a new job! and chapter 2 of the grandpa interview

hooray! the roommate gets to become a cube-rat again (i.e., a cubicle dweller). after a month of applications and interviews, he landed a job with a computery company in pioneer square. whoohooo!

and now, since allison was so demanding, i'll continue with the next segment of my interview with grandpa:
ii. grandpa's dad the technophile

helpful links that may clarify today's audio file:
something like grandpa's route to church
the only car in the neighborhood


andrew david. "hello from caracol" caracol, belize.

salvaged tunes

many mp3s perished in yesterday's purge, but today was a time of musical salvation. i was preparing to trash most of aqualung's strange and beautiful album; the tracks were rated 1s, 2s, and 3s, and seemed unlikely candidates for survival. but then something peculiar happened. i gave them a second listen and was pleasantly surprised--i may like this aqualung fellow! perhaps my tastes are changing....

that's all.

andrew david. "a strange plant that you mistake for a weed and then learn to love." san ignacio town, belize.

big events in the real world

for once i feel legitimately vindicated in my 17 point scale absence. since we last spoke, my world has exploded. by world, i mean my friends, my teams, and myself, and by explode, i mean that the last two weeks have been crazy ridiculous.

my friends

1. alex got married and headed off on his honeymoon
2. sean finally left on his honeymoon
   
3. my roommate got laid off
   
4. beth and her roommates got a tentative eviction notice
5. the other andrew and some of beth's roommates (i.e., whitney and nora) confirmed that they were beginning new life adventures in sunny california while others (i.e., joel & sara, mari, my parents) set off or prepared to set off for trips to china
   

my teams

1. the sonics drafted kevin durant and jeff green and signed wally szcerbiak, delonte west, general manager sam presti, and coach pj carlesimo
2. the sonics traded ray allen and rashard lewis
3. the muckleshoot indian tribe is considering the possibility of the construction of a new sonics arena
   
4. the mariners are still winning, and at 50-36 are only 2 games out of 1st place in the west and 1 game out of 1st place in the wild card race
5. after jj putz and ichiro, a pair of sports bloggers may be the leading MVPs for the mariners this year; perhaps i'll explain more later
   
6. the others, my amazing soccer team, are 0-3 with an ever climbing goal differential and potential for success

myself

1. i finished the text for the first issue of that silly newsletter that i mentioned a few months; i'll post a link when it's all fine and dandified
2. i spent the last week or so in ocean shores with the s.o., her family, and my family; it was the first meeting of the two clans
3. i have a new job! i am the assistant creative writing editor for the other journal; i'll explain more later
   

if life slows down and gets ordinary again, i'll be sure to visit more frequently.

andrew david. "the wize young iguana listens patiently to andrew's list" san ignacio town, belize.

back page: the master and margarita

x.
the master and margarita by mikhail bulgakov
translated by michael glenny

4/12/07
some masterpiece--this book stinks. the master and margarita was the worst experience of my recent trip to belize. its fantastical plot reminds me of some of the tales my buddy adam and i wrote in junior high. its funky, disjointed style reminds me of chesterton's the man who was thursday. and its ceaseless chaotic pouncing of immortal crazies on squeamish muscovites reminds me of the sadistic violence of tom and jerry with a slice of greek mythology. i'd like to blame this mess on the translator, but some parts of the book were actually rather good. if you choose to read this book, skip to the creative retellings of the life of jesus, judas, and pilate.

