NP: Radiohead, The Bends (CD)

All the way home from the gig last night, I kept telling myself, "if someone wants to break into my car and steal my drums during a torrential downpour, more power to 'em." Then I got home, and made good on my promise from late last year not to leave the tubs out overnight. That made me feel good, in the way that doing the right thing over doing the easy thing always makes you feel good in the end, and it's the little things that help build into a better overall picture, a better overall life.

I had a brief but somewhat intense conversation with my roommate last night that touched on that last part. While I haven't been thinking much lately about whether I'm happy or not -- mostly because of the tacit admission that I'm going through one of the most difficult periods ever in my life -- I have been thinking about goals. I don't have any. I've never had any. The odd thing is how this relates to the happiness question. While I don't think of myself as having goals, I do make an odd semantic distinction in that I feel I have directions in which I'd like to travel, and I make incremental choices to keep me going in those directions. This plan worked masterfully with the RollingStone.com job, and there's a spot on the horizon where it may work with Plan B, or with making music outright. What makes it tricky sometimes is when a decision doesn't seem to immediately help, and that's when I have to dig down and put my faith in the process. That's also why I've been pretty steadfast in saying I'm not going to take the wrong job now just to have a job. This has not been a trivial decision, by any means, but I've stuck to it for nearly two years.

The conclusion is that I feel good about most of my decisions. Granted, this is not the same as saying I'm happy, but I tend to process these things with my brain before my heart. That's a hard habit to break, with apologies to Pete Cetera.

There was a bunch of random stuff that happened in the last day or two that I can't remember now. I need to be writing this stuff down more often. One bit I do remember is that some random Mazda dealership in town has taken the Chicago Wolves' advertising lead ("We play hockey the old-fashioned way. We win.") and released a radio commercial that rips on the Blackhawks. The sheer incongruity of it is pretty damn funny. And resourceful campaign staffers and/or like-minded college students seem to have cleaned up all the "Elect Nimrod" signs from Evanston after Tuesday's election, although I didn't really look past my new commute.

Speaking of that, by Friday things have gotten somewhat more routine-like, as Friday was the first day I actually worked the hours up north that I want to work, without any mad scrambles to other appointments. I still feel more like a temp than a part-time employee, but we'll see how that evolves over the near term.

And, briefly, back to politics. In summarizing the published opinions on the story, The Week described David Brooks' column as arguing that Iraq has to be part of the war on terror, otherwise why would al Queda go after Spain for their role in the "coalition of the willing?" This is an entirely circular argument. Had we not invaded the country, al Queda wouldn't have given a rat's ass about Iraq and anyone tangentially involved with the war. I've said before that there was perhaps an oblique strategy of using Iraq to focus al Queda in such a way that they can be more easily picked off, but that has always carried the now (literally) painfully obvious risk of mobilizing the terrorist organization. It's not too much of a stretch to say that we, as a country, brought this on Madrid. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to make that claim, but I'd be surprised if someone in the mainstream press hasn't by now.