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Hell yes, it's FRI-day!

Today, while I was dicking around campus because it was kind of—to moderately—nice, for a change, I commented to my brain-audience on my iPodding habits. I muttered something of being more than a mere iPod enthusiast and that I was more like some kind of iPod deity. To this, one of the members of my brain-audience—most certainly—took offense, as well as to berating me with gusto. This could have gone on for hours, were it not for another member of my brain-audience, who told us to quit being such dorks and just listen to the [freaking] song. Good call.

It was "Who Feels Love?" by Oasis, a band for whose summer appearance in Chicago I had just received my ticket in the mail.

Found what I’d lost inside / My spirit has been purified / Take a thorn from my pride / And hand in hand we’ll take a walk outside // Thank you for the sun the one that shines on everyone / Who feels love / Now there’s a million years between my fantasies & fears / I feel love // I’m leaving all that I see / Now all my emotions fill the air I breath // Now you understand that this is not the promised land / They spoke of / There’s nothing more to be If you can be the remedy / who heals love

By the time the song came on—and the brain cell from the back row with the loose-fitting pants had told us to pipe down—I had wandered into the art gallery, where I took in some stunning Swedish photography. Shunt that to the top of the list of things I enjoy about my iPod: Taking it with me to go look at art. Strangely enough, just yesterday in my American Art class we were talking about the intertextual relationship between visual art and music, looking especially closely at Whistler's Nocturne in Blue and Gold, Old Battersea Bridge, in front of me now, and Erik Satie's Deux reveries nocturnes on iTunes. It's almost too much.

Remember this?

Karly, Charlie, and I got back from St. Louis—home of the country's second largest Mardi Gras celebration, or so I've heard—around 7:30 last night, and dropped right back into the same old groove.

But: Just 48 slim hours ago, I was sipping whiskey on street corners in the neighborhood of Soulard, watching drunken Missourians float down Broadway on the flatbeds of four-wheel parties, flinging beads through the air and caution to the wind. Red-capped, paunch-laden, beer-guzzling parade watchers shouting up to women, balancing, drunken, on balconies and the sills of second-floor windows: "Show us your tits!"

The tits are then shown: Beads. Flashbulbs. Shouting. Fighting. Blood. An ambulance struggles, lights flashing and siren blaring, to clear a path through the throng, inching some anonymous, shaking, vomit-covered partier toward a downtown hospital and a stomach pump.

Massive speakers pump classic rock into intersections joining G-rap and techno, swirling into some undecipherable, syncopated melody with birds flying and caps popping and thump-wikka-thump-wikka-thump-wikka-thump. Policemen stand there, laughing sometimes. It's all a lot of fun.

"I like this place," I can remember thinking.

Seeing Joe and all of his Gorlock pals down at Webster was swell. It was great just hanging out, listening to Ben Folds and Nick Drake, playing Cranium with really good, interesting people, none of whom, aside from my broseph Joseph, I'd ever even met before. I know exactly why Joe loves it there.

Today was an anomaly. I woke up, for some strange, bewildering reason, an entire hour before I had to. I decided it was probably nothing serious and hopped in the shower, twiddled with iTunes a bit, then proceeded to my first, and—what turned out to be—my only, class of the day, during which I fielded ground balls on the hard cement floor of the PEC (read: gym).

I returned to my room, where an e-mail informed me of the cancellation of my American art class. For the next two hours, little else was achieved but a new personal best at Bosconian and more iTunes-finaglery. Paul and I split several plates-full of waffle fries.

I scampered south, late for printmaking. I arrived at Bucksbaum (read: arts building) what I thought was five minutes late, but what actually turned out to be the same time I'd left. There, clocks shift puzzlingly, and scarcely tell good time. The professor arrived and explained to us that class was cancelled.

I went back to my room and played Bosconian.

ESPN2, 8:00PM (CST) Beloit @ Grinnell. First ever television broadcast of a regular-season D3 basketball game. Nifty.