the Digital run on love

Had a wonderful evening, today. Got out of jazz early, took to the Dragon and went to Menards to buy a big tarp. I grabbed a tarp, then grabbed another one… it was bigger and heavy duty. Sounded like she would make a fine groundcloth for sleeping outside with rattlesnakes and scorpion squirrels in Utah. Got the tarp home, unfurled it in the living room, and was unable to get it back to its perfectly folded state. Since the tarp was bigger and heavy duty it translates to heavy and unwieldly in the backpacker world. Now I want a lighter, smaller tarp.

Never happy. Never, never, never. Well, to hell with it. You can never have enough tarps. If I’m going to start chopping wood instead of going to school, I’ll need to store them logs under something.

Went to Target and got a third set of batteries for my camera. I replaced the first batch over winter break, after my soul-catcher stopped functioning at Du Nord. They lasted less than a month, at which point I dropped the camera in an underground river laden with methane. It’s one of those intelligent point-and-shoot cameras that usually knows to close up shop and disablet the flash when not in use. The foul waters confounded the poor dear, and she was stuck on for a week until she dried out.

I took one picture. Then the batteries died. A brand-spankin’ new set of Super Duracell Lithium Alloy Ionic Bonding M2 Big Top Circus batteries. A new set would put me back ten bucks, and I was seriously tempted to sign off from 35mm permanently and get a $300 digital camera just to stick it to the battery companies. Digital cameras run on love, not batteries.

Nevertheless, I suckered into buying another pair. The camera works again, and I’m excited to see how this water-logged roll turns out. Maybe the pictures will look like the backside corneas of some tripped guy at a Grateful Dead concert. Maybe I have a holy magic camera that makes Michael Jackson appear in every frame.

Enough. It was a good evening. Driving back from Target I listened to Progressive Liberal radio on KUMD, where some ex-senator was preaching to an audience of agreeable clap-monkeys that the Democrats in the Senate should oppose the war against terrorism because its goals are unspecified and has continued too long with no justifiable progress, and is doing nothing but erroding civil rights. One mouthy individual likened their progressive position to that of Martin Luther King, Jr. Another tossed in hollow criticism of gas guzzling (oh, such an original and descriptive adjective) SUVs and proposed an ironic attack on Alaska to liberate its oil for American consumption.

The clap-monkeys ate every scrap and passed around bottles of rot gut Schapps.

I haven’t yelled at the radio that much since REV105 was replaced with heartless DJ robots.

Finally, I got home and played Command and Conquer Renegade online for three hours straight.

This day has been chock full of ideas. Dr. Seuss, hallways full of people on crutches, prostitutes purchased for a dollar (all calls up to 20 minutes are only 99 cents!), outfits made out of barrels, ass-kicking machines, juice boxes filled with vinegar and oil, saltines, breakaway coffee republics and The Mimic.

Did you know that later and alter only transpose two letters?