Demons, Rainbows, and a Whole Lot of Fast: My Journey to Track Town, USA

Ok, this post is kind of overdue in a bad way.  But I can explain.  Wait, no I can't.  There is no cool story as to why this is late, but if it makes you feel better you can pretend that I was captured by a South American drug cartel and escaped on a hang glider I made out of banana leaves and empty Fanta bottles.



July 3rd was one of the fastest days in Hayward Field's storied history, with the first sub 13 clocking on American soil and stadium records falling left and right.  And I was there.

The Prefontaine Classic is one of, if not the, premier track meet held in the United States.  Named after the late, great, and seemingly infinitely marketable Steve Prefontaine, the meet is held at the University of Oregon's historic Hayward Field.  We had the idea to make a road trip up there a few months ago, after it was announced that Chris Solinsky, who had just broken the American Record in the 10,000 meters at Peyton Jordan, would be  running the 5k and potentially had a shot at going sub-13 and setting an American record at that distance.  Life doesn't always go like you plan it though, and Bernard Lagat ended up breaking the American record a few weeks prior in Oslo, with Solinsky running the third fastest time by an American in the process. Lagat then decided to run the mile at Pre, leaving Solinsky and OTC teammate Matt Tegenkamp to represent USA, neither of whom ended up going sub-13.  That being said every race was stacked and I will probably never see a better meet outside of Europe, East Africa, or an Olympic Stadium.

But first we had to get to Eugene, and Eugene is a long way away.

I volunteered to be the driver, because I love driving.  I once drove for thirteen hours and it felt like three.  I am happy when I'm behind the wheel in a bubble of steel and glass, especially in the lonely parts of the world. Eight hours to Eugene would be no problem for me.

I did encounter a problem when we stopped for lunch.  We stopped at a subway across the street from an establishment called "The Berry Patch," which I foolishly assumed sold berries.  I thought "great, I'm going to get some berries and we can eat them in the car or in Eugene and we will be happy because everybody loves berries!"  I walk in only to discover that THERE ARE NO BERRIES SOLD AT THE BERRY PATCH.  It was one of those combination restaurant and homespun country gift shops that sell adorable but useless knick-knacks that old people find adorable, as well as nuts and olives.  Sorely disappointed, I ended up buying an eight dollar bottle of olives, for some reason.

IT'S A TRAP!

Disheartened, I got back on the road and kept driving.  Took it like a champ.

As soon as we crossed the state line, it seemed, it got cloudy.  Before we had entered the middle of nowhere, everything on the radio was country music or mariachi, and before that was mass-produced corporate hip-hop, but in Oregon, when I tried the radio for a few minutes, I got Steely Dan and Bowie right away.  The air felt clear.  Why have I never known Oregon was so awesome? I thought.

But our "welcome to Oregon" moment came about an hour outside of Eugene, when we got pulled over for speeding.  I can't say it's entirely my fault though.  I would like to blame it on Billy Joel.  We were listening to "We Didn't Start the Fire," which of course I know all the lyrics to, so of course I had to blast it and sing along, and of course I got excited and before you knew it I was going 85 in a 65 zone.  Whoops.

The officer strolled up to our vehicle.  He asked us where we were headed, and I told him that we were going to Eugene, to watch a track meet at Hayward field.  He immediately knew that we were talking about the Pre classic, and then recommended some runs for us to do in the Eugene area.  He then asked if there was "any legal reason why I was going so fast."  For some reason, the thought running through my brain was not "oh no, I'm going to get a ticket now," but "this is so cool, a police officer just recommended a run for us to do.  Everyone is a runner up here!"  I knew it was a trick question, and told him so, cracking a big smile as I did, for some reason.

"You seem pretty smart, are you a college kid?"

I told him I was, and that I run for my school.  He ended up not only letting us off with a warning, but giving us a heads up that there were a lot of speed traps between us and Eugene.  "Are you a runner?" I asked.

"I was, a long time ago," he said.

My day being made, we drove on, at the speed limit of course.  In the next hour we saw at least ten rainbows, including one where it looked like we were literally at the end.  As much as I would have liked for leprechauns to appear and dance around the car, showing us a pot of gold in  the trunk, rainbows are, unfortunately, just visual effects, but still, it was pretty damn cool.

