some love and some theft

thanks for the prayers and whatnot from those of you who keep up with me in real life and here on unit64. the love means a lot.

now for some theft from my friend robert zimmerman

Every step of the way, we walk the line
Your days are numbered, so are mine
Time is piling up, we struggle and we stray
We're all boxed in, nowhere to escape

City's just a jungle, more games to play
Trapped in the heart of it, tryin' to get away
I was raised in the country, I been working in the town
I been in trouble ever since I set my suitcase down

Got nothing for you, I had nothing before
Don't even have anything for myself anymore
Sky full of fire, came pouring down
Nothing you can sell me, I'll see you around

All my powers of expression and thoughts so sublime
Could never do you justice in reason or rhyme
Only one thing I did wrong
Stayed in Mississippi a day too long

Well, the devil's in the alley, mule's in the stall
Say anything you wanna, I have heard it all
I was thinking about the things that Rosie said
I was dreaming I was sleeping in Rosie's bed

Walking through the leaves, falling from the trees
Feeling like a stranger nobody sees
So many things that we never will undo
I know you're sorry, I'm sorry too

Some people will offer you their hand and some won't
Last night I knew you, tonight I don't
I need something strong to distract my mind
I'm gonna look at you 'til my eyes go blind

Well I got here following the southern star
I crossed that river just to be where you are
Only one thing I did wrong
Stayed in Mississippi a day too long

Well my ship's been split to splinters and it's sinking fast
I'm drowning in the poison, got no future, got no past
But my heart is not weary, it's light and it's free
I've got nothing but affection for all those who sailed with me

Everybody's moving, if they ain't already there
Everybody's got to move somewhere
Stick with me baby, stick with me anyhow
Things should start to get interesting right about now

My clothes are wet, tight on my skin
Not as tight as the corner that I painted myself in
I know that fortune is waiting to be kind
So give me your hand and say you'll be mine

Well, the emptiness is endless, cold as the clay
You can always come back, but you can't come back all the way
Only one thing I did wrong
Stayed in Mississippi a day too long.

if you're new to the site, via my friend jen, click on archives, like the above link, to catch up on all the back-action.
sheezy sheezy

going someplace, and there's no goin' back

welcome to the new world order. the place of complete and utter nervousness. no home, no job, no peace, no rest.

some of the above are true, and some are more true. i sort of have jobs, though it feels like a lot of running around at this point. im not used to so much activity after a relatively quiet summer. its going to take some getting used to, but i am beginning to gather that i am not as spry as i used to be. maybe if i worked out at all or ate better, or at all, i would be a little bit more healthy. then maybe i wouldn't ache so much, physically or emotionally. i feel like i am struggling to be free.

right now i am listening to the title track of the great Springsteen album 'ghost of tom joad.' if you are familiar with the track you will notice the lyrical content worming its way into this post. if not, i made all of this wonderful stuff up myself.

my life seems to be really up in the air right now. i gave every single cent that i had to the university today so that i could register. i don't even know if i want to go to school anymore. i really have no other desire except to work for i.tv. i can't really see myself going to classes anymore. im sure it wont be half bad, and that i will get to meet some nice people, and maybe learn some stuff. but it just feels half a bubble off plumb. bruce says, 'you get used to anything/ sooner or later it just becomes your life.' i don't think i want to live my life that way though.

i still keep in touch with a teacher that i had in high school and we have gotten to be good friends. in an email this week he was updating me on what's going on in his life. talking about growing up and wondering what in the world you're doing, he sent me this Thureau quote; 'The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon or perchance a palace or temple on the earth -- & at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.' Damned if that didn't make me a little bit shakey.

to sum up; i have no idea what i can do right now with my life. i wont have a place to live in a month. i have no idea if the job thing is going to work out. i dont know if i want to stay in school. i have no money. i have no home to go back to. if i have options, there's just too many to even begin to think about, but none of them involve being able to spend money. cause there's none.

in some fairly upbeat news, i did get registered, and my first newspaper comes out tomorrow. at least i have some work to go to, and money coming in someday.

lay my head down on the pillow
and go drifting off to foreign lands

--->

trying to throw your arms around the world

hey hey, sha la laa

album of the night is achtung baby by U2

super duper busy week ahead of me. lots of meet and greet/data entry this week working registration for the university. this runs through wednesday night. big night at the manor tomorrow night here in whittier. bunches of cool acts in a concert set right in the lovely living room of my home on washington. tons of obligation will be neglected tomorrow as i work reg line instead of laying out the first issue of the paper (hopefully to be online sometime this year, though like the university will always be refered to loosely and vaguely until that point).

