So. Dave showed up at my house... I decided to scare him as he came in the door to try to capture his reaction:

He invited me to go to an "ask an atheist" meeting at the college.. There were two awfully rude christians in the front row who weren't there to be open minded or promote productive dialogue... not that that should be expected of fundamentalists, but... anyway, they were just causing a ruckus... I ended up getting pretty pissed off and let my mouth fly a couple times at them..
"yeah but monkeys never waged holy war, either, did they?" was one of my reactions. couldn't conceal it, every argument they made was weak illogical to the point of offense for me.

I'd like to see them hold a panel, i would.. I'd really like to show up and sit in the front row with all my pre-packaged questions and pre-rendered reactions, you know? savages. blergh.. anyway.. before we even made it to the meeting we had a couple tall beers near the observatory cleverly concealed from campus parkinglots or campus cops or what-have you.. basically we found a nice place out of sight (ironic an observatory) and pounded a couple.. which in retrospect is probably the reason i couldn't contain myself at the atheist meeting... heh. anyway.. we parked out near the observatory and saw not one:

not two:
but three deer in the woods nearby.

Anyway, the two questions I asked said atheists were as follows: "how old were each of you when you realized or decided you were atheist... how old where you when you were certain?" most of them said early twenties.. the only girl on the board said 16.. a couple dudes said 18 roughly. I figured it was interesting enough to know that across the board they were all just becoming adults when they 'converted'. Secondly I asked them something like this: "Is there anything of any religion that you have taken to heart outside its context? I for one appreciate the taoist sense of balance and duality.. I resent that religious people can't accept what's good in outside religions-- In the gospel of thomas, and i know a lot of christians don't recognize that gospel, jesus said "drink from my mouth and become as i am". This to me is an incredibly revolutionary thing to say.. It is basically saying 'keep the dialogue open'. its saying we share our existence and by sharing it become one-- what examples of good in other religions have you as atheists recognized?"

The answers were weak and later we figured the christian antogonist prickwads attacked them into a defensive state already and it was hopeless to expect any compromise on their part.

sad world, it is sometimes.

Later we went to the "brother ali" show on campus. It was rather up in the air whether or not I was going to be able to get in.. Student I.D.s were required for free entry, otherwise the cost at door was something like 6 bucks... Wayyyy too much for me. I borrowed dave's brother's i.d. and was nearly barred entry when the ticket guy said "this definitely isn't you... I know this guy" Shortly after he looked me in the eyes and asked "is he going to be coming tonight?" we said "no" and he let us in... Was too packed to get very close for any decent pictures, but here's what i managed to capture.
^above, brother ali.
^brother ali's hype man who made it clear that he was a "full band"
Brother Ali addressing his apt pupils.said pupils appreciating their teacher.
this is our leaving campus.


Later on dave and i went downtown... I was pretty drunk by that point and no longer had my camera with me. Walking down the streets near the 'bar-muda' triangle, I saw a couple harley's parked next to one another and thought I'd try to jump them... "hey dave, check this out" and i ran up to them-- at the last second I decided i was going to veer off and jump to the side.. i didn't get the most ideal approach to the jump-- Well my loafters begged to differ and my feet slid out from under me resulting in a crushing slam of shin and exhaust pipe.. Embarassed, I lay on the ground for a few seconds hoping nobody saw me.. I got up and tried to hobble away saying to dave "let's get out of here before anyone notices what happened"

just my luck a big ol motherfucker from across the street comes running over and shouts in his manliest voice: "hey.. hey you! what's going on here?" etc etc... I tell him I just slipped into the tailpipe and everything was alright... and you can see for yourself and so on and so forth, but he grabs me by the arm, pinching my skin underneath my coat and drags me inside the nearest bar: the aptly named "choppers". "HEY TONY" he says in his most dramatic voice. A dude at the bar wearing nothing but denim and leather looks over at us. "THIS GUY WANTS TO HAVE A TALK WITH YOU" I tell the guy to let go of my arm.. "i'm perfectly capable of being mature about this" i said.... already embarassed enough as i was... The guy in denim walks over... "I caught him snooping in your "random jargon I don't remember for the little leather bags that hang off the back of big ol' motorcycles"".

I told him that was bullshit- "i just slipped and bumped your tailpipe, you can see for yourself its not damaged". the big dude in denim tells the other guy off and under his breath mutters something like "pff.. making something out of nothing". I was glad the drama was over.. we ended up going to a house party nearby... I realized i was bleeding pretty heavily from the leg.. Some kids at the party poured whiskey on my leg and their dog cleaned my wound thereafter.. I felt pretty badass.. Later the dog and I made out uncontrollably in the basement.. was pretty hot.