Another Reason why Oregon is Awesome

There's something about Eugene.  Maybe just because I've heard all the stories, watched all three Prefontaine movies, read Kenny Moore's book, that Eugene has this sort of magical aura about it.  When we rolled in, the air was clear from the rain that had just fallen, people were rafting on the Willamette, and as we drove through the streets, there were runners everywhere.  There were even mileage markers on some of the main roads.

That night we drove around Eugene, trying to see the sights, but then we realized that Eugene doesn't really have any sights.  Once you've driven by Hayward Field and Mac Court, there isn't really much else that nerdy runners like that you can visit at nighttime.  We ended up hanging out on Hayward Field's practice track, and ended up getting yelled at by security guards.

Another fact about Eugene: at night, it is populated by demons.  The first one we noticed around 10:30, a haggard man in a beard riding around aimlessly.  At night for the rest of the trip, we would see strange people on bikes.  They were terrifying!  The other issue I have with Eugene and Oregon in general is that you can't pump your own gas.  I have a problem with this.

Oh Shit, We're Here...

For track fans, Hayward Field is like Disneyland and Mecca combined.  I've seen videos, heard stories, but I didn't realize that it is an actual bona-fide magical place.  Being in the cheap seats, we didn't quite get to experience the roar coming from the grandstand, but we did get to witness the incredible results it produces.  The meet started off with what may have been the fastest "B" heat of the mile ever, with Ryan Gregson and AJ  Acosta both running 3:53.

Solinsky ended up coming up a bit short of expectations in the 5,000, but I was still there for the first sub-13 on US soil, no big deal or anything.  Flannagan and the OTC tearing it up in the women's 5,000 and Dibaba setting a US soil record, again, no big deal.  There was Wheating running a 3:51 mile, just behind Kiprop's 3:49.  Tyson Gay battling Walter Dix in the 200 was one of the best races I have ever seen (insert joke here.) My personal highlight was getting a picture with David Oliver on his victory lap, right after he set the American record in the 110 hurdles.  Me taking the picture with him made it onto national TV.  Ok, kind of a big deal.

I was thinking that I would be inspired.  Instead, it was a little demoralizing.  They're so fast.  They're stealth bombers and I'm The Spirit of St. Louis's retarded cousin.  The thing about track is that you know exactly how much better than you someone is.  Watching Solinsky and the Africans bang out 62 second quarters felt just a little like getting the finger from God (now I know how Ryan Hall felt after Boston, zzzzzzzzzing!) But it's ok, Mr. Lydiard says if I keep pounding out them 2 hour runs I'll be better someday if my joints don't fold first, right?  Right?!?

After the meet, we ran the Amazon trail, which was recommended to us by Jordan Hasay, again, not really a big deal or anything.  We made the obligatory sojourn to Pre's rock, ran Pre's trail, and went to Track Town Pizza where we all but touched ourselves in front of a picture of Nick Symmonds.  Track Town Pizza is kind of like those restaurants in the boonies that you go to not because of the food but for all of the tacky yet charmingly homespun memorabilia (or farm equipment and outdated license plates) that they put up on the walls.  I brought an old pair of flats, leaving one on Pre's rock, and keeping the other one, so I can talk to him now, using the one shoe I have kind of like that scene where the guy uses a gun as a phone in Dreamcatcher.


But the best part about Eugene is that the next day, the entire front page of the Eugene Register Guard was devoted to coverage of the meet.  Name one other city in America that would do that.

Maybe I am missing out by living in one of the sunny parts of the world.

Goal!!!

When American's don't excel at a sport on the international stage, we see this as a problem that needs to be fixed immediately.  While this isn't exactly true with fringe sports like curling and team handball, we seem to have a big problem when we are not kicking ass and taking names in every major international competition.  While there are exceptions, notably China in the last Olympics, it doesn't seem as though it's as big of an issue in other countries.  Kenyans don't say "you know, we're sitting on top of the world of distance running, but we need to break the United States' and Jamaican's hold on sprinting."  Their national identity is associated with being excellent distance runners.  The problem is that in America, our national identity is associated with winning things like the Space Race and world wars.  We're the biggest, fattest, most productive* nation on earth, yet we seem to be evenly matched with some greasy Eastern Europeans from the former Soviet Satellite of Slo-whatchemacallit, it's a bit hard for us to take.  We live and breathe sports in America, but in a lot of countries, they only live and breathe soccer (ok, football.)

