So how's life going for me? Life is going. Busy and moving forward. Good things are happening. I'm sick at the moment with a cold but otherwise I love life. Love love love it. It’s awesome. Found a new place for Beauty and I to live and we'll be moving in the day after the breast cancer benefit show on May 3rd. Maybe I'll ask anyone listening if they'll help us move in. Then again maybe not.

I saw the movie Grindhouse which was and is fucking awesome. Car chase? Oh my god. Strategic editing? Brilliant. “DON’T DON’T DON’T DON’T DON’T DON’T DON’T DON’T DON’T DON’T DON’T DON’T DON’T DON’T DON’T DON’T DON’T DON’T”

The new Nine Inch Nails is fucking amazing. Not amazing in the sprawling epic sense of the Fragile, or the Concept album genius of the Downward Spiral, but it’s almost the album that With Teeth almost was. And With Teeth was terrific. It’s political and it’s clear that Trent has been hanging out with TV on the Radio.

Some crucial questions. How've I been? Already answered. How's the job? Well, it's s'ok. Music? Going alright, still never satisfied with what I write. Is Rose McGowan hotter as a blonde hippie or a machine-gun-legged ex-stripper zombie killer?

All of these things matter and are important.

I just heard that yesterday there was a bomb threat on the University of Minnesota campus. They cleared 8 buildings before learning that it was a hoax. This is not cool. Why can't we stop hurting eachother?

I try to believe that there is more love in this world then anger. but the shooting at Virginia Tech and now this thing at the UofM has me recently leaning to believe that the human race is more of a cancer than a natural occurrence. It’s a constant tension between me and Beauty as of late: she’s out to save the world, and I’m damning it down to the 9th circle. That’s not to say that I don’t love the people I come in contact with, much less die for them if it came to that. It’s just when I hear about a man so tortured that he plugs 3 bullets into 30 of his classmates, and I abandon all hope. That’s all that’s on the news these days, and it's hard to watch. Incidentally, I never call people like that sick or crazy – I find it to be dismissive and distancing. These are the people we share our freeways with, the people we buy food next to, the people 2 cubes down, or one house over. They are part of the human community, as are we. We can’t just write people off because they are “sociopathic.”

It's hard to keep hope in my heart for humanity (in the broad sense) where it is now. How it breathes and feeds and wastes and kills the way it does: Where it is on the global scale. And it’s far too big to intellectualize away. Is there any right and wrong? Is there only good and evil?

There is no devil. We don’t need one.

I want to say that people are inherently good but as I type this I don't know if I believe that. This is really different then usual beacuse I've always believed that. If there is goodness in people than goodness is a fragile, fragile thing. It takes work and effort. Maybe it hasn't always been like this, but as long as one man could conquer the mountain by force from the man who quietly sits atop it, goodness has taken a slightly less desireable role in the hearts of humanity.

Is it worth even trying to make sense of the shooting? Tom Waits has a song that goes something like, “There’s nothing kind about man.” Or something to that effect. Maybe a better paraphrase is from Se7en, when Detective Sommerset (morgan freeman) is reflection on the past week. “They say the world is a beautiful place, and worth fighting for – I agree with the second part.”

Keep fighting y'all. Fight for your woman. Fight for your guy. Fight for your mind and your heart. Fight for theirs. Fight for the air you breathe and the food that you eat. Fight for your neighbors. Fight for the melting glaciers and the next Red Hot Chili Peppers album. Fight for Eleanor Rigby and all the lonely people. Fight for your organic co-op and fight for your Twinkies and soda pop. Fight for the democrats and republicans and psych ward out-patients. Fight for Taco Bell and the diarrhea that follows it. Fight for rude waitresses and the people who sing at the top of their lungs from their car windows. Fight to stay awake. Fight for love and hate and ignorance and bliss and hangovers and blackouts and 55 second orgasms and fake orgasms and blogs and high school and cubicles and icicles and protestors and protestants and professors with ego problems. Fight for shitty jobs and the afternoons off. Fight for machine gun legged ex-stripper zombie killers.

Fight because it’s worth fighting for.

This world has an ugly face when it leers at us. Sometimes I feel like the only thing in this world that is always beautiful is the fight for the things that remind us that all those creatures that Pandora set free have not yet completely blinded us to the sun.

I hope this weekend finds you all in a happy place. Take care all.

I called in sick to work.

Today I feel like this...

Whether it's intimate or simply with a friend long distance relationships are hard.

