There’s always a van. The Scooby gang, ghost hunters by trade if not specifically by design, rolled around in the Mystery Machine. The Ghost Hunters from SyFy flit from haunt to haunt in their souped-up van — black, of course, with “TAPS” stenciled in yellow “COPS” lettering on the side. Even the land boat the Ghostbusters tore through New York City with bears far more resemblance to a modern-day van than a car.

Though you may question whether the contemporary investigators are aping the ghost hunters of their youth, the Whispering Spirits Paranormal Research Society pulled up to Farmington Daily Times building in the quiet northwest New Mexico hamlet in their very own van. It was (appropriately enough) Friday the 13th, with a nice big moon hanging in the sky to perfectly illuminate the aging but still functioning newspaper. It’s spooky business, poking around decaying buildings in the dark.

The motley crew that piled out for a night’s work wasn’t what you’d expect a group of ghost chasers to look like. They come in all shapes and sizes, all manner of hair colors and lack thereof, and range in age from 18 to well into Boomer territory.

Then again, if you really think about what real-life ghost hunting entails — a steadfast belief in the supernatural with an accompanying willingness to sacrifice your nights and weekends in pursuit of proving said logical improbability — they’re exactly what you should expect them to look like.

They began unloading their hard plastic cases filled with all sorts of electrical gizmos, some recognizable and some not, around 11 p.m. To a person, the only thing they had in common other than the uniform black T-shirts was a determination, a sense of purpose. They exuded a clear sense of order and efficiency as they transferred the boxes first to the ground, then inside. It almost bordered on urgency — though, since the investigation wasn’t set to begin until after midnight, it wasn’t quite clear why.

They all wore matching black T-shirts with the name of the society and a very pixelated vortex plastered on the back, but it was rare you’d confuse any of them for another.

Mel, the undisputed leader of the group — who never was referred to as such by the rest except in their complete obedience to his every order — stood distinguishable by his stocky, muscular stature, his reddish-blond beard and accompanying (though thinning) hair. He got started right away.

“We expect to find whatever we can,” he said, unpacking one of the six night-vision video cameras from where they lay in their custom-cut foam holes. He hands one of them to his wife, Krystal, one of the group’s co-founders, and has her run it from the flat-screen monitor they brought with to a prearranged point in the other room. “We’re doing a small investigation here, it’ll be about an hour, an hour and a half.”

The sheer amount of electronics the group carries along is somewhat staggering, especially considering the rather small area they’re investigating on this trip. A lunchroom and a small bullpen seem like fairly easy ground to cover, but Mel says the total cost of the equipment they have is pushing $4,000. It’s not hard to believe how expensive the equipment is. It’s just a little hard to believe that the people who run this nonprofit (they’re adamant about their IRS status) have nothing better to do with that kind of money.

Of course, it’s a little hard to understand what drives a person to do this sort of work in the first place. As people who believe in ghosts, they’re actually somewhat less equipped to deal with coming face-to-face with a spirit than a nonbeliever. A nonbeliever would be just as scared at a startling noise or a freaky coincidence, but logically they’d attribute it to just that — a coincidence. True believers, though, are prone to seeing specters around every corner. To them, that hard, bristly thing that brushes lightly against their left arm in the darkened room is out to get them — there’s no chance it’s just an upturned broom.

It all started with a cellphone. A smartphone, actually, the marvel of modern technology that carries a staggering amount of computing power in your hand. More than enough to solve the most intractable mathematical mysteries that stymied humans for generations. And it finds ghosts, apparently. Sometimes?

“We were messing around with an app on my phone, and it turned out to be fake, and we started wondering kind of a little bit more about the paranormal,” says the other co-founder, Natasha. By day Natasha works at a deli, but nighttime is when she can bring out her spiritual, supernatural side.

“We found another app on the Droid called the Ghost Radar, and I was curious as to how it worked because I couldn’t find anything on the Internet that said it was either fake or real,” chimed in Krystal, interrupting slightly. The two went to a local cemetery to test out the app, which instructed them to look for “Paul.”

