New and improved “Hand in Hand”.
So, in celebration of the end of the world, I have procured a bass guitar and some newfangled electronic drums and I spent the day re-recording my favorite song about the world breaking down.
Please enjoy. I did, it was literally a (minor) dream come true for me.
I mostly have work to blame for my 10 month absence. I’ve been working a lot. To the point where I’m so out of shape that running two miles is a Herculean task. But it’s like Thom Yorke says :”you do it to yourself”. So now I begin the task of undoing it to myself… and that’s what really hurts.
The above pic is one on my home studio. I took most of yesterday to acquaint myself with the wonders of GarageBand…wow, great stuff. The fruit of my first attempt:
Not a finished product, not fantastic, but kinda cool for a couple of hours of messing around.
They are.
I only write from airport waiting areas now – it’s a shame that i don’t have a guitar with me. My flight leaves in an hour and it’s already delayed, but it’ll likely work out for the best. It’ll mean less time in Houston. Not that it’s necessarily a good thing (to have less time in Houston) – it’s kind of a hike between terminals/gates in Houston (or anywhere else) when you’re flying from Gulfport/Biloxi. There will be less waiting around though.
I leave Mississippi with a bag that weighs about 10 more pounds and a body that weighs at least half as many less – this is amazing for two reasons:
I’ve also probably run over 20 miles in the last two weeks, so maybe it all does make sense. I’ve run on roads and bay side boardwalks and hotel gyms and these two weeks that have seemed more like a paid vacation in spite of the mentally rigorous work.
In short, it’s all good and I’m very much on track to be very ready for my scheduled half-marathon in November. I feel strong and healthy and most rare of all, happy. If everything goes as planned, I should be in Texas by 10:30 and in my own apartment (and with my guitar) by 4PM. I can hardly wait, but I’ve seriously come to flat out love this part of Mississippi. It’s in the middle of a lot of cool stuff. 90 miles from New Orleans, less than that from Mobile and on average, less than a 6 hour drive from almost any interesting part of The South.
Well whatta you know, the flight is on time again. I wonder how that happens…but I’ll not complain. Also: This airport loves the hell out of A-Ha’s “Take on Me” – I’ve been here four times now and I’ve heard it every time. I would hate to work at a place that only had one CD. I’d either quit or perform harakiri in gate 3 – I can be a little dramatic some times.
Now they’re playing the Cure’s “Close to me” – that’s much better. It might be enough to keep me sane if I didn’t have an ipod with me.
I think I’ll leave you with the musical highlight of the latest run:
South Texans – especially those who live near the Rio Grande think they know humid (and they do) – the Mississippi coast just has a lot more water to work with. I ran five miles today (right neer da beach) and I don’t think that I’ve sweat that much in years. It was a good run. It was good to get out, my previous two runs this week happened inside the hotel’s exercise room (on a treadmill). Today though – the breeze off of the gulf, the remarkable sunset, and some very friendly fellow runners made it all very enjoyable.
My ipod was on random, but it played some very appropriate music by Collective Soul, Dr. Dog, Jimi Hendrix, the dexateens, nine inch nails, and lots of Wilco (that last one is rarer than you might expect) – given the current circumstances in the gulf, my advanced state of exhaustion/dehydration at the time and my new-found but deep appreciation for this area, I found the last song of my 5 mile run particularly poignant:
Sound of silver is easily one of the most perfect running albums ever. I used it today to great success as I did 3 more miles at a pace of about 10:20 per mile. The legs felt tired and sore in all the usual places before the run but I stretched and walked a mile to warm up – everything was alright after about a quarter mile of running. I actually feel better now after the run (than I did before).
“All My Friends” is my favorite song off of Sound of Silver and it’s probably my favorite LCD Soundsystem song, but it would be boring and unoriginal for me to tell you that it’s my musical highlight of the run once or twice every week (even though it is). This time though, I’m not lying when I tell you that my musical highlight of the run was the following, it helped me get up a very steep quarter mile without quitting:
None for me, thanks.
The ipod really outdid itself today – the Who (pinball wizard), U2 (even better than the real thing), Beck (loser ~ for the longest time I thought the lyric was ‘from my head to toe, I’m a loser baby so why don’t you kill me’ – it’s actually: ‘soy un perdedor…’), and several others including the musical highlight of the run:
I feel worse than yesterday physically, but a bit better mentally (I don’t want to explode). My knees hurt, my groin hurts again and I’m walking around like a baby horse.
