1. I beat Suikoden III last night. Another great game that doesn't let you play after the credits: disappointing. So many monsters still unslain, so many items still uncollected... I guess I should start Shadow of the Colossus now, but I can't summon the enthusiasm.

2. Friday is our last day at 1591 Passive-Aggressive Place. Markieland is seceding, moving to Graham's apartment bulding in Minneapolis — the nickname contest for that place is already underway — and Jenna and Our Bold Hero are moving to posh new digs in a fancy neighborhood closer to St. Paul. The next place won't have lousy water pressure, an ineffectual landlord, or gigantic house millipedes centipedes.

3. I am terrified of gigantic house millipedes centipedes. Yes, that makes me less of a man. Lately I've actually been researching insect recipes. Yes, that makes me a bit creepier. One of Flo's friends in Germany, a cool albeit suspiciously wealthy guy, raised grasshoppers and crickets for food; the grasshoppers were quite good, as I recall.

4. I've been working, well, training, in Minnetonka this past week. I keep running through the numbers in my head, trying to figure out if I'll need (yet) another job to pay the bills; unfortunately, all the numbers I have are just guesses. In any case, I'm anxious to start editing again. Oh, and weekends are much much sweeter when you've got actual work to take a break from.

5. I finished the second version of Swamp Thing around 5:30 this morning. Good stuff until Mark Millar took the reins around issue #140. He ends it well, but there's a lot to slog through on your way there. I'd recommend ending with #138. Noble Joshua: thoughts?

6. I can't keep track of every magazine's supposed political affiliation, but it seems like my del.icio.us linkblog has been strangely conservative of late. There has been no actual change in my politics, however. Be sure to check out the long WaPo profile of the "new" McCain; I'm much more wary of him than I was when he last ran, probably because this time no one is quite sure what he actually believes.

So before I left Chicago two weeks ago, I bought Joseph Epstein's newest book, Friendship: An Exposé. In the hardcover edition. At list price. I am a sucker like three times over.

Not that I didn't enjoy the book. In fact, I was overjoyed to hear that my favorite essayist had written a book on friendship, a frequent topic on this blog, and while the writing was more lifeless than I've come to expect from Epstein and some chapters could be excised altogether, there were plenty of great observations.

Epstein, clearly an extrovert, lays claim to a ridiculous amount of friends, upwards of fifty as opposed to my dozen or so. This is partially because (and this is an important part of his thesis) his concept of friendship has nothing to do with the "confessing" we've come to expect from modern friendships.

As a very private person (Dan wrote on his weblog) I'm sympathetic to this view. I think of my younger brother, who goes fishing several times a week with a friend of his but apparently doesn't discuss anything of import. Aren't these two friends, good friends in fact? I have several good friends who've never come to me with their problems — am I supposed to resent them for that?

How much I'm willing to open up to a friend does play a factor in how good of friend I consider them to be, but it's far from the only factor. After reading Friendship I find myself weighing and measuring more: Epstein compares friendship to "the seating plan in a stadium, with my closest friends seated in the box seats, less close friends in the grandstand, and business associates and acquaintances in the bleachers" (19).

For years now, I've been too binary, trying to fill the box seats and the bleachers but neglecting the grandstand. Figuring who goes there is easy, since Epstein provides a spot-on definition of "acquaintance":

An acquaintance, I should say, is someone you know, may even have known for a long while, but almost never plan to meet, unless for some very specific reason. He or she may be someone pleasing enough to encounter — on the street, at a party or professional function, even in a hospital — but one generally does so with a slight element of surprise. A relationship with an acquaintance does not postulate a future. You may or may not meet again, no obligation on either side, nothing owed but recognition and civility. You may dislike, in fact despise, an acquaintance, and do so with a clear conscience, something one is not permitted to do with a person one claims to call a friend. (2)

That was for you, Ann of Stillwater. I have some fantastic acquaintances.

