My American Life

Here's a brief run-down of where I'm at right now.

I'm in Lovell, Wyoming, but just for the night. Tomorrow I'll be back in Billings, Montana, ready to get up at 4 AM to catch a flight back to Baltimore. My hotel is pretty trashy, but not altogether bad. The refrigerator is broken, which wouldn't be as big of a deal if I would have been able to eat dinner tonight. The only food in town, a Blimpie and Taco John's smashed into one gorgeous/awful conglomeration, closed at 8, exactly two minutes before I arrived.

I was late because I was at work. My work consists of me trying to get new audiovisual systems to work with outdated and possibly broken old lighting and sound systems that the National Park Service is trying to make live past their prime. In some cases, well past their prime. Many parks still use LaserDiscs as their main form of show playback. LaserDiscs.

Everything went well today. This morning at Yellowtail Dam went great - cleaned up and buttoned up well. The drive to Wyoming wasn't bad. I had a good lunch. Even stuff in Wyoming went well - the audio system now works perfectly, we were able to diagnose and fix a problem with a start button, and all of the equipment was in. Everything went well except for one thing. One small, and yet monstrously big, thing.

Their lighting system won't interface with our audiovisual system.

The idea is that when the movie starts playing, our video player sends a signal to their lighting system to turn the house lights down gradually, and when the movie is over, it tells it to come back up. Easy, right?

Well, it's not...but I won't bore you with the details, because, truth be told, you really shouldn't care. It's my problem. But my point for writing this whole thing is that for the next day, my entire life, reputation, and peace of mind will revolve around trying to make two electrical systems talk to each other - something that 95% of the population would happily shake their heads at and say, 'glad that's not me'.

But I don't have a choice - I'm responsible for the completion of the project and I'm the only one that has a stake in the outcome. I cannot leave Wyoming without the lights in the theater dimming when our movie plays. And yet, I have to leave two days from now because my ticket is non-refundable.

Did I make the right choice in letting such a trivial thing shape my happiness and schedule? Should I care less or more than I do about this? Would anyone else worry enough to write a blog post about it at 10 PM in a lonely hotel room? I have no idea. I do know that I take enough pride in what I do and the work that I do to work my ass off to get the thing to work, but really everything that I can try right now will be a leap of faith and a hope for some luck.

In some ways, I really wouldn't wish this situation on my worst enemies.......and yet, this is my life and I'm proud to live it. I'll let you know how things turn out.

Blogging for the Man

So I've been told that I'm not blogging enough. That I should get out there and blog. That I should blog it 110%. That my blogging to this point has been underwhelming. Well, I say to you, Mr. McBlogNaySayerSmith, that blogging ain't easy. I mean, I have to sit down, open up my computer, think thoughts with my mind, and type them into the computer. And don't get me started on the whole logging in thing. Sometimes it actually makes me type in my username.

So just to show everyone that I'm still alive and blogging, here's my list of interesting things about today, Friday, April 16, 2010 (AD).

1. I ate two Thin Mints for breakfast today.

2. I also ate a fiber bar later on.

3. I will eat the Chicken Tikka Masala we made last night for lunch.

4. And possibly another Thin Mint.

5. I wanted to ride my scooter to work today, but the Weather Channel said it was going to storm and that a 'serious potential for wildfires' exists in the area today. No scooter for me, thank you.

6. I'm going to play golf tomorrow morning, and will probably have to contend with ground that is soaked from the storms today, and 30-35mph winds. And probably wildfires.

7. In Orioles news, they lost last night to the Oakland Athletics, 6-2. Felix Pie, astonishingly enough our most productive hitter these days, left the game in the 7th inning with a sore shoulder. Also, Nick Markakis' head fell off and Peter Angelos sold the team to the Yankees. Plans to demolish Camden Yards are already underway. And Cal Ripken came out and said he never liked playing for Baltimore anyway. And Sidney Ponson is still alive.

8. I mean seriously, I haven't experienced a start to a baseball season that has ever been quite this depressing. And especially after all the talk this offseason about how good we were going to be - I actually had started drinking some of the Kool-Aid myself. These guys look like they absolutely don't care and don't want to be faced with the arduous task of playing baseball for a living. Right now, in April, they already look the way we are accustomed to seeing them play in August-September. It's going to be a long year.

Alright, that's enough. You know I'm still alive and kicking. I'm heading back out to Montana and Wyoming on Sunday, so you can probably expect some interesting stuff to happen out there that is worth blogging about. Plus, I am writing a travelogue of sorts about our recent trip to England and Scotland, and I suppose I'll put that up here in the coming weeks. Unless I have to remember my username and password.

Fridee...

No new post for this most beautiful of Fridays, just a picture of my father, John Guise Rossman III at Little Bighorn, more than 25 years before me:

The World as I Know It

I am a staunch believer in relativity, that is to say, that all things are relative and that there are no absolute truths. You may find my writing style to be offensive or beautiful; I'm not the one to say. I happen to enjoy writing the way I do, and it makes sense to me. Enough people have told me that they like the way I write that I no longer particularly care whether or not I'm following particular standards of style or form.