*Excluding China, Japan, Singapore, India, Germany, Switzerland, most Norse countries, Malaysia, and every country where facebook and iPhones have yet to catch on

Right now though, we seem to be doing ok.  Or at least, we seem to be performing respectably, advancing out of group play into the elimination rounds.  And this has people asking "will this make soccer more popular in America?"

The answer is no.

Every kid in Suburban America grows up playing youth soccer, with the orange slices and the Capri-Sun juice pouches and that parent that cares way too much.  I was the kid picking his nose and daydreaming about having powers like Goku in Dragon Ball Z while the ball would go flying past me or flying into my face, then everyone would yell at me and it would be ostracize-fest 99 and I would feel bad and really wish I had powers like Goku so I could go kah-meh-ha-meh-haaaaaaa on their athletically gifted little asses.  This was a big deal, because, well, I'm not exactly sure why, but it's nice to win things.  Unfortunately, I never got to experience winning because I was always on awful teams.  One season we scored a grand total of 3 goals the entire season.  The one good to come out of this whole fiasco was that I discovered I could at least beat other kids down the field, which would lead to future feelings of athletic inadequacy.

The more athletically gifted kids get separated soon after when they join hegemonic club soccer teams that require your soul as the membership fee.  This is not hyperbole.  This is an even bigger deal because everybody cares a whole lot more, and your soul is at stake, because if you win the big tourney you may actually get it back!  Just kidding!  From what I have observed, club soccer is a life ruiner.  So if you have kids, ovaries, or testicles, remember, don't ever let your kids do club soccer.  It would be a better idea to have them work in a coal mine.

The paradox seems to be that everybody here plays it just nobody likes watching it or has the ambition to be really good at it.  We don't have the cultural incentive.  Soccer players aren't lionized like football/basketball/baseball stars are.  Between Major League Baseball, the NBA, the NFL, and collegiate Football and Basketball, Americans have enough to care about, unlike in Ghana, where the only thing your country has going for itself is a pretty good soccer team, or the UK, where it's culturally acceptable to get into massive drunken brawls to display your fanhood.

And everybody complains that "soccer is boring to watch."  We complain about how it's low-scoring and how there's too much midfield action and it's not exciting like REAL AMERICAN FOOTBALL!  But, let me say this.  In American football, at least half the time is taken up with commercials, and even more time is taken up with inane commentary.  A standard game takes up an hour of play, but a football game on television takes up three hours.  We love watching a game where two thirds of the game isn't actually the game, but soccer is boring because they're actually playing the whole time?  The reason isn't because soccer is boring.

It's because soccer doesn't have as much advertising value.

Even if you were some kind of time-warping wizard, you could not come close to packing as many commercials into a broadcast of a soccer game as you could into a broadcast of a football game.  And in America, where corporations have come to dominate our cultural landscape, that is the reason why soccer will never be popular.  The people who control the system know that they can turn a much larger profit if we care about American football instead of regular football.

And that is why most Americans will never really care about a soccer match.

The Ozone Shack is Now on Facebook

The Ozone Shack now has its own official Facebook fan page (unfortunately, created by yours truly).  Become a fan and be the first to know when there's a new post!

Ok, was that too enthusiastic?  How about this: BE A FAN OF THE OZONE SHACK ON FACEBOOK SO YOU CAN BE COOLER THAN ALL YOUR FRIENDS BECAUSE YOU WERE THE FIRST TO KNOW AND SUBSEQUENTLY READ THE LATEST POST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Or how about old-timey advertising instead: Try Elixir of Ozone Revitalizing Tonic, the only cure for the grippe, cholera, dysentery, toothaches, and bear mauling!

I could instead appeal with edgy teen demographic marketing: This fanpage is x-treme.  Don't be LAME like your PARENTS!  Do kick-flips and 1080's while listening to bands that headline WARPED TOUR!  AWESOME!

I could go with the feminine appeal angle: You are you!  You deserve to get what you want and still be beautiful, so why not do both by becoming a fan of The Ozone Shack.

Or conversely, the masculine angle: Are you tired of being WEAK and UNDERSEXED?  Is your PENIS TOO SMALL?  Studies show that reading The Ozone Shack results in INCREASED TESTOSTERONE!  So what are you waiting for?  Take control of your life today, and BA A MAN!

Or like maybe a movie trailer: In a world... where UV rays are damaging to the existence of the Earth's Biosphere... a hero... will be born.  Get ready for the most exciting oxygen isomer of the summer... Rolling Stone raves "sure to be a classic for generations to come..." this summer, come inside... THE OZONE SHACK!  (Rated PG13 for extreme lewdness and frequent cock jokes.)

