the world has turned and left me here

gnarled hoodoos

It was a day of pun and hiking Saturday when the interns drove up to Sedona. Here is the Fellowship before 6 of us set out to hike Bear Mountain.

From left to right: Jen, Scott K., Lindsay, Nathaniel, Yours Truly, Scott M., and Ben. Not shown here is Tanya (behind the camera) but we wouldn't wanna leave her out--here she is earning the Jen-given nick of "Miss Attitude" after I turned the camera around on her.

Our travel guide on the expedition was a book written by local hiker Cosmic Ray, who despite his name gives straight advice. According to Cosmic hikers of Bear Mountain should look out for "stunning views of gnarled hoodoos," and advises the reader to "surrender to your imagination." So that's what we did. There were probably more "gnarled hoodoo" jokes than actual hoodoos themselves.

Here's the Scotts standing in front of a particularly gnarled one. (Why, what did you think a hoodoo was, oh beloved but dirty-minded reader?)

Wordplay wasn't confined to the subject of hoodoos, however, and in fact covered a broad range of more and less perverse topics. Among other things we decided that that a Kraft single should be termed a "chee," to denote it from the plural of several Kraft singles, "cheese." Here Ben, the trip's designated joker, has a good laugh during a break.

Along the way we came across quite a few cairns (so many that we stopped cairning, another pun we beat to bloody death). Too many in fact--they were misleading in places. Here is a retardedly large one. Somehow after this picture was taken Scott M. managed to stack 4 more on top, just to insure it really stands the test of time.

There was also some cool flora, like these tinsel flowers.

And check out this raging yucca in bloom.

It was a good 4 hour hike, even though the top was a bit of a letdown. The day was extremely hot and we all got quite a workout. Here we are afterwards (Lindsay's taking this one).

Finally here's some eye candy from some of those stunning views.

delight

Delight is laughing at perfection like a kid. You can't help it. It's me trying to paint in watercolors when I was six and getting frustrated and then Dad sitting down and quietly painting this perfect self-portrait next to me, a little watercolor Dad in a beard and red shirt, and me watching over his shoulder, laughing because he was so good I almost couldn't believe it. Or watching the rock-climber Diane do an overhang climb so smoothly it looks effortless. Or reading about this famous hack wherein two processes, named Robin Hood and Friar Tuck, resurrect each other when one's killed with a "Help, I'm under attack!" and an "I'll save you brave Robin..." from the other, so that, unless you kill them with perfect simultaneity (nearly impossible) they never die. Or watching stick birds hop around and realizing how perfect and silly it all is.

mt. humphreys

Sunday I drove up to Flagstaff and hiked up Mt. Humphreys, Arizona's tallest peak at 12,633 feet. The trail guide I read classified it as a "strenuous" hike but I dismissed this as written by and for the elderly. It was in fact strenuous. Never take these ratings lightly especially in a place like Arizona where average joe six pack is a tanned mountain biker who runs a couple marathons a year.

All told it took 6 hours to hike 9 miles of trail. I was also coming from 1,500 feet above sea level. At about 11,000 I started feeling the difference, and had to stop constantly because of light-headedness. It probably didn't help that the wind was so cold and hard at this point that I somehow got brain freeze externally.

The trail starts off by winding up through beautiful pine and aspen forests. I didn't suspect there were places like this in America; it was comparable to the forests I loved in Bavaria. Along the way knobby roots are worn smooth as your neighbor's coffee table by the endless rock polisher combination of trail dust and hiking boots.

In places the trail yields to scree slopes like this one, evidence of Mt. Humphreys' volcanic past.

Once above the treeline things change suddenly from balmy forest to bleak tundra. You hear a lot of tundra-hugging these days, but it really is a fragile, exotic sort of environment with lots of weird flora and fauna. Take this one for example, looks like something you'd find at the bottom of the ocean.

Nope, this isn't actually the top. It's a false summit. Beyond it there is still about an hour of hiking left before one reaches the top.

Yup, it's pretty windy at the top. There are a few man-made rock shelters up there but they still aren't much protection. When I made it up there were about six other hikers in one, all huddled together. One of them was nice enough to roll me a cigarette from my pipe tobacco when I couldn't get the pipe lit, and we sat around joking and laughing at one of the hiker's little dogs who were fighting. It was a mother-and-son brawl with lots of growling, teeth-baring, and ear-biting. Though the son was at least as big he got his butt kicked decisively.

