Read Keith

Remembering Old Books

2008-05-11T20:25:00.006-07:00

Recently I pulled an old book of my shelf. The book was so old the gold foil lettering had worn off and I couldn’t tell what it was without opening it up. It was a tiny hard cover, only 4”x5” with scrolling gold leaf on the spine and the author’s signature in relief on the cover. A tattered red ribbon marker fell limply from between the first few pages which hung to the rest of the book by only the thinnest of fibers. There is no publication date but Google tells me Collin’s Clear-Type Press most likely issued this book sometime between 1915 and 1927. Then, it must have been a deep vibrant red. Now it is worn, faded and water stained. As I held it in my hand I saw it was a copy of “The Three Musketeers” by Alexandre Dumas. It’s a story I’ve read before, but not one I’m particularly attached to and considering the poor condition of this copy I wondered why I would bother to buy it. But as I thumbed through it the reason jumped out at me off the page. It wasn’t anything Monsieur Dumas or his translator had written, or even the beautiful illustrations by F.C. Tilney scattered throughout. On the inside of the title page is three short of lines of script written in pencil. Most likely these lines are a quotation from a play or famous poet. I’ve never tried to find out. I prefer to think that they were written by the person who purchased the book, and meant as a comfort to someone they loved. (I’m a romantic, sue me.) Here are the lines as they appear in the book:

When twilight draws the

Curtains and pins them with

A star, I will remember you

Dear.

I keep this book because there is a story behind it. And I don’t mean Porthos, Athos, Aramis and D’Artagnan and “One for all, and all for one.” I mean the story of J. and whomever he or she is remembering. I’ll never know anything about those two people but nonetheless, every time I pull the book off my shelf, I’ll remember them both.

Regularly Scheduling

2008-01-24T20:36:00.000-08:00

When I was in college I was the owner of the largest TV in my entire apartment complex. (That's not to say that I had a large TV. But when you live in campus housing, most of your neighbors tend to be on a budget, thus keeping the average television size pretty low.) Several nights a week, various friends, acquaintance and the occasional random passerby, would drop in to make use of the big screen, abundant seating (we were one of the few apartments to have two couches) and digital cable. (I sprang for the extra $10 a month service.) TV became a regular part of my routine. I even started planning my study sessions around new episodes of Battlestar Galactica and Grey's Anatomy. (A favorite of the girls downstairs.) When I moved home, I brought my TV habits with me. It's much more difficult to watch with a group in suburbia were everything seems to be a 20 minute drive away, but I managed to find one group to watch Heroes with and another for The Office. Plus there was always my sister who shares my taste in TV.

But what to do about this writer's strike? I need my TV! And I needed on it's regularly schedule time. The answer? The glorious invention known as Digital Video Disc. Between myself, my sister and a couple of friends, I have access to what must be dozens of full seasons TV. But I couldn't just start watching shows at random. I needed that security of prime time lineup. So I made my own. One episode of each show, on the same night each week. If you see any thing you like, feel free to drop by.

Sunday

Malcolm in the Middle
The Simpsons
The X-Files
Playmakers~
Masterpiece Classics*

Monday

Firefly
Space: Above and Beyond
Battlestar Galactica
Terminator: The Sara Connor Chronicles*

Tuesday

Scrubs
The Office
Keen Eddie
Chuck

Wednesday

Dark Angel
Alias
Veronica Mars

Thursday

30 Rock
What I Like About You
Gilmore Girls
Heroes

Friday

Friday Night Lights+
Dead Like Me
Arrested Development
How I Met Your Mother

Saturday

Miniseries or Movie

*new episodes
+new and dvd episodes
~subject to change without notice

The Bourne Catchy-Title

2007-08-04T10:57:00.000-07:00

I read somewhere close to 300 film reviews in any given year. Sometimes I’ll read a review because I’m interested in the film. Other times, I respect the particular critic’s viewpoint or enjoy his or her writing. In all the reviews I’ve read, a subject which comes up very rarely and then only in passing, is the actual movie going experience itself.

Oh don’t get me wrong, critics love to talk about the theater as cathedral to the religion of film. They talk about the extra emotional weight a capacity crowd adds to the images on screen. And they talk about viewer reaction to particularly funny/tense/scary/emotional moments in the movie. But they never talk about waiting in line. Then paying $10 for a ticket. Then waiting in line. Then paying $15 dollars for soda and popcorn. Then waiting in line. Then filing cattle-car style into the theater only to find that all the best seats have been taken and you have to sit between Comic Book Store Guy from The Simpsons and a woman trying to nurse her crying baby. (Oh and the chair is sticky from the 5 year old who managed to spill his entire soda onto the seat in the previous showing.)

They don’t talk about any of that, because they don’t have to do any of that. No, film critics get to go to press screenings. I know because I’ve seen them. I’m on the list. No, not “THE LIST”, or even “The List.” I’m on “the list.” Every once in a great while, when the stars align (in this case the stars being a press screening for a film produced by Universal Studios, that’s in Seattle, and isn’t already full) I get an email with information on how to get two passes into the screening.