Or I could just be myself and advertise it in a typical Ozone Shack way.  Be a fan because for some reason I'm sad about my car/spaceship dying like a friggin year ago so maybe it will make me feel better about myself.

Also, there is now a logo, graciously designed for free by Olenka Malarecka.

Pretty spiffy, if I do say so myself.

Pukistan

Note: I'm posting this one unfinished.  I think this is supposed to be the type of post that has been successful lately, the self-deprecating ones with some personal bullshit injected in.  I'm overdue for an update and I kind of have to puke again, for whatever reason.  I'm stuck in a box and can't get out.  Please send some of that magical janitor's sand and a carton of hugs.  Thank you.

"There was nothing special about the room, but they say even a prisoner in the Bastille would wax sentimental over leaving his cell after languishing in it many years."
-John L. Parker, Jr., Once a Runner, Page 142


"I'll lay awake for a while
I'll leave the light on a while
You couldn't last a lifetime..."
Coheed and Cambria, The Light and the Glass


It's been a year since Spaceship Earth died, or sort of died, I'm not quite sure what exactly happened to it but its mind lives on with the rest of it is not.  Whatever Spaceship Earth was I'm not sure.  I understood what it did but can make no assertions about how it did what it did and now it's dead.

This is not exactly normal.  No one is supposed to think their car was sentient and definitely isn't supposed to be mourning its passing a year after it became scrap metal.  Maybe this is normal for a dog or something, but not a car.  I do know that it was alive though, and I know that stranger things have happened (both before and after noon).


Sometimes when I'm lying awake I think "hey, it's not supposed to be this way."  I wasn't supposed to break my foot and get depressed and become totally uncool and I would be kicking ass in some major conference and getting free shoes by the truckload instead of underachieving athletically at a mid-major school but setting world-leading marks for lameness. (It's true.  This year, I ran world leading times for the 5000 meter go to bed at a reasonable hour, 3000 meter diet high in fiber and whole grains, and the 1500 meter sit in your room on a Friday night watching Season 1 of the X-Files.)

To everyone in my building this year: I'm sorry I was kind of an ass-hat.  I'm sorry I dropped the f-bomb on you guys so many times about the lounge not being clean, I'm sorry I messed with the cable, and I'm sorry I took Becca's cookie that one time.  I may have also taken somebody's yogurt, but since it was unlabeled I can't be sure where to direct my apology.  I wish I wasn't so cagey and antisocial.  You're not bad people.  I just don't get 4chan as much as you do I guess.

I used to be intelligent and semi-useful, but you can bet I did away with that pretty quick, when I decided to go to school for creative writing and have this stupid pipe dream of running really fast.  I could be building bridges or discovering forms of alternative energy, or at least figuring out how to make sure America doesn't become as useless as I'm going to become.  Come 2039, I'll be spending my 49th birthday in a Chinese-owned, American sweatshop, treating baby toys with asbestos in order to feed my family, which won't exist for one of two reasons.  This could either be because they have been shot for not supporting our Dear Leader, or because in the next few years I'll be too useless to maintain not smelling like week-old elephant carcass and my inability to interact with humans will exponentially increase.  This is entirely because I have chosen to pursue a completely useless career path.  Every kid in China is going to grow up to be a kick-ass engineer while we're all trying to find ourselves while writing whiny songs about our heart-wrenching breakups in our v-necks or soaking up beers in the back of a pickup truck to get ready to watch hour after hour after hour of cars decked out in corporate logos do infinity laps around a racetrack.  I probably should have been learning to program computers instead of reading (and re-reading, and re-re-reading) The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.  I'm sorry America.

Also in 2039, I will attend my 30 year high school reunion and everybody will have jobs on asteroids or the moon or some kind of artificial satellite because they decided to do something with their lives.  There will be a fifteen foot bubble around me because I will be very smelly.  Lord knows how I will get there.  Maybe I'll just roll into a ball.  A lot of times I just roll into a ball.  Maybe I'm trying to hide from the world, maybe I'm trying to get somewhere without walking, I don't really know.

At least when Spaceship Earth was around I could actually write semi-goodly, and now all you get the crap up here or some things of similar consistency.  Right now, my writing lacks a certain quality that I like to call quality.  It's kind of like you stuck a Twilight novel in the blender, added a solution of equal parts clamato juice and whale bile, splattered said concoction all over the walls, then demolished said wall with a bulldozer and had homeless men defecate all over it for a good year, threw bird entrails over it, and had USA Today do a feature story on this pile of disgustingness.  That is how I would describe my writing.

