David Ernst Chats with the World

Haven’t written in the blog since a week ago, which made me wonder what I’ve been doing. Well, one obvious thing is that I just got back from a Fri-Sun trip to Chicago, to attend the [wedding of my friends Brooke Davies and Darren Schmidt](http://brookeanddarren.com). I thought “Oh, I could write about *this*” and “Oh, I could write about *that*” and the thisses and the thats sounded like good things to write about, so I will. But, they don’t really relate to each other that well, so I would like to do them as separate posts.

Which brings me to the “meta-blog” aspect of this post: I kind of want this post to be like an introduction to the next few. The only way I can imagine doing that is to keep changing the post time on this one. Otherwise, you’ll see the ones I write afterwards first. I guess I could save them all as drafts and then post them all when I’m done. But, I don’t like that… I like to put up little bits every day. So… Idk. I guess you’ll just have to get the introduction after the chapters. Sorry! *shrug*

Now that I have my new turntable, I’m able to listen to selections from my vast vinyl collection again. I recently found myself singing *Cinema Show* a relatively well-known song from 1973, during the Peter Gabriel era of Genesis. I have a live version on the album *Seconds Out*, so I played that the other day. Yeah, wow, good tune.

Anyway, today, while I was eating lunch, I was singing it in my head, and realized that I didn’t know all of the lyrics, so I figured I’d check the web. Naturally, I had no problem finding [the lyrics](http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/The-Cinema-Show-lyrics-Genesis/1A1D2CB5E64C53C74825696000138A73). I had most of them, including “take a little trip back with Father Tiresias”. But the key line I was looking for was the following statement, being attributed to Tiresias:

I have crossed between the poles, for me there’s no mystery.
Once a man, like the sea I raged,
Once a woman, like the earth I gave.
But there is in fact more earth than sea.

Yeah, ok, what the hell? The real words I was missing were “I raged” and “I gave”. But, learning the words didn’t really satisfy my curiosity.

Well, thanks again to the World Wide Web, I also had no problem finding out [more about Tiresias](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiresias). I certainly recognized the name, I’m sure I knew it from studying mythology in high school. I probably would have been able to remember/guess that he was a prophet. But I certainly didn’t know that he had spent time as both a man and a woman, and lost his sight by agreeing with Zeus that sex was more pleasurable for a woman than for a man. Hera, who learned with this information that she had lost a bet with her esteemed husband, struck Tiresias blind.

So… woah. This song is apparently a poem about sex being better for women than it is for men…. with an apparent comment that it’s because women are “giving” where as men are “raging”. This has really changed my understanding of the song, to say the least. I wonder when, if ever, I’ll be able to hear/think about the song without having to wonder if sex is a matter of “raging” for me as a man (I’ve certainly never thought of it that way), or whether being “giving” in sex brings one more joy. Or whether it was that way for Zeus and Hera. Or whether it’s fair to say that earth “gives” while an ocean “rages”. Or…

The inspiration to blog about this was not because of these particular questions. Rather, it was because I was struck again by how interesting it is when one’s understanding of a song can change suddenly when one learns the actual lyrics. Much has been made of the misunderstanding of song lyrics, but in this case, I didn’t have any of the lyrics wrong, I just knew I didn’t exactly know all of the words. I was really close, but just a few holes in my understanding, combined with an incomplete knowledge of the mythical character involved, made me pretty much not get the point of the lyrics, even though I’ve known the song (minus a few words) quite well for about 20 years.

OK, that’s not all that deep either, but what do you want? It’s just a short post to a blog!