wednesday night i will be spending having dinner with some really cool older friends, then classes and a return to the most awesome (post biolan) office on campus, campus safety (big ups to JK=) along with a repeat performance at a college class. then a three day weekend. a pretty rounded out week in the grand scheme of things for the old O'Brien here.

not much else to report. had an awesome time at amanda's birthday party saturday night. along with a trip to see a.w.k. with dead mike. then sunday night, with amanda, went and saw belle and sebastian and bright eyes at the greek theater.

don't don't don't forget about mars being super cool on the 27th, or wisconsin. these are important things.

who's going to ride your wild horses?--->

for darren

this sort of reminds me of dmh, so i thought i would post it. lyrics to shanghai by ed harcourt. if you go dbough, you have to send me some rickshaw wheels, i will make lamps from them.

Let's move away together, go interplanetary
Maybe in Chinese weather, where it's sanitary
I'll go out trawler fishing, yeah we'll have tuna steak
I'm on a special mission, for us to have a break

We'll climb the corporate buildings
Spray-paint the outside walls
You bet that they'll be yielding
When the castle falls
We'll swim beneath the ocean
Near the coral reef I have a certain notion
That it will not be brief

We're going to Shanghai
To watch the red sky
We're moving to Shanghai
Goodbye, goodbye
We're going to Shanghai
So don't you cry
We're moving to Shanghai

Looks like we might have made it
Put on your silkworm dress
You look so beautiful and I look such a mess
Across the city's landscape, the sun burns crimson red
Maybe the moon will wait, before we go to bed

We're going to Shanghai
To watch the red sky
We're moving to Shanghai
Goodbye, goodbye
We're going to Shanghai
So don't you cry
We're moving to Shanghai

Maybe, maybe we'll have a fresh new start
I'll learn the martial arts
We'll have our own rickshaw cart
We're moving to Shanghai--->

david gray

istened to a lot of david gray tonight, including but not limited to several spins of his album 'white ladder'. its a super good one and really fit with my mood today. its fun to listen to melancholy albums sometimes. i can't wait for winter!! its these type of albums that put me in the mood.

got a great letter back today from i.tv they said that they are excited about my enthusiasm and that i am one of the few that they are still considering for a job out of the countless hundreds they have met with already. lots of prayer needed for this. gotta call grandma and the prayer chain tonight or tomorrow to give them the update.


there are things stirring, not quite sure what is up. something though, or someone, not sure if its the Spirit, but something is moving. i can sense it. like obi-wan said "in my experience there's no such thing as luck..."

ticket please

so i start my new job today. i am going to be an office assistant in the campus safety office at school. i'll be working about 16 hours a week, mostly tuesdays and thursdays. so that should be pretty cool. airconditioning is nice, and they have that there. i even hear that they give me money for coming there, so that should be nice too.

i guess harbough broke down last night again. i got your messages this morning when i turned my phone back on. sorry dude. update and let me know what happened. did you bomb your car on purpose or something???

here comes the booom!--->

space race

here's a great article about traveling beyond our solar system and what sorts of technological things are being developed to handle that sort of challenge. talk about the impact it would have on earth based technology too, for peet's sake. no one can argue that there's no such thing as trickle down in this industry!!! here it is.

who's gonna go??--->

Mars will shine brightly. It will look great in a telescope. It will not kill you.

there's some crazy stories out there about the incredible closeness of mars to the earth on August 27th. a bunch of kids that live at my house heard it was going to be as big as the moon. what is this, the dark ages??

so here's a wonderful article from space.com that dispells any untrue notions that people have. here's a favorite quote from the piece

"Still the rumors are rampant. One reader asked Joe Rao if Mars will hit Earth.