The Lecture Series, Part I: BEARDS!

Disclaimer: This is entirely a work of fiction.

Disclaimer #2: I realize that I have already posted this elsewhere. I have reposted it for your enjoyment.  You're welcome.

So you know, it's really interesting to just look at what beards really mean in our society. I mean, what is someone really trying to say when they grow a beard? You've got to wonder what the sociological, physiological, psychological, sexual, metaphysical, astrological, transcendental, existential, metaphorical, theological, anthropological, and ornithological, meaning they really carry. I mean, if you look at the impact of beards alone on our society, the ramifications are just fascinating. I mean, just look how much our culture is dominated by what goes on with our face. We have beards named after people. Sideburns, Wolverine Chops, and the Clapton Stubble are probably some of the most commonly tossed around phrases to describe physical appearance.

Just look at what the beard does to your face, you know, it accentuates your mouth. Are you trying to draw attention to your mouth? What does that say? Do you want to visually draw attention to you words? I mean, do you want people to see your words come out of your mouth, dance around the room, and slap people in the face. Is that what you're trying to say with your beard? What is this fixation we have in so many cultures with just these structures of extraneous proteins? You could write a whole dissertation on this. You could write a graduate thesis on this. There is just so much to comprehend here it's staggering. What would happen if we had no beards? What would happen to our economy. If we woke up one day, and our beards stopped growing, what would happen to the razor industry? Stocks of Gillette would plummet. Steel and plastic futures would plummet. The economy would spin into a nose dive. The economy would be a 747 plummeting towards earth. And you'd better hope that that economy-plane metaphor doesn't land on your house, because what if it did, and your beard caught fire, and you could never grow it back again. I mean, if you knew that the next time you shaved your beard, it wouldn't grow back, would you still do it. Would ZZ Top cease to be relevant? Would they just become another classic rock band, doomed to be remembered for the latent sexual urges that their songs stirred in the hearts of a generation. Lemme tell you, I'll never forget the time back in 75, when I was a junior at Grover Cleveland High School in a sleepy little suburb of Chicago, when I first heard Tush playing on the radio. I was studying for the science bowl, and I heard it coming from a transistor radio on my neighbor Seth's back porch, and all of a sudden, I thought "I don't want to be here right now, I wan to go out and have some sex!" So that's what I went out and... well ok, I didn't, but it was hard, ok, I had a lot of acne and my voice really hadn't stopped cracking and most of the girls at my school were pretty prude, ok! Of course, when I saw a picture of them, everything changed. Those beards, those monolithic bushels of defiantly ungroomed facial hair made me want to turn to academia. But then Van Halen came along. They didn't have any beards. People heard them, and man, all they wanted to do was have sex. There were no beards to turn their thoughts to the sublime. No, all they caused was a whoooooole lotta fuckin. This lead to a whole lot of babies. And what if those babies knew that they could never grow beards? What if, when they came out of the womb, the first thing they heard before they yanked off the umbilical chord was "hey, your face is going to be soft and supple your whole life, never once to be covered by a coarse layer of unkempt hair that might potentially harbor fleas that will probably carry a strain of virulent plague that your generation will have to deal with, much like my generation is combating AIDS?" Are these the babies we want to be having? That's why these questions are so important. That's why I ask myself, every day when I get up, what the hell gives our society meaning?

Do beards give our society meaning? Are they the expression of one's manhood? Just look at the people who have facial hair: hell's angels, firefighters, rabbis, homeless men, hippies, lumberjacks, bearded ladies in sideshows. These are all dynamic movers and shakers in our society. Look at what Osama Bin Laden has done to change the way we operate as a society. When I fly somewhere, I have to get to the airport hours in advance just to be allowed on the plane. You know what I do with that extra time? I go to the airport Starbucks and get a shitload of coffee. Soon, I'm going to consume so much caffeine that it doesn't even do anything for me, so I'll have to take up snorting coke just so I can get up in the morning. And look what he has done for the beard itself. He is advancing the work of the Unabomber, John Brown, and chief justice of the Supreme Court John "Mutton Chops from Hell" Marshall. These were men (and in the case of John Marshall, people speculated of being a sort of man/woman/goat hybrid) who pushed the limits and redefined what a crazy whacko really was. Before these men stepped onto the stage of history, who was the most famous bearded guy? Jesus! Now, he couldn't even make it through airport security, with his deep, bronzy skin, lush, supple beard, and dreamy, hazel eyes... wow, sorry, I'm really getting ahead of myself here. Anyway, he would get yanked right out of the security line and flown straight to Gitmo. So what does a beard say now? It says you're a rebel, you're a nonconformist, you're so unpredictable there just might be C4 strapped to your chest right now.