I feel like refried poo and I’m taking tomorrow off.
I ran 3 miles again and it went well. It’s been raining quite a lot. Today was the first day in almost a week where I didn’t have to deal with drizzle, mist or actual rain during my run. Lots of mud, puddles and humidity though.
The groin was tight all day, but it didn’t feel so bad when I was stretching and it actually felt pain-free during the run and after. It doesn’t hurt or feel tight now. Aching knees are almost a welcomed feeling – a return to normalcy.
Mentally , the run was focused. I had a lot on my mind: work, my recent surrender to social networking (I fought a good 2 years), the book on Che that I’m reading and two separate conversations that I’d had today with two different people who are easily in the “top five best friends I’ve ever had” list (if there were such a thing, there isn’t – these are two people that “would help me bury the bodies” so to speak even though our alleged or hypothetical crimes,misdemeanors, felonies never got to that level. I’ll not beat the dead horse further, but these are more brothers than friends). All of that and four lads from Liverpool literally blew my mind during mile three into an introspective trance that I wouldn’t have thought possible without the aid of some chemical (honestly, not that I would know so much about that). It was almost uncomfortably intense. I feel as though I’ve some new perspective into my psyche and it’s kind of simultaneously freaking me out and inspiring a sense of peace. I’m going to stop talking about it now, because I can’t do it justice.
It had happened before (see: 03/03/2010), but it had never been useful to me before. It had been pleasant, exciting and strange, but never insightful.
Endorphins, son.
Endorphins.
Musical highlight of the run (possibly the musical highlight of my life now):
Well, I’m not either actually – not even a doctor of journalism. With that in mind, it will surprise none of us when I reveal that when I say that I’ve pulled my hamstring, what I really mean to say is that I’ve got a pulled groin (an adductor longus) to be precise. I feel like a dumbass, because as soon as I looked it up I realized that I knew that the hamstring was on the backside of the leg… the more pressing concern now is fighting off the urge to make a bad “pulled groin/blindness/felt so good I pulled it again” joke.
I ran today and the reality is that it feels much better after resting it for a couple of days. I’m doing my best to not make any sudden shifts in direction of abrupt jumps or anything other than very methodical one foot after the next motions. It’s sore and tender, but it’s not so painful that it alters my gait – even after running three miles (that wasn’t the case late last week).
It was raining off and on this evening and that added a little fun to the whole thing. All things considered, not too bad a run. The musical highlight of this run:
Ran a couple more miles today. It’s not so much that I ran or how far I ran, it’s more about building some consistency. I need to get in some kind of a groove.
I couldn’t ask for better weather: low 70′s, sunny, some clouds, nice breeze – in a word, perfect.
The musical highlight of the run is further proof that my ipod knows what’s up even when I don’t. I couldn’t decide on what I wanted to listen to so I hit random and the damned thing proceeded to play this:
So I did.
“I don’t believe in Beatles, I just believe in me.”
But sometimes I don’t even believe in that. I’m in a dark, dark mood kiddies. I’ve become a bit of a nihilist. I’m a mess and the world’s a mess and we have no hope of affecting each other for the better. There is no hope that we could have any effect on each other and even if we did, it would only add fuel to the fire of each other’s demise. It comes and it goes, so if we give it a month I might be back in the suburbs of Zen. Or maybe I’m there already.
It’s all about perspective and as of right now I’m completely cool with my nihilism, the world and myself.
I’m also about 8 miles and change away from completing my goal of running 150 miles in 2 months. I ran five miles yesterday and that helped. I could only muster two today – tired, woke up for work at 3:30AM (server updates) – but I can certainly run eight miles in 5 days (it’ll be two months on the 11th).
It’s supposed to get really freaking cold (for south Texas) this weekend – so we’ve got that to look forward to. Extreme cold or heat always makes the running more fun… makes it more of an experience/challenge.
I’m tired.
Highlight of the latest run:
See. I’m not kidding.
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In unrelated news: I’m reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and I love and recommend it. It’s fanfuckingtastic.
Finished reading The Know-it-All and I loved that too. It’s fun, funny and fact-filled. It’s where I learned that “fanfuckingtastic” is one of the few examples of infixes in English.
I hope you’ll pardon the french – just trying to do my part to spread the knowledge.
