I went home for Thanksgiving this year. I didn’t go last year. Speaking with my Dad last year he said, “I know sometimes you want to get together with your friends…”. I hadn’t missed a Thanksgiving in the last fourteen years I’ve been living here so I had no idea what he was talking about. But I took advantage of it anyway, and didn’t have to deal with the travel hassle of a quick trip. But this year I decided to go, since I hadn’t seen many relatives since February and I think Christmas is going to be a little “off” this year as my brother and his family will be going to visit my sister-in-law’s in New York state.

It turned out that renting a Zipcar was just as expensive as taking the train down to my Dad’s so I chose that option, which would give me greater flexibility about traveling times and definitely less stress about getting to a train station twice. I scheduled a 24-hour reservation, leaving Wednesday evening and coming back on Thursday, after the feast.

Since all Zipcars (thankfully) have iPod adapters now I was able to leave the seemingly-archaic CDs at home and just take my iPhone and play music from there. I put on Arcadia’s So Red The Rose and headed south, reminding me of those Friday nights headed to Badlands cranking the tape (EMI Catalog: 42148) so many years ago. It still sounded good loud, exhibiting its many nuances.

Upon arriving it’s the requisite sit-in-the-living-room-watching-History-Channel stuff, and then when it gets close to 9:00 I ask “Can you switch it over to Channel 5 so we can watch Glee?”. Well. About ten minutes into it my brother (my oldest brother) says “This would be a great show if they would stop singing.” Um, yeah, I think that’s kind of the point. He gets up and leaves and then my Dad, instead of watching the show with me, starts reading a road atlas.

Fast forward. It’s about 2:00am and after going to bed and listening to some music I decide it’s actually time to go to sleep but I toss and turn until almost daybreak. Looking back I think I was dozing in and out of consciousness but at the time it seemed like I was just laying there, awake.

At times the dim light coming through the cracked bedroom door would appear to turn red like a laser beam, but only in its color not in its concentration. Then it would cloud and flicker back to a warm dim yellow which seemed more natural.

Then, and I don’t know if I dreamed this or imagined it and whether it actually happened, I felt something, a cloudy presence, off to the right of my eye. It was a form, but not a recognizable form, that slowly changed and flowed as if smoke from a cigarette was contained in a glass sphere, swirling around and around but not dissipating. Was this the ghost or spirit of my mother, who had died in the bedroom down the hall two-and-a-half years ago? Maybe I was groggy and frustrated from not being able to attain sleep. Regardless, I looked at it for a while and said “Hi Mom, I love you.” and immediately fell asleep.

The next thing I remember is waking up a few hours later and hearing my dad in the kitchen making coffee. The remainder of the day would be filled with having my five-year-old niece read a story about Pilgrims to me, getting kisses from my nephew and catching up with aunts, uncles, cousins and their children and grandparents. There was a lot of family love there, I could feel it.

Today on their website Duran Duran announced an all-encompassing repackaging of Arcadia’s 1985 So Red The Rose, arguably the best Duran Duran album never made. Nick Rhodes had hinted towards this release several months ago and I was eager to see if it would come to see the light.

History: Arcadia was one of the DD splinter groups in 1985, at the height of their fame, being comprised of Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes and Roger Taylor. The other remaining DD members joined up with Robert Palmer and Tony Thompson to form Power Station.

This re-release includes the original album as-is and all 20 remixes of the five released singles from the album, plus the soundtrack-only rarity “Say The Word”. Also included is the über-rare long form version of “Rose Arcana”. The shorter (0:51) version, according to legend, ended up on the original lease due to length of tape and vinyl allowed to be released at that time. I don’t know if that is necessarily true, but it does make for good folklore. Also included are all five videos and making-of documentaries for each video.

This project would also mark the last use of graphic designer Malcolm Garrett of Assorted Images for any of their packaging or branding related efforts.

Just for kicks, here’s video of 80s stalwart Max Headroom giving Simon and Nick a hard time:

From the Duran Duran press release, the complete track listing for the re-release is below:

Read the rest of this entry »

These items were found in my wallet:

• TriMet bus transfer (from Portland, Oregon)
• DC Metrorail receipt for $4.00 purchased on 11/19/09 at 22:47:13 at 7th & S St, NW (Shaw/Howard University stop)
• Wetzel’s Pretzels Frequent Buyer Card, punched six times therefore receiving a free pretzel (free spot also punched)
• Handwritten banking routing numbers and account numbers, which after a quick search, point to Bank of America routing numbers.