It’s worth noting that, on the website for Ghost Radar, the company’s only comment on the app’s veracity is that it’s “as effective as an EMF detector or a KII.” Which is to say they either believe in it wholeheartedly, or think it’s a great way to transfer money from the gullible to their bank account.

Krystal, however, seemed to be convincing herself she believed.

“It was like leading us to it, I want to say, because we were looking for this person’s name and we couldn’t find a Paul, and it said, ‘Beyond,’ so we’re like, OK, so it’s on the other side. It wasn’t actually on the wall itself, it was on the ground, so we just kind of went from there and invested …”

“They were playing, basically,” interrupts Judy.

Judy is Mel’s mother, something of a skeptic and an utterly devout Christian. She got into the ghost-chasing game after Mel and Krystal kept out all hours of the night and asked her to babysit the kids. Judy doesn’t actually believe in ghosts, per se. She mostly tags along to help protect Mel and Krystal from the spirits they face, which Judy believes are all demons. She started asking to help them analyze the recorded evidence, and eventually worked her way up to a starting spot on the squad.

The investigation itself is actually the easiest part of the whole thing, if you can get over the whole “actively seeking out haunted places” thing. The part that Judy broke in through, the analyzing, is actually the most difficult piece — mostly because of the tedium. Hour upon hour of straining to look at grainy, black-and-white footage of something you just witnessed firsthand, all to find some — any — evidence of the supernatural. Since just about anything unusual can be ascribed to the supernatural, just about everything that happens has to be double-checked to rule out the presence of other beings.

Mel couldn’t give me a definite estimate as to the man-hours involved, but what he did come up with sounded exhaustively time-consuming.

“Probably two hours for every hour, reviewing just video,” he said. “It takes probably a couple of weeks to go over four hours worth of audio and video.”

The cameras, recorders and what can only be described as gadgets they carry with them could stun a small herd of high school AV nerds. Each investigative “team” of two people carries at least one personal digital audio recorder. There are also various electromagnetic field readers, something called a “ghost box” (an AM/FM radio that continually scans through frequencies, so as to create “white noise” that spirits can use to make themselves heard more easily) and of course the Ghost TiVo, the digital video recorder that captures of every frame of freaky footage they shoot on their stationary night-vision cameras.

Between the expense, the late hours, the hours (and days and weeks) annihilated by analyzing and the cringe factor that accompanies an adult describing his or herself unironically as a “ghost hunter,” it’s somewhat bewildering to comprehend why this dedicated — and any group of people that willfully sacrifices this kind of time and money deserves the designation “dedicated,” among others — group of people would do this kind of thing. From the variety of their answers, it’s clear there’s no category they can be slotted into, no on explanation that covers all of them.

Except, maybe — simply — that they like to do it.

“This is probably the best hobby we could ever come up with,” says one.

It’s time for the investigation to begin. First the entire group clears out to the back door, most to smoke, but ostensibly for the purpose of getting a neutral reading, of sorts. The sensors and video cameras can get a control reading — and maybe pick up some stray ghost bloopers before the spirits see the “ON AIR” light switch on.

The group also needs to let off some steam (slash smoke). This is the part of the play before the play, when the cast gathers backstage to let out the giggles, stretch and warm up their vocal chords. And, of course, pray for a good show.

Religion and ghost hunting don’t mix together well when you first throw them in the blender. Though you can (and Mel does) point to the Bible for evidence of evil entities on Earth, the prescribed method for dealing with them involves commanding them into the bodies of pigs and running them off the cliff.

Not only are there no big drop-offs present, we’re fresh out of pigs as well. This, however, does not deter the group.

“Basically, we stay in God’s word. If I have to take a Bible with me, I’ll take a bible with me. I preach God’s word,” says Mel. “There’s no guarantee that we can get rid of what’s there, but we do our best.”

Mel, Krystal, Judy and Shane (he’s the oil worker in his mid-20s with the tattoos and the leather vest that plunk him square in a moderate-to-rough motorcycle gang) are adamant about religion playing a huge role. Shane takes the same demonological hard line about spirits that Judy does, while both Krystal and Mel believe God protects them and their children against the spirits they counter. It might be the couple’s biggest worry, actually — unknowingly bringing a ghost home for a spooky reenactment of “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?”