All kidding aside, I love dogs.. they are so tentative.. so sensitive and emotionally intelligent.. its incredable... they take care of their own better than we do these days, you know?

ahh.. anyway. have a good night all.

on said hip hop show

well.. i didn't feel like taking pictures of said hip hop show.. turns out everyone was celebrating the weed-smokers holiday 4/20. a.k.a. hitler's birthday.. didn't want to enhance their paranoia.. the camera brought too much attention on me so i left it in a buddy's car. hip hop was alright though.. I did however take pictures on the walk down.

here they are:





this egg nearly fell on me as i walked by... i looked up almost expecting to see some ruffian kids laughing.. but it was a robin's egg that fell from the bas relief sign of "holiday inn".. i thought the moment was rare so i shot it.

day at the farm

There's been a lot of turmoil in my life lately but there have been a handful of nice days intermingled with the shit.

9 days ago, the eleventh, a saturday-- a bright and sunny one at that-- was one of the good days. The night previous was hard on me.. I didn't sleep well for the usual reason, I was lovesick. Tessa came home at 5 in the morning and woke me up because I had left my light on. I tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn't do it. Knowing the one I loved was out at the bars all night--and not only that but she ended up god knows where with god knows who doing god knows what until 5 o'clock in the morning- It was troubling on the mind.

I don't mean to call her out on anything-- It was understood that the transition was going to be difficult.. its just hard to love someone who doesn't have the same feelings for you anymore..

Anyway- getting to the point- I had made loose plans to spend a day out at my friend's recently purchased farmland with him and another friend, Peder. Alex, the man with a plan, is a good friend of mine whose head always seems to be in the right place.
below: a picture of said friends on another, previous adventure-- stickswordfighting along the blue earth river a couple years ago.
alex is on the left and peder is on the right. as you can see, they're terrible sword fighters.

so. I was weary and tired and it would have been terribly easy for me to cancel the loose plans made a week or so prior-- But I knew I needed to get away from the pain and I knew I wasn't going to be able to get back to sleep anyway.. So I stayed up from 5 to 7:30 and waited for their call-- When they arrived, we hightaled it over to the nearest gas station to stock up on coffee and donuts and then to alex's parents' house where we packed everything we needed onto the trailer. We also brought Alex's dog, Prairie. She's my favorite.




Then we headed toward the highway, toward Amboy.


the car ride was enjoyable, albeit stuffy. Pickup trucks don't have quite the seating accomodations i'm used to. I had to sit on one of those terrible fold out chairs perpendicular to regular seats. I had about a foot of space between the rear window and the front passenger seat to wedge into... Prairie was opposite of me and we got to know each other really well back there for about and hour and a half or more. (if you know what i mean) ( yeah, we sexed.)

Along the way we listened to some twangy bluegrass and we sang along with our best southern voices
this song was a highlight... ricky scaggs - mansions for me A MANSION FOR MEEEEEEE MANSION FOR MEEEEE

very fun to sing along to..

So it went like that-- we drank our coffee, listened to bluegrass-- their eyes on the road in front of them, my eyes on prairie (the dog).

It was about the sweetest thing ever, getting out of that car to stretch my limbs in already warm morning sunlight... I walked the property's perimeter with camera in hand to get a feel for the place.

the soil was soft and I enjoyed the sensation of walking over it-sinking ever so slightly into the earth with each step... My first inclination was to walk toward the trees along the property's outer edges and so i did.. Prairie followed along leading our pack of two... Interesting how dogs can do that. It speaks of intelligence, i think.. Prairie is a very intelligent animal
.
. ^Above: Prairie leads the way-- waits for me to catch up.

While I was putzing around, taking pictures of the trees and their twisted shadows, the windswept grass which resembled waves churning or fire crawling as it does on a flat gasoline doused surface-- I managed to catch Prairie taking a dump on my landscape... (My viewfinder is not representative of the images I took because I know I cut the sky out of my composition.)

Well this putzing around went on until i took a left at the edge of the property and spied the shed Alex had been working on building in his previous outings this spring.. I took a rather gloomy picture of it then enhanced said gloominess with vignetting hijinks in ps. (sorry)


to be balanced I took a dreamily over-exposed shot of the same shed with a less dramatic angle..

(which I also vignetted-- but inversely.)

if half finished sheds aren't that appealing to you, you might not enjoy the following images either:



alex pluckin on mah banjo above, peder's doubled reflection below:

I waited for about 30 seconds for him to walk into my shot-- i heard his footsteps approaching in the grass and he lingered outside for a bit before he made it into the photo.

I spent a little bit of time inside the shed plucking on my banjo trying to master the rolls I had recently gone about trying to learn for myself.. (with the aide of a youtube video the day before.)

I got lost doing that for a while before I decided to wander back out into the warm sunlight-- again camera in hand... I'll spare the details, but here are some more pictures of the day:



my camera died halfway through the day so i missed some photographic opportunities.. we drank beer on the roof of the shed, we grilled food, i napped in the hammock, drew pictures, read, etc etc... the day was very good for my soul... I have to remember to get out there more often in the summer to keep track of progress made there... There's something very nice about the idea of planting, tending, harvesting your own crops.