Made the 747 mile day -- 10,000 vertical feet there too -- and another 550+ across much more level terrain to pull into the Farm. Good place to spend a night.

The place I feel most in it so far is still Westhaven. It feels like the revolution up there. I really do want to build an outhouse that drains into an algae pool I use to make biodesil I trade to my neighbors for fresh produce which I excrete in the outhouse which drains into an algae pool...

Dead Tower? What is that, like Whiskey Dick or something?

Aside from our neo-survivalist tendencies, we also talk real crackpot schemes. One good one we had was a rehash of the Corpulent Populism concept, combined with our idea of a turnkey Porntrapraneur service. The two ideas are 1) a publication aimed at converting middle class straight white males to the left -- a Progressive Maxim of sorts -- and 2) an answer to the revelation to outfits like Suicide Girls may not, in fact, be all that empowering to all that many women, since the girls in the photos don't get a real cut of the revenue, nor even the copyright to their images. We invision a system which would allow people to join a network of porntraprneneurs, with 80%+ of proceeds going back to the actual producers and the image subjects retaining full copyright over their photos. We also envision a magazine of inquiry, taste and opinion which would enjoy a collegial relationship with these content producers, publishing some racy pin-up images with every issue. Seems like quite a combination.

So there was that, and then I was out. I think the way I'll get back there is if the biz gets over the hump and I have time and inclination to write and Mark finally gets the fucking internet. I could occupy the Siesta and crank out many lines code and many pages of book. It would be good. Maybe.

San Francisco was fun though. Once the party got going everyone was stoned and it was loopy and loud. I think I was only entertaining for the first half of things. Joe and I played some word games. "Crack torch" became "freebase combustor" became "narcotic immolation system," which is a good name for a band we thought. Dumm is on his way to Amsterdam for a conference. Zack dresses really nice, or let's Jamie dress him really nice which amounts to the same thing and is a good idea in either case. I told the bird-picture phone joke, and only realized right then that the punch line -- "wing, wing wing... herwow?" -- could have kind of prejudicial overtones. Or maybe it was a flash of social paranoia. Who knows.

Anyway, I woke up and drove to Vegas, and met Mike of Trellon in real life. I like this guy. I've liked him since he told me in one of our first IM conversations that he has two rules for the company: No scumbags, no liars. Those are rules I can get behind. Plus he's a legitimately eccentric workaholic single-father (his 9-y/o daughter is awesome; charges me and everyone else $1 for every time we cuss) and a practicing Catholic to boot. I can get behind that.

Also met colleague Dan Moger, who I thought was two years older than me but turned out to be two years younger. He was a frat-houser in his day at Wesleyan, which means he knows how to tuck his pink collared shirt in, but isn't much of a back-slappin' keg-tappin' personal friend to the Quayles. Actually in previous days, he helped monitor the first free elections in Georgia. That's the former Soviet republic, where, unlike the member of our United States, there is no Poll Tax. Ho ho ho.

Anyway, it's been interesting. We're on some ambitious paths here, following the twin lures of being devistatingly effective in taking control of the government away from assholes and making the kind of money that qualifies you as "successful" in 21st-Century America. These are both things I'd love to do in the next year, but I've still got to get used to the idea in some ways. I need to find my own logic and through-line for it, my own terms for the deal.

Reading the second volume of HST's corrispondence, wishing I could get that as a motherfucking podcast. 747 miles tomorrow. G.D. it.

I'm in Vegas. Craps is fun.

I inadvertantly deleted a couple of "real" comments just now trying to manage my massive comment-spam problem. I'm going to try a few new things, and if that doesn't work I'll do the deal that forces you to type in the random letters before you can post, a CAPTCHA test.

Anyway, thanks for the comments. I'll be reaching out soon to folks once I get a sense of what time I'll be arriving the next few places. Yesterday I did 570 miles and it wasn't event all that hard, so I'm hopefuly about tomorrow's 747 mile haul through the Rockies. As I recall from before, I-70 is mostly deserted until you get into Denver, so I'm hoping to beat Google's 15-hour estimate for timing.

I'm about out. The travel plan is thus:

• Tonight: Westhaven w/Mark
• Friday: San Francisco; get-together at Drummy's at 10pm
• Saturday/Sunday: Vegas summit for Trellon
• Monday: Round about Denver, prolly Motel seis
• Tusday: Iowa Farmhouse
• Wednesday: Chi-town, Dave and Jessica
• Thursday: NYC -- probably very late

This is a savage and greuling marathon schedule, with multiple 700-mile legs. However, with the exception of the final push to NYC, the long legs include vast stretches of mostly empty country where high speed driving is the rule. I figure if I can average 75 on those stretches, 10-hours of driving isn't out of this world. I can break it up with catnaps or whatever too.

I picked up a 400W DC inverter from GI Joes that will run off the cigarette lighter. This is a better deal than all those specialized converters: it'll run anything I have a power plug for and it's got clips to hook direct to a battery, so it can be used for all sorts of other things too. This'll keep my laptop and cellphone alive while I drive, so I'll be rocking out to tunes, audiobooks and podcasts.

