06/01/2001 - 07/01/2001 07/01/2001 - 08/01/2001 08/01/2001 - 09/01/2001 09/01/2001 - 10/01/2001 10/01/2001 - 11/01/2001 11/01/2001 - 12/01/2001 12/01/2001 - 01/01/2002 01/01/2002 - 02/01/2002 02/01/2002 - 03/01/2002 03/01/2002 - 04/01/2002 04/01/2002 - 05/01/2002 05/01/2002 - 06/01/2002 06/01/2002 - 07/01/2002 07/01/2002 - 08/01/2002 08/01/2002 - 09/01/2002 09/01/2002 - 10/01/2002 10/01/2002 - 11/01/2002 11/01/2002 - 12/01/2002 12/01/2002 - 01/01/2003 01/01/2003 - 02/01/2003 02/01/2003 - 03/01/2003 03/01/2003 - 04/01/2003 04/01/2003 - 05/01/2003 05/01/2003 - 06/01/2003 06/01/2003 - 07/01/2003 07/01/2003 - 08/01/2003 08/01/2003 - 09/01/2003 09/01/2003 - 10/01/2003 10/01/2003 - 11/01/2003 11/01/2003 - 12/01/2003 12/01/2003 - 01/01/2004 01/01/2004 - 02/01/2004 02/01/2004 - 03/01/2004 03/01/2004 - 04/01/2004 04/01/2004 - 05/01/2004 05/01/2004 - 06/01/2004 08/01/2004 - 09/01/2004 10/01/2004 - 11/01/2004 11/01/2004 - 12/01/2004 02/01/2005 - 03/01/2005 04/01/2005 - 05/01/2005 a firenze

Wednesday, October 31

1:25 AM
oh yeah, and on the way to the debate, i saw a guy getting beat up on the street. on his knees, kicked in the ribs by another guy. i didn't know what to do and i just drove right by.

12:04 AM
i feel really good tonight. probably because i was working on a jasper johns presentation for 8 hours straight, and i still wasn't properly prepared, but for lack of time after other presentations mine was postponed till thursday. but i feel a lot more informed about foirades/fizzles and johns and beckett, so that's contributing to my mood. after that class i went to the last mayoral debate tonight at the downtown library, for my political leadership class. it was the informal sit-down-at-a-table style. for once (of the three i've been to), the audience wasn't rowdy. the candidates, kest and ford, seemed to be more composed and presented their ideas more clearly, too. i don't know if either of them will be a good mayor, but it's not really important to me other than academically. i'm not staying in toledo. when young people from toledo become successful and/or educated, then leave for bigger and better places, they call it "brain drain". the lightweights stay in town. barbara my installation prof (not from toledo; by her accent i think the east coast) says "this city has a major identity crisis". i agree. there's not much pride among a lot of its natives. i didn't like this town when i came here, but i'm starting to be more sympathetic. i actually like some of the people here. but that doesn't mean i have vested interest in staying here. i need a bigger city than this one; something at least as big as columbus, which feels just right to me. after the debate a bunch of people in my class went for coffee. something as simple as that is a big social event for me, for how little i hang out with people. my friends in the art dept. are all workaholics... but i should spend more time with them outside the studio. i dunno. just a little human contact does wonders for me. i like it when people are nice to me.

james macgregor burns says that transactional leadership "occurs when one person takes the inititative in making contact with others for the purpose of an exchange of valued things" and that transforming leadership "occurs when one or more persons engage [sic] with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality... their purposes, which might have started out as separate but related, as in the case of transactional leadership, become fused." my professor called reagan as a transforming leader. was he really? i guess so. and i'd say that republicans are more receptive to that kind of leadership, an idealogical viewpoint that everyone (in the party) can agree on.

Sunday, October 28

4:27 PM
I heard about this on This American Life. Boder interviewed Holocaust survivors in 1946, before it was called the Holocaust.

Monday, October 22

6:16 AM
When we were hiking in Hocking Hills, we sang a little bit to entertain ourselves. My dad and my youngest sister Kate knew all the words to Marty Robbins' "El Paso".

Sunday, October 21

1:36 AM
hmm. just the first part, the rest is crap.

Saturday, October 20

6:27 PM
I am remarkably busy, as I keep telling people. But somehow I seem to get nothing of consequence done. I guess I include worrying about stuff I need to do as part of the work.

Tuesday, October 16

6:34 AM
my sweetie's coming to see me, thanksgiving.

