and hates me, she is part of the Interpol crowd, too much coke. I would rather get high and listen to Creedence and go to bed by nine.
Who wants to take a road trip? I'll show you how to freebase marijuana with the cigarrette lighter in my rental car. We can listen to Kid A a lot, its about 9/11. Whos in a bunker, whos in a bunker, women and children first obviously. Ice age coming, what happened to global warming? Come on George, guess how many people who bought my book voted for you. Less than 15%. Did I mention that I'm from a red state and my parents are republican? Lets find the crossroads where Robert Johnson sold his soul. Lets talk about Kurt Cobain, 85% of you didn't like him until after he died. Courtney did it, that slut. Now Frances Bean will have her revenge on Seattle. Dave Grohl is such a rockstar now, he always wanted to be Kurt. I'd rather be hosting a radio show in Astoria.
Did I mention how nerdy I am? ESPN pays me to write about sports. Thats 85% ironic and 15% retarded, me writing about sports. Esquire pays me to write about being a man. Rolling Stone doesn't pay me anything, I'm too cool. Its a good fallback if I ever get disgraced while I'm writing for the Villiage Voice. So hip. I compare Heart to Bright Lights, Big City. So Badass. I'm from North Dakota. Fargo Rock City. KISS facepaint. Happy Holloween. Quincy you're hot like Minnesota is cold. Lets rock.



By the way, if you want to know how it feels to be a dude, read my books.

Wrapped Up in the Pleasures of the World

"Signora?" he asked.
"Yes?"
"Why are you crying"
Because I'm unlucky in love."
"Ah!"
"You can't understand; you're still a kid."
"You want to try swimming with my mask?"
"Thank you very much. Is it nice?"
"It's the nicest thing in the world."

From "Big Fish, Little Fish" by Italo Calvino

Rock and Roll Lifestyle

For a little over a year now, I've been a DJ at the KWVA, which is the University of Oregon's campus radio station. Its pretty fun, it gives me a chance to force my music upon the ears of the one or two hippies who are listening. Its also an oppurtunity to learn about music that I would never hear about outside the station, access to several thousand CDs and a way to meet other people who like to DJ ("Hey you play that spoon song every show too? I thought I was the only one at the station that played that!")
Unfortunately, this being a college radio station that is all about variety and obscurity, meaning its not cool if other people have heard of it, we get some pretty obscure (bad) music. This is fine, I'm all for bands getting a chance to be on the air, but the thing that I can't stand is the way that these bands hype themselves up as if the are the 2nd coming of the beatles (its actually a kind of mellow classic neo-psychadelic vibe we're going for, imagine if Brian Jones with Procol Harem but with the dreamy feeling of the Cocteau Twins, we don't really like what the Beatles stood for). This might be an extreme example, but here are a few of the band descriptions that I came across today.

The Icarus Line, Black Lives at the Golden Coast
The Icarus Line is Not Dead! Black Lives at the Golden Coast, their first LP in 2 years, also serves as their first full length for Dum Mak, whom they recently signed with. Recorded completely on tabe, Black Lives at The Golden Coast is prood that rock is not dead - it's alive and well in the form of The Icarus Line, who go beyond any of their previous releases with BLATGC. The Icarus Line experiment with the traditional definitions of what it is to be a punk or rock band, and make truly original and timeless music.

Kinetic Stereokids Basement Kids
Its not all that hard to detect when a band's members know each other so well that the music becomes a completely cohesive creature. This is exemplified by Kinetic Stereokidsand the 10 tracks on its latest release, Basement Kids. The childhood friends take rock t an entirely new place--with compelling instrumentation and innovative production details. Not too far off from Sonic Youth's extreme-dabbling, or Elliot Smith's melancholic rock balladry, KSK presents the next step in the evolution of the experimental rock sub-genre. Its no surprise these kids have shared stages with Explosions in the Sky, ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of The Dead, The Secret Machines, and Wolf Eyres. Its a genuine and fresh approach, coupled with addictive hooks and vocals, make KSK a must-hear. The individual energies of this four piece combine perfectly to make a kinetic record that will move any listener.

These are pretty representative of most of the little press blurbs. The irony is that if you want to get played, you need to have one of these. The station doesn't have enough people to listen to all the CDs that get mailed to us, and we can't play them on the air until they have been reviewed and checked for profanity. When the cd arrives with one of these reviews--plus warnings of profanity--allows that CD to go straight to the rotation rack, from which I am required to play 4 songs per hour off of. That is why I am forced to look at the CDs of such bands in the first place, because there is usually music that I would rather be playing. In the case that I do feel like a little introspective Elliot Smith combined with the crashing and rebellious guitars of Sonic Youth, I know where to look.