And you know, what if beards weren’t on our faces. What if they were on our elbows or the lower regions of our buttocks? I mean, how would that change the way we feel about them? How would that change the way we visualize such concepts as "masculinity" and "stalker potential?" Furthermore, how would our clothing be different? Would we have holes in all our shirts or pants to accommodate elbow and/or butt beards? How would razor commercials be different if our beards were located elsewhere? Someday, when I finally get that federal grant to do research, I'm going to conduct an experiment on genetically modifying people with beards growing from different parts of their bodies, and see how the public reacts. There will be a man walking into a job interview, and the interviewer will reach out to shake the applicants hand, and BOOM, he'll be confronted with a palm full of disgusting, unkempt, pube-like hand-beard. It'll be a celebration of scientific discover. I've written a lot of letters to the head of the department for a grant for this experiment, but it hasn't happened yet. Last time I asked him at a staff meeting, he muttered something about "sinning against nature." But you know man, that's science. That's how things get done. That's how we got from being cavemen, smashing each others' heads in and sporting unkempt beards into modern humans with technology like the internet, robo-cops, microwaves, and bio-domes run by genetically augmented bears, and with such complex beard styles as the Garibaldi, the Friendly Mutton Chops, and the Soul Patch. And that's why you need to write to your congressman telling them to provide more funding for beard-related research. Also, throw in something about a monument for John Marshall. It is a rarely known fact that he was actually Jerry Garcia gone back in time. I would love to bring this up at the next department meeting, but I don't have tenure yet, and I don't really want to be rocking the boat until then. Well uh, yeah, that’s about it. Until next time, dudes and dudettes, keep rockin’ the ‘chops!

Drink like a Scientist

Drinking cultures are based on two principles: that the end goal is to get drunk, and that this first principle is to be concealed as much as possible through ritual and arbitrary rules.  There are certain drinks for certain occasions; there are classy drinks, trashy drinks, chick drinks, man’s drinks, gay drinks, celebratory drinks, drinks you have with dinner, drinks you have at a bar, fat drinks, skinny drinks, drinks that climb on rocks, etc.  There are even games designed to facilitate getting drunk without having to actually talk to anyone.  The only real difference in these drinks is alcohol content, and they are all really designed to get you to the same state of nirvana: being drunk.  

Left: A flask for normal people

Right: A flask for scientists!

Here is my proposal for an experiment.  We find a country where the game of beer pong is completely unknown, probably somewhere in Africa, the Middle East, or East Asia.  The best place would probably be somewhere in rural Sudan, seeing as there are bound to be very isolated areas, and alcohol is not exactly halal.

In this experiment, you take four college-age males from the region in question and teach them to play beer pong.  But, alcohol is not used, nor is it even mentioned.  You show them how to play the game, sans the beer.  I can guarantee they would play one, maybe two games, and then be done with it.  And you can be pretty sure that the next weekend, when they're looking for something to do, they won't say "hey, let's play that game that those Americans showed us where you throw the ball into those empty cups."

Because when you take alcohol out of the equation, beer pong is pretty damn boring.  You're essentially giving yourself a reason to consume room temperature Natty Light and feel good about yourself while doing it.  People talk about it as though it were a sport, with the great comebacks they made or their astounding records.  But the fact is that the only reason it has any value is because it's getting you drunk.

The Artistically Defining Moment of Self-Doubt

If there was some sort of mojo I had as a writer, I feel I may have lost it.  The fact that I had to use "mojo" in that sentence, in fact, that whole first sentence and probably this one too, is evidence that my writing is much less like that found in the New Yorker and much more like that found in USA Today.  And I don't even put any visually enticing graphics up here, so this is basically as entertaining as a middle school class newspaper without the over-reliance on a thesaurus.