Monday, October 15

12:44 AM
This weekend I read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I have never seen Blade Runner, but now I'm very interested, and I wonder if it will be as good. From the library I also got Understanding Media by Marshall MacLuhan and The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon.

I think my sleep cycle is getting really messed up. It feels like my body wants to be awake at exactly the opposite time that most people are.

Saturday, October 13

3:36 PM
paper journal.



10/6/01 saturday, about 7:30pm

just had dinner at the lodge at the bottom of the canyon, at phantom ranch. we left this morning from the north rim at about 8am, and the last of us arrived here at 5:30pm. A pretty long haul. Two-thirds of the 6000ft elevation drop are in the first half of the 14-mile trail. The last seven seemed to go on for such a long time because there wasn't much variety in the terrain — it mostly followed a stream that ran throught Bright Angel Canyon. Actually it was interesting viewing the whole way. The first half involved a lot of walking down over rocky paths, along cliffs, down a lot of switchbacks.

We had breakfast at 6:30am at the north rim lodge (why am I not writing chronologically?) "All you care to eat." It was good stuff. I felt like we got spoiled every step of the way on this trip until we started the hike. Okay, from the beginning then:

Came home from Toledo to Columbus Thursday night and Aunt Carolyn and Uncle Henry were there already. I hardly slept that night for some reason. Listened to my autographed copy of Mink Car. We got up at 4:30 the next morning to leave at 5 for the airport (Dad, Henry, and I were the ones flying). The line at the security gate was 50 yards long but we got through it pretty quickly. I unthinkingly brought a swiss army knife in my carry-on bag, so had to give it up to the guard. Damn. They took my dad's safety scissors too, ha ha.

Three hours to Denver, where it snowed. From the phone I saw a target-shaped rainbow, each color a concentric circle. Two hours to Las Vegas. Last time I was there was 1986 when I was seven. All I remember is the video arcade, with so many games they literally appeared to stretch infinitely. My brother was trying to play Space Ace and we got frustrated because we didn't realize you had to wait before you pushed any buttons, so he kept dying right away, falling off a cliff. Anyway, my first impression this time was the incredible gaudiness of it. But I guess you have to appreciate the place as part of American culture. My cousin Chris (who met us there) said if there were any tall buildings like the World Trade Center in Las Vegas, they would have been targets too.

We rented a car and headed toward the Grand Canyon, stopped for lunch at a trucker's diner. We went through Utah... the closest we came to my namesake, Bryce Canyon, was about 100 miles, but we didn't have time to go see it. It was on the same trip in 1986 that was the last time I've been there. Zion National Park was on the way, though, so we drove through there. Some really beautiful mountains there, and precarious roads along them. We arrived at the Grand Canyon at right about sunset, met up with most of the rest of our group: five of my dad's six brothers, Lawrence, John, Steve, George & Ken. My brother Phil and his wife Teresa got there a couple hours later.

Some of us ate at the nice restaurant, but others (me included) just had some fast food pizza, which was fine with me. I got a really good night's sleep so I felt good this morning when we got up to go.

It started off a little chilly but warmed up quickly enough. At first, it felt like I could have walked forever with how good I was feeling., but after several miles I was starting to feel some pain. The outside of my knee is really sore and gets stiff more quickly than anything else. The rest of me is fine, in fact.

If you spend any amount of time around my uncles you'll be entertained. They're natural comedians I guess. I've never met anybody funny in the same way. George is the funniest I think. He sort of picks up catch phrases every once in a while, but he's quick on the fly too. Sometimes he says things under his breath so that you're the only person who hears him, accidentally almost, and probably he says a lot of hilarious things that no one hears. Since the terrain couldn't help but remind of Afghanistan, or what we're told it's like, there were a lot of references to bin Laden and the Taliban.

Three people had walkie-talkies, and Henry had a gadget that measured how many steps he took (31,225), making for a rather hi-tech hike.


10/8/01 monday 6:57pm (pacific time)

We decided that hiking back up the 14-mile North Kaibab trial would be too much, so instead we split up. Phil and Teresa took the North Kaibab anyway because they had reservations for another night at the lodge there. We sent Steve and John, the ones who are in shape, on that trail too, so they could drive our cars to meet the rest of us at the top of the Bright Angel Trail on the south rim. So that plan went perfectly. We left at 6am. The 10-mile Bright Angel trail was still tough, especially the steep last three miles, but I made it out in seven hours forty-five minutes. I was sick for about an hour after reaching the top, but by the time we had dinner at the restaurant in the visitor center, I felt better. Steve and John arrived shortly after we finished. They had left at 5:30am and made it out in just over six hours! It took a couple hours to drive around the canyon to come get us.