Down in the pricier seats, Epstein provides two more useful definitions:

The sociologists nowadays speak of "fossil friends" to refer to friends from one's geological past, from college, or high school days, or earlier, whom one can go without seeing for years and then pick up with roughly where you both left off. (71-72)

Dylan, of course, is my prototypical "fossil friend," and since I'm slow/cautious/paranoid about making friends, not to mention just out of college, I have more of this type of friend than any other.

More useful is the "foxhole friend" (37-38), the person you'd like to have in your corner when the going gets tough. We were erroneously taught in high school that this is how Germans view friendship, so for years I've divided the people I like into acquaintances and freunds, with often disastrous results. Good people were snubbed, box seats were trashed.

As Epstein points out, foxhole friends needn't be your closest friends — you may have witty and interesting friends who aren't loyal, trustworthy, or reliable — but I for one have given all these friends complementary box seats.

I remember one night at Lawrence when a good acquaintance suddenly, inexplicably stood up for me when everyone else was keeping quiet or piling on. (Some people, dimmer bulbs all, take my self-deprecating humor as an "opening," as if I'm not aware of my faults and have exposed them unwittingly.) It was completely unnecessary, no one else at Lawrence had ever done such a thing, and yet: instant foxhole friend.

This is the kind of friend I try to be, to the extent that a disorganized procrastinist can be relied upon at all.

Epstein describes many more types of friendship, and it's as a taxonomy that this book is most useful. I now know that I've been too stingy, too mired in dichotomies. This book has shaken my long-held beliefs about friendship. Whether it will affect my actual relationships remains to be seen.

Along with Graham, Barry, and Jenna, Our Bold Hero went to Des Moines this weekend to attend Adam and Betsy's wedding.



I've known Adam since second grade; he's what Joseph Epstein would call a "fossil friend" — more on that in a later post — and in point of fact he's my oldest friend. I've known Graham for almost as long, fourth grade if I'm not mistaken, but our friendship took a sabbatical when the old blowhard moved away for a few years.

Our families go to church together, my younger brother Matt is friends with both Adam and his cousin Ally, and my youngest brother Josh has been romantically "linked" to Ally's sister, though I suspect that's just a cover for some sort of land deal.

Years and years ago Adam and I went to camp together, and more recently we used to sit around with Jenna having discussions of variable loftiness and playing a game I've since dubbed "Jenna ping-pong." If you knew me in high school it should come as no surprise that our parents apparently thought we were drinking or doing drugs or making bootleg DVDs or something, but no.

That was the summer after freshman year, and recently I've seen Adam less frequently, but like good fossil friends, we're usually able to pick up right where we left off. As far as I can tell, Jenna is the only Brainerdite who's kept in regular contact with Adam; presumably she was only a Y-chromosome away from joining his wedding party.

This was the second wedding where I've been on the "inside," a situation which naturally invites comparisons between the two events. Adam (and Our Bold Hero, if we're being honest) has always been known for a certain haphazardness, and though everything worked out and was in fact great, this wedding seemed much more casual than the Politician's.

(There's a sense in which Bill and Beth always seemed destined not only to get married but also to plan a wedding. They were just so into it. I picture charts and graphs and scale-model figurines.)

It was very weird having nothing to do except show up, but truth be told I failed at even that. I'd picked up my tux, and I was ironing my pants for the wedding rehearsal when a thought occurred. And by occurred, I mean Jenna said this:

Am I supposed to be at the church right now?

I was forty minutes late, which as luck and character would have it was only a little later than the groom. You know, they say every wedding needs at least one thing to go wrong.

Unlike the Politician's wedding, this one seemed to have no implicit ranking determining the order of the bridal party (I could feel honored, but I couldn't "win"), so being late meant an added responsibility: my bridesmaid and I would be last in line, and the first to walk down the aisle the next day. Which we rocked at, by the bye.

The rehearsal dinner, with Jenna and good food and sparkling dinnertable conversation, was uneventful. I love wearing a suitcoat with no tie.

Oh! I have a combination watch/moneyclip now. Somewhere.

