What up Gang?

Sorry there's been no messages of importance lately. And of course if no one reads this than I guess I'm just apologizing in a vacuum. But that's wayyyyy better than apologizing too the vacumm right? Right.

I'm happy to announce that my band Scar Tissue has emmerged from studio with a new 5 song c.d. I was a busy little bee the past few weeks planning, recording, and helping to mix and produce the c.d. Though I didn't do much help on the latter, I wish we did have a better producer than the one we had but hey he offered us the recording space for free and it's tough to top that.

Anyways I've spent the past week issuing out copies to various friends and clubs that I socialize. JS, JW, and I have essentially taken the month of August off save for one last show this coming weekend at Gilly's in St. Paul (The city of summits).

Saturday night. Music starts at 10:30 pm.

Bring a friend

Make a friend.

Peace

Out

Beauty took this picture while I was laying on her bedroom floor getting dressed after some naughty fun. She sent it to me saying she put it on her facebook page and as the background to her computer. I have a friend who posts pictures of herself sort of in poses like these from time to time, and for some reason I'm feeling sort of daring. Isn't the best kind of fun naughty? Maybe I will take this down

The backstory: Tuesday night I had returned to my apartment after from a vigorus game of apples to apples and music listening with some of my beloved friends. The first thing I noticed when I stepped into my place is my cat, Cecil, cowering under the couch like the fierce saber tooth he is (I still claim that saber tooth runs in his blood and that he was only biding his time). Low and behold I had a guest: a gigantic (or at least it seemed gigantic at the time) bat was flitting around my living room. It swooped at me, and was dive-bombing like a kamikaze. I just wasn't up for dealing with a fucking bat after such a hot day, hell after any day. Plus, how do you deal with a bat? I had never known anyone who had "bats." Was there some secret echo-locator interruptor that could be obtained from a sophisticated place like Home Depot? I hadn't left any windows open and couldn't think of how in god's name it could have gotten in. I scooped Cecil up who let out a purr that seemed to say to me “thanks for saving me but I could take that thing.” I than met a friend for coffee and kept trying to think of the significance: Why had fate thrown a bat into my new pristine abode? My friend Lucas, tired of my constant lack of internal monologue paraphrased: Bro, sometimes a bat is just a bat.

Tuesday, 9:03pm CST: My nocturnal visitor and I had a final encounter after I trapped him in my bedroom. I realized the only way to deal with this was to lock myself in with the vermin in my 12x13 room (which, incidentally, seems a lot smaller when there's a bat flying around in there). With a pot in one hand and a cookie sheet in the other I rushed in, with a war cry somewhere between William Wallace and Wally Cleaver.

My guest and I spent several sweaty minutes going around in circles, screeching, and eventually tiring out. Unbeknownst to me, in addition to flying and screeching, bats are also very good crawlers; my little invader exploited the lipped weakness of my teflon pot whilst temporarily trapped on the floor. This happened three times before I emptied a garbage bag onto my floor in favor of more direct and desperate measures.

Finally, I was able to ensnare the winged rodent in a grocery bag. I then released my unharmed friend ("Pat" as I called hir as (s)he flew away), into the wild, to terrorize another renter in another new home.

Tuesday night, 11:23 pm CST: In the afternoon preceeding the re-emergence of the bat, I had cautiously peeked around every corner before entering a room. I looked everywhere. Under cushions and behind plates and dishes - a friend of my fiance once had a bat hiding under her pillow. But just as soon and i gave up the search and continued building my lettered stacks of alphabetized CDs, in swooped the bat. I watched him this time, panicking less. Studying it's movements. Then the whole encounter ensued. And just like that, i had reclaimed my home, grunting triumphantly.
I got back into normalcy. I washed the pot and pans. Cleaned up the trash off my floor from the fast-emptied makeshift bat-catching-garbage can. Did my pre-sleeping ritual of brushing teeth. I wandered over to the living-room, half-expecting to see by little flying friend there. It, of course, wasn't. And inexplicably, I was filled with a sadness. I turned around and wandered to the back rooms. I caught myself looking into the bathroom and my bedroom half-expectantly searching for an answer that I already knew was empty - like driving past an ex-girlfriends house with the off-chance that you might see her or at least her car.