This is a very rare occurrence. In fact, it has only happened three times in six years. The first time was for a movie called The Bourne Identity. Having read and loved the Robert Ludlum novel on which the film was based, I was very excited to see it. I walked into the theater, flashed by pass at the skinny guy in the box office and was pointed toward a theater. No lines, no cash, no hassles, just walk right in and pick any seat I want. (Oh and instead of sticky dried up soda and candy wrappers on the seat, there’s a gift bag waiting for me.) Then comes the hand delivered (free) popcorn and soda. Then came the movie. And it was awesome! How can critics ever dislike a movie when it’s this much fun to go!

Last night I went to the late showing of the newest Matt Damon action-spy-thriller, The Bourne Ultimatum. The follow up to 2002’s The Bourne Identity and 2004’ The Bourne Supremacy, Ultimatum stars Damon as an amnesiac government assassin hell-bent on exacting revenge (justice?) for his lover’s murder by his former employers. (As if you didn’t know that already.) The first two films were some of the best action movies of the past decade. So good in fact that many, myself included, believe they served as the model for the re-imagining of that most ubiquitous of action heroes James Bond. This third Bourne is better. (And not just because a prediction of mine about Julia Styles’ character Nicky was proved correct.)

In the first two films Jason Bourne must fight three of his fellow assassins who have been sent to kill him. All are members of a group called Treadstone. In Ultimatum, the agents sent after Bourne belong to Treadstone’s successor Blackbriar. Presumably they are products of training methods perfected beyond what was used on Bourne who is, we find, the very first agent. In many ways they are better assassins than Bourne because of it. At one point I turned to my friend in the theater and said of one of the Blackbriar assassins, “Did that guy just outsmart Jason Bourne?!” In fact he had. Bourne then proceeds to kick the crap out of him. The enemy Bourne faces in this film is all powerful. They can tap into any security camera, listen in on any cell phone call, assassinate anyone, anywhere. But it doesn’t really matter. When they come up against Jason Bourne, they’re powerless. Is it because they represent the filmmaker’s ideas of an intelligence community with too much freedom and not enough oversight? Or because Bourne’s cause is just? Or simply because it makes for a really cracking action movie?

I prefere the third explanation. Yes, if you are so inclined you can infuse this film with some politically relevant theme. But for me that makes the film a waste of money. I paid to see a movie and have a good time, not sit through a political science lecture. And as for Bourne’s cause being just, it’s Bourne who commits the most heinous, despicable act in the whole movie. We identify with Jason Bourne because he has changed. He is no longer an assassin, but the fact remains that he killed quite a few people in cold blood and with no explanation necessary. Jason Bourne’s quest has very little to do with him being righteous. Instead, he understands that it is not enough to simply no longer be Jason Bourne. He must ensure that they’re will never be another Bourne… born. (Sorry.) And in that, the character finds at least a small bit of redemption and allows us as an audience to root for him.

But mostly there’s a lot of punching, crashing and shooting. And it’s awesome! Even if I did have to wait in line this time.

Today's Tomorrow

2007-08-01T23:00:00.000-07:00

I'm supposed to publish something today. I wanted it to be a review of The Bourne Ultimatum. Problem is the movie won't be released until Friday. So I'll see you on Saturday.

Fighter Pilot Dreams, Part 1

2007-07-05T21:42:00.000-07:00

When I was young I watched Top Gun every day for two years straight. I can still quote most of the film word for word. From age six to age seventeen all I ever thought about becoming was a fighter pilot. At first it was simply because I wanted to be Iceman. (Most kids want to be Maverick. Not me.) top Gun lead me very quickly to other sources. I cleared out the local library's aviation section. I watched the Discovery Channel religiously, hoping to hear about the Battle of Britain or “MIG alley.” I spent hours playing “A-10 Tank Killer” on out family computer. By the age of twelve, I was an expert in the history and lore surrounding combat aircraft and the men who flew them. I learned very quickly that I wanted to become a fighter pilot for reason other than just simple idol worship. I craved the freedom of the wild blue. I craved the power and performance provided by huge engines stuffed into tiny airframes. I craved the challenge, both physical and mental, of piloting a fast, agile craft right up to the edge of the envelope.

Tom Wolfe called it, “the right stuff.” The pilots he wrote about certainly never called it that. In fact, they never talked about it. But they all knew what it was, they all knew it when they saw it, and they were all completely confident that they had it. Wolfe says, “As to just what this ineffable quality was... well, it obviously involved bravery. But it was not bravery in the simple sense of being willing to risk your life... No the idea here (in the all-enclosing fraternity) seemed to be that a man should have the ability to go up in the hurtling piece of machinery ad put his hide on the line and then have the moxie, the reflexes, the experience, the coolness, to pull it back in the last yawning moment...” That's all very dramatic, but trying to learn from that just what “the right stuff” is and how you can get it, is like trying to learn combat tactics by watching Top Gun 400 times. What I needed to know was what “it” looked like. I needed to know how to get it. For that, I had to go straight to the source, to “the most righteous of all possessors of the right stuff: Chuck Yeager.” Yeager was and still is the yard stick by which all fighter pilots are measured.