"The odds that Mars will crash into the Earth on Aug. 27 are about as good as the Detroit Tigers winning the 2003 World Series in 4 games.""

there yazs go harbough--->

fin aid

not aid for the type of fins you wear in the water, but fin aid, short for financial aid. Spent an hour or so sitting at school in the fin aid office, trying to get them to work with me on my status of not having enough money to go to school. Thankfully it worked out and i can now attend university once again. ok cool. scratch one thing off the 'to do' list

in other news, i did some fun design work this weekend in my room. i created a rug out of rectangular carpet samples and zip ties, and i used several cool looking aligator clamps as picture holders on my wall. its a shame i have no idea how to post pictures on this thing. added to that is the shame that i haven't even tried to find out how. oh well, priorities i guess.

no word back on the application that i have in to work for dispatch/operator at school. i hate them now. i wouldn't take their stupid job anymore. so that's that.

not much more to talk about at this point.--->

black jettas

if you haven't heard it already, 'black jettas' is a steller track from the up and coming band Ima Robot. pretty outstanding if you ask me. very dance/bowie-esque with joe strummer influenced vocals. if you wanna check em out, you can listen to them here (scroll down) via streaming to your real player from KCRW.com.

in other news this evening, listened to a lot of dwight yoakam, watched the shooting stars (i saw 6 before the moon came up) and sat on the porch quite a bit. i know i talk about it a lot, but mars sure is bright in the night time sky. make sure to check it out, its the second brightest thing next to the moon, and way way brighter than the north star. i think its somewhere between 14 and 18 in magnitude of celestial brightness, but nowhere near the moons 1,800 lumens worth of shine.

im also rearranging my room this weekend. amanda needed the set of four connected grey vinyl waiting room chairs i had been using because she needed more seating at her house in long beach. i grabbed my old swivel chair from my old office, and i am in the process of rotating my furniture around. im also building a sweet sea-shanty style awning for the inside of my room. it should be pretty cool.

not much else to report beyond that. im going to be house sitting for my sister and brother-in-law all of next week, so updates might be sporadic.

deal with it --->

beeman!

so i dropped beeman's name a couple of posts ago, i miss that guy a ton. so i did little searching around the web tonight, and lo and behold, i found him!

he has been playing in a band called 'fly nova' that recently changed their name to 'the adored'. which to me sounds like theadore. hence when you have been acted against by a guy who's nickname is Ted, you have been 'theadored'. you can check them out at alvin, simon.... theadored.net
(p.s. dave is the guy in the middle looking to the left)

come back home dave!!--->

back at home, the martian front

had i been able to afford to travel home this week to be with my sister, which i couldn't, i also would have taken the time to tune in to an out of this world conference. the mars society this week is hosting a huge Mars summit in Eugene, Oregon. Just a few miles from my house, i would have been transported over 34,000,000 miles away to mars, just by dropping by the Hilton. check out this article, about as shallow as a martian ocean, from Eugene's paper, the register guard.

in other martian related news, i was checking out my above linked 'new mars' what i came upon a great article about how to encourage public interest in the exploration of mars. it involves four letters: IMAX. check out the article here.
have you seen mars lately?--->

bloggers of the world unite, and listen to morrisey

everyday seems to be an adventure of monumental proportions that become hard to take into context without a seperate, out of this world vantage point. even days like today, the one year anniversary of my mom's death, can end well. even though today i sold a couple of my most monetarilly valuable possesions, including my cherished powerlite cruiser, i feel good. and i have absolutely no idea why. it must have something to do with endorphines or something like that.

exciting events of my day, in semi-linear order:
woke up and cleaned up my room, went and dried my clothes at the laundermat, returned home and put said clothes away. drank one pot of peet's 'top blend' coffee, smoked a couple camel lights and got ready to leave. went to spend some time by myself in honor of mom. had lunch at O'Malley's (scroll down) pub in Seal Beach. had food and a pint. came home, drank 20 year old whiskey. watch 'spirited away' with drew and andy over at the bijou. good times.

so now i am listening to the smiths 'singles', and trying to get this blog back to what it sort of was in the beginning; a rambling and funny account of my life that started on here nearly a year ago. only about 24 days left until the one year celebration of this incredible piece of tripe!! amazing, astounding, stupendous, and finally one more adjective... creme filled goodness.

in blog news, i learned this evening of my good friend andrew's new found adventure into the blog world. make sure to bookmark him, he's smart....and dashing =)

i might head down to LA tomorrow to hang out with amanda. i like to look at clothes a lot, especially because i am in the midst of designing my own mens line at the moment. in other amanda news, i recieved some presents today (okay so the picture isn't really great, the pattern is much more masculine than it looks on my monitor anyway). fun times.

in the spirit of the old days of unit64, i will end with an album of the day. the disc today happens to be none other than the first disk of the box set by stiff little fingers curtesy of good buddy mattmaust.(refresh this splash page over and over until you see me 'jesus saves!)

