The Band for Veep

"In general, the powerful and the influential in our society shape the laws and have a great deal of influence upon the legislature and the Congress. And this creates a reluctance to change, because the powerful and the influential have carved out for themselves or have inherited a privileged position in this society…

[One] source of my understanding about what’s right and wrong in this society is from a friend of mine, a poet named Bob Dylan…I grew up a landowner’s son. But I don’t think I ever realized the proper interrelationship between the landowner and those who worked on a farm until I heard Dylan’s record, “Maggie’s Farm”. "

- President Jimmy Carter

bloat

Another day in another town in another area of the country that you’ve never heard of. Another day spent trying to find a kindred spirit in a town full of lost souls and drunks, of empty heads and washed-out road signs. Another stop in a pit of gas stations, casinos and pizza shops, eached closed on account of Sunday mass or another superficial attempt at injecting piousness righteousness or some sort of gorgeousness on this awful bloat of a community.

Now that there’s no mill and no mine and no factory and no railroad station and no anything anymore to dream of or dream to or become or be, all that I have seen is the hollow shells and remains of people and places and ideals that couldn’t come true. Sure, there’s a school with a mascot and a tennis court and even this gentleman carrying a trombone away from Maggie’s Sunday recital. But where does Maggie goe when she wants to play her trombone? The casinos aren’t interested – they have their own C-E-G melodies that are far more attractive to the residents than Maggie’s Porgie and Bess could ever be.

I’m out here on my own. I don’t understand it or them or anything. I want to. I want to believe that I am part of this fabric and they part as well with me and everyone else. But it is a different tapestry that they belong to. I’m going to stay out of the way.

So Don't Ask Me How I Found This But

Just in case you ever were really craving a bag of Grandma Utz' potato chips and weren't in the Mid-Atlantic region,

http://www.utzsnacks.com/docs/utzEveryday2009.pdf

I had no idea you could get a NC Tarheels trashcan filled with Sour Cream & Onion chips delivered overnight. Also of note: the Chip of the Month club. For the low price of $50/3 months, you can get nine bags of potato chips right to your doorstep.

yum-o

Reason #28746 Why My Girlfriend is the Greatest

She got us floor tickets to see the Boss play 1st Mariner Arena! She knows this already, but in the pantheon of cool things that people have done for me, this has got to be top three. Of course, she is responsible for the other two things in the top three as well, so let's just say she's on a roll.

I love you baby!

Not seen in this photo: my girlfriend (must have gone to the bathroom or something)

Weird Facts About Northern Alaska, Part I

- The sun rose today at 8:45, and will set around 8:15.

- At 10:50, both the sun and the moon were perfectly visible in the sky.

- Gas is currently $7.39/gallon as posted on the one pump in town.

- Every Alaskan gets $1,305 this year as shared oil revenue. (source: my girlfriend)

- All of the buildings in this town are built on stilts just like at the beach. This is done to prevent the permanently frozen ground from thawing and turning to mud due to the heat of the building.

- Sun Chips are available at the local store, on sale for $7.99.

- Curiously, Pringles are also available right next to them for $1.49.

- All of the restaurants and carry-out/delivery places in Kotzebue are run by Chinese and Korean immigrants, even though there is not a sizable Asian population in the town.

- Satellite dishes in this region of the world point either parallel to or towards the ground.

Greetings from the Great White North

Programming note: Here in the middle of nowhere 1MB pictures take forever to upload, so for a few pictures of the town I'm talking about in this post, you can check out my Flickr page. Please do so at your own peril. I do not take responsibility for any loss of joy or feelings of despair that you may find yourself overcome with.


I like my job a lot. I have a lot of responsibility, it is a lot of fun, and I like to think that I'm pretty good at it. One of the things that has made my job a lot of fun over the past year has been a contract that we put in place with the National Park Service to install audiovisual systems in their park Visitor Centers throughout the United States. This is, truth be told, probably the biggest reason that I haven't posted any meaningful blog posts since June. This summer, I've been sent to New Mexico, Arizona, Minnesota, and Cape Cod, all to the great chagrin of my immensely patient and understanding girlfriend.