3 out of 17

i should mention that (1) the critics love this book, (2) rebecca the internationally-minded legal counselor-in-training loves this book, and (3) if you don't mind messy senseless plots, people say there's a meaningful satire here.


andrew david. "the wise mennonite grinds the master and margarita into the hard grassy slope." san ignacio town, belize.

blog to do list

1. change the red font to something more readable
2. find a way to capitalize (i.e., make money) on the 10-50 hits that i get each day for blue scholars lyrics
3. decide whether i want to change the random nature of the blog. that is, i generally post on whatever topic strikes my fancy, which tends to include a lot of off-the-wall reflection, but perhaps i should narrow my focus. over the last month or two, i've hit a serious dry spell as far as creative writing and insight are concerned, and i feel like i'm letting my dwindling readership down with the substandard fare that i post instead. therefore, i'm considering limiting the content of the blog to ratings and reviews. if i make this change, the frequency of posts may decrease slightly or stay about the same as the current rate.

andrew david. "the posing problem" san ignacio town, belize. this man was busily building a shoe, but when i asked him if i could take his picture, he stopped, said yes, and stared. he didn't return to work again until i left.

the reason i didn't blog tonight

i'm getting tired of looking at that last post every time i boot up the internet, so i thought i'd shoo it further down the page by writing a sentence or two about why i'm not writing:

1. first, i toured alex's new house and ate at his neighborhood BBQ joint. fans of the blog might remember alex because of his vast collection of music (somewhere between 3,800 and 4,016 songs) which i nabbed and subsequently rated. during our afternoon chat i was shocked to learn two things: (a) alex is renting his two-bedroom ballard house for an insane $600 a month and (b) because of financial problems (i.e., working as a mars hill intern, having an upcoming wedding this month, and being alex), he is no able to keep current with the indie music scene. still, he let me borrow the shins' latest album.
   
2. i'm breezing through dick staub's the culturally savvy christian: a manifesto for deepening faith and enriching popular culture in an age of christinaity-lite, the next book that i've been asked to review for imageupdate. i have to finish skimming the book and writing a one-paragraph blurb by thursday morning.

andrew david. "conversations in spanish I: but what if he's this tall? can he still ride the octopus? yes, sir, it is right over there, in the field." san ignacio town, belize.

some of the others in a live concert at the green bean

that's right, my new band, some of the others, will be performing at the green bean open-mic night on wednesday. we're a cover band that focuses exclusively on sufjan stevens classics. more particularly, we have trained our euphonic sights on chicago, one of the singles from come on, feel the illinoise (check out track #9). some day we may broaden our repetoire to include other sufjan songs and perhaps even some muse but in the meantime, our guitarist, trombonist, accordionist, violinist, marimba-ist, vocalists, and pianists make chicago a spectacle that is more than worth the drive (or flight).

we'll be playing sometime after 9pm. incidentally, the green bean is greenwood's favorite non-profit coffee shop. you can find it next door to the tap root theater at 210 n 85th st. also, some of the others is a name that i coined just now, so don't be surprised if mari (our illustrious leader) introduces us by some other name (e.g., sufvan stejens) at the show. (some of the others seemed an apt name because the band consists of some of the players from our soccer team, the others, and then some others.)

for those of you who are very ill and can't make it to our second debut, i hope to have some bootleg youtube footage for you in the next few days.

the s.o. "contemplating the d-c-g sequence of chicago." cahal pech, san ignacio town, belize.

added some films to the scale

i spent today's blogging time adding films to the rankings on the left panel. until this evening, the list only included films that i'd seen since july or august of 2006. however, because the list makes no mention of this exclusivity and because i can't quite recall which month i started this tally, it seems a bit silly to ignore other films that have been discussed on this blog. here are the new additions to the 17 point scale film ranks (and as is my custom, comments to the right of the hyphens indicate why one might choose to forego the film, and the exclamation marks indicate that the link will take you to something i've written about the film)

15.good night and good luck - in black and white
14.magnolia - foul-mouthed, violent, abusive ch's !
13.united 93 - somber yet poignant !
13.crash - profane, violent; lacks subtlety !
12.sophie scholl:final days - like a german tv movie !
12.l'enfant - slow, awkward, in french !
11.the son - slow, awkward, in french !
11.searching for the wrong-eyed jesus - quirky !
10.the storekeeper - short, silent
10.munich - long, too many kettles boiling !
10.brokeback mtn - long; mostly hype !
09.tsotsi - gaps in ch. developm; poorly translated !
09.dandelion - awkward, disjointed, and strange !
07.v for vendetta - worse than i expected
07.the da vinci code - crammed, silly, wrong !
05.new world - boring, cliche (sorry jeff) !

