First: New photo gallery. Check out New Year’s Eve at Hoodoo. Relive the sweeping sensation that is sweeping the nation nationwide.

Second: Pardon the mess. Now that I can churn out web designs in a matter of hours, I’ll be constantly experimenting with new layouts and crap until I find something I like for more than ten seconds. I crack my fingers. I flex my muscles. I stretch my joints.

And then I fall asleep.

Brainside Out: All the ambition. None of the commitment. We’re like Coors for the Internet.

Which, speaking of, I’m currently drinking two beers at the same time. Such is the life of a rich man.

It’s been a strange winter, a truly huge winter. Not only is it already February, it’s past mid-February. I feel like I’ve been living the life of ten men, ten midget men that all live in a house together with a video camera crew and they interact to humorous consequences every Wednesday night at eight pm. At the same time, I feel tired, oh so tired, for which the only explanation I can muster is that I’m working a pseudo-infinite workweek. I say ‘pseudo’ because it often finds itself broken up with delightful episodes of things that in no way resemble work. Like today, where from 2:00 to 4:00 I was at the mountain, off the clock, in plainclothes, chewing down every untracked tree run I could find with a foot of fresh pow.

At the same time, given the fragmented nature of my existence, from Mountain to Bend to Lava House to Green Dragon to John Doe’s to Web Design to Taco Stand to Subaru, throughout my day I often feel like I just woke up. My graceful transition from one dream to another is anything but, and the colors from all facets of my being bleed into each other. This is as it should be, really, with everything cross-referential, but my brain seems to have difficulty hardwiring all the connections for consciousness.

There are mornings. When the air is just right you can taste the Pacific, and you know that means a gorgeous day in the mountains. There are other mornings, cold mornings where frost has brushed everything an ethereal hue, that shiver with the chill of a desert spring. You have spent time in the desert, not much time, and these mornings feel familiar. Sleeping out on a tarp you rolled over to see the first rays of sunlight strike the high cliffs in Zion, and through the veil of your breath you saw the valley glistening in crystal.

But these are the mornings that become familiar, while the other mornings remain locked in the mystery of dreams. You wake up after the bus ride to the mountain, do a mental count on the cars already in the parking lot to compute how busy today will be. You wake up again at lunch, and again hours later when the bus pulls into the park-n-ride in Bend. Sometimes you wake up enough in the evening to go out with friends, but usually you are sound asleep when you unlock the door to your house. And each time you fall asleep you enter a new world of dreams, each thick with its own thoughts and challenges and sensations, that is completely disconnected from the other dreams, the other worlds, the other lives.

Yet each dream, each life, shares a common thread; that in each you are seeking a common thread across all dreams, across all lives. You know of one, only one so far, and that is you, but you starve for more. You starve to strengthen the bonds across all worlds so you can make sense of them, twirl them about your fingers and laugh at the obvious.

But for now, all you do is sleep. Sleep and dream.

Fate is truly a mysterious beast, especially if you don’t believe in such a force. Nevertheless, it is apparent that despite our strident efforts to the contrary, sometimes things work themselves out under their own power in their own time. The concept of fate is born from that sensation that something else must be altering the path of your life, because damned if you’re controlling it yourself all the time. There’s a reason it doesn’t rain candy wherever I walk and I don’t own a spaceship yet and I can’t make the grocery store clerk fall in love with me, and whether this is fate or inevitability or the bondage of reality, it is definitely something that excedes my efforts.

But what is fate, really? Proof of a divine intelligence in the universe? A clumsy and superstitious way to shirk responsibility for our actions? A testament to the infinite adaptability of human will? I honestly have no idea, but I feel I’ve been at its beck and call for the last couple months.

In all honesty, I originally did not want to work at a ski resort this winter. When September rolled around I fired off resumes to the four corners of the world, trying to land myself a job at a web design firm. I sent out 23 resumes and didn’t get a single response. Not one. Still haven’t. My backup plan was to move back to a carefree life in Duluth, but driving 1,600 miles back home to a town that offered no gainful employment made little sense. As the dreams of living on Lake Superior slowly evaporated, I started chatting with Joe at the ol’ Bee Dub about working at a ski resort. The plan took hold and I started contacting mountains all across the Pacific Northwest and down in Utah.

People in Hood River questioned why I was casting wide when I could just get a job (or a season pass, for that matter) at Mount Hood. But I knew better. I knew I loved Hood River, loved that little town to death, but knew it would kill me if I tried to survive the winter. I got a cold response from Crystal Mountain, which had all but completed their hiring process, and never heard from anyone down in Utah, and I started to despair that perhaps it was going to be Hood River after all. That or flipping burgers in Duluth.

Then I made contact with Mount Bachelor, which took a strong liking to me for some reason. I’ll bet it was because I have a hot telephone voice that made the ladies quirl, but perhaps it was because I’m a rugged genius rockstar and they needed more of that. I told them I wanted to be a rental technician or lift operator or ticket attendant or marmot hunter, and they told me to swing down to their job fair in a couple weeks. They also told me to show up early just to make sure I got the job I was looking for, but given my qualifications (rugged, genius, rockstar) I was a definite shoe-in.