This is the kind of visually enticing graphic that separates The Ozone Shack from USA Today

Let's take a look at what I have done in the past few months:

1. Make the astute observation that the Eagles are kind of like a turkey sandwich with avocado
2. Rambled on about the future and how it will be exactly like every dystopian sci-fi movie ever
3. Produced some incoherent rambling about the philosophy of running
4. Talked about LOST for two posts more than was necessary
5. Changed the name of the site, for some reason
6. Acquired exactly one (1) more follower

Basically, as much as I hate to admit it, this has fallen into the category of "every crappy blog by some asshole on the internet that barely has a readership greater than one."  I would like to fix this, but, as you can probably tell, I am not very good at doing things, and especially not good at doing things well.  (It's true, I just sort of lie here in a pile of my own filth thinking "if I could move properly, then maybe my bedsores wouldn't be so infected right now.")  Incidentally, I'm not sure if I closed that parentheses right.  I have a quote and a parentheses and it's the end of a sentence, but it looks like some sort of weird smiley that looks like a combination of the face paint of Paul Stanley and Peter Criss from KISS, and whoever it is, they are very happy.  Maybe I haven't been learning what's important.  But I have learned that you should never put a gun in a story unless it's going to go off, as well as its corollary: never put a banana in a story unless someone is going to slip on the peel.

Maybe I'm like Dylan Thomas and I can only write well when I'm in a specific place.  Maybe more like Bob Dylan, who throws a lot of references together that kind of make sense grammatically and calls it profound.  Or maybe the part of my brain that writes well got swallowed up by some other important part of my brain like the responsibility lobe.  If said lobe is the culprit, however, it has yet to come online.  To compensate, I have been keeping my cell phone extra close to my crotch and standing in front of the microwave whenever possible in order to reduce my sperm count, because I am in no state to be siring any illegitimate children right now.  However, this is much more likely to cause a horrible mutant strain of bacteria or virus (or brain parasite!) which our immune systems will be horribly incapable of handling..  Even my best ideas suck.

I sort of have this desire to puke right now, and it's sort of a combination of despair, confusion, and a feeling of being useless.  But there's nothing I can do other than puke and keep going.  And this is not some sort of lame metaphor.  I really feel like I'm going to puke.  Like, despair puke.  I don't know if that's a term, but I want to puke out of despair.  I can't take Dramamine or Pepto-Bismol or ginger ale, I think I may have to let this thing run its course or somehow abandon this irrational lack of hope.  Jesus, I should at least turn the lights on.

Ladies, keep in mind however, that as much as I seem to talk about unpleasant physical maladies, I would also love to talk about your day.  Because I care.  I really do.

My content sucks, my readers are few, and my haircut makes me look like Ellen DeGeneres.  I can do two things well.  The first is make playlists and subsequently turn them into CDs which are like mix tapes used to be but pointless now because you can just skip between tracks and you don't even get the meaning, do you, you children of the robotocracy!  The second thing I'm good at is not getting lost, but that's not useful anymore either because iBorgs come equipped with GPS systems.  Seriously though, I participated in a study for the geography department looking at how people learn new spatial environments.  Apparently my numbers were off the charts.

So, if I wanted to make a blog that was say, useful, I could give directions to places and suggest ideas for mix tapes.  The first component would be just silly, since it's basically like a very limited version of MapQuest.  (MapQuest, this advertising space is yours for the taking.)  The second component would be equally silly, because let's face it, I like jazz.  I also like Zimbabwean Chimurenga music and Tuvan throat singing.  And Coheed.  Let's not forget the discrepancy between how I feel about Coheed and how most people feel about Coheed.

So, how am I going to get this waste of a domain name off the ground?  Edit: There were some more words in this paragraph, but google deemed them to be a violation of their policies that allow complete hegemony over the internet.  Said words have now been removed.  Does this make you happy, Google? You're already an evil totalitarian regime from the future, can't you at least let me try to be not broke?

I like being good at things, but I'm usually not good at anything.  For every time I hear "wow Nate, that was good," or "good job," I hear something along the lines of "what the hell were you thinking!" "here, let me do it, I can do a way better job," or "that's the worst idea since East Berlin" at least ten times.  I'll be honest though, these late-night, self deprecating posts are probably the most entertaining material I produce, simply because I think "hey, no one is going to read this so I can spend whole paragraphs exaggerating my uselessness and talking about how I miss my dead car that was actually a spaceship."