Mel’s even had a sit-down with his pastor. Or two.

“He does not agree. He has an issue with me doing what I’m doing and my wife doing what she’s doing,” Mel recalls.

“He’s just real concerned with the Bible and what it says,” offers Krystal. “In there it says not to seek the spirits.”

After the invocation, the group heads back in and picks up their gear. Each two-person team has the aforementioned voice recorder as well as a walkie-talkie to facilitate to communication and rule out false positives. If one of the teams hears a weird noise, they’ll try to ascertain whether another group’s nearby before maintaining radio silence in the hopes of hearing it again. Similarly, if the group leader back at base sees something on the camera, he can instruct a team in the field to take a closer look.

The audio devices seem to be the easiest way to catch a ghost, though the reason is never fully explained. Mel tells me he can just sit in his backyard with the recorder and hear plenty of voices. This for some reason makes him think the method is more, as opposed to less, reliable.

In addition to the audio devices, Judy’s carrying around a garden-variety digital camera with the flash set to “accidentally staring directly at the porch light when your parents flip it on after the sun goes down.” The hope is that you can catch a spirit by surprise? Or something. That was never really spelled out to me, though Mel assured me 35mm film cameras do a much better job than the new-fangled digital ones.

Even ghosts can be Instamatic hipster snobs.

Natasha and Shane are exploring the lunchroom, where unspecified paranormal activity is rumored to have taken place. They carry both an EMF reader and the ghost box. Shane takes the EMF reader and basically runs it over every square inch of the cabinets, walls and as much of the ceiling he can reach, interrupting every so often with a desultory, “Are you there?”

Natasha, on the other hand, immediately takes a seat at the table, lays her cellphone and the ghost box down on the table, and turns on the squawk.

“Are you there?” she asks, though it’s more of a demand than a question. “Show yourself. Prove to me that you exist.”

This goes on for longer than you’d think tolerable. In the corner of the room sits one of the tethered night-vision cameras, its presence notable for the circle of small red LED lights that ring the lens, staring directly at us. It’s watching Natasha decry whatever spirits may be there as “cowards,” challenging them to prove her wrong.

One obliges.

As the ghost box flips through the frequencies, every so often you’ll be able to make out a word or a partial sentence that slips through a broadcaster’s lips.

“Did it say ‘press room’?” I ask at one point, pointing at the device even though we can’t really see each other.

Natasha confirms she heard it too. Her aggressive patter picks up in volume and intensity, but we don’t get much more in terms of aural confirmation.

But there is something strange going on. For some reason, every time the ghost box rolls through the 1300 AM range, you can hear a whine cycle up through different pitches. And when it gets to 1380 AM, it just … stops.

It stops scanning and hunkers down on some random Latin music station. Natasha says it’s never done that before. Shane agrees. When we set it to start scanning again, everything continues as normal. At least, until we hear the whine in the 1300s. And it stops. Again.

The group line is that they’re debunkers. Sometimes it’s the house settling, other times it’s simply in your imagination. They say their job is to go in, gather all the information possible and announce that the ghost was actually just Mr. Jenkins, the creepy real estate developer, all along.

“The main purpose of the group is to go in and debunk, to make sure that people aren’t seeing or hearing things that are naturally occurring,” says Judy.

That’s the spin on natural occurrences. When it comes to the supernatural — that no one spoke out against during the powwow we had before the investigation began — there are no human spirits wandering in search of a loved one or a great burger or a long-lost childhood sled.

Everything is demons. If you hear a voice that sounds like Grandma Lil or knows something only Uncle Jerry could know, that’s just a particularly crafty demon trying to trick you. Judy also believes in demonic possession — but they’re spirits of Hell, not spirits of people. Tricksy demons.