So we headed back to Las Vegas, a 6-hour trip. We drove over Hoover Dam, where security had been tightened (we were waved through after a quick glance, however). It was a beautiful sight at night. We arrived in Las Vegas soon after, looking over the vast sea of electic lights. As an abstraction, at least, it's pretty. Our hotel is the Rio — I'm writing from it right now. When we got to our rooms and turned on the tv we learned of the US bombings of Afghanistan.

I slept pretty soundly and got enough sleep, I guess, but everyone got up at seven. We walked over to the strip and had breakfast at Denny's (another meal that felt like a luxury on this trip). Then we walked (ouch) around for a while looking at the various gaudy constructions mimicking famous places of the world. They were all the same: plastic statues, endless casinos, stupid tourists like us milling around. It thoroughly depressed me. Of course, I'd expected to find it all distasteful, so maybe my attitude was self-fulfilling. But I just can't be like my dad, who seems genuinely impressed with it all. And it's not just because I've seen the real Venice and the real Paris. It's just that it's pure spectacle, pure commercialism, pure Americana. It's Disneyworld with sex and gambling. Every scrap of paper on the ground has a picture of a half-naked woman on it. Is it strange to be mildly revolted by Sin City at the age of 22? Maybe it's just the whole place lacks any sense of dignity. [Or pretence.] Wah, wah, wah. Having said that, I feel guilty that I played 50 cents in a nickel slot machine. I didn't even get to pull the lever on the one-armed bandit. It's merely for show — you push a button instead.

Henry and Chris went back to the hotel before the rest of us to "nap and read a newspaper". I should've gone with them, but I stayed on and got enough exposure to Vegas to last a lifetime, probably. I entertained myself from time to time by listening to the lyrics of the Pixies song "The Happening" in my head. We had gelato (wasn't as good as Vivoli), and cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory (it was good). I think something that was contributing to my downward-spiraling mood was my left knee, which was killing me. There's some weird fluid I can feel moving around when I bend it. But it feels better now that I haven't been walking for a few hours.

I'm alone. Henry and Chris went to see the strip at night, the rest went to the Stratosphere, which is a tall tower that has at the top a roller coaster and one of those rides that drops you at an alarming rate, causing heart attacks in people my dad's age. I guess they're all having dinner... I thought I didn't want any, but now I'm hungry.

9:35pm update.
Just had dinner at the all-you-can-eat buffet downstairs with Dad, George, Chris, and Henry. Twas good. We leave at 3am for the airport.

Wednesday, October 3

8:10 PM
So we're flying out west Friday morning, hiking down the Grand Canyon on Saturday. I'm in terrible shape, but I think I'll survive this. I'm irrationally nervous about flying now - there's no reason terrorists would hijack a plane going where we're going, and they wouldn't attack again yet.

Yesterday I gave a little talk on my experience in Florence, for students interested in study abroad. But I was sort of nervous and wasn't that great. I remember when I went to something like that my freshman year, and I wasn't very impressed by the speakers. Still, I don't think that will keep people who really want to go from going.

Today in Installation we critiqued our water containment projects. There were some really cool ones. Jimmy had spheres of ice, each filled with something he didn't like — coffee, koolade, tomato soup. He passed them around and they burned our hands. Anna had a few chunks of ice on dog leashes, walked one of them around. Chad built a tiny triangular fish tank hanging in the sterile, all-white basement stairs of the art building, giving some life to the area.

Tuesday, October 2

1:29 PM
Wow, nevermind. It turns out I have somewhere else to go for a website. The URL is : http://dicebourbon.port5.com. Change your links now, as freespeech.org/dicebourbon will be gone in five days. I'm not sure how well this new one will work out. Apparently, I signed up for a website there about a year ago, but forgot about it, and then I got a couple of e-mails from them to remind me.

Monday, October 1

2:15 AM
I've been listening to a lot of They Might Be Giants. Here's something funny: my girlfriend has a tape that someone made for her of TMBG's Miscellaneous t album, but she thought "miscellaneous t" was the name of the band. So when I asked her if she liked TMBG she said she didn't know who they were. And even after she found out who they are, and liked their other songs, and realized her mistake, she can't think of that one album as being by any other band but "miscellaneous t". Okay, I think it's funny.

1:17 AM
Read for most of the weekend, finishing off Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics, Will Eisner's To the Heart of the Storm, and David Sedaris' Me Talk Pretty One Day. And now to clean my surprisingly messy apartment.

One week of "No thanks" hypergoodness remains.