Charles Elwood Yeager was born in Lincoln County West Virginia in 1923. As an Army Air Corp. officer, he flew P-51 Mustangs in the European theater of World War II. He became the first man to eject over enemy territory and later return to combat. He is also one of only a handful of American pilots to score five or more kills on a single mission. To make five aerial kills, to “ace” has been the mark of a good fighter pilot since the very early days of air combat in the first World War. Less than 1000 people have ever done it. To become an “ace in a day,” elevates a pilot into even more rarefied air. He finished the war with twelve kills total, a “double ace.” While his combat record made him a legend in military and aviation circles, it was what he would accomplish after the war that would make Chuck Yeager a household name. On October 14, 1947 he did what no man had ever done before. At 45,000 feet above the Mojave Desert, Yeager flew the Bell X-1 test plane to a speed of Mach 1.1 (around 800mph) breaking the sound barrier. The list goes, Wright, Lindberg, Yeager, Armstrong.

Yeager says ever since the film version of “The Right Stuff” came out, the question he's asked most often in if he thinks he has the right stuff. He says, “I know that golden trout have the right stuff, and I've seen a few gals here and there that I'd bet had it in spades, but those words seem meaningless when used to describe a pilot's attributes.” You can imagine my confusion upon finding these words in Yeager's autobiography. If I'm not looking for “the right stuff” then just what is it that I need to have? What is it that I need to know? What is it that I need to do to find my way into the cockpit of a jet fighter?

“'Combat vision,' we call it. You focus out to infinity and back, searching a section of sky each time. To be able to see at such distances is a gift that's hard to explain, and only Andy [Yeager's best friend during the war] and I could do it.” And there it is. I had to have eyes. Good ones! Of all the other qualities a fighter pilot had to have, Yeager believed that it was his eyesight that set him apart from every other “good” pilot. To be able to see the enemy first, be able to see trouble coming before it gets to you, before it's too late to do anything, it's what keeps a pilot flying and makes him one of the best.

When I was in the fourth grade, our entire class was sent down to the nurse's office in groups of three to have our eyes checked. I went first.

“Cover your right eye with your hand.

“Good, now please read line eight for me.”

I tried to read line eight but I couldn't tell the F's from the P's, the Q's from the O's. This was bad.

“O.K. Keith, how about we try line four.”

I tried line four. I had to guess on most of them, but I was pretty sure I got them all right. I had to get them right.

Just write down on you little nurse's clipboard that I have good eye! Write it down. “Keith has great eyes! His eyes are so good he should be a fighter pilot!”

“O.K. Keith can you tell me what the top letter is?”

The top letter?! What is she talking about? Everyone knows only old people have to read the top letter. This is really bad.

“It's and 'E',” I say, utterly confused.

How is this possible? I have to have perfect eye sight.

She sends me back to class with a note for my parents. When it was all over, I had three visits to the optometrist and a set of this, gold framed lenses. Today I wear a contact lens with a diopter power of -5.00. That translates to rough y 20/400 vision without the lenses. It was a major set back for me. But I would continue to purse my goal. There was hope for me yet, as my eyesight in one-hundred percent correctable. With my contacts in, I have 20/15 vision in both eyes. I would need a medical waiver in order to fly, but my need for speed had not faltered. I would find a way.

There is a killer instinct which all good fighter pilots have. It's a blood lust. A willingness to do anything to win, to bring the other guy down. Yeager's closest friend during and after the war was Andy “Bud” Anderson, a “triple ace” with 17 kills. “On the ground, [Andy] was the nicest person you'd ever know, but in the sky, those damned Germans must've thought they were up against Frankenstein or the Wolfman; Andy would hammer them into the ground, dive with them into the damned grave, if necessary, to destroy them.”

My father refused to let me play football until I was in the seventh grade. It was most likely just a financial concern as youth football was very expensive while junior high football was covered by his tax dollars. When junior high eventually rolled around I joined the team, and would finally get to prove I had that component of “the right stuff.” Football is the closest you can get to war in a civilized society, without actually going to war. The game of Football is an avenue for aggression. In a developed society which frowns on violence, men have found it necessary to channel their fundamental need for combat into the arena of organized sport. And in the game of football, there is no position which fits Yeager's description; a violent, relentless unopposable force of a fighter pilot better than middle linebacker. So that's what I'd be. And I was right. I was good at it. While I didn't have the pure athletic talent of some of my teammates, that willingness to go right into the “dive with them into the damned grave,” that I had. I was aggressive and ruthless and despite my lack of speed, still managed to find the ball carrier. I even started using the “Combat vision,” that Yeager talked about. I called it “tunnel vision.” It was like a spot light shooting out through my eyes. I could focus it down to one tiny, intense beam to notice the smallest change in an offensive lineman's balance. Or I would broaden it out to cover the whole field and see a splint end motioning down to crack block the defensive end. When the ball was snapped, I didn't hesitate. I flew to a spot on the field where I knew the ball would be. Often, I got there before the offensive player did. Just as a pilot has to know where every plane is in a dogfight, what's called “situational awareness,” I knew where all 21 other players on the field were, and more importantly where they were going to be.

I Am a Lazy Person.

2007-06-11T22:03:00.000-07:00

Most of the stuff here on my blog was not written for the blog. It was written for a class or some other project then published here. This has to change. I won't be taking any more writing classes. Which means I have to motivate my self to write. It's not easy. I'm pretty busy with other stuff. But you can help me out. I am committing to publishing a new piece on the 1st and 15th of every month. If I do not do so, could the four of you who read this blog please be as annoying as possible in asking me why I haven't published. Thank you.