But the trip that I have been dreading/looking forward to the most is the one that I am currently working through: a new Visitor Center/museum for the Northwest Arctic Heritage Center in Kotzebue, Alaska. I know what you're thinking - Gee, I think I should know where Kotzebue is - but I am here to tell you that you do not. Quick - make a mental picture of the state of Alaska. Got it? Now imagine the worst possible place to build a town.

That's where I am right now.

Yes, that's right. I'm closer to Russia than I am to Seattle right now. Hell, I'm closer to Russia than I am to Anchorage right now. I am above the Arctic Circle. I am 4 hours behind Baltimore. I am a short plane ride to the got-damn North Pole.

All of that to me is extremely neat, and before I go any further I would like to make sure that everyone knows that I am aware of how rare of an opportunity this is, and how I should treasure every moment, and how I'll never get this chance again blah blah blah.

But this place sucks. Hard.

It is possibly the most depressingly dark and foreboding town that I've ever been to or seen. It is extremely quiet, and almost always overcast and damp. Nobody talks or looks at you, and I swear to god that every building has a boarded-up window in it. And before you say that I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to dilapidated buildings, remember that I do live in Baltimore City. This place is twenty times more depressing than East Baltimore. I'm not exactly sure why, but it is.

My best guess is that I don't feel as though the residents here know any better. But they have to, right? This is 2009...its not like they don't have the Internet or TV. But it seems as though no one here cares about how their house looks, or how much garbage is piled in their front 'yard', or how many broken-down dog sleds they leave 'round back. I guess they'll get to cleaning it up someday, but I swear that I haven't seen anyone cleaning anything since I've been here.

What I really don't understand, above all else, is what would draw anyone to live out here. And yes, I know, most of the people here didn't move here but were born here. But they can leave at any time. Again, this is 2009. There's an airport within walking distance of everywhere in the town that can take them to Anchorage, and from there anywhere else in the universe. They don't have to stay here, where the number of available jobs probably can be counted on your right hand and where the cost of groceries are so prohibitively expensive your money wouldn't get you anything anyway. Why would you want to try twenty times as hard to find a job that doesn't pay you any more than anywhere else just for the privilege of living in a run-down depressing dirt-bag town where your money is worth less than everywhere else? It just doesn't add up for me.

And as far as I'm concerned, the whole 'this is the only place I know' argument doesn't hold any water any more. Everyone has a marketable skill, and it only makes perfect sense to use that skill to make money where it can buy you things you want. Not only does Kotzebue have a severe shortage on things that people want, like say, clean drinking water, when it is available, it costs more than six times as much as everywhere else on the planet. Don't believe me?



Best $6.19 I ever spent.

For a lot of the remote places that I've been to, I've often found myself thinking, 'I would never want to live here in a million years, but I can understand why these people do, because _____', where _______ is usually beautiful scenery, or cheap land, or being away from the big city, or whatever. I can't find the reason here. Well, unless you're really, really into 4-wheelers and being able to drive them down Main Street. In which case, have I got the place for you.

And if all of that wasn't enough...you can't buy alcohol here. Yes, as Alaska's final kick in the nuts to itself, it took away the one thing that could make this place bearable.

I wanna come home.

Just to Keep it Going

Hehe...whelp, sorry about the whole 'not-writing-any-blogs-for-a-couple-of-months' thing. Things have been crazy at the ol' mill. I've been sent off to the five corners of the globe, or at least the US - Arizona, New Mexico, Minnesota, Cape Cod, and soon, Alaska. But recently I was reminded that I haven't updated the site in a while, so I figured I would write something and at least make Blogspot.com think this is still an active site.

So,

something.

I'll be back - I promise.