bring back manifest destiny!! (dave beeman)-->

Be Thou My Vision


Be Thou my vision O Lord of my heart
Be all else but nought to me save that Thou Art
Be Thou my best thought in the day and the night
Both waking and sleeping Thy presence my light

Be Thou my wisdom, be Thou my true word
Be Thou ever with me and I with Thee Lord
Be Thou my great Father and I Thy true son
Be Thou in me dwelling and I with Thee one

Be Thou my breastplate, my sword for the fight
Be Thou my whole armour, be Thou my true might
Be Thou my soul’s shelter, be Thou my strong tower
O raise Thou me heav’nward, great power of my power

Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise
Be Thou mine inheritance, now and always
Be Thou and Thou only the first in my heart
O Sov’reign of heaven, my treasure Thou art

High King of heaven, Thou heaven’s bright sun
O grant me its joys after victory is won
Great heart of my own heart, whatever befalls
Still be Thou my vision, O ruler of all
--->

in loving memory

its fitting that the perseid meteor shower is this time of the year, in fact the peak is supposed to be tonight. the full moon should block most of the small ones, but it will be the big ones that people will see and remember. one year ago tonight my mom passed from this world and went to be with her loving savior. i wanted to post a couple things about her. her obituary for those who didn't ever get to meet her, and some of her funny quotes i happened to take down last summer while i was home.

i hate this heat!! i have been praying for those people in the asphalt jungle. no wonder they kill each other, its so hot out there!
-mom


what would the pioneers think of patios on top of buildings? they didn't even know what patios were! building houses on top of houses, the world trade center would be a joke to them! and do you know what they would think of little dogs that live in houses? even the vietnamese ate their dogs!

-mom


1950-2002
Longtime Cottage Grove resident Tammy O'Brien died Aug. 13, 2002, of complications due to heart disease. She was 51.

She was born in Eugene Dec. 1, 1950, to Wally and Rosemary Morelock. She graduated from Cottage Grove High School in 1969. She married Frank Garnet O'Brien II in 1978, and they later divorced.
She worked for the past 10 years as an educational assistant for South Lane School District. She enjoyed gardening and reading, and was interested in film and history. She was a member of Calvary Baptist Church in Cottage Grove.
She is survived by her mother of Cottage Grove; a son, Matthew O'Brien, currently attending Biola University and living in Los Angeles; a daughter, Samantha O'Brien of Cottage Grove; and two brothers, Michael and Ray Morelock, both of Cottage Grove.
A memorial service was held Aug. 16 at Calvary Baptist Church. Smith-Lund-Mills Funeral Chapel & Crematorium was in charge of arrangements. Memorial contributions may be made to the Tammy O'Brien fund, c/o Bank of America, Cottage Grove branch, 750 Main St., Cottage Grove, OR 97424.

i miss her with all my heart. i love you mom. matthew
>

hot hot heat

days like these are times that i hate having a lower core body temperature. temperatures that top the 90 degree mark heat me up so much and so quickly that i spend most of my day straight swettin'. i guess if that makes me cold hearted or whatever, great. i would rather be cold than freakin damp all day.

saw the supergrass last night. great show, always fun to listen to. free tickets curtesy of jesse 'the bastard grandson of the Duke' gloyd never hurt either. thanks jesse.

in other news, since i haven't updated in ages:

had a second interview with i.tv It went really well and i will be suprised if i don't end up working there in the next month or two.

there has to be, of course, a plan B in case everything doesn't work out with the former route. so plan B, which i am beginning to implement, goes as so. i return to biola, after hasing it out with financial "we're no help at all" aid, and finish my degree by may. but hopefully the i.tv stuff will fall into place and i can just drop out.

plan C, should i not be able to go back to biola AND the job falls through, is yet to be determined. may or may not include a semi-permanent trip down memory lane back up to oregon. who knows. cross that bridge when there's a hole in the road.

so what's up for today: an evening bike ride with dead mike

that's all folks! (for now)--->

boys are back in town

...guess who just got back today... back from an apperent break from the blogging world. lots of stuff to update on, but that i will leave for monday. im about to walk out the door to go camping for the weekend. here's a great little article though in typical unit64 fashion, about mars.

the red planet is closer to earth this month than it has been during the last fifty thousand years. there are all sorts of viewings going on to check out the view. this link has everything you could want to know to find out what's going on in your area. just click on 'events' and find where you are.

well i've got to get going, but please shout out so i know there's still some people out there.

lates---->