How did these items get into my wallet you ask? I’m not really sure, as I’ve never been to Portland, don’t get receipts for Metro tickets (much less buy one for only $4.00) and don’t even know what a Wetzel’s Pretzels shop is. Another search reveals there are no shops in DC. Then I remembered the other night at the movies,making my way through the concession line when someone said I had dropped something out of the my wallet and I gathered up the pieces of paper on the floor and shoved them into my wallet. It turns out, they weren’t really mine. Maybe I had dropped a receipt of sorts and it fell upon these already lost pieces of information and I hastily scooped everything up without even looking at what it was.

After looking out the window every five minutes this afternoon a Lego shipment finally arrived and I immediately built this sculpture.

Yep, that’s it. It’s a thrill-a-minute around here. Yawn.

They say not to let your work life define you, except here in The District that’s what we do. It’s always the 2nd question asked when meeting someone. “What do you do?” Earlier in 2009 I used to answer this question with a professional title associated with what I’ve been trained to do for the past twenty years but sometimes I answer it with “Nothing” because that’s literally what I’m doing right now. So if work defines us and one doesn’t work, you can do the math.

Today since the weather was nice I went to the grocery store. Big whoop. I did this because basically I had run out of sugar for my morning coffee. Creamer I can do without but sugar, no. So I went. This was the first time I’ve walked there since the weather turned cooler and it instantly reminded me all those cold forays (sometimes at the break of dawn) to the store nine or ten months ago. Thankfully it’s not that cold yet. But it will be soon enough.

It’s funny the familiar people you see in a grocery store mid-afternoon on a Tuesday. Familiar people that you’ve seen at the gym, a local restaurant or bar, the bus. And you wonder why they’re there at that particular time. Did they call in sick? Is this their lunch break? Do they work nights? Are they using an EBT Card?

My favorite checkout employee wasn’t working. Out of chance (or fate) I was always in her line when I first started using my EBT when I was unfamiliar with the process. She always very discreet when she would need to explain to me something paying extra (for non-consumables) or alerting me to when coupons expire. I’ve helped her grab items off the top shelf that she couldn’t reach while she was doing her own shopping. Maybe she recognized me and that’s why she asked, or maybe I was just the tallest, closest person.

So that’s what I did today. Oh, and then I went to the gym. And then I came home and made a sandwich for dinner. Then I went to bed.

Purchase: $37.18
EBT Card Balance: $240.49
Club Card Savings: $1.69

I see now I was charged $3.79 for a stuffing mix that should have been $1.50. Sigh.

Rattle, of The Twins™, gone two years today. Rattle is in the background.

Hum, of The Twins™, gone three years today. Hum is in the foreground.

Can you see how frequently I’m writing here? Answer: not very. Or at least that’s how it seems to me. With nothing going on to really write about, except resume sending-out and that can get pretty dull real quickly, well, there’s nothing to really write about.

A blogger friend I mostly keep in touch with through Twitter started mentioning the hashtag #NaNoWriMo. I clicked on it and saw that others were tagging it at as well but I couldn’t figure out what it was by their tweets. A quick google search provided the answer I was looking for.

Did you know that November is National Novel Writing Month? Well it is. Look it up. It’s an online project where writers “feverishly” pound out a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. That’s 1,666 words a day. The outlook on it is not to edit and not to think about it too much. Just write. They even say “it’s about quantity, not quality.” So while it’s not supposed to be stream of consciousness (although I guess it could be) the idea is to write without knowing where your characters are going, but for you to keep going with the writing.

In 2008 5% of the 119,000 who entered finished the lofty goal of 50,000 words. Seeing as how I started already a day behind (November 2) I really doubt I will finish successfully. 1,666 words a day, every day, is a lot of tappity-tapping. We’ll see how it goes. If I can finish with 20,000 words I think that would even be an accomplishment. I’ll post a downloadable pdf once it’s complete and you can read the missing plot and lack of character arcs for yourself.

So, to recap:

What: Writing one 50,000-word novel from scratch in a month’s time.

Who: You! We can’t do this unless we have some other people trying it as well. Let’s write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together.

Why: The reasons are endless! To actively participate in one of our era’s most enchanting art forms! To write without having to obsess over quality. To be able to make obscure references to passages from our novels at parties. To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work.

When: You can sign up anytime to add your name to the roster and browse the forums. Writing begins November 1. To be added to the official list of winners, you must reach the 50,000-word mark by November 30 at midnight. Once your novel has been verified by our web-based team of robotic word counters, the partying begins.

If you’d like to join the madness yourself, please link your author name to “futurejunkie” so I can see how far behind you are as well.