bad p-l-e-x

Here's a stolen Piepmeier story for you: One day, when a visiting cousin was behaving badly, a Piepmeier child stopped them, took them by the arm, and conspiratorally admonished them about being "a bad p-l-e-x." No one was really sure what this meant exactly, but they figured the kid was trying to spell "example."

Well, not only have i stolen that story--and tell it often as if it happened to me as a child--i have stolen the actual modus operandi of the story itself. So, sometimes i'll tell Alison not to be a bad p-l-e-x. Or, if i want to explain that i'm irritable, i might say "i'm r-t-b-l." Or, i if i think someone has a bad attitude, i might say...oh, something like "that person has a bad r-2-d-2." The fun part of the game is you can say pretty much whatever you want as long as it sounds only vaguely like the word.

Anyway, lately i have not had much of a bad r-2-d-2. Or at least, i haven't wanted to have one. I'm enjoying my job, me and all my compatriots are playing some really good music, i actually revel in the misery brought on by all the heat and humidity, i'm sleeping well.

Here's probably the biggie, though: i've kind of quit reading the news. I do that every once in a while. I'll go on a news hiatus and i'm always a much happier person for doing it. (Well, i still keep up with current events via my shopmate's morning ritual of listening to a guy named Neal Boortz...and still that doesn't effect this ebullient mood--go figure...)

I used to feel guilty about not trying to stay informed. I felt as if i had some duty to empathize with the families of miners out in Utah. Or that i needed to spend a little of every day doing penance for the sins of the Sudanese military in Darfur. And actually, i still do feel like this.
My own tautological rationale involves recognizing that i am simultaneously part of a global information network, but bodily, i'm still a very local being . I cannot physically aid those miners in Utah, or those suffering in Darfur. In this global system, however, I can indirectly help them by not using my pocketbook to be a fascist, or a capitalist p-i-g.

Which brings me to the conclusion of all this: This non-bad attitude of mine, this good r-2-d-2, makes me less apt to criticize others. And that's a less-on i can use more of, believe me. The upshot of all this, though, is that i'm blogging a whole lot less. It seems if i don't have anything critical to say, i just generally stay quiet. That's a shame... In lots of ways...

But anyway, to break this silence, i will come out of my blissful closet and exercise a little bit of bad r-2-d-2 to tell you another story:

It's 8 jillion degrees here in Charleston currently. The humidity is hovering right around the percentage of a swimming pool. I've played two gigs in the last two nights--and the electricity went out at both of them. I can't say for sure, but when that happens in the summer like that it can only be one thing: air conditioners--the sucker of 70% of America's electrical supply. Well, imagine my consternation as i talked, in the dark, to a bandmate the other night during one of our lack-of-electricity-imposed breaks. This guy explained to me how he had a bad r-2-d-2 of his own concerning the cost of his new 4 ton air conditioning unit. Seems he'd burnt his other one out by keeping his house...now get ready for this, start hearing that drumroll...at Sixty-Eight Degrees. Sixty-Four when they were sleeping. I didn't even know a.c. can get that cold!

Alison and i keep our house at 80 degrees during the day now, and i'm proud to say that i get a little cold even then.

Those miners in Utah are coal miners, by the way.