There’s a lot to debunk in this creaky old newspaper office, though one can’t really rule out the notion that one or more demons has passed through its halls posing as an editor or a sales rep. But there are plenty of clunks and groans when the air conditioner kicks on, at least twice an hour at random. And since the gigantic printing press used to be just on the other side of the wall, there’s a drop-basement that holds the leads and connections to enough juice to power at least one good-size Vegas hotel.

This is where some of the science comes in, the debunking. They’re a research society, see. It’s right in the name. And their studying is not limited to extraterrestrials and ghost stories; they also read up on common phenomena, and I’m sure the electrician-in-his-other-life has gotten through a technical manual or two. That, the technology and the scientific method the group applies to their investigations (two people to a team, so they have verification; constant communication to rule out false positives; and making sure everyone knows where everyone else is for the same reason) are the values the group holds highest.

But the power plant only explains the crazy readings we’re getting on one section of the wall with the EMF reader. We’ve still got this ghost box that’s spooking us all just a little bit with its whine and random-but-not-at-all-random stoppages. We run it through some tests.

“Try stopping it manually once we start hearing the whine,” I suggest. Natasha does so, and we both hear the whine skip up through the scale on each of the 1310, 1320 and 1330 AM stations.

“So the octave’s not tied to the frequency,” I offer, which sounds scientific-ish, at least to my ears.

Natasha nods. She then turns the scan back on, only to have it stop a few seconds later on the same station as before.

“OK, this is pretty weird.”

Natasha nods again.

We sit in silence as we let the box run through the same cycle two or three more times. Then we decide to experiment again, so Natasha picks up her phone and hits a button so we can get a better view at the ghost box.

Which proceeds to skip right on by 1380. No whine, either. The ghost is gone.

We’re both a little disappointed. She sets her phone back down so we can continue the hunt in darkness, which is apparently the group’s guess at spirits' preferred mood lighting. When the whine comes back and the box stops abruptly at 1380, Natasha gasps.

“Dammit. It’s my phone.”

She moves it away from the box, and we resume the investigation in silence.

Some level of skepticism should be present. As debunking performs a fairly vital part of paranormal investigating, at least for Whispering Spirits, you’d expect the group to be somewhat wary of what it finds. You’d expect each of them (or at least some of them) to examine things with a critical eye, always naysaying each other and operating on a basis of “normal until proven not.”

You’d also be wrong. Most of the debunking, it seems, falls to one man — Bobby.

“Bobby is very skeptical,” Natasha had told me earlier. “He is the one who does not believe.”

The concept was boggling. Why would a paranormal group carry around a skeptic on its roster? More to the point, who joins a group for the expressed purpose of not believing a word it says?

“I think it’s curiosity,” Bobby says. “I just like to prove ‘em wrong. Until they can prove me wrong.”

Bobby’s proved ‘em wrong on more than one occasion. Despite being very hard of hearing, the first thing he does when the group shows up on site is to check for any mitigating evidence — do the lights hum, is there a power plant behind that wall, what noises do you hear?

“Bobby’s very observant,” says Mel. “He’ll note everything in his head, and when it comes time to go over evidence, he remembers. He tries to debunk everything that we come up with, because we get excited. He tries to explain everything.”

Once, the group set up in an old graveyard. (Despite the ready abundance of dead bodies, nobody ever seems to haunt a new graveyard. Wrong atmosphere, maybe. Not the right aesthetics.) They had been wandering among the tombstones for a while, in the oldest section, running the ghost box.

“We were walking through there, and the radio come off with, ‘Scared,'” Mel recalls. “And we stopped and we said, ‘Don’t be scared of us, we’re here to help you’ … The girls come off with, ‘What do you have to be scared of?’ And it came through, ‘Reaper.'”

The electromagnetic spook set the scene perfectly. Armed with their digital camera, the group took a steady succession of pictures of some spooky-looking trees.

“We were shooting pictures, and you see the dark images of trees, and there’s the really dark image that looked really tall,” says Mel. “It looked like the Reaper.”

That one wound up being pretty easy for Bobby to debunk.

“It turned out to be me,” he says.

