The World Ends With You.

Is there any greater delight in travelling than being able to shrink the world? The very act is a Zen counterpoint to itself -- the easiest way to shrink the world, of course, is not to go anyway. But the very act of finding the similar refrains in different worlds is impossible without achieving a greater understand of just how large the world is in the first place.

But I didn't dance the night away in a seafood restaurant just to put my interpretations of Zen koans to the test. I danced because when you're eating crab legs in San Francisco with two other friends from Medicine Hat, that's cause to celebrate.

Alas, they declined to join me in dancing. Maybe that's because everyone on the dance floor was a waitress... or maybe they were just tired from all their sight-seeing. Yeah, that's probably it.

mojo status: 50/100

The wrong turn of Froese.

Today was an interesting day: The Walrus Expedition's Official Log arrived in my inbox this morning. A full report of all the events, along with some interesting commentary. For example, my dancing was described as "Unquestionably Lethal". Now, that by itself is enough to let me die a happy man, but I also had the privilege of seeing a poem I wrote included. I'll let you read it for yourself... and try to find the one small error they made.

Blue towers watched us watching
As we sailed to Radstock Bay
We manned the decks in hopes to see
Our Expedition's name.

A branch, a rock? A shoal, a flock?
'Twas all a distant haze

'Till three large stones the shade of bones
Got up and walked away.

The whisper roared throughout the ship:
"Polar bears in sight!
The barren shores of Devon
house a family in white!"

The mother kept her cubs alive
throughout this slow September,
while all our cameras zoomed and whirred
in order to remember.

My frames were out of focus,
my hands shook like a die,
but the pictures still show who was there;
The polar bears and I.

-Denton Froeme

It's so nice to be published... less nice to have your last name misspelled, though. Ah, well. At least now, I have the unparalleled joy of saying, "That wasn't me! I've been Froemed!"

Really, a pun that awful makes it all worthwhile.

I'm a lover, not a fighter.

I know there's a lot of bad karma surrounding Alberta drivers, but when I was driving to Edmonton this weekend, one driver smiled and gave me a big ol' thumbs up as I passed him. That's got to count for something.

Conversely, I'm sure someone out there is putting the following in their blog: "I know there's a lot of bad karma surrounding Alberta drivers, but when I was driving to Edmonton this weekend, one driver was totally rocking -- even spazzing out to Pixies on his CD player as he passed me. That's got to count for something."

And it's true -- MJ lent me a Pixies CD last week, and I'm hooked. It's a little embarrassing to admit it, however. That band was cool precisely when I was the ideal age to care about cool bands (Denton_1987 = uncool), and liking them now, I fear that I'm grouping myself with baby boomers who still remember The Day The Music Died. Behold the grim and terrible truth of retro: pull back the facade of irony, and it's just another term for "golden oldie".

The only chance is to keep on going; pull back the facade of nostalgia (easier in my case, since I never liked them in '87), and the good music is still good. As for Pixies, they're not just good; they're gnarly.

That wasn't my only foray into 80s music this week. There was also my Tae Kwon Do class this evening. A senior student was showing some others how to sweep their foot back more effectively, and I was struck by a realisation:

That's how you do the moonwalk.

In other words, today was a very good day.