Regular readers of this blog (HAHA!) were probably concerned (HAHAHAHA!) about the dangling stories about two bits of Internet shopping I’d done recently. Both are resolved now, so I figured I’d just finish those stories up really quickly:

First there was [my turntable that came with a broken needle](http://davidernst.net/blog/2005/09/16/another-mixed-box/). The eBay seller was extremely upstanding, and made sure that I got a brand new cartridge to replace the broken needle (he couldn’t find a seller for a needle without the cartridge). This almost certainly means that he lost money on the whole deal, so I definitely respect him for doing the right thing. Thanks. Anyway, I’m listening to some 1970s Genesis on vinyl as I type this. Just what I was looking for. It’s good to remember how much 7/8 can rock when done well. Anyway…

The other issue was [my kitchen shelves](http://davidernst.net/blog/2005/09/27/shelves-installed-at-last/) which arrived just before an email that said that the seller had rejected my paypal payment. How strange. A few emails to them were ignored, and finally I decided I’d call them. I did, and after fumbling a bit with the explanation (“no no, I *have* the shelves, but as far as I can tell you never received payment from me for them”), they took a credit card from me and the matter was finished. A day or two later, I received an email from them gushing with thanks for my honesty. That’s nice. I guess it’s something like honesty, but I think they should have thanked me for my tenaciousness. If the phone call hadn’t worked I would have given up. Anyway, it worked, I got my shelves, they got their payment, all is right with the world.

Well, who knows how related it is, but I was at least forced to consider the possible negative implications of “doin’ it all”. On Sunday night I ate my vegan version of “spaghetti and garlic”, the ground-beef version of which my dad used to make on Sunday evenings when my mom ate popcorn. Anyway, when I was going to bed (early, I was very tired), I felt like I had a piece of flat parsley (featured in the dish) caught in my throat. I couldn’t get it out. *shrug* I went to sleep.

I woke up with a peculiar sore throat. It pretty much went away during the morning, but I still felt pretty out of it on Monday. I still thought that maybe I was just tired from my exerciseful and otherwise busy weekend. But, I did a lot of blowing my nose and sneezing on Tuesday and Wednesday, and today I’ve been coughing. All a pretty normal progression. I certainly can’t say I’ve been miserable, but I’m pretty sure that I had a mild case of something.

So, maybe doin’ it all can lead to a depressed immune system. Even if that’s true (which is questionable, I mean, I might have just gotten sick) I have no regrets. It was a fun weekend.

And another is coming up!

Matece, Michael V, and a few other people I know all drove down to [LEAF](http://www.theleaf.com/dancing.php) this weekend. Jan K was also going down from Urbana. Emily and Casey both live down there, and were also very excited about the event. All of them encouraged me to go too. I definitely considered it…

But, it turned out to be the weekend that *everything* happened. The [Hilly Hundred](http://hillyhundred.org/) being the big one, but Saturday was also the night that Ira Glass was speaking at the IU Auditorium, and the night of the [Eroticon](http://www.sensualskills.com/). Tad then scheduled his housewarming/pumpkin carving party for Friday night, and just to round things out, Mark R invited people over for soup on Sunday afternoon (which I thought was a courtesy to the Hilly Hundred riders, but I don’t actually know how much that motivated him).

Well, I decided that since I didn’t go to the dance, I’d better make sure to have a really good time doing all the things I could this weekend. Ok! So, my motto became “doin’ it all!”

It got off to a bad start when dinner and conversation with Kynthia lasted much longer than either of us really intended on Friday night. We almost missed Tad’s party! But there were still several people there when we got there, and it was fun. But, I didn’t want to drink a lot or stay out late, since I was scheduled to pick up Erik at 8am, so we were only there for a short bit. Some other people there certainly were drunk, though!

Saturday, I picked up Erik. We rode to indy together, so this was our second experience with long distance cycling together. I think we’re a good match for each other. I think I slow him down a bit, but he doesn’t seem to mind, and we have good conversation and otherwise seem to be good company for each other. Amy N went with me last year, but bailed this year because she had a wedding in MN. Sad! But oh well…

