I try to buy my gas on Mondays and Wednesdays, because I have to drive out of Austin near the lake where the price has leveled at $1.95/gallon. Wow...what a deal. Still almost two bucks. Hey it's better than $3. So yesterday I was filling up the tank when a man refueling his Ranger next to me walked up and asked if I would look inside of his ear.

"What?" I said.
"Would you please look inside my ear."
Me staring.
"I felt something fly inside my ear, and I think it's still there."
"Oh."
"Could you look to see if it is still there?"
Me cautiously looking around to the side of his head. Should I grab hold of his head and turn it toward the light? Should I stick my finger in there to find out what was buzzing around. Does this guy do this to pick up young boys off the street?
"Nope, all clear."
"Awhh, I guess it musta flewn away."
"Yep."
"Thanks Mister."

It really is a predicament. You can't see inside of your own ear. Glad I could be of assistance.

I spend a lot of my day up a the VTV studio looking for cool sites, trying to get an idea for what's out there (I'm relatively new to this professional arena, so I'm learning how to write for the web from some of these other sites). Most of the stuff I'm looking for is community based. Here are a few that are kind of interesting. Neiteher Ryan Vaughn nor his God necessarily endoreses any of the views expressed at these particular sites.

Also of note, we are working on a new site at VTV which will be live most likely sometime this week, so I'll post a link for that too eventually. We tested it all day today. It's pretty fun to navigate. Very communal.

www.fuse.tv
Eye candy site. MTV on steriods.

www.gnn.tv
Created by a couple of guys who worked for MTV and found out that it sucked.

www.fuel.tv
Fuse TV on steriods.

www.gawker.com
Simply entertaining. That's all. An online publishing company that hires bloggers to write a few pieces everyday.

www.buzznet.com
Photo community.

www.lifeswitch.org
Weird, find a new country to host your personality profile.

More coming...what do you guys think of all this? We consume so much entertainment media. Yikes.

Dear Nose,

You are so weird. I could walk behind a street cleaner in Maryland after the last winter's snow for five hours straight and you wouldn't so much as twitch. But every single night when I get out the tooth past and the tooth brush you are indignant. I've never seen so much consistent tooth-pastey-saliva-on-the-bathroom-mirror in my life. You are so random nose. What is your problem? Why must you thrust an entire days worth of carcinogens and dirty grim through those two little holes when I fill my mouth with tooth paste...Every night. I mean its kind of funny once or twice you know, but COME ON dude. Get it together, or I'm getting another nose, maybe one of those nice thin jobs.

Okay, okay, I'll admit that a good sneeze is next to a good bowel movement, and a good bowel movement is next to bad sex, and well, bad sex is next to good sex, and good sex, ha, is next to godliness. But that doesn't give you any right to create so much extra clean up work for me to do every day. Stupid nose. I know your always telling me to pick on somebody my own size, but now it's my turn. Now it's my time. I don't want to hear so much as a sniffle the next time I slather that Crest on the diverging bristles of our eight-month old tooth brush with purple and orange stripes. Believe me it is in your best interest to cooperate. As I said before I'm not asking that the sneezing cease altogether, just try to keep it to normal times, like when walking into a Linus dust cloud or something okay? Okay.



Love,

Ryan

Living at home again has brought out a very silent me. I've lived alone once before in my life, and when I would come home, it was peaceful, quiet, because there was no one to talk to but myself. This is different. I think I talk less now than I did when I lived alone.

I can remember thinking at different times in my life, especially in college, that I just have no reference for what to say in certain situations. I couldn't remember observing my parents having said much, or gotten themselves into many confrontational situations, particularly verbally. So a lot of what I would say would come from books or what I'd seen my friends parents saying.

Now being around these silent types so much again is really bringing this side out of me. I'm not talking much to anyone any more. It's rather contagious. When friends ask me to go out lately, I say that I'm probably going to stay in. I don't want be around a bunch of talking and laughing people having a lot of fun, because I know that I'll have to pretend that I'm having fun too.

Funny thing is I think we're all chatter boxes once we leave the confines of our dinner table. It was always weird to me, to hear my brother on the phone right after we had spent all of dinner in Chili's, the only words spoken to the waitress. All this silence, and then we're in the car and Jimmy gets on the horn: "Yeah bro. Well call Brian, he can fill in, yeah, right on, give me a call later okay?" Next phone call: "Is Sarah there? Sarah, can you tell Trav to be there at 10. Yeah, then afterward we'll get some grub. Yeah, I can probably get you in. Are you gonna be there tonight?" Then beepity beep beep beep. And we're all back to Vaughn mode in the car on the way home from dinner.

And I've been blaring the lyrics to a song lately with my sunroof popped at night, no sun, and no where to go, which say something like this: "When I used to go out, I knew everyone I saw, now I go out alone, if I go out all."