Bobby’s disbelief isn’t really disbelief, though — more like the suspension of belief. He says he truly wants to believe in ghosts and spirits — he just hasn’t had the opportunity yet.

At the very least, Bobby has to be a believer in belief, then, right? He’s actually had a spooky experience he couldn’t explain — a recorder he set down in a haunted basement recorded a disembodied voice growling, “Lucifer” about 10 seconds after he left a room. He has no explanation for it. But still he doesn’t believe.

“Every investigation, though, I go in hoping to find something that I can’t (explain) — that’s not me. And so far, I’ve been let down,” he says. “I wanna be a believer. And someday, I will be.”

The dark is scary, regardless of whether ghosts are present. By far the spookiest occurrence took place in the press building, where the team finished up after scouring the main building. There are no windows in the building’s deepest recesses, so the area where huge mountains of five-foot paper rolls are stored dims to the blackest of black with the lights off. So black you can’t even discern the movement of your hand as you wave it in front of your face.

Stephen seems like the most normal guy in the bunch. His partner, 18-year-old Kim, isn’t the opposite, but she’s closer to the other side of the spectrum than to his.

Stephen and Kim set up in a paper-roll canyon that stretched back to the cinderblock wall, towering some 20 feet overhead. Stephen aimed a red laser pointer at the wall opposite, down the length of the chasm, explaining it would be much easier for a spirit to cause a small, weak light flicker than to manifest into a form visible by flashlight or camera flash.

So we waited. In absolute darkness, with only the tiniest, most anemic of red beams shimmering along our sides, barely even visible on the far wall. Your mind starts to play tricks at that point, combining the extraordinarily low light with the sleep deprivation that comes from ghost hunting until well into the 4 a.m. hour.

Then I heard shuffling.

Officially, I was along as an observer, not an investigator. And yet, much like when I asked if anyone heard “press room” on the ghost box, I felt compelled to speak up when no one else did.

For I knew the stories of the press building. Of the suicidal press operator who jumped into the baler (which compresses plastic barrels, cardboard or human flesh and bones, if you ask it, into much smaller and compacter versions of those things) in order to commit suicide. He failed to notice that the baler had been emptied and wound up just being stuck for the weekend, but it’s still a bummer vibe to put out there.

I had heard of the full-bodied apparition of the ’70s press operator, still dressed in the proper garb, standing watch at the control panel one late night. And the barking dogs and growls heard over by the ink tanks when no other soul, man or beast, was supposed to be in the building.

“I hear feet shuffling,” I announced.

“You do?” asked Kim, surprised.

“Is anyone there?” I asked, directing my question toward the tiny point of light on the wall.

“Check the radio,” I instructed Stephen.

He did. “No,” came the response.

So we waited. Silence can seem oppressive in any situation, but in absolute darkness it’s downright suffocating. I strained my eyes, trying to see anything.

Then I noticed the slightest waver in my peripheral vision, right along the left wall of the canyon. The laser beam streamed down almost directly along the right side, so the movement I noticed was so slight I almost missed it.

“I see something,” I announced again, this time a little bit louder. I was, I admit, slightly scared. I scooted back away from the light, toward the cinderblocks. And I knew it wasn’t Bobby this time, because I had heard him breathing heavily and walking away a few minutes earlier.

“You hear shuffling?” asked Kim.

“No, I definitely see something. Turn on the light, turn on the light!” I finished, my voice getting slightly louder, higher and faster on every word. Stephen fumbled for the laser pointer, which was attached to a flashlight, flipped the light on and shone it on whatever was coming for us. I gaped at what I saw lurching out of the darkness.

I don’t know if Judy is right to be keeping an eye out for demons, or if Krystal’s prayers do keep the evil away from her home and family. I don’t know if Bobby’s skepticism is well founded, or if Shane is correct in his adamant belief of evil spirits trying to fool us. I don’t know what’s on the other side, reaching out to make a connection to the land of the living.

But that time, it was Mel.

In the end, it turned out the newspaper wasn’t terribly haunted. In the bullpen, where most of the spooky happenings had been reported, there were only two things to note before they went back to the tapes for analysis.

