Every now and then, Louise let’s me know that she’s praying for me. For my health. For my success.

She really believes in the power of prayer. It’s healed her family, it’s given her guidance, it’s provided her with the strength that she needs. She’s one of the few Christian’s whose faith I respect¹.

It’s a nice feeling to be in someone’s prayers, and she does this even though I’m not Christian myself.

Normally, I’m a skeptic about these things.

Which makes it difficult to deny how it’s lately been working.

1. In most of my experience, it’s as Nietzsche said; “The Christian resolve to find the world evil and ugly, has made the world evil and ugly.” [↑]

Eric, who used to work with me, introduced me to Brant Bjork, and stoner rock in general, about two years ago. It’s a genre that explores delightful repetition, where variations are subtle, but powerfully psychedelic.

[I]t is certainly accepted that the effects of marijuana and the often low or psychedelic riffs of stoner rock complement each other.

—Wikipedia, Stoner rock

I liken the idea to Plastikman’s debut album, Sheet One. Though of a different genre — trance — it features a perforated album cover, an homage to acid tab art, for which the LSD enhances the details of every single minimalistic beat (so I’m told).

While I’ve enjoyed Queens of the Stone Age, who are considered to be influenced by the stoner rock movement (indeed, Josh Homme and Brant Bjork formed pioneering band Kyuss while in high school), the sound is a little more commercial, less droning.

After I heard a few songs by Brant Bjork, I was hooked. I never associated it with a memory, which is what I do with almost all my songs, but it was good enough that I didn’t have to.

At Thanksgiving, during one of my trips through the mall with Andrew and Alex, I resumed my search for Brant Bjork’s solo album by the name of Jalamanta. It was a bigger city, a bigger place…maybe I’d have a better luck. Unfortunately, every music store gave me the same answer; it was an album they didn’t keep regularly in stock.

Alex asked me what I was looking for, the name of the album and artist, and I didn’t think anything of it.

Yesterday, I found a package in the mail. Fragile — CD, it said. Inside was the Brant Bjork CD I’ve been looking for, which they found at an independent music store. Along with the CD was a card made from my Pollen Junkie photo (which was taken in their garden), with a message written on the back.

And as great as it is to finally hear the songs I’ve been missing, as nice as it is to have an original release, it’s nothing compared to the thoughtfulness, the effort they made to find me exactly what I was looking for.

Been having an insane argument with a person on Flickr over a “racist” picture of me and Bronwen.

Are people really this asinine? I really don’t want to believe it, but it’s kinda hard when they repeatedly go beyond all sense of logic.

There goes my faith in humanity.

Please, please, please, let this be a joke.

I’ve been in the strangest mood lately. Killing my Top Rated playlist everywhere I go, yet I skip through 90% of the songs, trying to find the right one. Talking to myself. Replaying conversations in my head.

I don’t quite feel at one with the Tao. I’ve been letting small things get to me. It’s as if I’m falling back into my old destructive habits, but upon realizing this, I fight against it. The struggle, when observed objectively, is quite amusing.

These are exciting times. Along with the excitement comes nervousness. It’s turned me into a jumble of emotions, bittersweet, and unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.

Wish I could do something with this feeling.

 

 

 

 

 

Since he’s never been bowling before, we decided to go for Trolley’s 30th.

Rock ‘N Bowl is an interesting phenemonen. Aaron thinks it’s for the 14-year-olds to get all hooched up and feel like they’re going clubbing. Didn’t stop us — Trolley included — from getting carded at our table when pitchers.

Five-pin is harder than I remember. Maybe because I was trying to spin everything, so it would either hit the left pins, or completely gutter on the right when I tried to adjust. For our two teams, it was a pretty close match through the night.

For the photographs, I tried to play around with light settings. 2nd-curtain-sync wouldn’t work for me, and I didn’t realize that there’s a setting for it on the 580EX flash which overrides camera settings. As a result, the pictures are mostly flash-less to capture the mood of the wildly swinging light.

The next day, I discovered that I somehow pulled my left glute and right groin muscles. A gentle reminder on Trolley’s birthday that we’re all getting older.