It was the first time in my new home, that I had felt lonely. Weird huh? Maybe.

Anyway, As endearing a name as it is, my apartment will no longer be known as "The Batcave."

Gav

p.s.
please remember that although animals don't belong in our homes, theorhetically, we don't deserve the planet we've taken from them and pretty much destroyed. Try not to kill your guests, if you can help it. Any lummox can kill an animal, but any ninja can kill a lummox. Are you a ninja or a lummox?

110 people have been treated in various twin city hospitals.

24 remain hostipalized.

5 people have lost there lives.

8 people are still missing.

A cloud of dust is going to hang over Minneapolis for a long time to come. A bridge on I-35W collapsed on Wednesday and there was no reason for it.

I've heard that the fear of falling is one of the most basic along with the fear of drowning and of being trapped. As anyone who is from or has family in the twin cities can tell you Wednesday night was the most awful night in a long long time, maybe even their lives. The uncertainty following the tragic event. "Was anyone I know on the bridge?" is a question a lot of us needed answers to immediately. Answers to a question like that can never come fast enough.

It's not a scary thing driving over a bridge. I mean DRIVING OVER A FUCKING BRIDGE! Don't panic, you tell yourself. The people in charge of this know what they are doing. They make sure that the bridges stay standing. And if there were a problem, they would tell us. Wouldn't they?

What if they didn't?

It's now common knowledge that the bridge was "stucturally deficient." And I've just read that it had a rating of 50%, the threshold for replacement. Why didn't anyone error on the side of safety to the public? Why did the error have to be the other way?

Would you drive with your family over a bridge that had a sign reading "CAUTION: BRIDGE SAFETY 50%." Of course you wouldn't. But there was no warning.

A bridge falling can be an ironic metaphor for soceity collapsing but this isn't a metaphor. Right now the focus is on lives lost. The efforts of real heroes, those searching and trying to resue anyone who can possibly be saved, and first respondents - good samaritans and public servants. That's the focus right now but I feel like it's not just concrete and steel that failed us.

So far, we are told that it wasn't terrorists or tornados that brought the bridge down. But those assurances are not reassuring. They are troubling.

If this tragedy wasn't created by the hand of god or hate and it turns out not to be the cause of an accidental train hitting the bridge, than I'm left to assume that it was worse than any of those things. Far worse because it was more mundane and more insidious: This death and destruction was the result of incompetence or indifference.

It never should have happened. It was avoidable.

It
was
AVOIDABLE!

You know for the past 5 or 6 years the motto of government in the state of minnesota has been "No new taxes." A popular motto for sure. One that definitly is popular with voters, the stupid ones at least. We are years behind a dangerous curve when it comes to the replacement of infrastructure that everyone but crazies who make own assualt rifles in the woods agree is one of the basic duties of government.

What a sorry situation that this weekend was to be the ground breaking for the new Twins stadium. How ironic that it was postponed. Even the stadium barkers realize it is in poor taste to celebrate the spending of half a billion on ballparks when your bridges are falling down. Perhaps this is a sign of shame. If so, it is welcome. Shame is overdue.

At the national level the sin seems even worse. A trillion spent in Iraq, while schools crumble, there aren't enough cops on the street and bridges decay while our leaders cross their fingers and ignore the rising chances of disaster.

And now a disaster has happened. People died losing a gamble they didn't even know they had to take. I guess they believed someone was guarding there interests. That someone was making sure bridges won't collapse.

Gavin

Regarding the 35w bridge collapse:

I'm ok. My friends and loved ones are all ok.

Beauty and I actually left the twin cities yesterday and came back up our apartment near UnD. Still this is insane. I grew up in the twin cities. I went to school away from there, and currently have an apartment a few hours away but I'm still around there on a regular basis. That's where most of my friends are now. That's where my family is. It's undescribeable the feelings of sorrow I have right now. I wish this didn't happen in my town. I wish this didn't happen at all. I'm keeping all of my friends and family, and anyone who reads this and is in or from the twin cities in my heart.

Give me a shout if you're all right.

GIVE BLOOD TOMORROW!

Gav