soon, i hope to share with you my opinion of blades of glory, the last king of scotland, and the queen.

andrew david. "tree of life." cahal pech ruins, san ignacio town, belize.

i suck at debating

this afternoon i joined an LDS member, a priestess of light, an ethnic catholic, and an agnostic in a passionate discussion of mormonism. at one point in the conversation, the priestess of light tried to convince everyone that mormonism and catholicism were more closely related than protestantism and catholicism because both faiths claim apostolic succession. despite a bag of facts, i couldn't seem to sway the priestess. thus, it is no surprise that when the debate got more controversial--i was arguing that mormons are not christians--i failed again. it took a dozen hand scratched diagrams before i could even convince my crowd that protestants, catholics, and orthodoxers fell under the same religious umbrella.

my inability to argue effectively isn't a new discovery. i have always had trouble pulling rhetoric from my brain without first thinking, thinking, and thinking some more. however, until yesterday, i was functioning under the false belief that, thank God, i could at least hold my own in a written debate. and then i posted in the controversial subject section of the grammar forum. ooooh boy, was it a disaster.

[i'll finish the 3-part post next time--i first had to confess my inadequacy in these logic wars]

andrew david. "belikin, the belizean hometown brew & a possible explanation for my sucky debate skills?" san ignacio town, belize.

ps. i may have the priestess of light's title wrong. i think she's also a druid.

dreams 2

[today's post is continued from yesterday's post in which i recounted 1.3 of my prophetic dreams and speculated about their cause.]

it was the last time that i ever saw the man: i watched him place the $5 million check a safe distance from the wreck and then return to the van. as a storyteller, i'll admit, this feels like an unpleasant way to leave the fellow; he should peel from the parking lot in a cloud of exhaust or shrink into the fabric of his grey tweed coat, a concrete chameleon, a certain spectre of some malovent surreptious secret. but, no, he walked at a rather ordinary pace to the rather ordinary van and i saw him no more.

instead, my dream suddenly exploded in a brilliant splash of colors. razzle dazzle rose, torch red, laser lemon, jungle green--a crayola parade of twirling octagons. apparently, i was surrounded by a throng of umbrella wielding shoppers returning to their cars, each peopling the drab lot with her own customized color. it dawned on me then that i didn't have an umbrella of my own, so i started walking purposefully toward the mall (yes, this is a remarkable dream). near the entrance, i saw a crowd, some tables, and an overhead banner proclaiming UMBRELLAS FOR THE POOR, A NONPROFIT. ah hah.

it was quite a spectacle; volunteers were busily attempting to distribute their wares to the hundreds of needy shoppers. as i watched, i gathered that the number of umbrellas was running low. it was nearing closing time. and then i noticed my college buddy brady hatfield off to one side, listening intently to a bespectacled volunteer in a red pant suit. she looked worried.

i worked my way toward the pair and greeted brady with a smile. he motioned me toward the woman.

"--carol, this is my friend andrew."

"yes, well, hello." then back to business. "after that, right, she asked me to watch him. she said she'd be right back. something about her keys or front door or i don't know." as she spoke, the woman brought a finger up to her cheek and absently performed tiny figure-eights.

"and i didn't have time to--" over the chaotic sounds of mass charity, an infant's screams momentarily interrupted the woman, but she continued. "she just left."

brady sprung into action. he gently removed the shrieking puddle of fat and face from the car seat and secured the boy in a burly-looking mountaineering pack that just happened to be waiting on the ground. "don't worry," said brady, "we'll find the mother."

unfortunately, that's where the dream ends--i awoke before discovering the baby's fate. however, that afternoon, i received an important phone call, and the prophecy was revealed....

