home again

i've written two songs in two days, after not having written anything in years. like 5 years...coincidence? who knows.
i'm feeling energized even though it's over 100 here and we have no AC. apparently while i was gone the temps in Esco topped 115, setting a record. that's Baker heat.
I came to a realization while travelling through Utah and Nevada...parts of this country are fucking UGLY. There are some bits that are ruggedly beautiful, but also freaking ugly. St. George Utah is one such place. it looks like someone just had a handful of model railroad shrubs and let an arthritic baby pile up sand and scatter junked cars and walmarts around.
there's a stretch of road that is so abandoned it's stupid, and as you're going along this craptacular dirt fest, you crest a slight rise and see the biggest stinking warehouse ever. it's got to be a mile long, and it's got a big fat "Wal Mart" on the side of it, and hundreds of semis and trailers clustering like sperm on an egg around its many cargo doors.
there's a spot right outside the virgin river gorge that is just awful. it's a long, dirty sprawled out spray of litter and trailers and fireworks shops randomly interspersed with microwave and cell phone towers. we still got shit for service too. when you first emerge from the gorge and look to your left you'll see a single, ramshackle joint leaning on the slop from the mountains, looking for all the world that it's preparing to jump to its long-awaited death. i tried my damnedest to imagine people living in baker, or beaver, or salinas, or any of those shit hole towns along the I-15 or 70, and i couldn't do it. even here, in san marcos, which is kind of an asshole of a town, or escondido, which is fucking unbelievably hot, i couldn't figure it out. i'd rather deal with the traffic. i guess there's a special kind of person that can live in that sort of desolation. The gorge itself is beautiful....everything around it looks like shit to me.

i just went and got a portable AC unit for the art room. our landlord, who is a gigantic douchebag of quivering proportions, has failed to fix our AC for at least 3 weeks. i suggested not paying any fuckin rent. people who don't fix AC units during heatwaves deserve to have their eyeballs removed with salad tongs and fried up into tasty eye-fritters.
the thing is buzzing along happily behind me, and i can even now feel some cooling going on. i didn't actually mind the heat so much, but my office mate gets kind of whiny. i think i'll get some delicious lunch.