There Ain't Much Sadder Than A Record Store On Its Death Bed

New releases are eight months old, the owner is the only employee left, it's 101 degrees because he won't run the air, I think he might sleep in the stock room.

c'est le vie

Awhile back my dad reminded me that to ask why bad things happen to us is a ridiculous question. In fact, we should be surprised when tough things aren't going on in our lives. He essentially said that we live in a fallen world and we can't expect it to be like heaven. Instead, life is a series of challenges that prepare us for heaven. I think that's an important thing to remember. It's like when it's miserably hot outside and you can't stop wishing it were winter. With that perspective, the heat will seem even worse than it really is and you'll remain miserable. But if you just accept the fact it's summer and that it's going to be hot for a few more months, it's a lot more bearable. So, Jenny had another miscarriage, which brings our 8-month total to 3, including one discovery and removal of a benign tumor. Yeah, it feels horrible and I don't ever want to feel this way again. At the same time, I realize I will. Pets will get run over, friends will move away, I'll witness loved ones battle serious illness, I may battle serious illness, stuff will get stolen, parents will die. That's the nature of life on earth. Through it all, though, there's one constant: "The relation of the soul to God is a higher, unique relationship which nothing can sever and which nothing can threaten or shake (...) If we wish to follow Him, then this life, too, with Christ, is joy, even amid difficulties. As Saint Paul says, 'I rejoice in my sufferings.' This is our religion, and that's the direction we must move in." That quote is from a book by Porphyrios (a Christian monk) we've been reading at Sunday night mens group, and I know it's true even though my emotions don't always agree.

Hip to the Hop

Considering the size of their ears, I've decided rabbits are pretty weak at identifying the direction of sounds. Today, like every other day I ride the Santa Ana River trail, I had several dart out of the bushes and directly in front of my bike. They usually bounce around like a teenager in a mosh pit and then run back to where they came from, but sometimes they run straight across. I haven't hit one yet, but they're not all so lucky. A couple weeks ago I rode past a carcass with a bicycle-tire-sized gash across its neck. I wondered if it made the guy crash and I thought the cottontail probably screamed like a banshee until the lights went out. Chris has commented that the woods along the trail would be the perfect place for a person with a taste for rabbit meat. Sometimes I think about what I'd do if this country of ours got so bad I couldn't just go to the store and buy some food. I mean, what I'd do if I had to score food for myself rather than pay somebody who paid somebody who paid somebody who paid somebody to grow it or kill it. I thought maybe I'd head down to the river with a deuce-deuce and come back home a couple hours later with dinner slung over my shoulder like a Russian soldier. The thing is though, I probably wouldn't, because I've been castrated by a life filled with talking cartoon animals, cuddly teddy bears, and corporate Easters (Our profit margin has Risen!). Also, considering that Jenny called me one time, crying her face off because she'd run over a rabbit with her Suzuki, I don't think she'd eat one either. So I'd probably take my lady up the hill into the apple orchards or something, you know, depending on the season. I'd just sit there under a tree and grab some fruit whenever I got hungry until the tree was bare. Then I'd probably wander around looking for some berries until I starved to death.

Qualitative research suggests one may experience feelings of guilt when writing casually after spending extensive hours writing an academic paper in APA format. I mean....my project is straight up done, ya'll.

Summer Reading Part 1

This is what I think of the books I've read over the last 2 months. What are you reading? How do you like it? I want to know!


I enjoyed the second half of this book much more than the first, and I like the book more now than I did while I was reading it. Yeah, it’s a little tiring to read about high class Americans who simply eat, drink and socialize at Parisian and Pamplonan cafes for a couple hundred pages, but that’s the reality of a hedonistic life. Lonely, pointless, unfulfilling. Though this theme is central to the novel, I did begin to actually care about the self-absorbed characters and Hemingway ultimately developed a strong story to keep me turning the latter pages. My favorite section was when a couple of the guys left that fickle Miss Brett in the city and went fishing out in the woods for a few days.


I hadn’t read To Kill A Mockingbird since freshmen year of high school but remembered liking it very much. I wasn’t mistaken. It’s one of the strongest novels I’ve ever read and look forward to teaching it in the future. I’m amazed by Harper Lee’s ability to convey the characters’ maturation so believably in so few pages. The themes and symbols never seem forced, yet they’re as clear as the points in a Sunday sermon. I’d love to see aspects of Atticus in my fatherly roles.


Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman is a collection of 24 short stories by Haruki Murakami. So far I’ve read about half of them and I’m a fan of about half of those. Really hit or miss. Some of it might be lost in the culture gap, but some of it might just not be very good. I do like Murakami’s style though, and he’s often hilarious. My reigning favorite is “The Rise and Fall of Sharpie Cakes” but I have a feeling there’s a bigger gem I haven’t gotten to yet. It’s like playing the lottery, except you get to bet 15 minutes instead of 15 dollars.


Before I had decided which novel to assign my second session summer school (alliteration!) class, one of my students asked if we could read The Outsiders. The school had a class set, so I took a survey which revealed that only 3 kids in the class had previously read the book, so that’s the one I chose. I didn’t know anything about the author when I started reading it, but about 20 pages in I thought, “This sort of sounds like a girl writing from a guy’s perspective.” Then I realized the author is indeed a female, and that she wrote the novel when she was 15. Ah-ha. So, it’s really impressive writing for a 15 year old. If one of my students turned in a bit of fiction like that, I’d piss my pants (after I thoroughly checked for plagiarism). Anyway, I enjoyed it, the lessons were worthwhile (though heavy-handed), and the kids were crazy about it. However, it should be read in 7th grade rather than 10th. I let them watch the movie on the last day of class and was pretty disappointed. Lots of people seem to love it, but the book is better without the visual influence.


Freakonomics was all the rage a few years ago, but I wasn’t interested. My brightest summer school student just finished reading it, however, and told me I should read it too. He leant me his copy, so I did. It’s definitely entertaining and some of the parallels Levitt draws are pretty interesting, but some are crap. For example, his data shows that there is a correlation between decreased crime and abortion. He proposes that this correlation may exist because unwanted or inadequately supported kids are more likely to become criminals. If these kids are aborted, they won’t become criminals and thus the rate of crime decreases. Last I checked, murder was crime, so whatever. My favorite chapter was about an ivy-league student who starts hanging out with a major drug-dealing inner city gang in order to study them. The stuff he finds out is fascinating.


This book is crazy powerful. It basically explores the human condition in a world where everyone stops caring about the Redeemer. Very quickly, the world essentially becomes hell. I don’t know what else to say about it except that it’s worth reading. Also, don’t watch the 1990 film version. It’s nothing like the book and awful, awful, awful.


This is the one I’m currently reading. I’m about 1/3 of the way through and it’s fascinating. If you’re not familiar, Oliver Sacks is a neurologist who writes about how the mind works by weaving in true stories of patients he has studied. This book is all about how music influences, and is influenced by, the brain. So far I’ve read about a non-musical guy who got struck by lightning and suddenly wanted to play the piano all the time (and was good), people who go into seizures when they hear certain music, people who are genuinely terrified of certain music, people who have musical hallucinations (where they regularly “hear” music playing when none is on), people who only hear terrible noise (like banging pots and pans) when others hear music, and people who have absolute pitch. Apparently 1 in 10,000 have absolute pitch, which means they naturally know exactly what note is played without even thinking about it. One guy talks about how when he was a kid he recognized without even trying that his dad blew his nose in G. People who have it say that it’s as easy for them to identify a musical note as it is for most people to identify a color. Anyway, I could go on and on about what I’ve read so far, but I can’t wait to finish it.

Who Done It?!

This is our automobile. We don't deliver pizza, but thanks to some street wandering ruffian, we can pretend.

Why Summer School Rules Should Apply Year Round/ I Swear I Don't Use My Powers For Evil

“Summer school’s a privilege,” I said, “If you miss 6 or more hours before the three weeks are up, you get dropped with an F. If you’re late in the morning or after a break, I automatically deduct 15 minutes. Even if you’re 2 minutes late. Understand? Good.”
After a couple days, smart boy gets smart. He tells 3 friends, “We should just be 14 minutes late every break. If he’s gonna take 15 off we might as well use it.” They agreed that was a very good idea.
They walked into class 14 minutes after class had resumed. “Why are you so late?” I asked.
“Just wanted to use all our time.”
“Well I guess you should have stayed out longer, because you just lost 45 minutes.”
“How’s that work?”
“You try to work the system, I make sure the system works you.”