The ride went really well. According to my bike computer, we averaged well over 13 mph both days, which is far better than my typical 12 (it may not sound like much, but it’s probably a 10% improvement over last year). But, what was more striking was that I just wasn’t that phased by any of the hills. Don’t get me wrong, I certainly treated several of them with due respect, I thought a lot about strategies for getting over them and certainly had to cope with a lot of difficulty. But, almost without exception, I finished every one thinking “that didn’t seem as bad as I remembered it being”. My only theory on why is that the biking I’ve been doing has just resulted in me being in better shape/better conditioned, which is nice to think about… but so much so that I hesitate to believe it because I know I’d be biased towards believing it. But what? The size of the hills didn’t change significantly so… *shrug*

After Saturday’s ride I took a bath, talked with Sue, went to dinner with Kynthia, and then raced to the Audirium to see Ira Glass. It was good. I didn’t know what to expect, but he basically just sat and chatted about doing the show and what he thinks about it and stuff. He did an amazing job connecting with the audience, giving us all (if I may speak for everyone) the feeling that we were his friends and he was excited that we were willing to let him expound on his opinions for a while. I left feeling like if I passed him on the street, he’d recognize me… which is ridiculous of course, but that’s the feeling I got.

Of course, I’ve got my mild issues with him and his show. I was glad that he acknowledged that they should have a greater variety of background music. His descriptions of the formulas and tricks that they use in producing the shows were very much in line with a lot of the things that I’ve noticed about the show, I found it a wee bit odd that he was just unabashedly admitting to us how formulaic and “tricky” they are with it. I am a bit bothered by that kind of thing, but he obviously isn’t, and indeed seems to think that all journalism should be done that way. Of course, all journalism is formulaic, so what’s my beef? Not much, but I guess I’d like to believe that information could be broadcast in a number of effective ways that didn’t all follow some formula. Anyway, this isn’t supposed to be an entry about my opinions on those things, I’m just talking about my weekend.

After the talk, Kynthia took me to her house where I picked up my car and went home to get ready for the Eroticon. I had decided to go, but as partial compromise I’d decided I wasn’t going to spend lots and lots of time on my outfit. “Just throw on a dress and go check it out” is what I said, again thinking that I shouldn’t drink much or stay out late. So, that was the goal. I chose a dress that Sue had gotten as a DGP possibility, but that was beaten out by another possibility. A bit hard to imagine, because it was a nice dress, and I thought it fit me well. I wore a red “tissuey” scarf and that was about it… Oh, I had a funny pair of cheap but “fashionable” black flip-flops that I wore, which was good because I was worried about what shoes I might wear. The were too small, though, so they bothered my feet a bit.

The event was good! *Lots* of people there, which was nice because the last couple similar events were not very well-attended. I saw a number of people who I know (and I’m not going to try to list them in case they don’t want their attendance broadcast on the ‘net) but mostly hung out with Renee and Jeremy and some of their, uh, circle of friends. I like them, it was fun. And I did a good amount of chatting/dancing/flirting with other people. I was glad I went.

I stayed out just a bit longer than I’d intended, but I was in bed before 2a. At about 7:45 I woke up, two minutes before my alarm, and started getting ready to go. My socks and pants that I had hand washed hadn’t dried yet, which I was disappointed in because I’d hoped that the synthetic fibers would make them dry that fast. Alas. However, they did both dry incredibly quickly in the dryer. Like, less than 5 minutes. Very dry. Impressive.

Not much too different to say about the Hilly today. It was fun. I guess the biggest surprise was a rift in the usually flawless organization of the event. When we got to the lunch break after riding 28 miles and climing well over 1000 feet of hills, there was no food there! Some logistical problem resulted in the food being late. I don’t know the details, but would sure like to know what happened. If anyone reading this knows, please share! Anyway, as I suggest above, I typically think of the organization of this event as exemplary for anyone planning any major event, and this one problem is not going to turn that opinion upside-down. Still, it cannot be denied that it was a blemish on their previously (for me at least) spotless record.