That night, after trying and failing to find our original destination, we ended up in the Flying Carp Cafe, an awesome basement bar with mounted fish on the wall. Des Moines also boasts a bar called el Bait Shop, and a "famous" taco place called Tasty Tacos.


Clearly, I have underestimated Des Moines. The only stereotype that survived the weekend was my prejudice against terrible Iowa drivers. You see, in Minnesota, the left lane is for passing. I know, it's crazy.

There's also, I suppose, my belief that every Midwestern state needs a few towns named after much more famous places but pronounced all funky. Wisconsin has Medina (Med-ine-uh) and Berlin (Brrln); Iowa has Nevada (Nev-aid-uh).

The next morning — the ceremony was at 11 — I arrived at the church an hour before the rest of the groomsmen. There were pictures; I have no good smile, though I've been told that my smirk is dashing. And the tuxes were pretty sharp. I talked to the photographer, who will have the pictures from Adam's wedding on her website in a few weeks.

The wedding ceremony, a full Catholic mass, brought back a lot of memories, but emboldened by the presence of one heathen and one born-and-raised or "natural" atheist among the other groomsmen, I decided against taking Communion. Kind of a pointed way to demonstrate my atheism, especially since my dad was one of the Communion servers, but it was time to have the courage of my convictions.

I also think it's more respectful to the actual believers when the rest of us sit out Communion, rather than feigning belief and committing sacrilege for good measure. Then again, according to one of my apologetics teachers, you can't fool Jesus. He'll transubstantiate that host right back to bread if you don't believe.

It was weird, but also fun and exciting, to see Adam married. Standing in line next to the bride and groom as they said their vows, you could feel this soft electricity radiating outward. I craned my neck to see what was going on.

However, I think it only really hit me at the reception, when a fellow groomsman came up, pulled up my collar, and said that our friend is getting married! We should be drunk!

Celebrate, get drunk, we did, though I never felt the enormity of the day; it didn't seem like there would be any substantial break with the past here, though of course I wasn't the one getting married. At most, this wedding, the first wedding for that core group of friends that I've been to, foreshadows a time when we'll all be getting married, or at least getting our acts together. I don't know if I'm eager for that time or frightened by it.

I danced briefly with the bride during the dollar dance, chatted a few times with some of the guys I'd met at the bachelor party, and cut up the dance floor with Jenna to the general amusement of all. When the party ended, I said my goodbye to Adam, who of course I'll see again.

So I just got a shirt, a shot glass, and a pint glass from the website Extra Tasty for submitting a "Drink of the Day" winner, the Busticator.

In fact, I got all this swag twice, because the Busticator won twice. Jubb: I have a small, ugly T-shirt that you're welcome to take as compensation for my pimping of your drink idea. Good luck getting it from me.

(It's aqua with two olives on crossed swords. Don't worry, the one I'm keeping is even more nonsensical.)

I was once very excited by the idea of Extratasy. It would, I thought, be a site where I could just enter in the booze and mixers I have and get good recipes.

Unfortunately, I tried to use it for exactly this purpose a few weeks ago and got 12 recipes, mostly for things like "Salt water" and "Simple syrup." There were some good, or at least legitimate, recipes, but they were overshadowed by crap I had no way to filter out.

If the site restricted you to recipes with alcohol or let you set rating minimums for recipe display, I'd use it again. Right now I'm happy to use this fabulous swag and wonder what might have been.

Adam's bachelor party: top secret.

Good times, though, well worth the trip. Adam's friends from Drake, particularly the other two groomsmen, were pretty cool. And it was really good to spend some time with Adam; I have no phone skills and we live many states apart from one another, so we haven't had many chances to talk recently.

And wow, the booze. I think I've had alcohol at least six days in a row now, since "PR Night" on Wednesday. I haven't drank that much in a long time: ten beers, a whiskey-coke, and three shots. Thankfully, I trained under the best.

That's all I can say. On Sunday I finally revisited the Art Institute of Chicago. "American Gothic" is overrated, but they had some paintings by Magritte and Ernst so it was time well spent.

