Real Breaking News:
One of the DJs at the radio station where I work is there right now, trying to do a 24-hour marathon show. Just a way to kill time and meet up with his friends coming home for Thanksgiving without spending all week at Stomping Grounds, I guess.

Anyway, if you're not listening to anything right now, go tune in his show and cheer him on. There's a thread on our message board for anonymous heckling too. He's there playing a bunch of old Phillip Glass works right now, which is pretty awesome to hear at two in the morning so I have a good feeling about this.

Well, I made it back to Rapid City successfully. The city's changed quite a bit since I was last here in December. I was quite pleased to see the number of barbecue restaurants had risen significantly--shoot, there are more small businesses in general. There are more chain stores too, though; a second Wal-Mart is going in, along with an Olive Garden and a couple of yuppie deli-type things. And for some reason all the Mini Marts have changed over to the delightfully named Loaf 'n Jugs. But all in all, it seems like the town's on the way up--there are more things to do, more places to do them, and more people getting out of the house in general. HOMETOWN: REVIEWED AND FORWARDED FOR APPROVAL.

While I'm here, I'll probably be spending some time clicking through Chris L. Seebe'oh's website now that it is functioning again. I don't know where he finds stuff like the Ninja Bake Sale, but it is proof enough that his blogamarole is worth bookmarking.

I don't often cop to watching... *ahem*... anime, but after a month or so I just wrapped up my viewing of the well-known crazy apocalyptic Jewish giant robot psychothriller cartoon and wow. It really didn't make any damn sense. I had planned on just watching the ending and going to bed after work last night, but after seeing that mess I felt compelled to stay up and go through every damn Wikipedia article, the plot summaries on this website and fast-forward through half of the (twenty-six) episodes until it a sort of tenuous, sophistic logic suddenly appeared before me. "Ah!" I said to myself, "now I finally understand why the psychopath's borderline/depressive son had to get in the giant biomechanical Jesus to fight the evil Kabbala moon monsters in the first place!" And then it dawned on me, just what I had been doing all night instead of sleeping or otherwise preparing for my ten-hour drive to Rapid City today. So I'll probably be a little late getting there now.

For my own future refence: hey Rob, when that crazy art student from Wyoming asked me at Nic's house that one time, apropos nothing, if I had seen "Eva" and then said I looked like some guy from "the series," it turns out she was talking about that guy on the right. Checked it with Alan yesterday, he said she was crazy too.

I mean, after spending twelve hours of screen time setting up all these mysteries and seeming contradictions and developing nuanced relationships between the characters--not to mention insane giant robot action--and setting the main characters up for their greatest challenge, the writer just said "hang it all" and spent the last two episodes psychoanalyzing our hero, Emo Boy. Where's the "resolution" in that? What good is the "falling action?"

But then the series creator realizes this and has to go back and make an alternate ending into a feature film which is even more ridiculous; a film which starts out with one of the most disturbing scenes involving a comatose girl I've ever seen, and near the end features a short bit where one of the minor characters is killed when a naked ghost the size of the moon hurls a clutch of schoolgirls at him, obliterating his soul.

I mean, I can't believe I'm missing my kid sister's play tonight because of this! Well, this and all those emails and such I had to square away. And oh, right, the blizzard that's supposed to meet me somewhere around Mitchell.

But still, what is wrong with me? I ask you.

We ended up getting more ice than snow here. Between moving and buying a new car over the summer, I somehow lost all six of my ice scrapers and wound up being forty-five minutes late to my part-time job tonight because instead of driving to work I was standing outside in the cold, trying to dig a couple inches of ice off my car with my mittens. I don't think any of those countless episodes of MacGyver I watched as a kid rubbed off on me.

For the motherland crew: Tonight it will snow again here, on into the morning. I'm due to return to South Dakota this weekend, but I might have to put it off until Monday if we get dumped on. I'm coming back, though! My kid sister has been telling me all these crazy stories of how the town has changed, and how our high school is even more like a prison now than ever, so I figure I'd better come back and check things out. Shake things up a bit, maybe see if I run into any of my old friends or history teachers now that I'm old enough to patronize the taverns.

Speaking of prisons, former Rapid City state senator Alan Aker (emph. former) got a column in the Journal sometime while I was away. I don't know too much about the guy, except that I always voted against him for various reasons. I certainly didn't know he took seriously that Spiro Agnew line about how "there are people in our society who should be separated and discarded." But there it is in black and white. I'm sitting here scratching my head and trying to decide whether it was worth trading "what the rotten kids need is less coddling and attention" for "Joseph McCarthy was a great American hero."

But back here in Iowa, apparently campus celebrity/activist/student governor Drew Miller has some kind of blog. For months, every time I've gone to the Campustown coffee shop, Drew Miller has been there with his laptop, apparently filling out his intarweblog with news on local politics. Which surprises me, because the man is one of the hardest-working bachelors I know! I always just assumed he was just there trying to get on Facebook girls. Ah well.

Just got back from seeing Good Night and Good Luck, which was quite quality. The film is as much about the attitudes of the time as it is about the actual story itself, of Edward R. Murrow standing up for ideals that were not considered useful in the early years of television news. I liked it, though, especially the careful characterizations by the actors. The director's goal was to transport the audience back to a tense moment in what we today think of as idyllic times

Though maybe that's all just me spewing didactic nonsense. I think I'm justified, though, especially after coming home and seeing this incredibly important breaking news! on CNN:

We've really come a long way since 1956, haven't we?

In other news, the snow we were supposed to get (see below) has been postponed until Tuesday afternoon, but that storm has been upgraded to include heavy winds and a 100% chance of the roads turning into some kind of arctic slip'n'slide. So if you don't hear from me for a few weeks, well, you'll know why.

The weekend here was pretty wild. Despite it being halfway through autumn and despite the fact that we've already had two frosts this season, on Saturday a line of tornadoes swept through the state over the weekend, destroying dozens of homes and killing a lady. One even touched down on the outskirts of the town here, delaying a big football game against the University of Colorado, which the Cyclones eventually won. Fitting, I guess, though I'm still trying to find a way to explain to the Livingston family that the twister that flattened their house was a "lucky twister."

So Friday it was warm, with thunderstorms and tornadoes. Yesterday was cooler. Today and tomorrow it is going to snow. My friend Carl is convinced we can pin this one on global warming. Somehow.

The first link I've been saving to post: when I head back home to Rapid City, I usually drive through the small town of Denison, Iowa. It has been a major destination point for immigrants from Latin America coming to the States for work, and apparently there is a passable book out about the town called, appropriately, Denison, Iowa. The New York Times published a review a while back. I'll let you know if I get my hands on a copy of the book.

I admit I am a consummate liar. At least when it comes to updating this website. I fixed the sidebar a bit, though. Hopefully I will be able to redesign the site over break or something. Whenever break happens.

Elections here were yesterday. For once, everyone I voted for won their respective races, which was a very pleasant feeling. By all accounts, voters acted to punish backers (and even prospective supporters) of the proposed Wolford Mall, a massive, economy-crushing project to be built on the edge of town that was approved by the outgoing city council on the night of the elections. Which is fine with me. Plus in a nice related story, voters in Roland, a town of 1,300 about 15 miles from here, elected a high school senior to be their mayor. The reason? He was the only one willing to step up to do it.

OK. I have a whole archive of stuff to post, but for now... hey, I got my new mobile phone's camera to work with the gallery software here. It will be a while before I can use it casually, but there's a start.