But, other than that, the Hilly went well. I’m still amazed by one hill very near the end that just doesn’t look like a hill. Surrounded by farm land, it really feels like you’re on level ground. But, just as with last year, I was getting totally demoralized feeling like I was pedaling really hard and just not getting anywhere. However, it turns out that this section is a hill, similar in many ways to “water tower hill”, which is just after it (check out the Sunday [elevation profile](http://hillyhundred.org/Route.html) and you’ll see the two hills right near the end) and which we all respect greatly for being a difficult hill to climb. So, yeah, it’s weird. So, even though I was trying to convince myself of that, it was still demoralizing. Ironically, I felt much better as I trodded very slowly up water tower hill, just because I totally felt like I was on a hill.

Anyway, we finished the 51 miles of today’s ride in 3 hours and 45 minutes of biking, which felt like great time to me. It was shortly before 2p when we left the road. I gave Erik a ride to the School of Informatics and then headed over to Mark R’s for the soup/party. I was the first one there, which was surprising to me. The only other people who came were Ann and Nancy from Urbana, also fresh from the Hilly. It was fun to see them and to compare notes on the ride. And Mark’s straw bale house is really cool. And, as Ann and I independently observed, the soup really “hit the spot”! Great thing to have after the ride. I was pleased.

I came home, talked with my mom on the phone, and took a bath. Now I’m winding down and will go to bed early, aiming to be to sleep as shortly after 10p as my body wants to sleep. It’s been a busy weekend! But, I’m finding recently that I’m enjoying being busy. As much as I like being alone, it feels good to my psyche right now to feel like I’m doing lots of things. Of course, some of the things that I do are alone, not social events. So, it’s not the being with other people as much as feeling like I’m living life with lots of energy going in to cultivating joy. There are many kinds of joy, so it makes sense to do many types of things to experience it.

Saturday night was the [Illinois All Night Dance](http://www.prairienet.org/contra/iand.html) in McLean, Ill. I was the featured caller, or, as it said on the promotional materials, the “host”. :) I thought that was kind of funny.

After a lot of discussion about who all might be joining me on the trip, it turned out to be just Matece and I. It was very nice to have company, we had some great conversations along the way. It was nice to spend some “QT”, as she called it, noting that we really never had before. So good.

The dance itself was fun. It’s in this remarkable place… the town is surrounded by farms, and it exists seemingly for the sole purpose of giving farmers a good place to load their crops onto trains. So, the main fixture of the town is a grain elevator next to railroad track. Near that is what’s called the “town hall” although it seems more a community center than a center of politics. I don’t know. Anyway, it has a beautiful dance floor in it, not very big but lovely. There’s a decent stage on one side of the square dance hall, and balconies around the other three sides. Very nice.

One quirk, about which I had been warned: the floor slopes. It’s imperceptable if you’re just on it, but… wow, it makes the dance line move! A line will start in the center of the hall and around half way through the tune it will have drifted all the way to one of the walls. Fascinating phenomenon, and it repeated on almost every dance of the whole night. :)

Calling was fun. My role as host was a bit confusing… since the dance was scheduled from 8p to 2a, they don’t expect one person to call the whole time. That’s wise. What they do then is have volunteer calling as well. That’s not a bad idea, but it wasn’t very structured, and what I found is that I didn’t make as much of a connection with the dancers as I normally do when I’m the hired caller. But, hey, it meant that I could dance! So, I did a mix of calling and dancing, and some of the other callers there were very good, so it worked out just fine. The music was good. People had fun. I guess the only thing that would have made it a lot better would have been more dancers. Ah, well. It was still fun.

I’ve never liked the “touchpads” that are the norm on laptops these days. I’m always accidentally clicking somewhere with them while I’m typing, or accidentally moving the mouse, or something. On my old thinkpad, I had one of the little nipples, and I liked it quite well. But when that laptop died, I gave in and got one with a touchpad. I’ve been dealing ok, thinking it wasn’t that bad, and I was very glad that with only a normal about of linux-user trouble (meaning, I had to do a web search and edit a config file) I was able to turn off the “click by tapping” feature that causes me so much trouble while I’m typing. So, I was dealing.