And now, another (and possibly the last) piece I wrote for a class. This time, I was asked why I am seeking a Masters Degree. My answer follows.

I am a college graduate. I hold a Bachelor of Arts in History. This means I am qualified to do almost nothing. There are a few things I can do really well. I can use microfiche readers. I can perform complex boolean searches in obscure online databases. I can take information gleaned from microfilms, from online sources, and from books and articles and turn it into a coherent piece of original historical thought. Try putting that on a resume. For most open positions, having a history degree is roughly equivalent to speaking fluent Romanian. Interesting, but hardly useful.

History, like a few other select subjects (Latin, Feminist Studies, etc…) is a self sustaining field. Meaning that the only thing learning it qualifies you to do is teach it. (I find this ironic, since the very thing that drew me to History was the fact that its scope is limitless. There is literally no subject which cannot be studied under the banner of “History.” In fact many historians find themselves experts in other fields because they have studied the history of those fields so extensively.) Whether the act of teaching comes in the form of lecture at an institution of learning, or through the publication of a book, or through an appearance on a History Channel special presentation, the only thing historians do, other than study history, is teach it to other people. Which is convenient for me, because teaching is exactly what I want to do. I love history. I have a love of all things past, a fascination with how what once was has shaped what is today. And having the opportunity to inspire that fascination in others has been the driving force behind my entire academic career.

This is where my decision to seek a graduate degree comes in. I want to teach history. Specifically, I want to teach history at the middle/high school level. And while I have the history in “History Teacher” covered (I even know a little about the history of teaching. Socratic Method anyone?) the teaching part needs some work. I want to learn about connecting with students from different backgrounds. I want to learn about child development and psychology. I even want to learn about lesson plans and presentation methods. I am beginning the process of earning a Masters in Education because I want to be fully prepared to be a successful educator in today’s classroom. Also, no one will hire me with out it.

Am I Done, or Did I Just Start?

2007-03-22T18:13:00.000-07:00

I finished college today. Classes ended last week. These last few days were finals week. The only thing I had to do was finish up a paper. But not just any paper. I had to finish a 25 page monster of a History paper. Basically, it amounts to an undergraduate thesis. It is now done, and will be turned in early tomorrow morning. I am (justifiably I think) pretty proud of it so... here it is.

WARNING: Do not continue reading unless you are a History nerd! 7,300 words (not including endnotes and the bibliography) on the Protestant Rhetoric in Early Modern England can cause violent head aches, bloody stool and even death in those not properly acclimated to it.

Catholics in Disguise: Protestant Rhetoric as Justification for English Conquest

Endeverance - Club Corridor

2007-03-21T11:43:00.000-07:00

Re-Entry.mp3

2007-03-14T18:11:00.000-07:00

I recently read aloud a revised (once again) version of the Re-Entry piece posted below for a class I'm taking. I thought it was an interesting form of expression, so I've recorded myself reading it, and posted the .mp3 bellow.

download file: reentry.mp3

Sorry about the poor audio quality. I think it turned out pretty good considering I used my cell phone to record it. Let me know what you think. If this is something you'd like to hear more of, maybe I'll invest a couple of bucks in a microphone.

Re-Entry

2007-03-09T13:28:00.000-08:00

I was born on a Monday and the following Sunday was my first visit to church. The habit that began on my sixth day of life, would continue through my 21st year. The church became my community. It was my family, my home and my social center. It was where I could find all the people I couldn't live without. Then I moved away. I’ve spent the last few years in college. Having lived without a church, having lived a hundred miles away from the structure that defined me, I wonder how it will be when I go back. In just a few weeks I'll be graduating. I'll be moving back home. And that will mean a re-entry into my world of faith.

I feel as if I've been on the moon, with only a sixth of the earth’s gravity to keep my feet on the ground. I’ve changed my perspective on faith. It’s not a matter of losing it. My faith has never wavered. Faith, like gravity, is a constant. But the magnitude of that faith has lessened. Soon I’ll be making my way back, on the verge of starting that fiery drop back into the atmosphere. The re-entry will be fast and turbulent. Falling like so much metal and plastic back into the gravity well. And for a while afterward, my legs will be weakened from the low-g environment of college life where your only concern is your own well being. But eventually, that physical adjustment will get made. I’ll remember that life is a shared experience. Eventually I'll relearn how to act like an inhabitant of my blue and green church world. Won't I?

Did Pete Conrad ever feel like this? As he stepped off that tiny craft 240,000 miles from home? Did he ever feel like having stood here, in this place, he could never truly go back? I imagine there was a sign there to greet him, like the ones on the road leading into little towns in Idaho. “Welcome to the Moon. ‘A great place to see the world.’ Population: You.” And that's how I feel. Like it's just me. The only inhabitant of an entire celestial body.