And here's the sign. After taking this picture I got blown over, and decided that was about enough of that, so I headed back down.

a ham, a yam, a yamaha

Now that I'm rolling in the dough I finally made a big purchase, one that's been in the works for a while: a keyboard. Here she is, my new Yamaha P60. It has weighted keys that approximate the action of a real piano. Has a pretty full piano sound too for an electronic.

Like a needy girlfriend, I can already tell she's gonna demand that I spend all my free time with her. :)

seether and frapt

The Seether and Trapt concert came and went. Venue quite small and dark, maybe 1000 people there if that. Seether had some cool stuff up their sleeves, particularly their cover of Nirvana's "You Know You're Right" which was to a tee and took everyone by surprise. I worry about the dudes in Seether though. They seem like they may have been influenced by Kiss, 'cause the drummer had on a Kiss shirt and the lead singer had on some face paint that you couldn't see except up close. (Oh well, wouldn't be the first time I liked a band that liked Kiss--Rivers was a diehard Kiss fan before forming Weezer.)

Trapt, or Frapt as I will now refer to them, somehow got lead act. Presumably because of the incessantly played Headstrong. They were just a bunch of frat boys though, didn't have much on Seether, and the lead singer was this annoying good-looking Oscar de la Hoya pretty face. There was some young screaming girl hysteria when he first came out (yuck). In between songs he said some hoakie junk about how he could tell everyone was "feeling it in their hearts." Later he commited the ultimate unforgivable wrong and ordered people to jump. I hate it when bands do this. Just play your freakin music, and if it's actually good, people won't be able to stop jumping.

The mosh pit started small but got progressively worse. During the last two songs of the night I got thrown to the ground 3 times (slippery beer floor) and clocked in the face hard enough to make me head for the sidelines. Felt like I almost got my teeth knocked out. Whole nose sore today, luckily must have hit beneath the bridge otherwise it would have broken. People however were courteous and helped you up immediately--apparently, everyone has seen that devoid-of-content VH1 special on the history of moshing that talked about mosh etiquette, so now we can mosh proper just like Emily Post would.

But hey I shouldn't complain about that, fellow-feeling is a good thing and the Disturbed concert definitely could have used some.

Shopping for freaky alternative girls thwarted, there were none around sadly enough, all the chicks there looked like copies of each other cloned in sorority land. But that's an Arizona-wide problem from what I understand. Will continue to keep eyes open.

foam party

I heard that Club Rio down on the Scottsdale-Tempe border played alternative on Thursday nights, so longing as always for the Keller experience, I went. It turned out it was foam party night. Hanging over the center of the dance floor was a machine that would pour foam onto the crowd at regular intervals. The signs boasted that the foam could reach five feet, but I waded in and was completely enveloped so it must have been about 8 feet deep. Actually I kind of panicked a couple times 'cause all I could breathe in was soap bubbles.

It was basically like a sudsy version of MTV's "The Grind," with hiphop and rapcrap playing and a lot of white guys trying desperately to prove that, despite appearances, they were not actually white. I was in a good mood and just laughed it all off. I mean, poor white befuddled America trying so hard to be something it's not, trying to be "cool," something which will be forever out of reach. And then all the consequent bad vibes that emanate from these frustrated white boys--all the hostility and feigned aloofness and rejection of other human beings in order to get one step closer to cool, it all adds up to one big brutal culture with no one having a good time. But if you zoom out enough it's just funny. So that's what I did.

But inside I realize I'm still pretty torqued about this. The Disturbed concert proved to me that even with an alt crowd you can still get a bad hostile vibe, so I dunno where this comes from really. This coming Friday I'm going to see Seether and Trapt and we'll see how that goes.

herniation?

Tuesday was frisbee day and afterwards me and another hardcore guy decided to practice layouts. I should have known after I nearly snapped my neck on a faceplant that it was time to lay off, but instead I kept going, and promoted the "layout scab" from scar status back into primetime (8th time), at the same time landing on the zipper of my pants so hard that I wondered if I herniated my stomach. I called mommer the next day at work and discussed loudly the details of herniation--she can diagnose anything and convinced me I was okay.

Having a mom doctor is pretty swell, I have to say. When I broke my collar bone in Germany I didn't go to the doctor there, but just called her on the phone. She had me do arm lifts every which way and then told me what was probably wrong--a diagnosis Martina figured out pretty quickly on her own too, to give credit where it's due.

stick birds

Daydream in which I envision a balloon artist constructing a giant strand of DNA. I wake up beside the pool to see a little club-footed bird hopping around begging for crumbs. Actually the way they herk and jerk through their tiny lives, bouncing off the pavement on sporadic stick legs, makes me laugh--not cynical mad laughter but genuine amused-with-life laughter.

float trip

Woke up and went on a float trip down Salt River with some of the other interns. It was seriously like MTV Spring Break only in tubes going down a river; there was voluminous beer drining and much displaying of hot bods, including one exhibitionist chick with pierced nipples who went shirtless for the duration of the trip (4h). Lots of dumb risk-taking behavior in the form of cliff-jumping.