But I had trouble. In particular, there’s some feature on there that allows one to go “back” in a web browser window by dragging to the left along the bottom of the touchpad. Well, I activated this a lot of times accidentally, and it caused me a good deal of frustration. Most notably, several times while I was making some of my [gmap pedometer](http://www.sueandpaul.com/gmapPedometer/) maps, I lost all of my work because “forward” didn’t take me back to the correct link. Ugh.

So, I thought, I should get myself an “external” trackball. So, while I was out shopping tonight, I looked for them. The one I really like was still $30, which is about the same as what I paid for it like 8 years ago. And then I got to thinking… I already have a trackball that I like! Why not buy the cheapest mouse they have, put that on my “server” machine (at which I rarely sit anymore) and move the trackball to my laptop (at which I sit a lot anymore).

So, now I’ve got the trackball on my laptop and… oh… why did I wait so long? It’s already brightened my entire experience of working on this computer! I had totally underestimated how much I was being frustrated by the touchpad. Now it’s so easy to point, to wheel, to center click, and so on… Such a simple move… But, yeah. Wow.

I know a number of people who don’t like trackballs. They are so used to physically moving a mouse that they can’t get used to rolling the ball with their thumb. I can understand that, it’s hard to change habits. But, wow, I really prefer the trackball. I barely have to move, and I’ve got excellent accuracy. So, there’s my publicly viewable opinion for the day. :)

I also bought a suit and a magnetic knife holder. Isn’t that nice?

I came home from work feeling tired and lazy. Thought of a couple of errands I might run, but I didn’t feel like it. This is somewhat common for me, and my favorite way out of it is to keep thinking of things I’d like to get done until one of them sounds ok. And, tonight, it worked! Installing my shelves sounded ok!

So, they are up there. Curiously, my initial reaction to the big shelves was a lot like I’d feared (and that fear kept me from installing shelves for nine years): It feels like less open space! I feel more clostrophic in my (inescapably small) kitchen! But, the shelf sure can hold a lot of stuff! I’m not sure I’ll keep these flour tins up there, but having done that I put all of my mason jars (which had been competing with the framed photos on the “hutch” thing for space) on the rolling shelves and… yeah, I feel like it’s a lot more space. And I consoled myself by reminding myself that I could take them down if I find that I don’t like them. No harm done.

I didn’t feel like putting up the spice rack, but I made myself. So, that’s good. Curiously, it’s pretty level, but it accentuates the fact that the shelf above it really isn’t. Ah well. Such is the nature of my house.

By the way, my paypal payment for these shelves was rejected, after I had already received them in the mail. I don’t understand it! I’ve emailed them and asked what I should do, but I haven’t heard back. I think I’ll have to call them tomorrow. While there’s certainly a temptation to take the goods and run, I like [the company that made them](http://panrack.zoovy.com/) and I have no problem paying for a nice product. Having said that, I sure hope it doesn’t take too much work to get them to take the money I’m trying to send them!

That’s all for today. I have to get back into the habit of frequent, short blog entries. Spending all night blogging (like last night) is ok occassionally, but I don’t want that to be the norm…

If you don’t live around here (or if you live here but never leave
your bomb shelter) then you might not know that the [Lotus World Music
& Arts Festival](http://lotusfest.org/) is this big deal music
festival in Bloomington. Definitely the biggest event anything like
it in town, they close off streets and get about six venues to all
open their doors to whatever music gets scheduled by the Lotus
organizers. The town starts buzzing. Everyone in my circle of
friends gets really really excited.

Well, almost everyone…

(more…)

Yup, I loaded up the bike and headed out towards Brown County State Park. This was my first major ride since the bike to Indy, and I had such a good time writing up [a plain-text log of that trip](http://www.bloomington.in.us/~drernst/bloomington2indy-log.txt) that I thought I’d do it again for this one. Could be a regular feature here on my blog. But whether that’s true or not, here’s this one…

(more…)