I can only imagine what Captain Charles “Pete” Conrad, USN, saw as he shuffled through the eons old dust sprinkling the surface of his new satellite. But I know what he saw when he looked up into the sky, with no atmosphere to distort the view. What he saw was home. The earth, so small he could close one eye, hold up a thumb and make it disappear. A pure, unfiltered view of all life, all at once. What better place to find God than the surface of the moon, where there's 300 degrees difference between night and day, and where the magnitude of his creation can be seen in a way no human eye ever has before.

So maybe that's what I remember seeing now. Standing away, looking back. Despite the isolation of life alone at college, I could turn back and see, really see for the first time, everything that made life worth living. Maybe it won’t be like it was. I can forget about canned air and dried ice cream. I can move on from piles of dirty t-shirts and ramen noodles four nights a week. But I’ll never forget that view.

To the Moon and Back (How the university experience altered everything.)

2007-02-21T17:52:00.000-08:00

Scratch that. See above.

To Rhonda: Explosions and Car Chases!

2007-02-11T20:44:00.000-08:00

It is no coincidence that the words "actor" and "action" have the same root. My sister implied (most likely in jest) that the prospect of an action movie containing a good performance by an actor or actress was unheard of. (Read her piece here.) This is a common misconception among women* and film snobs. I hereby submit as evidence a listing of action films which received an Academy Award nomination in one of the four acting categories. (This is by no means a comprehensive list. Most of it is from memory and I have excluded sports films.)

The Right Stuff (Shepard)
Apocalypse Now (Duvall)
Gladiator (Crowe, Phoenix)
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (Depp)
Platoon (Berenger, Dafoe)
Saving Private Ryan (Hanks)
Glory (Washington)
Apollo 13 (Harris)
Aliens (Weaver)
Pulp Fiction (Jackson)
The Departed (Wahlberg)
Unforgiven (Hackman)
The Deer Hunter (Walken)
The French Connection (Scheider, Hackman)
The Sand Pebbles (McQueen)
The Bridge On the River Kwai (Guinness)
Star Wars (Guinness)
A History of Violence (Hurt)
Collateral (Foxx)

Plus a few more which received no nomination, but probably should have.

The Bourne Supremacy (Damon, Cox)
The Bone Collector (Jolie, Washington)
Enemy at the Gates (Fiennes, Harris, Weisz)
Inside Man (Foster, Owen, Washington)
Silverado (Glenn, Glover, Hunt)
Panic Room (Foster, Whitaker)

Generally speaking, performances in action movies are assumed to be bad. This is because if an action movie contains good performances, the movie critic will simply rename it a "drama" and state that the action sequences were "particularly well done." Thus making bad or mediocre performances the only ones left in the action genre. Thankfully this cop-out of cynical snobbery is a loophole through which so many good films and good performances have received their just rewards from critics as well as from the movie going public. It's a shame comedies don't have a similar back door into award ceremonies. There appears to be an unwritten rule that no actor or actress performing in a comedic role will ever be nominated for a major award. (Johnny Depp being the exception which proves it.) This is of course excluding the Golden Globes, which wisely sets aside an entire category for musical or comedic performance. Naturally this category tends to be dominated by the "musical" half of that equation... hmmm, maybe another list is in order. Rhonda, care to help me out?

*I am fully aware that there are women who enjoy action movies. I am also aware that the number of them is directly proportional to the number of men who enjoy romantic comedies.)

A Five Sent Motel Room

2007-01-22T10:25:00.000-08:00

Best Westerns are dives. Motel 6's? Junk heaps. Travelodges? Arm pits of the motel industry. I've been to and slept in more shoddy little chain motels than I care to count. Mostly on road trips with my family. They're all the same. Same sheets, same towels, same low pressure shower heads sputtering out the same lukewarm water. The day old pastries at the complimentary continental breakfast always give you the same queasy full but far from satisfied feeling. You ate the first two strawberry/raspberry/blueberry/cinnamon/custard/raisin glazed whatevers and thought that would be enough. But now there's that sense that what you just ate may have taken up space in your stomach but won't provide sustenance. So you have another, or five. Then there's the raisin-bran in the giant plastic container with the sliding door on the front. How can they screw up raisin-bran? Easy! They just give you tiny little styrofoam bowls that only hold two or three plastic spoonfuls of cereal. Good luck getting a full breakfast out of one of those. By the time you realize what's happening, that it doesn't matter what or how much you eat from the lackluster display, you've no room left for real food. Yep, that's the same too. Until I was twelve I thought “continental” meant _______.

God forbid you get the smoking room. For years smokers were spread out among all the rooms. The only time you noticed was when the occupant immediately before you was a smoker. Now, there's only one smoking room. It's room 114. It's where all the smokers stay. So many cartons of cigarettes have hacked and burned and tared their way through so many pairs of lungs in that one small space that the room is no longer called the smoking room because of what happens in it. It's called the smoking room because of what it does. It smokes. Literally. The walls and floor and furniture have all been slow roasted in poison gas and they gradually release their deadly vaporous cargo into the air. When you open the door it hits you in the face like a rotten egg. When given the smoking room, it's best to just walk down the block to the next identically generic motel, and hope they have a non-smoking vacancy.