Okay, so I keep getting these worship gigs. I'm doing one this Sunday for Easter. And I'd really like to be doing more of them, but it takes a lot of time, which I don't have right now, to do it well. I feel like every time I've lead worship for some group, that it's always half the practice, and half the heart (my fault). But then there's another side that make it kind of difficult as well. A lot of the time, people just call the week of and are like, "Hey, can you be my worship leader for such and such? We can't pay you at all, but I know you're doing it for the Lord anyway. " Well, the Lord ain't payin' nothin neither pardner.

Not everyone is like this, there have been some very gracious and heartfelt interactions that I've had with folks in this regard. In fact I really like the pastor of the church that I'll be playing for this weekend. But overall I think that artists and musicians are seen as people who have to do what they do as a hobby, in your free time. Not just in the church, but I mean where do you think we get the term "starving artist"? It's because if you're an artist, there's a good chance you're an artist who is bagging groceries or waiting tables, just open on Thursday night at the Chuggin' Monkey. People who are so-so at selling cars still get to sell cars for a living because it brings in money that is so-so. But a musician who is really good might have to get a full time job for a long time before he figures out a way to make so-so money with his music or painting or whatever. I'm not trying to get rich here, though I wouldn't mind getting rich, just want to not worry about that stuff so much.

And then again, maybe it's sort of good situation to be in, creating from a difficult, dark and dank place. The artists' income in America is so polarized that it corrupts some of the best and starves the runners up. I guess it would be nice for there to be a value placed on art in a way where we realize that without inspiration and creation for the sake of expression as opposed to marketing, we will live our lives with less awareness of its preciousness. That way ordinary artists can do what they love to do and have a family.

What if I died right now? What if I just...died? No sons or daughters or love of my life. Or what if while driving to the community college tutoring lab with the radio turned on softly and the sunroof cracked only halfway, I just slumped over and flew off a bridge or something? Would that make sense? There has always been this thing with my hands and things. Every time I look at my hands, they say whatever it is that the rest of my body could not bring itself to. They are the most telling thing about me. And now when I look at my hands on the keys, the numb tired pulse of blood, I think, "That would make sense. Yeah, that would make sense." My hands...divorced from purpose.

This illogical conclusion hovers, instead of love, like a vulture over my wasted mind and settles like bags of sand on my shoulders and throat and chest and stomach. And I'll just sleep again with my neck craned uncomfortably on my pillow until the morning reminds me of what I knew I could not forget:

Selfishness, when it comes to this, is not gratifying.

Good night.

I went to see this band last night called The Black Tie Dynasty at Habanna Calle on 6th. I think I've finally formed at solid opinion about the 80s as a result. In some ways the 80s were like a bad cyberpunk movie, produced by folks that were not technologically savvy enough to handle the modernity and futuristic ideas that were being put forth. But, I feel, some found a way around this problem in the music industry by tweaking the timbre of their vocals and the style of their play. The most successful ones, U2 leading the pack, created a timeless kind of new genre.

Ambient and emotional guitars backed by solid rock and roll bass and drums, a synth here and there, all conspire to draw you in. It's almost as if the music is asking a question that you had not dared to ask yourself for fear of the answer. Can we change? What do we really want to?

Well, happy spring break everybody. It's high-ho for me; I feel rested and ready.

Sorry guys, I haven't written in a long time, and instead of spilling my dramatic guts about all of the emotional highs and lows I'm in the middle of, I wish to leave you with these funny thoughts. ( I will post dramatically within the next couple of days here, watch out it's kind of touchy feely.)

McSweeney's List
Cinematic Expressions of Inner Self-Loathing If There Were No Mirrors to Smash.
BY ROSS MURRAY
- - - -
Junkie jazz singer sees self in back of spoon; uses clairvoyant powers to bend it until it snaps in two.

Actress who clawed her way to the top catches reflection in pond; uses nearby backhoe to drain pond.

Woman who married for wealth rather than love looks at photo on driver's license; goes to DMV to ask for new photo.

Politician who has forsaken his grass-roots values discovers potato in shape of own head; mashes it.

Burnt-out rock star looks down at himself during out-of-body experience; refuses to go back in
body "until we start seeing some changes around here, mister."

Aging supermodel has plaster cast made of face; backs over it in SUV.

Alcoholic author looks at reflection in a tumbler of Scotch; drinks Scotch; pours another to see if he looks any better in this one.

Clocks Ranked According to the Ease With Which One Can Tell Time From Them (Easiest to Hardest).
BY ALLIE OESTREICH
- - - -
1. Digital
2. Not Digital


Names Gas-Station Attendants Call Me That Leave Me Feeling Both Slightly Superior and Subtly Overwhelmed.
BY ROB ECCLES
- - - -
Chief
Boss

(this one's for Zach).

I recently posted at Mark's blog about having trouble really getting into the Beach Boys. Well, here is a guy who I didn't like very much at all either when I heard him the first few times. So there may be hope yet for future relations between Brian and I.

