It's All Good from Diego to the Bay

Things that I’m finding to be really annoying.

1) Loud cars

2) Loud motorcycles

3) Loud people

Things that I’m looking forward to:

1) Road trip 2K9 starting this wednesday

2) In-N-Out Burger

3) Seeing the Rocky Mountains of my birth for the first time in a few years

Things I like about summer in San Marcos

1) Sunshine

2) Being outside

3) Most of the people who really don’t appreciate San Marcos are gone

Things San Marcos needs:

1) An independent video store

2) More local fast(er)-food places near campus

3) Bike paths and bike lanes

Places where I like to see live music

1) Emo’s

2) Emo’s

3) Emo’s

Favorite non-sit down places to eat in Austin

1) Tacodeli

2) P. Terry’s Burger Stand

3) The other Tacodeli

Flight of the Navigator

The Semester ended today at Texas State, except that for me it’s just another day tomorrow…I’m on a pretty steady work and thesis-work schedule that is not exciting enough to write about so I won’t.

I did almost crash my car the other night, that’s a little more interesting. I was driving back from my parents place outside of Temple. For the first time in my life I had the surreal experience of taking a full controlled access highway bypass completely around Austin. They’re all toll roads but I guess you win some and you lose some. I crusied along down SH-130…the final link (SH-45SE) just opened on Thursday so I don’t think a lot of people even realize you don’t have to take I-35 staight though Austin anymore (a fact they should advertise heavily in Dallas-Fort Worth, as that heavily populated region seems to produce a solid percentage of 35 drivers clogging their way through Austin). There was a sign on SH-130 that said “San Marcos 35 miles”…and I could actually take that to mean “under 35 minutes” instead of “I’m going 15 miles per hour…so hopefully traffic picks up”.

That’s the upside. The downside is how apparently dangerous the shiny new SH-45SE is at night. I merged onto it at the end of SH-130, and suddenly there were no lights. It’s understandable to a degree, because there isn’t much development out there (yet), but there will be. And, if TXDOT intends for this to be an urban bypass, they might want to make the drive less-than pitch black. I immediately noticed a pool of blood that was likely the remains of a deer that someone hit over the weekend. I’ve never seen a deer on 35 (most of the animals that live near that freeway have probably been wiped out by cars by now), and I’m not used to deer on freeways (occasionally they’re sighted on Mopac) so I kept my cruise control on and my speed at 70 miles per hour.

I thought nothing more off it until about 3 or 4 minutes later, still crusing at 70, a young but not small deer appeared in the lane right in front of me like a ghost. I immediately thought “if I don’t swerve I could die” so I did…and while swerving I thought “If I over-correct I could still wreck my car and get hurt pretty badly”…so I didn’t. Of course, it all happened in a half-second, so my thoughts weren’t quite in full sentences but that gives you an idea of what flashed through my head. It was a jarring experience. I got on I-35 two minutes later and from the flyover bridge I could see thousands of cars going in either direction between Austin and San Marcos…I can’t remember the last time I was actually excited to see I-35…but I was then.

Basically, a new road through rural terrain is going to have deer on it. And, if there are no lights on the freeway, those deer are going to be pretty invisible until they’re in your headlights (there were a few too many cars on the opposite side of the highway for me to put my brights on). This means that until the deer get scared by traffic, or the lighting is improved, there are going to be deer-car collisions on SH-45SE. Considering the amount of money spent on the highway, and the fact that it’s going to be tolled, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask that this gets fixed.

So, yea, be careful when you’re driving at night on new highways.

- Jordan

You Said It Kid. You Said It!

I’d like to start this post by thanking Charlie Day for introducing me to a procession of great and increasingly loud music by bands that are made up of people who are roughly my age, as opposed to being 40 years old and having been in the band since 1986 or whatever. I had previously almost lost hope that bands that made music that I espeically enjoy listening to were going the way of the buffalo.