There's a reason most of the rooms in the these places only have windows on the front side, looking inward toward the courtyard. If you ever get a room with a window on the backside, do not, under any circumstances look through it. Out that window is a poorly lit back ally, or a scrap yard, or a line of dumpsters, or a crazy cat lady's back yard. It will be filled with cinder blocks, railroad ties, a baby pool covered in two inches of mold, and a white 1973 Ford van where her 45 year old son lives because his room in the house is now filled with boxes of old junk mail which can't be thrown out since the garbage in this town is handled by the prisoners at the county jail and one of them might use the address printed on an envelope to steal the cat lady's identity. It's best to just leave the drapes closed and spare yourself the sight.

No one ever cleans the pool at chain motels. When the water starts looking dirty, someone just pours more chlorine in. Some time in 1980's the mixture became more chemicals than water and the ratio has been steadily increasing ever since. Actually swimming in the pool will turn you green and cover your skin with a thin, slick film of bleach and toddler urine. Good luck washing it off in the aforementioned motel shower.

You will never get a good nights sleep in a chain motel. It's not because the mattresses are filled with small stones or because the television won't turn off. And it's not because the air conditioning won't turn on in the summer and is stuck wide open in the winter. You won't sleep because the person you're staying with is a snorer. They will wake the next morning annoyingly refreshed and ready for the day having honked and snorted their way through the night like a entire flight of Canadian geese. And don't think you can get around this problem by staying alone. Because the person in the room next door will definitely not be alone. Maybe you weren't able to get any sleep during the night, but at least when you get up the next morning you can go downstairs for the complimentary continental breakfast.

Unfinished Business

2006-12-10T21:46:00.000-08:00

Sorting through files on my computer as I prepare for the switch from WindowsXP to Ubuntu, I found a piece I began writing a couple of years ago and never finished. It's one that I've wanted to get done, but when I remembered it I wasn't motivated to write, and when I felt like writing I would forget about it and move on to something else. So what I've decided to do is post it in its current (crappy) state. Having it displayed in public should give me plenty of reason to finish it. Plus it will give anyone who may be curious a look into my writing process as I update the post with each draft.

What you see below is a direct transcription of my handwritten notes minus (most of) the spelling errors.

The park is crowed with people on this bright, clear Sunday evening. It’s the third week of April and it seems like the entire city has come out from under their winter coats and umbrellas to enjoy the first few days of spring weather here at Seattle Center. I’m sitting on the steps outside the east entrance to Key Arena watching as families and couples and groups of teenagers walk past. They talk and yell and laugh, surrounding me with the noise of a city on its day off. But over it, I hear something else. A guitar coming from the Arena, slightly muffled by yards of concrete and glass yet still very loud, is playing the same three notes over and over again. It’s The Edge. Inside, U2 is doing a sound check, warming up for their concert set to begin in three hours time.

As he walked around the perimeter of the stage, Bono reached into the audience and took a flag being offered to him by a fan. It was the Irish flag and as Bono waved the orange and green banner of his homeland, I was struck by a sense of irony. In 1983, while on stage during their War Tour, Bono frequently waved a giant White flag of surrender during Sunday, Bloody Sunday. He would open the song by saying, “There is but one flag, the white flag!” U2 have never been afraid to declare their beliefs, and Bono is certainly conscience of the fact that he is Irish; he has made it clear that he feels a connection…

U2 were made famous by the energy, volume and passion of their live shows in the 1980’s and made infamous by their over the top, tongue-in-cheek commercialized tours of the 1990’s. (1997’s Popmart tour featured a giant McDonald's arch and a 40 foot lemon as part of the stage.) It was not until the 2000 Elevation tour that they were able to combine the emotion and power of their earlier War and Joshua Tree tours with the high production quality and audio-visual elements of the later Zoo TV and Popmart shows.
The band’s current tour titled, “Vertigo” after the first single off their latest album is in many ways an extension of the Elevation shows of four years ago. The stage is the centerpiece of the show. Shaped like a giant egg, it extends half way across the floor of the arena. One half of the interior of the ellipse is taken up by a circular platform that elevates the band above the audience while the other half is left open. Around 300 fans are able to stand in this interior section and are privileged to a 360 degree experience as Bono, The Edge and bassist Adam Clayton spend much of the concert moving around the perimeter walkway.

Back outside the arena, it’s now just minutes before the doors open. I stand near the front of the mass of bodies that constitutes the “line” as more and more people push in from behind. The crowd is buzzing with conversation as everyone jabbers nervously with their companions in anticipation. Having come alone, I have no one in particular to talk to and instead listen in on the conversations around me…
…The doors open, and the first wait is finally over. The reservoir of people built up behind the doors breaks through the entrance and quickly disperses to the various section of the venue. My fleece jacket hangs heavy on my shoulders as I make my way up the stairs to my second level seat. My pockets are stuffed full of T-shirts and other memorabilia I purchased outside…

The stench emanating from the aging hippie in front of me is nearly overpowering. Its eight day BO thinly veiled by bad colon. These two elements I’ve encountered before. But the third component of the funk is unexpected. As I try harder to forget about the man who I’m now convinced is a thoroughly lost Grateful Dead fan, it becomes more and more impossible to ignore the putrid quaff flowing up from him. Then I see it. A small plastic bottle quickly lifted to his lips and dropped back down again. They’re not serving alcohol at the concession stands, I realize. And this man, apparently unable to sit through the concert without his booze, has with him the only form of alcohol he could get past security, NyQil. He’s worked his way through about half the bottle already. How is this guy even staying awake?

