In honor of our anniversary I will crawl out of my hole for a while. I am well. I have a great job these days. I work at Edward McKay books, which is a big used books store that also sells music and movies and text books and so on. The job keeps me very busy and I like most of my coworkers a lot. Working with friends is better than working with "co-workers" in this case, at least. The pay is weak, but the benefits are nice enough (health and dental insurance, vacation time, flexible hours, lots of store credit). I'm also working at Gate City Noise, the record store. Although I love the place, I have to be honest with myself and say it's a dying beast. Business has dried up to pratically nothing. It's a shame, but Andrew, the owner, is a champ. He's made it work for longer than I could have.

The rock and roll band rolls on. Our approaching thirties make the continued functioning of the band a question. I'm not shooting for U2 level rock stardom here, but it is a fun hobby. I hope we can keep it together after 2005. Currently, though, everyone is into it. Plans include: two-disc Dawn Chorus omnibus of our first two albums, an eight day February tour of the midwest, a longer Summer tour, and a third album. I've got vague plans to do something by myself.

I've been feeling good physically too. I've lost a few more pounds, which is nice. I've a spring in my step. Dad tried to convince me to do Atkin's. The Atkin's diet and the vegetarian diet do not mix well. I'd be eating nothing but corn or something. But, he's right about overloading on the carbs. Especially flour which I've come to realize has a tremendous effect on the body. I feel better if I avoid flour, salt, and sugar. So, I'm trying to avoid them.

I've been reading a lot of comics, because I can get trade paperbacks at the store and because I figured out how to download what I don't want to buy. I find a lot of inner peace and joy in old Spider-man comics and Fantastic Four and Green Lantern and stuff. When I was a kid, I was in love with comics. It's a nice full-circle to read them again as an adult. I'm working my way through Warren Ellis' Stormwatch/Authority series right now. Mike and his buds recommended them to me when Garrison toured through here a few years ago. Thanks Mike. Good call.

I've also gotten obsessed with crime fiction through HBO's awesome show the Wire. Me and some buds at work have been trading books by guys like James Ellroy and George Pelecanos and Kent Anderson. (Speaking of whom, I found an old Advance Reading Copy of Kent Anderson's first book in a box of books someone was trying to sell us. It sells online for $250. Cool.) I'm a sucker for the hopeless noir types.

God, four years, guys? And JT and Kainui and Shelly and I have been corresponding for years and years before that. Well, I guess I'm glad to have you folks. Sorry I've gotten so lazy.

testing. toasting. tersely. tickleck. tootie.

You may not recognize the five words above, but look a little closer, closer still, touch your nose to the screen, now you can't see them at all. But now, maybe now you're starting to remember? These were the first five words posted to this beloved blog four years ago to-the-day (I wish my first post were so inventive).

Happy Birthday Lake Effectors.

I'm sorry to be the prodigal to point this out, but I'm also a sucker for nostalgia, monutmental occasions and above all revisionist history.

I'm trying to imagine what may have motivated a blog amoung us 4 years ago, and I think I may know what (or who), but perhaps it's time for a re-positioning. It's easy to explain how tronsport, relocation, nomadic lifestyles, or in some cases the refusal of the nomadic, inspite of friends shifting locations, led to our humble and yet proud virtual hypertext community, more immediate than I'm willing to admit.

Given today's political evironment I situate the blog as a support group that would never define itself as such, a stability amidst questions of a stolen election, a begrudging acceptance that something like this, our current global-political situation, our elected leaders, their policies, could happen. I haven't become militant, or even pessimistic, far from it, I'm suggesting that this lakeeffect was a "pre-emptive" (if I'm still allowed to use this word) bomb shelter, a group duck-and-cover, a self-protective measure.

I won't make any statements more grandiose than that, but it's certainly the way I feel at the moment. A while ago the author of the first five words you ever read as a lake effector said that long posts (if posting at all) were reserved for the introspective, slightly melancholic, possibly lonelier moments. No gnus is good gnus then. In the year 2000, at least by the end of it, maybe we finally had words for a post pre-mellinial tension, we all had quiet moments, a willingness to share, an appetite for... well just an appetite, we certainly know how to talk about food.

Perspective:

This summer I went to a conference in LA, when I got back I was 30.

4 years is not the long lens of time. Even still the archives of lakeefect represent my unkept once and future diary - informed, interpreted, positively negated, sometimes (regrettfully on my part) missed by the blog company I keep.

Here in Buffalo, temperatures have been unseasonably mild, meaning warmer lake temperatures. We all know the old lake effect equation by now:
warm lake + cold artic air = snow measured in feet, not inches.

The next four years will most likely clear up stormy, and (if I may extend the metaphor, however corny it may be) we're all here to dig each other out.


So lakeeffectors, bake a cake, blow out four candles, and most importantly make a wish... but don't tell anyone or it won't come true, save ourselves

It becomes clear now, never mind any of it except for this:

Lake Effect is a repository of untold wishes, destined to come true.

testing. toasting. tersely. tickleck. tootie.

Some libraries have wish lists posted on Amazon - you could check there and see what's most needed. If not - maybe buy a book that makes you think of that person - for example, for you, I'd buy the library a copy of Stitch 'n' Bitch or something similar.

Congratulations - I love the knitting photos. How awesome.

Zach put it more eloquently. This sucks.

I am appalled by my fellow countrymen tonight. I just cannot believe that we've become a people that would re-elect this President. I am ashamed, deeply, at the level of cynicism, fear, and arrogance that we are seeing tonight. This is a low place we find ourselves.

Jesus guys. I feel like I've been kicked in the stomach. Is there any hope left for our country? Is this what we've become?

Hey Kainui, what the hell is going on in your state? Are they lacing your bong hits with something? You guys are a Red State now? What the...?

The only poll I trust, the Nickelodeon Kid's Poll (4 correct picks out of 4 elections) puts Kerry over Bush 55 to 45. I guess they didn't call any kids in Hawaii, where, apparently people think Kerry is going to tax the sunshine or surfboard wax or something.