I'll post when I can, but no promises there. See you New Yorkers soon though, and all you in-between peeps sooner.

I'm going to be driving across the country in a few days. It should take a week. What should I be listening to? I'm particularly interested in getting some good audiobooks and/or podcasts.

Anyone actually listening to any of this crap? Tips?

My sister got a job working for Code Pink down in LA. See, she's going to leapfrog me on the revolution tip too. I fucking knew it.

Congratz, Brie!

One of the ways I get traffic here is by building an archive of strangely topical narrow interest content. For instance, a google image search for travis will probably show you this image of Jessica Travis who I went to theater school with:

And so it goes. This is cool because from time to time people who I've lost touch with will decide to google someone they know (not even me, dear ego) and come across my site. The other week Randal Cohn, who was assistant director of the Ad/Diction project (nee: the QuickFix) dropped me a line because he was googling people from the cast of his ETW Independent Project, a cast that included the illustrious Julia Henning, and he ended up here.

It's fun to catch up; Randal's pulling down a Masters in International Relations and going PhD in 06 -- turns out we had similar reactions to how the world has changed in the past four years, promting a detour from purely artistic pursuits -- so I asked him what the Acadmic trip has been about, since I've considered going that way myself. Here's his response, which I thought was awesome:

things you should keep in mind:

1. your fancy BFA from NYU don't mean shit. you have a BFA. unless you got a dual degree, that means you didn't do any serious scholarship according to most people whose opinions matter in the application process to any rigorous academic program. that's why i am at SFSU -- not the best school on the planet -- getting this master's degree: so i can write a thesis, prove i'm capable, and then, in combination with my fancy BFA from NYU, make a credible application.
2. academics, on the whole, are kookier than artists and musicians.
3. the girls are hotter at the theater program.
4. the people who are -- by profession -- less full of shit than normal people who just talk out of their asses all the time are a) full of shit, and b) talking out of their asses all the time
5. better like reading.
6. it's about as likely you'll get a tenure-track appointment at a good university as it is you'll become a movie star.
7. the social sciences are particularly suspect epistemologically.
8. smart girls.
9. i remember when i used to take dance classes.
10. we'd love to have you.

I just posted all the other audio cuts I have from this summer over at Vagabender. They're not as produced as the first bits, but they're potentially humorous all the same.

I'm planning to open that site up for anyone who wants to share their tales of vagabonding, benders, or just the adventure of everyday living. Needs a little redesigning, but A-stock said he'd post about going to Singapore, and my mom just got back from France with all kinds of great photos, so I'll get it ready for them to kick off soon. If you're interested in posting there, let me know.

My mother returned from France today, totally energized. It's really something. I have a hard time keeping up with her enthusiasm.

I'm going to try and get her to post some writing and photos on vagabender.com, which I'm going to slowly make into an open platform for my friends and family to share the wild and rollicking details of their lives. A-stock just got back from Singapore and will probably be our first post-road-trip poster, then maybe my mom.

I think it's a good idea. There are a lot of travelers in my extended social family. Could be fun.

It's the Eugene celebration, son, and the coffeeshop I've adopted as my office has windows onto the parade. This is really a pretty good representation of the town where I was raised.

- Local dem congressman (since, like, forever) Defazio
- Rainow flags (god bless 'em) every 5 minutes
- Local wild people on double-tall bikes; dancing girls; "Diversity is Sexxxy"
- Punk rock kids, anarchists
- Local businesses
- My old high school's Crew team
- Falun Gong (the medidation people who are being persecuted by China)
- Group from the OCF summer arts program

Lots of kids around to see it all. What a place to grow up. I was lucky, I think.

The Burning Man influence is strong here. That old bus that just dove by with a bright yellow paint job, a boat hull built on top and some kindly-looking greybeards wearing American flags and playing amplified Rock and Roll.. that's got to be an art car. One of the reasons I believe in that event is not just because it's a great party, but because moreso than any other contemporary festival it has a deep enough impact on people that they carry its ethos (and it's style) into the "real" world.

Anyway, I'm finishing up some work here -- I'll start pimping it as soon as it's ready -- and wondering about getting a new cellphone. Apropops my previous posts about wardrobe and haircut, I need a new phone for image reasons. Now, after playing some very rainy basketball the other day, I also need one to be able to talk to people.

A quick rant: I hate cell phone companies almost as much as I hate credit card issuers. I mean really hate, like I want to punch someone when I have to deal with them. They're not good people and they're not doing good things. Mobile companies in the US have created an inefficient and wasteful system -- multiple overlapping proprietary networks because they all thought they would be able to monopolize the market and so they didn't want to agree on a standard -- which they refuse to open up to users in an information-empowering way. Their phones are all proprietary mysteries that come with legal warnings against reverse-engineering. They want to own all your data and charge you to access it. They lock you into multi-year service agreements so you're stuck with whatever service they end up delivering, shitty or not. Except for actually letting people talk to one another all over, they are example #1 of how not to get along with the revolution. It annoys me to no end when I have to read about them.

Anyway, the live music is starting up. It's not my scene so I'd better leave.