From elementry school to my junior year of high school I was very close to my friend Naseem. He moved to Virginia when we were 16 and I thought it was the worst day of my life. There's been worse since but that's besides the point. Sure, we did our best to remain in contact. Through the rest of high school we talked on the phone at least 3 times a week, not to mention the countless number of emails and instant message conversations. But as much as we still talked things just weren't the same. No longer could I drop by his place at 2 am on a school night to vent about how much that girl (what's her name) in my drama class kept sending me mixed signals. Gone was some of the support that could have helped me and my bandmates kick out our original singer sooner. The Bone, Professor Java's and even Caribou in Woodbury would never be the same.

Life happens. Without constant connection people drift apart. That's the thing about long distance friendships, relationships, whatever. You miss the personal connection that comes with being able to see someone eye to eye. To give them a smile, or a hug, or if need be a slap on the head. They require so much more work because you have to set time aside to chat and the payoff isn't the same. As the years go bye those 3 phone calls a week dwindle down to 1 a week, then maybe once a month until finally it's just a few times a year if your lucky enough to still even hear from that person.

You'd think emails would make it easier but just as you lose something in the trade off in conversation from face to face too over the phone you'll lose something from phone calls to emails. The sarcasm is gone, replaced by an awkwardness that comes with typing where emotions are hard to emote. I know it sounds lazy. It only takes a minute or two to whip up an email but this realization only adds to my frustration of becoming more seperated then either of us wanted to be.

I never thought I'd see something that would be more awful, more scary than columbine. Two days ago at Virginia Tech was definitly the worst attack in a school in my lifetime and as I read more about that day it seems ever. Naseem graduated last year from Virginia Weslyn where he got a full scholarship. Had it not been for the scholarship I know he would have considered V. Tech. I know that he partied there from time to time with some friends. I spent a few hours on the phone with him on Monday and again I chatted with him on Tuesday. Words can't descibe what happened down there and I definitly won't even try but it was such a relief to hear from him and to know from him that his friends down there were alright.

My sisters husband recently accepted a job in Richmond Virginia. They'll be moving from Ohio to Virginia and she'll be joining him down there as soon as they sell there house. Once they do I'll be flying there to help them move. When we get to Richmond I'll also be spending some time with my friend. I have no idea what we'll do over the few days I'm there but I do know that the first thing we'll do is hug.

I wish you all love and respek.

Gavin

Strangers Making Eyes

Today unraveled slowly as the hours fell apart.
A glimpse into the ending,
but not of where to start.
Taken by the sound of words but not of what's been said.
I took the bait but wasn't full from lies I had been fed.

Concentrate to lose all focus
as pupils will close to the light.

Make another round
just to feel it all again.
There's nothing new,
still caught inside a fort left to defend.
Everyone and everything shoots fire towards the walls
It's hard to find a willing mind to make sense of it all

So hide away from all that's haunted
Thoughts provoke a soul that's taunted.
Nervous by the sight of strangers making eyes.

Hello those that take the time to read. I hope this bulletin finds you well, if not great. I just wanted to drop a note and a humble request. Life has been wearing me like a favorite bra as a of late, only life has put on a little weight. I've been completely consumed by my job, consequent routine, finding a new place to live and music-making. My internet provider has been kind of scketchy this past week as well and I try not use it at work meaning, less blogging, less contact, less of me and you, and you and me, no matter how we toss the dice...anyway,

I'll be playing along with two other solo acts at the Memorial Union on the university of north dakota campus. The event is being held by Beauty's soroiety to raise money for breast cancer research. Come on out and buy a pink wrist band with me.

Changing gears here...

Yesterday one of my all time favorite authors died. Kurt Vonnegut, writer of "The Slaughterhouse Five." I first came across that book when I was 16. I tried reading it despite the teasing from my friends, none of whom read anything at the time. Needless to say the book went way over my head and I didn't finish it. Years later when I was 20 or 21 I was rummaging through my closet to find my copy of "The Shining" for my sister when I ran into Mr Vonnegut's book again. Inspired by my previous defeat in reading it, I picked it up again and blew through it that very day.

Though Kurt is no longer on this world his many novels are still out there. I urge you to pick one up, whether it's "Slaughterhouse Five" or "Cat's Cradle" before you become unstuck in time.

To me Kurt Vonnegut will always be one of the greatest writers ever. I've been told that "The Slaughterhouse Five" was important to the vietnam era peace movement. Near the end of the story Kurt wrote...

“Robert Kennedy, whose summer home is eight miles from the home I live in all year round, was shot two nights ago. He died last night. So it goes. Martin Luther King was shot a month ago. He died, too. So it goes. And every day my Government gives me a count of corpses created by military science in Vietnam. So it goes.”

Some see those 3 words, "so it goes," as a statement of acceptance. There's a much darker side to those however, an admission of defeat.

Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday at the age of 84.

So it goes.