Buy Me Stuff!

2006-11-20T16:04:00.000-08:00

Well it's that time of year again. Time to gorge ourselves on dead animal flesh and football. It's a truly American holiday as we celebrate either the founding of one nation under God, or the subjugation of a native people, depending on how liberal your history teachers were. It also ushers in the annual month-long veritable frat party of capitalism where the modesty of fiscal responsibility is thrown out the window in favor of the debauchery of credit card culture. For those of you out there who may wish to use me as an outlet for your wanton spending, here's a list of things you can buy me:

Stuff:

Xbox 360 Pro
PSP (PlayStation Portable)
Scrubs Season 4 DVD
Battlestar Galactica DVDs (Any season, including the miniseries, but from the current version, not the one from the 70's)
External Hardrive (Any size is fine, the bigger the better. An internal drive with a case is also more than acceptable as this is a far better value for the money.)
Notebook PC RAM (512 or bigger, as I already have a 256 and only have the one expansion slot.)
Motorcycle and motorcycle related t-shirts. (NO HARLEY CRAP! Racing and Euro bikes are best. Japanese stuff is cool too. Buell is iffy. When in doubt, ask my Dad... unless you are my dad, then it really shouldn't be a problem.)
High school sports t-shirts. (The more far-flung and obscure the better, but local stuff is great too. Football is my first choice, but I'll wear just about anything, including girls sports.)
“A Feast for Crows,” by George R.R. Martin
The Magnificent Seven DVD
Switchfoot, Oh! Gravity CD
The Office DVDs (Any seasons from either the BBC or the NBC version would be great.)

Gift certificates to places where I can go to buy stuff:

Game Stop
Target
Duluth Trading Company
Barnes & Nobel
Amazon.com
iTunes Music Store
Regal Cinemas
Old Navy
K-Swiss.com
Macy's

Common myth holds that we give gifts at Christmas in order to celebrate the three wise men giving Jesus gold, frankincense and myrrh on the occasion of his birth. This is in fact, wrong and may be a major contributing factor to the materialist nature of Christmas today. The gift we represent every time we wrap up an iPod or a diamond necklace or a pair of argyle socks, is not the treasure given to the Christ child, it's Christ himself. It's God's gift of salvation through the person of Jesus his son.

Go ahead! Spend like crazy this December. Your small business owning neighbors, as well as our collective economic livelihood is depending on you. (And if you want to throw a little bit of that excess my way, I won't mind.) But this Christmas season, make sure you take time out of your busy schedule to remember the first Christmas present you ever received. The one given to you two-thousand years ago, in tiny little town in the Middle-East. This is the gift we should be emulating. Give as He gave, and love as He loved.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Mario!

2006-10-16T15:59:00.001-07:00

Fraser Hall, WWU

Letter to the Editor

2006-10-13T14:10:00.000-07:00

Strictly speaking this is not a letter to the editor, but "Letter to the Subscription Services Department" is a pretty lame title.

To Whom It May Concern:

Theory: TV Guide is run by chimpanzees.

Exhibit A: TV Guide, a magazine with one of the largest distributions in the nation, does not provide a way, by mail or electronically, for new subscribers to pay with a credit card. New subscribers are not informed of this fact beforehand.

-This means that people like myself, who do not use a checkbook, are unable to pay for a subscription to TV Guide.-

Exhibit B: TV Guide's subscriber service hot line, 1-800-866-1400, has been unable to take subscriber calls of any nature other than address changes for the past three months.

-This means that people like myself, who subscribed to TV Guide without the knowledge that they would be unable to pay for their subscription with a credit card, are also unable to contact TV Guide about their inability to pay for their subscription by phone.

Exhibit C: TV Guide's method for contact through the internet does not recognize names and subscription numbers of subscribers who have not, or have not been able to, pay for their subscriptions.

-This means that people like myself, who subscribed to TV Guide with out the knowledge that they would be unable to pay for their subscription with a credit card, and who are also unable to contact TV Guide about their inability to pay for their subscription over the phone, are also unable to contact TV Guide about their inability to pay for their subscription through email.

Please cancel my subscription, I do not wish to subscribe to a magazine run by chimpanzees. I do not have a problem with you primates, in fact I appreciate your contribution to the evolutionary process of us humans, but frankly a magazine written by you holds no appeal to me, a logical, rational homo-sapiens.

My subscription number is: *********** **** *********** *********

My name and address is:

Keith *****

**** ****

**** **** ******** *****

Bellingham, WA 98225-5923

Thank you,

Keith *****

P.S. If you report me to a collection agency for your inability to accept my payment, I will be forced to look into the process of taking a group of monkeys to court for libel.

P.P.S. I would be willing to pay the amount of the subscription represented by the issues I have already received, by credit card. I certainly would not want to short anyone, chimp or human, the money they are owed.