Sometimes the river would widen and get real stagnant and then we would sit around like a single big flotilla, as marshmallows were chucked around, listening to the latest hip-hop garbage on floating radios. The water in such places was absolutely disgusting, an amalgam of cigarette butts, plastic bags, crumpled beer cans, and general filth.

In other places it narrowed and got faster. Once during one of these stretches I thought it would be a good idea to try to stand up and surf. Of course, I fell off, and got drug along the rocks at the bottom by the tube I was still clinging to. (Later, at home, I took out my contacts and my eyes started burning and watering so bad from that poisonwater that I couldn't even keep them open.) After whole ordeal we went out to eat at Wendy's. I initiated a terribly hypocritical conversation about the evils of processed food while I wolfed down 4 junior cheeseburgers.

mill avenue

Tonight went to Mill Avenue to check out that scene. Much more my kinda scene unlike this whole rich-and-beautiful Scottsdale thing. Went to a coffee shop. Went to a bar named Ziggy's where a crappy boyfriend-girlfriend cover band duo had driven everyone out. Went to a place called "The Cue" with lots of pool tables in the back but a heavy fratmosphere. Went next door to the Mill Avenue Beer Company and caught an alt rock band named "Innocent Fortune" with a cute skinny chick on bass. She reminded me of that one Smashing Pumpkins guitarist. Band was prety rockin' for one that was just getting its start.

After this was feeling pretty good and stopped to listen to three street musicians, a Japanese guy named Mabo, a 2nd generation Swedish immigrant with red hair named Hans, and a toothless Mexican named Timothy. Some drunken middle-aged anesthesiologist set into to for a while (mid-life crisis material). After he left I sat down and started singing with these guys and did so until 2:30 in the morning. They grossed about $30 of rent money on the night plus some bread rolls a guy from the coffee shop unloaded on them. Not a bad life I'd say.

times

Oh yeah I should mention the times on this blogs have been messed up ever since I came back to the States--they're Munich time. I've fixed it now for future entries.

maelstrom

Maelstrom is the name I've given to my new developer's journal. Ever since I started the world has turned, I've wanted to blog my technical thoughts too, but didn't want to pollute this blog, since the original idea was to record what was happening in my real life. So now you get to choose which side of me (good or evil) you want to read about.

prostitution

This recent slew of shows in the vein of Who Wants To Marry A Millionaire, The Bachelor, etc. has hit it right on the money, no pun intended. A chick going after a guy just because he appears successful can be just as disgusting and superficial as a guy going after a chick because she's got big boobs.

Take my friend Jonas for instance. He was an intern at MS these past three summers, but only last summer did he jump from developer to project lead. He's always gone to parties with other interns but this last summer it was different--whenever he would mention he was a project lead, their little ears would prick up and he would have two or three of them asking questions about his position. It was so weird he said that he swore girls off during the next school year. And here's a guy that isn't disillusioned by the ways of the world easily.

Among the culture of the rich and beautiful especially relationships amount to prostitution. Man exchanges money (or symbols which promise it) for sex with attractive girl--what else would you call that?

in need of a wendy

The other day at work I was doing something repetitious in front of a computer screen, and realized that although I could seemingly control it, I could not make my own mouth feel like mine. I bit its lips, frowned, licked lips, but it was not mine, it was someone else's down there.

I have decided that what is slowly happening is that my soul is separating from my physical self, like Peter Pan losing his shadow. In need of a Wendy.

bike path

Pics from a ride along the Scottsdale bike path.

When the woman you see in the distance came up to me she was crying, mascara running all over the place, because her fat little black dog (own words) got lost. I agreed to keep a lookout for it (though I don't think a fat black anything could make it very far in Arizona 110 degree heat).

There are tunnels beneath many of the roads so you don't have to 6 lanes of crazy traffic every block; nice idea.

And in one place there's a bridge over the road. The flaming bush on the left is a visual explosion of sorts, I took all kindsa pictures of it.

There are lakes along the way. This is my favorite, has a weird azure/green tint to it. Today I sat down beneath some shade trees and watched a turtle I had scared from his sunning spot drift farther out, his little head periscoping up every once in a while to let me know where he was.

And there is a park at the end where we play frisbee on Tuesdays.