I have been making it, and I kinda rule at it.

This post brought to you by a latent urge to earn some sort of weird cultural capital with a wholly undefined audience through practice, and successful completion, of an unnecessarily archaic task. I mean really, isn’t the internet mostly for patting yourself on the back and begging for affirmation anyway?

[this was in my head last night as i fell asleep. it does not sound as pretty now as it did then. pretty isn't the right word. maybe after some revision. this is mostly for me, hi me! since i'm really the only one who reads my blog]

Yes, there are trains here. There are trains that will shake your house and run through your living room like that movie. That movie was actually a television show. I had to look it up.

Yes, there are trains here. Good luck finding the tracks. The tracks, the trains, don’t appear until you need to be somewhere and their passing can impede your progress. Then they will throw themselves down all over town stopping you dead in your…

Yes, there are trains here. You’ll sit and watch as they go by. You’ll sit and look at your watch as they go by. You’ll imagine your bedroom in your head. You’ll twist your bedroom in your head and try to orient it to the tracks. You’ll calculate the distance and volume the noise of the trains must travel to rattle your belongings so.

Yes, there are trains here. In the summer they are but a voice in the cacophony of trilling cicadas, droning air conditioning units, howling dogs and unseen beasts. In the summer the train barrels through, a sonic cowcatcher announcing its antiquated supremacy before bowing to nature. In Alabama, everything bows to nature.

My first vidya column is up at UsedfurnitureReview. You can watch it here and stuff.

I am the most awkward. My favorite part of this whole thing is Oliu talking about “Shake Ya Ass” and him talking about one of his favorite songs at the end. We’re gonna do one more sports themed episode because everybody needs to watch a poet scream scream obscenities at a college football game. I’m not sure this happens at other MFA programs.

Best weekend ever. A lot has happened and I’m turning into a real woman. Ok, someone said they had a diary this weekend and it was way funnier than it had any right to be, eyes watering and short of breath and coughing fit funny.

I teach my first college class Wednesday. I’m generally pretty stoked…I guess. I’ve decided to keep my beard, three white hairs and all, mostly because I can store tiny weapons in it. There’s also supposed to be something about dudes with neatly trimmed beards having more ethos (I am already speaking in 101 jargon) and I’d like to be as much of a stereotype of a liberal English teacher as possible. My only regret is that it’s too warm for my corduroy blazer. Also I don’t wear glasses. That is a bummer. Other than that, not much is going on. I will start updating this thing more often, soon, I promise.

I went to the DMV today. I was there to finally get my motorcycle license. While my little 1971 Kawasaki is a great lawn ornament and lends a touch of southern charm to the little bungalow I live in, I thought it might be nice to actually take the thing for a spin every once in a while. Thus, we have my DMV excursion of this morn. I wasn’t expecting much of a shitshow at the Tuscaloosa DMV as this place isn’t that densely populated.

When I walked in there was one sassy older woman, named Elliot, wrangling the crowd and sending people out the door to retrieve forgotten identification or through the door behind her to be photographed, tested, poked and prodded.

Now I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking that this is gonna be another DMV horror story where I slag on the the lines and the inefficiency and the horrible picture and how in the end they end up giving a license to anyone, mental capacity not withstanding, who can deal with the red tape. Not so! Not so at all.

You see, I actually found my experience at the DMV quite pleasurable. In a lot of ways, it turned into a life progress report. And lemme tell ya, on the surface at least, things are going swimmingly.

I got past Elliot without incident and was soon enough sat in front of a license official. After taking a look at my documentation, she told me to stick my face into a big, beige View-Master.

“Read row six,” she said.

“Four, five, six,” etc etc etc I said back.

Perfect vision still intact? Check. The license official lady (I can’t remember her name), then asked me a bunch of questions.

“Mr. Houser, has your license ever been suspended, revoked or have you been charged with a major infraction in the last two years?”

“Nope.”

Looked like I was living on the right side of the law, all things considered.

“Mr. Houser, have you suffered a brain aneurism, any sort of head trauma, a grand mal seizure, any seizure, lost vision temporarily, smelled nutmeg in June, suffered any physical or mental or emotional impairment within the last five years?”

“Nope.”

And there you had it. Not only was I an upstanding, law-abiding citizen, I was healthy as a horse to boot. I would like personally thank the Tuscaloosa Department of Motor Vehicles. I feel like I’ve had my oil checked, my tires kicked and been given a hearty stamp of approval.

I popped over to the official web site of Tuscaloosa today as part of my obsessive Tuscaloosa/Alabama research. The site leaves a lot to be desired, but frankly so do most official municipality sites. Phila.gov is barely passable, and we’re the seventh biggest (I think, suck it I’m too lazy to research) city in the union.

The slideshow in the middle of the page caught my eye before I got to any real digging. As a runner, I’m totally stoked about the many shots of the path along the river. There are some other pictures of pretty stuff, one inexplicable shot of a brick wall that may or may not be the side of a parking garage and this image:

If someone could explain what this image is meant to convey, I’d really appreciate it. To me it looks like the creepy street the meth head’s gonna drag you down before he choloroforms you and harvests your organs. sayin.