That morning I was willing to wake up at 5:30, but not 4:30, so by the time I dropped off the saddle of Mount Hood, blasted across the Warm Springs reservation and reached Bend I was a bit later than I had wanted. The road to Bachelor was not clearly marked, so I spent some time driving around lost in the Deschutes Wilderness until I ran across some stoned homeless fellows out camping. I gave them a ride down to the roundabout on Galveston (which, it’s a good thing I picked them up because I wasn’t sure I would be able to find my way back to downtown Bend without them), and finally swung by a coffee shop to ask directions.

I was close. I was real close. But I was way off. They told me which way to go and advised that I consult the bulletin boards at Ray’s Food Place to find a good place to live in Bend. I thanked them graciously and bid farewell as I hit the gorgeous road that wound up to Mount Bachelor. Or Bachelor Butte. Or Mount Flatchelor. Depending on who you are.

The lodge was filled to the brim with other rugged hopefuls, and I had to wait half an hour to get an interview. Then I had to wait three hours to get another interview. I finally got settled down with the higher echelons at about 2:00, by which time all the positions I was applying for had filled up. Not only had they filled up, but they had filled filled up, in that they had already taken on all the highly qualified extras they were willing to take. The mountain was bursting at its seams with skill and enlightenment and I began to despair. Always with the despair.

But Deb, bless her heart, did some running around, pulled a bunch of strings, and got me an interview with the managers of ski school. All the managers of ski school. At the same time. The five of them sat me down and grilled me for fifteen minutes about my teaching abilities and snowboarding abilities and classroom management abilities, and by sheer clarity of thought and eloquence of tongue (coupled with bad-ass skillz as a windsurfing director, senior counselor and international super-genius) I was able to weasle my way into their hearts. They said to come back mid-November for the hiring clinic, and I floated outside to meet the Three Sisters dressed in blinding sunshine. Bliss, yo. Absolute bliss.

Three weeks later the Green Dragon was loaded up and I drove to Bend in a snowstorm to move into Lava House, a wonderful downtown abode that I would never have discovered without the Ray’s Food Place bulletin board. What followed were two weeks of intense teaching clinics that did not guarantee my employment at the Mountain. The ranks of eager snowboard instructors were thinned, the weak were torn apart by wolves, and I was proud to be a member of the elite crew that survived the carnage.

However, for how wonderful snowboarding every day is, and though I recommend that every person take a moment in their busy life to live such a dream, such a lifestyle is not conducive to paying bills. And for an eager fan of capitalism that believes heavily in personal responsibility, not-work can put an indefinable strain on the psyche. Thus, like most of my comrades I began searching for evening part-time employment to supplement my time at the mountain. Some of us found work at pizza joints. Others ended up at a shack of radios. Still more peddled drugs from behind a plastic window. I applied at bookstores and cafes, but everyone had already completed their holiday hiring and were no longer interested in ski bums.

That great motivator Despair dropped in again. I rode my snowfoot eel for the sheer pleasure of it all, and to keep my mind off the rest of it all. In my weakest moments I considered going to grad school. Then I ran across an ad for a web support specialist in the Bend newspaper. By the looks of their ad and website it was a spam house, and I wanted in. Their online job application was eight pages long, which I felt was a bit excessive for a spam house. By the time I was half done with the thing I was getting really frustrated, because whatever lame script they were using in their forms disabled the delete key in Opera.

I started skipping answers. When I didn’t skip an answer I put down harsh words. Later I would speak to other job applicants, who were concerned that they wouldn’t get the job because when asked to document the process of building a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, they forgot to put the two pieces of bread together. I held my tongue, because I knew my answer to that question had been a slew of curse words I was unable to delete. I chocked it all up to the bottomless pit of job applications and went about my bum life.

For the first time in years, a prospective employer called me. Less than a month later I was working as a snowboard instructor by day, and a super-secret web support specialist (aka high-powered web designer, aka master of the universe) by night. I went from working only on the weekends, to the exhausting holiday work marathon at the Mountain, to the 8-6 mayhem of an internet start-up, to a dizzying combination of both. I’ve had two days off since December 30th. My last two day weekend was before Christmas. Now we stand at the cusp of what, Valentine’s Day? Friday the 13th? After this it’s St. Patty’s, then Easter, then Mother’s Day, and right around then it’ll be one official year of Oregonasms.

And really, even with all the work, I couldn’t be happier. Work is never an end in itself, of course, but when you enjoy what you’re doing as much as I do, churning out beautiful web pages for cities or baked goods or airlines, and then taking photos of your students at the summit of the Mountain, what is there to complain about?

Well. Cats, single life, poisoned peppers, bills, housing costs, designing on spec, favorite CDs in decay, insufficient power in mark-up and non-programming languages, 45 minute waits on reboot, a pinch in your instep, concussions, broken feet and persistent bowling injuries.