Later I met up with a fellow maphiosi, the Strategist, up in Lincoln Park, where I taught a bartender how to make a good vodka gimlet. Oh, vodka gimlets.

Megabus continues to rock, though the first busdriver kept listening to what must be the Jamaican equivalent to Muzak and was unable to do anything about the bus's constant beeping for eight hours.

Off to Chicago for the next three days. Maybe this time I can check out the museums.

But first, eight hours of bus-riding.

I'm somewhat nervous about this — I haven't been able to talk to any of the people I'm meeting about when and where exactly I'm meeting them. If I lose my cell phone then, well, there will be much trouble.

It is waaay too early to be eating breakfast.

I just found out that I've been hired on as a part-time tutor, thanks in no small part to a glowing recommendation from Representative Man.

Our Bold Hero works part-time as a copy-editor, tutor, and _______.

Filling in that blank is now my new goal; I'd like to do more editing, but I've been looking for editing jobs for the past two months and there are presumably few stones still unturned.

In other news, I went to B-town this weekend. Revelations: Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby is a surprisingly good movie (in fact it's the best Will Ferrell vehicle to date), my lake at home is the lowest I've ever seen it, and Fleet Farm is awesome.

Adam's wedding is still two weeks away (in high school, at least, Adam and I both held a worldview in which two weeks was "plenty of time") but the month of travel is officially upon us.

Tomorrow I head back up to B-town for three or four days, and next weekend it looks like I'm heading to Chicago for a bachelor's party on Saturday.

(If any MAPHer wants to hang out with and shelter me Friday night, let me know before I buy bus tickets. But think before you offer: is this "blog" really enough proof that I'm not a serial killer?)

Finally, the weekend after that is Adam's wedding. Then I start work, and won't be able to be so footloose and fancy-free.

I just got word this afternoon — I have a part-time editing job, starting in late August. The job is in Minnetonka, but after training I'll be doing the work from my computer, so... score. Did I mention I'll be editing?

It's time for some celebratory Mariokart-enhanced drinking.

Today was one of those light, good days. I couldn't say why.

According to the forecast, today was what they call a scorcher. It took me a few hours to deduce that I hadn't seen Jenna all morning because she was holed up in her room, playing videogames with the air conditioning on. Entrenched.

I knew it was hot — tonight Graham noted that I was sweating profusely, I forget the exact simile — but the heat didn't feel stifling. There was a cool breeze early this evening; the heat wave has broken.

The past few days I've woken up early because of the heat, the sheer weight of it, but today I woke up to a call from the IT placement agency Jenna had referred me to. I could feel myself on the verge of an, integriphany I called it once, but no, I couldn't tell the lady what I'm looking for right now, I'll know in a week, that seemed fair.

For breakfast I ate the last of the chocolate chip pancakes. Around lunchtime I put a batch of scalloped potatoes in the crock pot. When the time came, I put on heavy clothes — armor — and did battle with a wasp. The cooking was delayed slightly; I have been stung many times in the past and do not like wasps.

The heat doesn't bore me, as it seems to bore everyone else, but eventually I felt unproductive and ran some errands. From time to time I would catch myself humming softly. Before I came back home I took The Warriors, and Burnout 3, and our conquered game file from Ben.

He lent me Jet Set Radio Future; I haven't made up my mind about that game yet. Something to play while Jenna is holed up with Suikoden III.

When there was time, I read Swamp Thing. It was worth slogging through the tortured prose for twenty or so issues after the relaunch to get to Alan Moore's contributions. Like a good book, they brought a little of my mind back to me.

It's raining now, Markie just walked by and told me. The sky doesn't seem to be blue or black, from my window it's a sooty yellow.

For a while, earlier today, I was wondering what we would do tonight, and then suddenly, but without realizing it, I stopped wondering. I didn't care to organize anything; I was unmotivated but not because of ennui or depression. It had already been a good day.

Otherwise unremarkable, it will soon fade from memory.