But this is precisely the problem. The struggle for these bands is that if they want to make it, even just to get on the air on KWVA--an consider that this station begs a kid like me to fill an hour of their airtime playing Modest Mouse and Portishead. This is why a dude from some band Levator "Its like Elevator without the first E" calls from outside Diamond Lake asking if they are still scheduled to come perform in our studio this afternoon before their show at the Indigo tonight. Kind of a shoegaze combined with dream pop, Levator has a myspace you can check out. I actually played two of their songs on the air and they really appreciated it. I also gave them the phone number of Charlotte, the grad student that runs the station and therefore gets to deal with bands like Levator. I don't know whether or not they got into the studio; I had class and couldn't listen, but good luck to them. Levator is just driving around in their van playing for anyone who will listen to them, you and I included. We most likely never will, but as long as there are bands like Levator and kids like me with radio shows, everyone can live out their dream of being a rockstar just a little bit longer.

Spaceboy

Feel it
Break your bones
Mr. Jones

Taste me
As I bleed
Taste my need

And spaceboy I've missed you
Spinning round my head
And any way you choose me
You'll break instead

Watch me
Death defy
Defile my life

I don't need
I don't care
Please

I want to go home
I want to go home
I want to go home
I want to go home
'cause when a lover aches
That's when a lover breaks
I want to go home
I want to go home

And spaceboy they'll kill me
Before I'm dead and gone
And any way you choose me
It won't be wrong
And any way you choose me
We won't be long

We won't be long
We won't be long
We won't be long
We won't be long
We won't be long

Algunas fotos

I've spent the last half hour or so uploading pictures from my camera to my computer. Here are some random pictures that I found to be cool. They're not in any order at all but they all bring back good memories.

San Francisco
These are from about 3 weeks ago when I went with my friend Lightman.

Eugene
The outdoor ones are from the Masonic Cemetary, the others are from when I was staying with my friend Melissa.

Chicago

This was a bar on top of the 2nd tallest building in Chicago.
Really cool city, I only got to spend a few days there but I liked what I saw a lot.

New York

Portland Maine
Washington DC

This is just kind of a random selection I chose, I have more that you can see on my picasa account here. I'm not much of a photographer but some of the pictures are definitely worth looking at.

Jason Schwartzman and Kirsten Dunst

Are way chiller than people give them credit for. Jason was the drummer for phantom planet (of OC fame) and his brother is the lead singer for Rooney. Now he is Coconut Records, his solo project. I had the album Nightiming burned for me and a lot of the songs aren't that great, but the fact that Jason is talented enought just to make record by himself where he plays all the instruments and sings (in key) is pretty impressive and I'm not going to complain if I usually skip a couple of songs on the album. Three of the songs are actually really good and for the past two days I've pretty much been listening to those constantly.
One of the chillest things about the album is that Kirsten Dunst provides some guest vocals on two of the songs. Neither the songs or her singing are particularly good, but its still chill that Jason invited her to sing on his album. According to wikipedia, Jason and Kirsten met at Sofia Coppola's wedding (Jason's cousin) to Spike Jonze and danced on top of speakers together. Kirsten is also way cuter than I realized. When I saw the spiderman movies I never really thought she was anything special but then I saw Marie Antoinette a few weeks ago I realized that she is bomb. And then I saw Eternal Sunshine again and she is bomb in that too. She's also going out with the lead singer of Razorlight, who I had never heard of until these British guys told me that they are all the rage over in England. My friend Beard bought their cd and I wasn't that impressed, but once again that doesn't really matter.

Look how chill she is, she reads Carl Sagan and wears flannel and white sunglasses. And she's all skinny and pale but still flaunts it in people magazine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Schwartzman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirsten_Dunst
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofia_Coppola
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_Jonze
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weezer
http://youtube.com/watch?v=mTzEp4CeWT8
http://www.myspace.com/coconutrecords

In Your Head

I don't really know anything about psychology, but whenever I learn anything about it I find it incredibly fascinating and always end up playing games in my mind, which makes everyday thinking a little more fun. I think that it would be a really cool major if you got into the right stuff, but the one psychology class I took (psy 201 mind and brain) didn't impress me much so I gave up on that pretty quickly. However, before I took the class (and part of the reason why I took the class) my dad sent me a really interesting psychology book calle The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom by Jonathan Haidt, a professor at the University of Virginia.
The title sounds like a Dr. Phil self help book, but deals with pretty in depth psychology studies and the like. Basically its all about studying from a scientific standpoint what makes people happy. Its pretty much what you expect: family, friends, things you enjoy doing, not being stressed. But the best part of the book for me is all of the studies that it describes. One passage that I find particularly interesting:

"Whenever you see or hear a word that resembles your name, a little flash of pleasure biases you towards thinking the thing is good. So when a man namesd Dennis is considering a career, he ponders the possibilities: 'Lawyer, docter, banker, dentist...dentist...something about dentist just feels right.' And in fact, people named Dennis or Denise are slightly more likely than people with other names to become dentists. Louis and Louise are more likely to move to Louisiana or St. Louis, George and Georgina are more likely to move to Georgia. The own-name preference even shows up in marriage records: People are slightly more likely to marry people whose names sound like their own, even if the similarity is just sharing a first initial. When Pelham presented his findings to my academic department, I was shocked to realize that most of the married people in the room illustrated his claim: Jerry and Judy, Brian and Bethany, and the winners were me, Jon, and my wife, Jayne."

Most of the studies support the general hypothesis that we have very little control over our thoughts and actions because the concious mind is so heavily influenced by the subconcious. We conciously decide to eat because chemicals are telling us that we are hungry and that getting food is probably a good idea. Haidt compares the concious mind to a rider on an elephant, which represents the unconcious. The rider can direct the elephant, but can never really control it. I shouldn't even try to explain this in a couple paragraphs, you should get the book.

some links to check out:
http://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Hypothesis-Finding-Modern-Ancient/dp/0465028012

really cool experiment, also check out the stanford prison experiment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

test yourself here, do the research studies they are way bettter.
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

The Artwork of Garrett Durant

I've never known or felt like I understand much about art, but I like looking at it and definitely appreciate what I find to be good art, regardless of whether or not the art community agrees. Recently I was shown a facebook album of Garrett Durant's artwork. Garrett went to my high school and was always known to be one of the best artists there, but I was really impressed when I saw his current artwork. He is studying art at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and based on what I have seen he has improved a lot since high school. Here are some of the pictures that I saw, I am going to try to find and post a link to more.














I tried to post a good variety but there were still more I didn't post, hopefully I will get a link to more soon. If there are more that I haven't seen I will try to post those to.

Lordsburg, New Mexico

If you ever find yourself taking I-10 east from Tuscon, roughly one hour after you cross over into New Mexico you will find yourself in the town of Lordsburg.

Having never been to New Mexico before, I was shocked by how empty (and boring) it was. Granted, I only saw the what you can see from the left window of a Greyhound bus so I'm probably not giving it the credit it deserves, but based on what I have seen of every state that I have been to, New Mexico seems to be the most boring of the 50. But while in New Mexico, the bus stopped in the small town of Lordsburg so the passengers could get out and walk around and get something to eat at the local McDonald's, which was surprisingly reassuring to see. While the other greyhound people ate, my friend Beard and I decided to explore New Mexico a little bit. Here is a glimpse of what we found.

This is basically what Lordsburg looks like. Also try to imagine that its windy.

This is what I look like in Lordsburg. I don't always walk looking straight down (or at least I like to think that) but it was really windy which I think explains my awkward posture.

This is what Beard looks like in Lordsburg. Pay special attention to the hat. The wind also can be blamed for Beard's squinting eyes.

According to Wikipedia, Lordsburg has a population of 3,379 (bigger than I expected), is the county seat of Hidalgo county and was founded in 1880 on the Southern Pacific Railroad. The per capita income is $10,877, as opposed $42,166 in my hometown of Lake Oswego, Oregon. 28.6 % of families and 32.7 % of the population of Lordsburg is under the poverty line, including 47.5% of children.


I can never quite wrap my head around the fact that real people live here, not just statistics I read about on Wikipedia. They take their job just as seriously as I do, have families and pets and hobbies and everything else that I do, except that their lives happen to take place in a town in new Mexico of which a kid like me comes along and takes some pictures of their town and unsuccessfully tries to get high behind some random shed while on a twenty minute break from a daylong greyhound bus ride. And then I post the pictures online and feel a little bit better about myself for doing something a little bit intellectual.



I can't decide whether or not I recommend going to Lordsburg, you will either find it tremendously boring or tremendously fascinating but most likely probably somewhere in between these two extremes. Its been several months since I was there so I can't really remember how I felt about it at the time.

Bonus Picture

Beard with a border patrol agent in El Paso. You would never guess it by the smile on his face, but these guys actually don't like having their pictures taken. As far as I know, there is nothing more comforting than looking about like Beard and I when these dudes come onto your bus.