Come to think of it, I may not be entirely useless or boring.  I detected two gas leaks within a half hour of each other, passed out in an orchard, and got a ride from a tweaked out hippie and his mom.  This is a guy I met on a bus who runs a family marijuana farm and believes that aliens prevented the Cuban Missile Crisis from escalating any farther than it did.  He also gave me his home phone number.  I plan on visiting him on a road trip I am taking this summer.  All this while wearing an extremely classy hat.

Don't take rides from strangers.  Unless the strangers are these people.  These people are awesome!

I also got un-banned for life at a campus eating establishment, which is nice, and don't get a strange burning sensation in my right lung when I try to breathe.  I pulled off a fast of almost 96 hours and felt great the whole time, and topped it off with a pair of revelations during hour 75.  Now all I have to do is find out who shot JFK and I'll be golden.

And despite the optimistic turn this post is taking, I'll have to nip it in the bud here, because this is starting to sound like a lame personal blog, which it is most certainly not.  Welcome to the post-postmodern era, where a postmodern art form (ok, calling the blog an art form is a Gumby-esque stretch) is aware that it is art (again, using the term "art" loosely here).  And as of that last pointless parenthetical clause, the little man is very sad about the fact that he only has one eye.  Stupid internet.

Until next time, Earth.

Edit:  I puked. See if you can guess the color!

One for the Road

(If I ever make a title that lame again, please shoot me.)

How would I fare during the end of civilization?  This is a question I ask myself more often than is healthy, but after reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road for the third time, I found myself considering the question again.  I certainly don’t have the know-how that the man in The Road does.  I don’t know how to salvage usable things from wrecked automobiles or the best material to make foot wrappings out of.  My first reaction to a nuclear explosion most definitely wouldn’t be to fill up the bathtub for drinking water.  My first reaction would probably be more along the lines of “holy shit what are we going to do!!!”  I don’t even know the best way to kill myself with a flake of obsidian, or if I would even know where to get some obsidian in the first place.  I own no firearms and have no arsenal of canned food.  I don’t have much of a plan for holding out in a disaster or an invasion other than finding a place where I can stockpile staples and wait it out until, well I don’t really know, I doubt I would last more than six months.  I’m pretty useless in my manual skills and my physical abilities and my ability to fix things.  My stomach is so weak from growing up on purified water and antibiotic-fed meat that I would probably die of dysentery in the first month.  We’re overdue for a meteor or a plague. (Fortunately, nuclear war seems to be on the back burner at the moment.)  Which brings me to the question: why am I going to school, spending all my time studying and running?  I should probably be digging my bunker, stocking it with canned everything and acquiring a healthy arsenal of rifles, shotguns, and possibly even a flamethrower.

I know that if I were alive in the twilight of humanity, I would try to stick around as long as possible, even if there was no world to stay alive for.  And it would be awesome bragging rights to say that you were the last human alive, if only you had someone to brag to.

*          *          * 

The Road somehow pulled off an impressive feat: being popular, read and discussed in numerous circles, and also being a well written and significant work of literature.  It came out during my junior year of high school, and it felt like most of my friends read it.  I saw people reading it who I didn’t even think could read at all.  I remember a run I went on with my track team that turned into a sort of an impromptu book club, because almost every one of us had read The Road.  When certain people ventured forth some insight, my first reaction was to turn to them, stare in disbelief, and say “you, read a book?”  Looking back on it, I’m surprised I didn’t get punched in the face.

It’s certainly not a feel-good book, unlike most of the books that are popular these days.  It doesn’t tell us that we can control the universe with our minds, it isn’t an uplifting tale of overcoming one’s addiction problems, it isn’t a window into a fantastical world where a humble male protagonist with a heart of gold takes on evil, gets to fly around on a broom and go to high school in a castle, and hooks up with his best friend’s hot redhead sister.  But it’s not what we want to hear, it’s what we need to hear.  The Road was a miracle in a way, because it got people thinking – about mortality, about morality, about what they value.  Instead of an irrationally positive message or an overtly cynical outlook, The Road got people thinking about the hard truths of reality and what it means to persevere even though, yes, life does suck sometimes and you may have to scavenge for whatever nonperishable calories you can find in an earth whose biosphere has been completely destroyed while at the same time preserve your morals and faith in humanity despite the fact that what remains of humanity is actively trying to eat you.  And it doesn’t even matter what it got people thinking about, simply the fact that people were reading and thinking, and actively discussing those things is in and of itself something we need more of.  So thank you, Mr. McCarthy, for giving all of us a great common experience.  In this age, they are as few and far between as undiscovered canned goods on the road.