I'm the same way about music - I care equally deeply for the music of King Crimson and Yanni, of Springsteen and the Dismemberment Plan, of the Rolling Stones and the Baseboard Heaters. If music moves me and makes me feel something, it is good. I simply cannot believe that there is a single, universal truth as to what makes good music or bad music, or what makes good art or bad art. I'm also not confident or selfish enough in my tastes to pretend to espouse that I know what is good or bad - I've been wrong more than enough times in my life to realize that taking such a hard-line stance on any art is a foolish proposition.

Truth be told, I once naively thought that everyone innately knew this fact to be true - no one could be so blind to actually think that there was a right art or a wrong art. But in my second year of college, I played in a band and lived with a person who literally thought exactly that, and told me so. I point-blank asked him if he thought there was such a thing as good music, and such a thing as bad music. And he looked me straight in the eye, and said yes.

Although this happened close to 10 years ago, it has been something that has stuck with me for a long time. How could someone whom I actually regarded as an aware and intelligent individual actually believe that there was no relativity in art - that art was objective, rather than subjective - and above that, that he actually knew what was good and what wasn't? It seemed more than pompous, more than arrogant. It was wrong.

Recently I read a short essay by Chuck Klosterman that put the whole situation into perspective. He, as he is so often wont to do, explained the situation in a way that I had been attempting to do for nearly a decade in a short, concise paragraph that was so precise and perfect it was scary. He was explaining why he hates the term 'Guilty Pleasures' because he feels as though there is no such thing - if something gives you pleasure, you shouldn't necessarily feel guilty about it:

'What the authors of 'The Encyclopedia of Guilty Pleasures' (and everyone else who uses this term) fail to realize is that the only people who believe in some kind of "universal taste" - in other words, a consensual demarcation between what's artistically good and what's artistically bad - are insecure, uncreative elitists who need to use somebody else's art to validate their own limited worldview. It never matters what you like; what matters is why you like it.'

And there you have it. Thanks, Chuck. Your art is hereby deemed 'GOOD'.

Hey, Remember L.O.R.D.? No? Damn.

I’m sitting in the lobby of a Super 8 in Hardin, Montana. Go ahead, look it up…it’s out there a ways. I’m sitting and I’m writing and I’m finding myself upset that the wireless internet connection here keeps disconnecting me so that I can’t finish watching my Netflix-streamed episode of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations. I’m really actually quite upset – all week I’ve been fighting this damn connection to, well, stay connected.

But think about the situation for a second – what I’m actually attempting to do:

- Sit in a hotel lobby, with my laptop computer.

- This laptop computer will be connected, wirelessly, to a super-network of computers across the globe.

- This wireless data connection will be high-speed. In fact, when operating properly, it will be capable of transmitting up to 159 Megabytes per second directly to my laptop.

- This wireless data connection will be available for free.

- Once connected, I will go to a website that allows me to watch any of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations episodes immediately by streaming them, in high-definition, to my laptop for playback on a media player that was included with my laptop.

- In fact, if I find Mr. Bourdain a bit fake and annoying, I can watch nearly ANY episode of ANY show that I have EVER wanted (or not wanted) to see, along with any number of classic and not-so-classic movies at ANY time.

- For less than $10/mon.

- It actually works 95% of the time.

I submit to you that not much more than 10 years ago all of the above-mentioned items would have been absolutely impossible to achieve. 15 years ago, I would submit that all of the above-mentioned items, except for the first, would have been impossible to even imagine.

And yet, 15 years later, I am truly, seriously pissed that I can’t immediately stream, without interruption, the show of my choosing in the middle of nowhere for free.

Think about that for a second and what that actually means…will we ever be truly satisfied with what technology can deliver to us? We have made such monumental, gigantic leaps and bounds with network technology in the past decade, but I don’t really appreciate any of that but in two instances:

- - The first time that it works flawlessly

- - The time that you really want it to work badly and it just won’t

Obviously, I’m experiencing the latter instance right now, but the point remains: if the Super 8’s wireless coverage hadn’t have been so spotty, would I have appreciated how cool what I was trying to do actually was? Would I have written anything about what I was able to do? Of course not – as soon as any new technology works reliably two or three times in a row, we take it to be the new standard and check off that little scientific advancement in our mind. High-definition video and surround audio, delivered anywhere in the world, wirelessly, for free? Check! As long as I can watch ‘The Hangover’ with my girlfriend without the Netflix player buffering more than once, we can consider ourselves firmly in the grasp of the FUTURE!

So where am I going with all of this – no idea. I guess I’m telling myself to occasionally look back and remember how shitty it was to have to wait until my sister was off the phone to dial into the local BBS service to play ASCII role-playing games with two of my friends from down the street and one weird old man. It seems as ancient as vacuum tubes in TV’s – except for the fact that I had a dial-up modem until I went to college in 2000.

I’m just sayin’ – technology won’t always be moving this fast. It took them like 30 years from the invention of the radio to the invention of the TV – and another 30 years after that for color. Enjoy what we have while we have it.

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.