But ’tis topics for another evening. I think I’ll go out and buy a Subaru.

Remember this? Three years ago yesterday we were here. Three years ago I asked Peter how to access my UMD web account, grabbed a copy of Adobe GoLive and swore for a week straight. I enjoyed the vocal liberation and anti-social practices of web design so much I stuck with it. As evidenced by recent photo galleries, the last few weeks have seen heavy experimentation with CSS design and moldy vegetables, so I thought I’d push the trend and see if I could recreate former incantations of Brainside Out.

Brainside Out. Dane’s Bored. Cromlech. By any other name, it’s still like flapjacks for the insane.

But where have we really been? To answer that question we really have to look at where we were. It was January 2001, my sophomore year in college, and I was outside Goldfine Apartments in the cold taking a smoke break with a drunk Jesse. I was still a jazz major at the time, and my friend was lecturing me on how I had really good talent, lots of talent, maybe more talent than I had when I was a sophomore, but you need to focus more, Dane. If you really want to become a better musician, and I mean really want to get better, want it so bad you can taste it… you’re gonna have to put in the time. Get in that practice room. Play until it bleeds. You could be damn good, fucking good, man. You just need to stop fooling around and find that grindstone.

It was typical Friday night drunk banter, but it caught me right under the ribs. Suddenly I was questioning myself, questioning the path I was taking. I had decided to become a music major my junior year in high school, after an epic week of skipping class and gigging almost every single day. It was an intense week, but it had a visceral life that was completely intoxicating.

I remember one concert that week, at the Hamline jazz festival, where I stood up to tear through my solo on Sausalito Strut. A smarmy kid sitting in the front row of the audience leaned over and whispered something to his pimply friend. They both shook with laughter and I felt my blood boil. I was convinced that they were laughing at me, cutting me down, talking about how could a kid that short, that puny, possibly play baritone sax worth a shit? I clenched my eyes and channeled every ounce of my soul out the end of that horn, and before I knew it my solo was over and the entire auditorium was going nuts.

I sat down panting. What the hell just happened? I asked myself, even though I knew the answer. I had found it. I found what I was looking for. I found what every human scratching around on this big old earth is looking for. A reason. A purpose. A calling. From then on everyone else could scurry about their petty random lives, but I knew what I had to do for eternity. Music let me channel the white-hot soul from my body in such great waves that it was the only thing keeping me from bursting into flames. It was either this or burn to death.

People would ask me what I wanted to do with my life, and though it was so clear to me I always fudged the explanation. Some quasi-sophisticate answer about changing people’s lives with music, touring with a band, playing saxophone, dancing with pyrotechnics, throwing concerts on a lake where the audience is all in canoes… I never had a word for it until I met a friend in college who was so passionate and unapologetic about his desires that he summed it up in one word:

Rockstar.

While I was busy finding elaborate justifications for my need to study music, Chris Fahey had a singular explanation. He wanted to be a rockstar. Nay, he was a rockstar; he just needed to make sure the whole world knew it as well as he did. And slowly I began to realize that what I wanted to breathe eternal wasn’t jazz, wasn’t the saxophone, wasn’t 20th century atonal fugues, but the life of a rockstar. I wanted dark stages and bright lights and screaming fans and roadies and bad tour food and late nights and hard drugs. I wanted the glitz and glamour and intensity of a life on the road.

And then suddenly, in the course of one drunken conversation, I realized that this wasn’t all I wanted. Or if it was what I wanted, I was no longer willing to subject myself to the punishment necessary to reach it. In my maniacal dedication to music I had to forsake all my other interests in life. To remain focused and competitive I had to treat any non-musical activity as a distraction at best, a complete waste of time at worst. Had I stuck with music at the demanded intensity, my life would have had no time for learning to snowboard, no time for working at summer camp, no time for living in Hood River and no time for teaching little grommets how to ride the snowfoot eel.

After that fateful Friday night, I spent the weekend digesting every nook and cranny of Lileks.com. In F403 Stadium Apartment I laughed my ass off for hours on end, much to the stifled annoyance of my cowboy, surfer and Hong Kong roommates. Lucky for them I moved downstairs to the swingin’ bachelor pad of E101, which was ripe with a bloodthirsty capitalist, a mad-scientist libertarian and a snowmobile artist who always wondered, “Was she dripping?”

It was in this rich soil, the rich, orange carpet soil of E101, where I threw down the roots for a complete redistribution of my efforts. In the same week that I moved downstairs I started teaching myself how to write Engrish and build websites, and soon thereafter I changed my major to what would become Interdisciplinary Studies – New Media Writing. Had I not chilled out on the music bong I would have had no time to learn how to write, and certainly no time to teach myself web design. Three years ago, had I not slackened the grip on my neck to let myself breathe again, there would have been no writings, no news reporting, no humor columns. Certainly there would be no weblog, no photo galleries, and no Brainside Out to speak of.

But then, there was. And there is.

It is with my great pleasure that I introduce to you all, for the second time ever, Cromlech version 0.009.