I mean I really was looking hard for something to like about Jay's music at the time I was introduced to it, and I just couldn't find anything. He sounded sad, his lyrics often weren't the kind that you found coming out spontaneously in the shower, mostly because I couldn't remember words that I didn't understand, or because they didn't rhyme. But after going back and listening to some the first things that he recorded when he lived in Belleville IL, I began to be interested in the guy, Jay Farrar, and the making of his musical intuition less his actual music that I didn't care for.

Now Jay's music may be the most comprehensively familiar tunes that I have in my head. The way I took a liking to Jay happened in sort of the same way friends of mine might like my music because they have a history with me. Or because they know where I'm coming from. Only I had to work backwards with Jay. There are some people that were able to identify the timeless timbre of Jay's vocals, the prophet like delivery of the songs, and the gift of songwriting. But all I could see were the same simple chords with a shaky delivery that didn't exactly get me pumped up in the morning on the way to work.

In the end, I've found that I love what God did when he gave man the gift of music. And the more I've attempted to tackle the craft of songwriting, the more I respect the idea that songs are gifts and work best when they are received as one.

Here's a list of his recordings if you are interested in checking any of his stuff out (The Son Volt albums are the easiest to get into I think):

Jay Farrar Solo Projects

Sebastopol

Thirdshiftgrottslack EP

Terrior Blues

Son Volt

Trace

Wideswing Tremelo

Straightaways

Uncle Tupelo

No Depression

Still Feel Gone

March 16-20, 1992

Anodyne

89/93: An Anthology

Rising Up and Rising Down, William T. Vollmann’s seven-volume, 3,000-plus-page moral exegesis of violence, took 23 years to accomplish, involving sittings where apparently he wrote for 16 hours straight. Any body heard of this guy? Tim, Mark, Kevin, Ryan, John, Justin?

We could try to read through the whole thing on a scheduled basis so we can comment on the same chapters everyone else is reading at the same time.You know, like one of those read-through-the-bible-in-a-year things, only this might take like 7 years. We'd all have to come up with an extra couple 'a hundred bucks to purchase the volumes as well which most likely means "count me out", and for me probably means, "nevermind".

I'd like to take a peak inside at bookstore or something though.

Or we could just read through the Bible. Admission: That doesn't seem so exciting to me right now. Don't get me wrong, the Bible is great, but I haven't been able to get outside of Proverbs for the last 9 months or so.

Forewarning: This is a very indulgent entry, so if you'll excuse me while binge write. When I sit down to compose one of these entries, there are so many things to deal with. First I look at that title line. It's blank, like a static-y television station that's lost it's feed. For me, the title is the connection to the rest of the story, post, poem, whatever. One look at that flippin' title line, and it's complete chaos in my head; similar to the way a local network turns into a frenzy of technical babel and wire checking when they don't have any audio with their six o'clock news broadcast.

And that's only the beginning. Usually, I don't get that taken care of, I don't find a title, so the rest of the writing process is performed in the hum of that confused noise. Then there's my fingers that start to jam up and and jerk around (they don't know what they're doing, stupid fingers, like little wild caged cats)...then, DELETE, DELETE, DELETE. Uh, I need something to drink. Crap, I forgot to turn off the oven. Wait, no I didn't. I remember taking the pan out and then turning the knob from bake to off. Oh, just go check the oven dufus. So I check the oven, and of course it's been turned off.

Back to the blank screen. So full of potential. There's this little flickering neon sign that I see in my mind as well, that says, "prize writer" or "you are the writer". But it's really far away, not dominating the view or anything, and fading. So I have to go find the switch to that damned sign and turn it off. I'm not sure what that is all about, but I would imagine it has something to do with finding voice. Writers should not be writers first. Writing only shows us who we are and what we have to say about something else. Unless of course you wish to write about writing. Then I suppose it is recursive, teetering along the edge of helpful and annoying.

So I'm dedicating this post to freeing myself from these expectations (that I've placed on myself) to identify with other great wordsmiths in the world. I'm not a wordsmith, just a guy who likes words and think that they are very useful when chosen carefully.

And another thing. There are some odd road blocks to get past inherent within this art of blog writing, if you want to call it that. What makes a piece honest? How can I be honest without being careless? If our art is inspired mostly or partly by what is happening in our real lives, then how will we protect those we love? So, it seems the point of this blog, for me, should not be to discover as much what is going on in my personal life, rather to comment on it.

So then, now that I've decided this, what will determine honest or true work? For instance, I was talking to a painter friend of mine who was doing portraits of homeless people from photographs he had taken here. After visiting an old professor to get some feedback on the work he had done, he was forced to take an "honest" look at his work. The portraits were more or less what he thought would be good material for him to reproduce with paint, but perhaps what he really saw best were the friends, family, and percieved enemies around him. In the end, what he found was most interesting at the time were these composed photos of people huddling around at bus stops. And I believe he found that his work was more inspired after locating what he was most interested in.

Honesty in art is determined by the author's willingness to deal with subjects that are truly within his perspective. From there the path may lead to addressing the subject that he or she thought they "should" be portraying, but for now, honesty will affect the audience (no matter how diminished) more profoundly.