The All-nighter (Incomplete)

2006-09-20T21:58:00.000-07:00

It’s a common practice among college students. Pulling the all-nighter. Coffee, Mountain Dew, and Red Bull are consumed in mass quantities as the hours tick by. 1 am, 2 am, 3am, and now just 5 more hours to go. That paper won’t finish it-self. Thousands of under-grads across the country spend thousands of hours every year furiously toiling away at their computers while the rest of us sleep. I say “the rest of us” because the all-nighter is a university ritual I’ve so far managed to avoid. Through a combination of semi-careful planning, and a sincere belief that I benefit far more from a full nights rest than from possessing a “complete” assignment, I have always managed to spend my nights in bed, rather than in a desk chair.

The prospect of being forced into the all-nighter has none-the-less loomed heavy on the horizon on several occasions. But here it’s actually my innate laziness that pays off. The act of sleeping-in is sacred to me. Managing to sleep well into the late morning gives one a certain feeling of accomplishment. To ensure that I continue to be able to sleep late, I only sign up for classes that are held latter in the day. When mid-terms and finals roll around, this means that I can sleep 7 to 8 hours, and still have time in the morning for any extra work my classes may require.

I pride myself on my all-nighter avoidance strategy. Its principles are sound and it has served me well through 4 years of school. But last week my perfect record was shattered! You can hardly blame me for not seeing it coming. It’s August. There are no assignments or test or papers. I’m ready for all of that. I’m prepared. What my planning hadn’t anticipated was work. An all-nighter at work? Impossible! Work ends at 6:00pm. I go home, I eat, I sit, I watch, I read, I sleep. I sleep! But not last Friday. That Friday, I worked, I worked, I worked, I worked, and then I think I might have blacked out. At some point, I shut my internal recorders off. And I did all this to fix a motorcycle.

Abbotsford Internation Airshow

2006-08-14T21:31:00.001-07:00

My roommate and I made the short trip across the boarder yesterday to see the Abbotsford Airshow. At one time the Abbotsford show was second only in size to the Paris Airshow. It was an interesting mix of Canadian citizens and U.S Military personnel. A Lengthier article is to follow at a later date.

This video is a little hard to see, but the guy on the PA can be heard clearly and he gives a pretty good description of what's happening.

EDIT: Ok so maybe he's not so easy to understand. The pilot brings the plane in over the crowd at his minimum airspeed, then points the nose straight up and lights the afterburner. The fighter goes from 500 feet to 15,000 in a matter of seconds. It literally disappears. Pretty freakin' cool!

30 mm GAU-8/A seven-barrel Gatling gun, housed in a Fairchild/Rupublic A-10 Thunderbolt II (Warthog)

Boeing F-15 Eagle

Lockheed F-117A Nighthawk, that's an armed gaurd in fatigues under the nose in the background. There are two more guys with fully loaded CAR-15s standing to the left out of frame. It may be early 70's stealth technology, but it's stealth all the same.

Turf Notes

2006-08-14T12:22:00.000-07:00

With the 2006 football season fast approaching, I have realized that people who may have been directly involved in the events described in "The Astroturf Uncertainty Principle" may in fact read it. Thus I feel it is incumbent upon me to place this disclaimer both here and at the bottom of the piece itself.

Note: This article is very closely based on real events and real people. Some of the events may be condensed and certain details (the score of the game for example) may be incorrect as everything was written simply as I remembered it. As far as I know there was no record of the game to which I could refer. Names have not been changed. Robert is a real person. His actions on the night of the game are as accurately described as I could make them, but my knowledge of his life before I met him and away from the football field should be considered second hand at best.

Signpost Forest

2006-08-11T22:46:00.000-07:00

Watson Lake, YT. Photo courtesy Tim Watts

readkeith.com

2006-08-07T19:35:00.000-07:00

Read Keith can now be reached by simply typing in readkeith.com.

You can still find it at readkeith.blogspot.com so no need to change bookmarks or links, but now it should be easier for other people to find the site.

Many thanks to the people over at yahoo for the insanely cheap domain name registration.

Check out what I did this summer!

How Close?

2006-08-02T21:56:00.000-07:00

This is from an add campaign currently being run in the UK.

Everyone please take an extra second or two durring your commute to start seeing motorcyclists.

What's Up With My Little Sister?

2006-07-30T15:48:00.000-07:00

Check out my sister's new blog at wattsupwithrhonda.blogspot.com!

WWU Library Search

2006-07-30T13:37:00.000-07:00

I created a search plugin for the Western Library catalog. This plugin works with Mozilla Firefox.

You can download the plugin here. Once your download is done, click on the .exe file wherever you saved it on your hard disk. It will run as a self extracting .rar (.zip) file. Choose your browser's search plugin directory as the "extract to" or "destination" folder. Usually this folder is C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins . Then just restart Firefox.

The search plug in loads in your search bar in the top right of the browser.

By default, it will search by title, but you can change this setting in the code for the plug in. Just open the .src file with notepad. The file is in the searchplugins folder. Then edit this line of text: action="http://lis.wwu.edu/search~/t"

By changing the last letter, you change the search parameter, "a" for author, etc... Then save the file as new, and give it a new title. Something like "Western by Author," and your done. You can also create a 16x16 .gif file as an icon for your new search plugin. Just give it the same title as your new .src file, save it to the same folder and Firefox will do the rest.

If you have any problems, if you know of a better way to host/download the plug in or if you just have questions or comments, please email me.