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| This has been a really, really excellent year for music. A lot of really great albums were put out this year. I think it's the best year in my recent memory. Top Ten Albums of 2007:
1. Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?
2. The Apples in Stereo - New Magnetic Wonder
3. Radiohead - In Rainbows
4. The National - Boxer
5. Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
6. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
7. Feist - The Reminder
8. Iron & Wine - The Shepherd Dog
9. Over the Rhine - The Trumpet Child
10. Sage Francis - Human the Death Dance
* * *
I just read a bunch of Walt Whitman over break. How did I hate this guy in high school? "Song of Myself" is positively gorgeous and inspiring.
Samm... I'm in the home stretches of Ulysses. You should be really proud of me. I don't do well with long books.
* * *
Girls basketball started today. Eeek.
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| Western Washington and Western Oregon have entered their monsoon season. I think I might be a little waterlogged already. Hopefully our house doesn't slide down the hill into the river while we're gone for Christmas. That'd be a little tragic. So it's Christmastime, which means time for lots of cookies and card games. It's kinda nice to get away from the bullshit of work for a couple of weeks. Maybe I'll hire a hitman over the break or something. College basketball is lots of fun, I've discovered. Cougs are 10-0 (11-0 after today's game). Most excellent! Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night! | | |
| Basketball continues to roll. Both teams are 4-0. Tonight my eighth graders beat their opponent like 75-32 or some such ridiculous score. It's a lot of fun. :)
School continues to get more and more ridiculous. At what other school could a former teacher who quit after last year be removed from a football game (a public event) for no other reason than that the superintendent didn't want her there? The superintendent asked her to leave. She refused. The board chairman (who was, fittingly, totally inebriated and stumbling all over her) asked her to leave. She refused - she'd done nothing wrong. Finally, the campus resource officer told her that if she didn't leave he would arrest her. And they got away with this.
In other news, Rainier High School football is in the state semi-finals this Saturday for the first time in... a long, long time. Should be excellent.
But altogether, Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
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| I started coaching junior high basketball this past week, despite the fact that I have not played organized, competitive basketball since 8th grade.
It's kinda fun.
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| In Which: Chris Conquers a VolcanoLast Sunday, I crested the rim of Mt.
St. Helens as the final piano chord
of “A Day in the Life” came crashing over me. It was almost surreal, seeing the
angry, smoking crater spread before me with Spirit
Lake and Mt.
Rainier as a backdrop as that
oceanic chord flowed through my veins. I had a victory smoke at 8300 feet,
enduring the 40 mile per hour winds as best I could, electrified every second
of it. Even as the clouds hurried in and visibility dwindled, I could simply feel the vastness of the world about me.
From the top of Mt.
St. Helens you can see Rainier,
Adams, Hood, and on a clear day, Jefferson.
Never before has the world seemed so simultaneously gigantic and miniscule.
As I turned my back on the crater and turned my attention to
slip-sliding down the glacier, the funky rock groove of “Ziggy Stardust” echoed
through my head, setting a brisk cadence for descent. Upon reaching the
trailhead, I turned back and marveled at the fact that a mere three hours
before I had been atop that giant white rock.
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