[stay tuned for the final prophetic dream post]

andrew david. "a little girl with some flowers." san ignacio town, belize

dreams

[programming note: it's not wednesday, but i've decided to post a little something tonight anyway. also, my travel writing experiment is turning out to be a flop, so i may return to regular blogging again soon. we'll see....]

for my trip to belize, doctor wendy prescribed chloroquine. "don't worry," she said, "this isn't the one that gives you crazy dreams or makes you monster-sick." indeed, there are several ways to kill the malaria bug and chloroquine's side effects are rather tame. it's malaria med cousin is a bit more interesting however: travelers taking mefloquine complain of the usual aches and pains--headaches, nausea, dizziness--and then some more interesting symptoms like vivid dreams and visual disturbances.

i picked up my chloroquine at bartell's pharmacy on march 24th and have been taking the pills every saturday since. they taste rather nasty, but i didn't experienced anything too alarming until late last week. that's when i started having crazy dreams.

okay, in of itself, crazy dreams really aren't that uncharacteristic for the typical andrew evening; my memory and imagination have collaborated on some rather bizarre late night escapades. but this is new: my dreams are prophetic.

the first visitation of the future occurred last wednesday night. i was dreaming of a hotel in belize when some friends from spokane appeared in the lobby. "what are brady and alisha doing in belize?" i wondered. before i could inquire further, i learned that the hotel's staircase terminated about a flight and a half short of their room. this was particularly awkward because alisha was pregnant (and this wasn't one of my office mate james's flying dreams). after clamoring up onto the hotel's roof and trying to find an alternate entrance to their room (you know, ancient apostle-style), i awoke.

no, i didn't climb my way to work the next morning, but there's a surprise embedded in that little adventure. but before i explain, let me recount thurday's dream. i'll warn you though, my newly discovered talent for divination is in no way correlated with an improved sense of timing. that is, i'm not about to interfere with this vision i've been granted, and although much of the dream may seem irrelevant, there's no way i'm skipping to the end.

my recollection of the dream begins with me sitting in the passenger seat of a nondescript white van, watching as the driver, a heavy-set bald man, scanned his mirrors, pulled into the parking lot arterial, and then attempted to repark in the neighboring space. i say attempted because the space was already occupied--my driver didn't seem to care. he pressed the gas and gunned our big white beast through the rear bumper of the unfortunate subaru. with a chuckle, he jumped from his seat and tossed me a can of lighter fluid. as flames reflected off the walls and cars and puddles of that concrete jungle, we admired our handiwork. the man happily quipped about the surprise of the owner when he or she stumbled from the mall into the presence of their smoking car-cass. he then wiped the grime from his hands and reached into his sports coat.

"how does five million sound?" he asked. he nodded to himself, scrawled a figure in his ledger, and dismissed me with a wave. as i walked toward the mall, i turned to watch him stuff a check in a bright green envelope. he placed the envelope a safe distance from the smouldering wreck and returned to the van.

[i foretell that this post will be continued in the future, perhaps tomorrow....]

[disclaimer: this is creative nonfiction with the emphasis on creative--i may be overplaying my response to these dreams just a tiny bit.]

andrew david. "traveling by van" the highway from belize city to san ignacio town, belize.

greetings from belize

hi, everyone.

we have internet access at our house here in san pedro, so i figured i'd say hello. i don't tend to use the 17 point scale as a diary or travelogue, so i'm not sure what more to say. perhaps a list will do. belize is warm; humid; lush; sandy; formerly british; trilingual; friendly (yet a thousand years removed from those violent mayans a la gibson); well populated by meat dishes like pork chops and shrimp; regulated by "sleeping policemen" (i.e., speed bumps); and rather colourful. it's also a great place for relaxing (e.g., beach and poolside lounging) and adventuring (e.g., summiting mayan ruins, spelunking, evading backcountry armed robbers). maybe if i get ambitious, i'll try my hand at another travel essay, but i doubt it. in the meantime, here's a trio of pictures from DAY 1:

andrew david "freshly squeezed ojay" and "three chairs" cahal pech resort, san ignacio town, belize.


andrew david. "the steps to death" cahal pech ruins, san ignacio town, belize.