Actually, the buffalo are making a nice comeback and are no longer endangered and are far from from being extinct. So, I guess in that way, the music I like is still going the way of the buffalo, in that it’s recovering from nearly being hunted to extinction by hipsters and scene kids, who in this case play the role of the Native-Americans and Anglo pioneers driving the buffalo that represent bands that I like off a cliff made out of pretention and petrified scene points. Having killed ska (represented in this analogy by the do-do bird), they needed a new challenge. Emo was too easy. Buy, sucking the fun out of music that was positive and encouraging while still being loud and…um…moshy, that was an accomplishment. It should be noted that the attire of the people pushing the metaphorical buffalo off the cliff is in many cases as outlandish (to a modern perspective) as that which was worn by original Native-Americans.

I want so badly for music to be popularly considered to be simply fun again. No more popularity points based on how many times a band is mentioned at a You Tube party at the Beauty Bar or whether their latest review on Pitchfork passed the necessarily 7.31224 threshold (out of 10.0000) in order to be considered worthy of your precious time. I particularly resent Pitchfork for reasons that I will someday hopefully engage in a cathartic book-writing process about. No more hating ska because “it sucks” or punk because “it’s dead” or hardcore because it’s “too hard”. Music should just be about what you enjoy or don’t enjoy listening to. Bottom line. I may listen to Wolf Parade and Neutral Milk Hotel…but I don’t do so because Pitchfork coronated them into the “indie” royal family…but because I enjoy the music. I listen a lot of bands that can be classified as: punk, ska (*gasp*), ska/punk, hardcore-punk and good old fashioned hardcore (the punk kind more than the metal kind) for the same reasons. If I enjoy listening to a band, then I like them. If I don’t, then I don’t but I try pretty hard to remember that other people may like Fall Out Boy (a band I have never been able to stand listening to) for the same reason…but it’s tempting to overlook that and judge them for it. So, I understand how the scene point system really got going. In fact, I once was falling into that hole where I began to judge bands by what kind of people were into them. Fortunately, I realized that was not the best way to go about it, and music became fun again. I am hoping that I can help other people realize the same thing.

Check out a Buzz N' Bangs show in San Marcos (and hopefully sometime in Austin and other places as well) for a great example of the pure fun that I want music to be again: Another great example is Zlam Dunk...and if you don't like them, then it's whatever but don't just hate on them because you resent that a lot of kids are having fun at their shows. There is going to be a backlash in the next few years involving the reemergence of fun bands and their fans against the tedious scene-point/indie-point doldrums that have taken music hostage. At least, I hope there will be.

- Jordan

The Custom Concern for the People

“I wake up, just about noon. My head sends a message for me to reach for my shoes and then walk…gotta go to work gotta go to work gotta have a job.”

- Modest Mouse: Custom Concern

The sun rises. I tend to rise later. Some mornings I ride my bike to work and other days I just walk. I don’t have to drive, which is great. In fact, I get to work faster on my bike any way and I can’t even park within 3 blocks of the office any way because it’s a restricted zone. I used to have to work up at 5:30 every morning and drive across the middle of Austin to be at work at 6:30. That is pretty much the number one reason why I went back to school. My current job is part-time during the semester and remarkably flexible. I doubt I will have this kind of control of the use of my time in the future…I might though. I’m learning not to limit myself or whatever my options are.

I’ve been recommended a lot of books in the past few years. I usually get around to 5% of them, and only 20% of those do I actually finish. I didn’t get past the first chapter of one of them because it was written in paragraphs that were commonly one or two very short sentences long. Some people might like that or think that it is post-modern or something, but I just found it to be incredibly annoying. It went kind of like this.

// Here’s a couple of short sentences about something sort of vague. This vague something might have meaning because it’s in a book.

Can you see that it has meaning. In the book?

Books are amazing.

So amazing.//

I just unwittingly put that Kanye West song in my head. I’m not a huge fan or anything, but I heard the song in a commercial earlier today. Commercials are another topic that I could write a semi-sarcastic and moderately apathetic note about. In the interest of avoiding instant hypocracy, I’m extending this paragraph by a couple of sentences. Here is the second sentence in that paragraph extention.

- Jordan