Turns out that R.E.M. is playing at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville soon. Sometime next month, I think. For those outside of Music City, the Ryman is an old church converted into the music hall where the Grand Ole Opry spent most of its early years. It is most definitely not the kind of arena/ampitheatre that bands like R.E.M. usually play these days. And under normal circumstances, I’d give up my right arm to see them play in such a relatively cozy venue. But right now they’re on what can only fairly be described as their “Bush Sucks” tour, and I have as such lost interest.

Mind you, Bush does suck. Then again, so does Kerry, in my mostly-humble opinion. It’s just that I hear quite enough politics everywhere else, and would prefer my entertainment to be free of it, thankyouverymuch.

Sorry for the woe-is-me pity-party poetry in the below post. I’m havin’ one of those “first weekend home after a great vacation” kind of weekends, meaning that all of a sudden my total lack of a social life feels all the more aparrent. One weekend I’m hanging with some of my best friends in the whole wide world (who only happen to live one time zone too far to the east), and the next weekend I’ve surfed Straight Dope, drank hot tea, sung along to TMBG and entertained the cat just about as much as I care to, and now I’m now officially Bored Beyond Belief. Bleah.

I gather from

the loneliness

that spoils my cherished onlyness

that hermitry

is not for me,

if I’m deprived of company.

And yet I need,

I must confess,

this solitude. And so I guess

the thing for me

ideally

would be a hermit colony.

N.M. Bodecker

This much is certain: I will rue the day I learned how to make iced coffee.

Now downloading from iTunes: “Dial ‘M’ for Monkey” by Bonobo. Sometimes an album sells itself just by the title alone.