You know those individuals you encounter that seem to be trapped in a bygone era? The ones you think “the 70’s were so good to him, he decided not to leave”? I fear I’m destined to become my past. The novelty of growing my hair out has come and gone, as I finding myself leaving the house every morning with a wet mop pulled back into a nub of a ponytail.

In the coming weeks I’ll shed a few inches and probably adventure with a new color, the only downside being that I may not be able to see my grey as clearly when it’s all over. All this despite The Boys advice that girls shouldn’t cut their hair – “EVER”.

Ahhh, yes. I saved the best for last.

The scroll last night was amazing to say the least. It was phenomenal to see the text of the book in it’s original form, before names had been changed to protect the not-so-innocent. That Dean was typed as Neal and Allen Ginsburg was plain as day. That the character he later changed to his aunt was originally and truly his mother. The paper was brown and worn as you would expect and stretched the length of the hall with still more to go, wound at the end around a seemingly magical column. The tape and repairs clearly evident along with the changes in type (you could see where and when he had to replace the printing ribbon) and handwritten notes gave me chills. Magnificent.

Following the visit to this masterpiece, I watched the Democratic National Convention and I gotta tell ya, I like that Kerry has a personality. I know there are some Republicans reading this and that’s fine…I’m just sayin…he was passionate and articulate and is an idealist…which appeals to me greatly. As was stated many times: we CAN do better.

The best three things from last nights coverage:
- John Edwards giving him what appeared to be the “double guns”
- Kerry gleeked somewhere around the 3/4 mark
- CNN was tapped into the audio that was to queue the balloon drop and when they weren’t coming fast enough the guy dropped the F bomb and we aired it.

Sweet.

Brilliant, free spirited Kerouac. Tonight I see The Scroll.

On the Road was written in 21 days by Jack Kerouac in New York…he grew so frustrated during his typing binge with having to replace the paper that he taped sheets together so he could let the thoughts bleed without interruption. What resulted was a 120 foot scroll of the manuscript, currently on display at the Carlos Museum at Emory University. If you haven’t read the book, I encourage you to pick it up. His descriptions are brilliant, one that struck and stuck follows.

“So I stayed another day. It was a Sunday, A great heat wave descended; it was a beautiful day, the sun turned red at three. I started up the mountain and got to the top at four, and those lovely California cottonwoods and eucalypti brooded on all sides.

There was the Pacific, a few more foothills away, blue and vast and with a great wall of white advancing from the legendary potato patch where Frisco fogs are born. Another hour and it would come streaming through the Golden Gate to shroud the romantic city in white, and a young man would hold his girl by the hand and climb slowly up a long white sidewalk with a bottle of Tokay in his pocket.”

Man.

Onward ho to a different type of history – this was one of my favorite color jobs EVER. The picture was taken by Gaea during an afternoon frolicking at the park strip. I’m telling you, the things we did for fun…

Originally my hair was kinda yellow from an attempt at a bleach-out and then there was some red “temporary” mousse for a Rocky Horror outing and VOILA, red hair. It faded to a really pretty pinkish mauve but I don’t have any photos of that. If you do, ship them my way.

As much as I do LOVE the laundromat (and there really wasn’t any sarcasm there, I do like it) I decided to “treat” myself this week and free up a little time by letting them do some of my laundry for me.

My clothes smell like they were worn by a dead French whore.

And now, for picture time. What we have here is a very unfortounate and uneven mohawk as bestowed upon me by either Brighdie or Jenny (aka Slim) in the girls bathroom at Service during lunch. We spent many a lunch hour in there with clippers seeing what horrible, horrible things we could do to my head. The girl looking at me funny is Ali…last I heard she was in Florida. Weren’t the late 80’s great?

Note: this morning I let Jonathan (here’s a picture from his wedding) talk me into turning “comments” on. We’ll see how long this lasts…

Am I the only one that remembers Microsoft’s Comic Chat? It was around 1996 or so, and basically you’d pick a character, go into a chat room and your group chats would create a comic book, panes and all. Yahoo has a new avatar interface that reminds me of this. Are there no original ideas left? I mean, I know I don’t have any, but I’m not getting paid to either!

Hm.

As promised, another picture from 1989. The first is somewhere in the archives, it’s up to you to find it. I’ll probably post it later in the week with a matching pic I dug up anyway…in case you’re too lazy to go looking for it.

I figure I’ll start with the semi-tame and work my way to the truly horrifying. For those of you reading from Anchorage…good times, huh? Yeah, those were the days.

[Listening to: What Is Love? - Howard Jones]
(one time only props to Jonathan for finding this tool)

Duh…was there ever any doubt?

While Lance wrapped things up halfway around the world and demonstrated that the impossible was possible, I gimped along around the perimiter of Piedmont Park. As near as I can tell based on the posted results I would have come in around 40th for the women in my age group. This, of course, based on their timing and not the watch on my wrist, also not accounting for the fact that I began in the back of the pack with a bunch of other Turner-ites.

It does more for my psyche to start in the back and pass people as I go, than to start in the front and be passed as I go. The former is invigorating and the “one more down” mentality keeps my feet moving, the latter zaps my will to continue.

Now I will say that when I got out of bed at 6am with the TV already on (see also: blog entry from Thursday, April 22, 2004 post: “Hi, my name is Maigh, and I’m an addict.”) the weather school flunky announced that it was 80 degrees, and that it had in fact COOLED OFF by two degrees in the last half hour. When the run finally started at 8am I’ll assume we were midway through the 80’s. For proof, see the sweat ring on my tank and note that it first had to saturate two sports bras. Next run: August 21 – Virginia-Highland Fitness Challenge 5k.

Blog entries to look forward to this week: the evolution of Ketchup bottles, more pictures of Maigh in the late 80’s, Maigh visits The Scroll.

By now many of you have seen that “This Land” parody as brilliantly created by the brothers Spiridellis, but have you visited their blog?

This very funny post about snowmen reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend – more than once because there are memory issues involved – about how he would like to be a tree.

My take: it would suck.

Ok, so you’re a tree. Sure you get to hang out in the sunshine all day (and if you know me, you know I’m a sun whore and how much I would love that), you breathe mostly fresh air, sway gracefully in the breeze, spend time with friends, you never have to leave home, you even selflessly offer shelter to weary travelers and animals. Sounds great, but think of the downside.

Someone comes after you with a knife to carve the name of their new lover in your flesh, and there’s nothing you can do about it. An animal comes along and pees on you. Again, nothing you can do. Acid rain? Try to run. You’re stuck in the freaking earth. You have to stand there and watch civilization encroaching, forever fearful of the loud yellow monsters that have taken your family and friends and knocked them brutally to the earth before dragging them away.

Damn I sound like a Ferngully cult member. Jonathan’s right, I’m a hippie.

In closing, this may be one of the more entertaining URL’s I’ve ever seen: http://www.johnkerryisadouchebagbutimvotingforhimanyway.com/

I can’t start without saying LANCE FUCKING RULES. Ok. Next…

About the wine. Does it have a pretty label? Yes? Then I’m all about it.

Had this one last night and it was great, though I had too much of it for not having consumed anything but a slice of pizza all day. Whoops. I also blame the emtpy stomach / wine combo for Dejie whipping my ass at Scrabble — twice.

I’m going to grab a greasy breakfast from downstairs, then read this and probably zone out with day dreams of sugarplums and a world without spam.

Later, I’ll do my part to combat the morons at Fox News…and so should you.