Leap.

Unfortunately, I'm kind of collapsing from the travel I've been doing. Brain works, body doesn't. Like being a vegetable. I continue to plot/wait for coagulation, actualization, etc. Youth, suffering, impatience, mirth, other.

I AM IN NORMAL, ILLINOIS.

Annual Dark Age

I expect my brain to be even more unavailable for writing for the next ~8 weeks.

Music and pictures are different stories.

Dear Credit Card Companies: I can hurt you, too.

CapitalOne's customer service has been useless ever since I had a fraudulent $330 charge on my account and then got charged over $60 in fees and charges and lost 600 frequent flyer miles because of a payment that posted 16 minutes "late" on the due date. So I've diverted well over $2000 in purchases to my AMEX in the last month alone. Until someone over in Calcutta competently removes the fees from my account and reinstates my miles, I will not use my CapitalOne card. For companies that don't accept AMEX, I'm using debit or cash.

Will my frequent flyer miles ever amount to anything?

I'm racking them up left and right, as I book travel to increasingly remote destinations.

US Airways has stopped awarding minimum mileage on short segments, rendering the airline useless in many situations. If I fly to NY on Delta I get 500 miles, while for the same flight on US I get 200? Useless!

Playing Music All Day

We started by meeting in Allston, in a partially abandoned warehouse studio inhabited by hoodie-wearing couch-sleepers and countless mice running up and down the walls. We got pretty far finalizing two songs there, then got Indian food. After that, we walked to Guitar Center, got predictably mad at all the Berklee kids, and then got chai and stared at girls in the BU campus center. Then to Cheapo Records in Central, where we bought nothing, and then back to Teele for gin and Chinese food and more music. We probably walked five or six miles with instruments strapped to our backs.

Three songs are in a very advanced stage, with partial lyrics. Two more should follow soon. Then we find a drummer.

Town Topic Double

Two patties hand-formed on the grill, with cheese between them and grilled onions on top. Kansas City, Mo.

Town Topic #3, Kansas City, Mo.

World's Best Brisket

Pig In Pig Out, Wichita, Kan.

Hayward's Baked Beans

Overland Park, KS.

This is a cool coffee shop:

http://www.jpcoffeeco.com/

JP's. Lee's Summit, MO. A bizarre and brand new crossroads in the middle of nowhere, where the campus across the street is closed due to ice storm.

Cargill Salad and Vegetable Oils Refinery, Wichita, Kan., Take 1

Cargill Salad and Vegetable Oils Refinery, Wichita, Kan., Take 2

Thank You Bellinger

KCMO.

Starving in Wichita

Sitting in hotel room, working. Two presentations this afternoon. Surrounded by thousands of tons of beef, both raw and smoked. No reason to be hungry.

KC II

I get to my hotel out on the prairie after the traditional late night short distance cabbie ripoff circular jerk. On the outer frontier of the blacktop a pickup truck attached to a giant bbq smoker trailer shines under the sodium vapor yellow.

got rage?

Busy Season

I have not been outside my apartment for over two days.

Dignity Hunt #2: Bowling Alley

Wappingers Falls, NY

Dignity Hunt #1: Lighting Up

Hartford, CT.

Commence Ongoing Dignity Hunt!

Reserved

New Haven, CT

Second Stranding of the Season

Stuck in Hartford due to snow--I'm not going to drive to Boston going 31mph in 3-5" of snow, especially when CT doesn't bother plowing anything, every other asshole on the road is on a cell phone, Dan B. is 10 miles away, and it's 10pm and I've already been working/driving since 8am.

We are aware that this image may be disturbing.

The Tentative World:

accepting the good while taking the bad

Weltschmerz unltd.

Hartford--The hotel shower this morning reeked of feet, an obnoxious reminder of the parasitic fungi that will soon commence devouring the webbing between my toes as I travel feverishly from coast to coast in deeply concentrated efforts to Close the Business. The force-fed CNN at the breakfast bar, where I have been the only customer for the last half-hour, is excited about NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN THE WAR ON TERROR. These evils have remained constants for about four years.

Air Canada is fucking retarded.

Four different fares for the same seat? $15 to pick a seat? Subtract $3 for no checked baggage? Switch fare classes for differently valued frequent flyer miles? Subtract $5 to make the fare fully nonrefundable? Move up a fare class to make changes possible for a smaller change fee plus full fare difference? Three types of trip insurance? $6 for food?!

Sounds Like

"Elvis Costello meets ZZ Top"

I give CMike credit for issuing this truth.

Used Car Lot, Caney, Kan.

From the Siege.

It is now darker out than it was an hour ago.

House of a Thousand Spreadsheets

It really doesn't matter what anyone, including me, is doing on his/her company laptop in this North Andover Panera. It all looks the same. It all looks exactly the same. At least I'm not wearing a tie.

VOTE!!!

"Unenrolled" (i.e. independent) Mass. voters may vote in either primary this Tuesday.

That's good news!