Judy managed to snap a photo of an “orb,” a large globe of light that appears in one frame of a photograph and doesn’t appear in any taken just before or just after. On the small screen of the digital camera, it definitely looks like an orb.

This was confirmed by one of the press workers, who exclaimed (multiple times) while looking at it, “Damn! You caught an orb!”

It’s not as interesting as expected, given their recitations of other investigations. In fact, their very first time out they visited a location they refer to only as “The Basement,” a literal hole-in-the-ground Mel had been told was haunted since he was a little kid.

“Growing up, all the kids used to talk about a lady that lived there that kidnapped kids back in the ’40s,” Mel recalled. After kidnapping them, locking them in cages and starving them for weeks, “she would take ‘em down to the pond and drown ‘em, if they were still alive. And she’d throw their bodies down a shaft.”

Of course, after a full investigation the team found there was no truth to this story. The woman merely had several citations for cruelty to animals to her name before she was “taken away.”

“She lit a horse on fire,” according to a neighbor Mel spoke with.

Then the house was demolished and some homeless guy took up residence, kicking all the drunken teenagers out and scaring them by re-enacting “The Blair Witch Project” (back when people would have gotten the reference) before himself getting taken away by police.

Despite the attempted suicide-by-crushing in the press room story, this was no basement. Yes, one team did have a strange encounter with a table in the bullpen area. They sat the recorder and themselves down at one of the tables in a corner of the room where a lot of disturbances (both spectrally and in the flesh) took place. There, when Stephen (Kim’s partner) knocked, a distinct rapping sound knocked right back.

“It’s very interesting. It was almost like it answered me, so that’s what makes me think it’s not coincidental,” Stephen recalls. “It knocked several times. I think it’s something more. I’m hoping.”

Kim, however, has no qualms about believing. Ghosts, spirits, demons, she’ll root for the existence of everything. And she’s even extra religious — though she grew up with her grandmother’s Christianity, the deli-worker-by-day also got to hear about the traditional Navajo creation story and myths.

“Yeah, I believe there’s a God, but I don’t believe, ‘Oh, you have to do this and be good,'” she says. “Traditional, they come from four worlds, and it’s … confusing, mainly. They talk about skin-walkers, bigfoots …”

Of course, as much as religions differ, they also come together in surprising ways. In the same way that Mel and Krystal worry about ghost hitchhikers, Kim’s dad employs his own religious cleansing for her ghostly doings.

“He believes that if I do something like this, then something’s going to follow me home,” she says. “He has to do a prayer with me, medicine man.”

Kim’s purpose for joining the group is the simplest, which is why it seems like the most honest.

“I just wanna find answers. To know if there really is another side,” she says. “You have to find something to believe in, and I want to believe in something.”

That may be why Kim appears to the most in tune with the supernatural. For the group’s recent (and as of yet, only) UFO outing, Kim was the only one it communicated with, it “only lik[ed]” her. And this investigation — which was her “first big one,” according to Krystal, as Kim is still technically training — she got a response in two different places, as opposed to most of the group’s none.

Did Kim’s search for answers influence her perceptions? Perhaps. Then again, it’s possible she’s just more attuned to the other side. Her grandmother told her the story of her grandfather, who was murdered before Kim was born. Every few years, her grandfather would visit her grandmother, telling her, “Good job.”

“And he’s telling her the next time he comes back, he’s going to take my grandma with him,” she says.

Kim also believes her grandfather is the voice in her head that restrains her from getting too angry or too upset, the voice that tells her, “Stop,” or “Don’t.”

“My grandma says that’s him protecting me. And that’s what I want to know, I want the answer to it,” she says. “I’m not all crazy about the idea of demons.”

The intricate weave of belief in ghosts and religion seems to at once make both perfect sense and none at all. Kim’s makes more sense than most, as she’s already trying to tie together two beliefs that don’t have any common threads — in fact, Christianity explicitly refutes much of traditional Navajo religion, If she can make those work, adding in ghosts just requires tweaking a few names.

The rest of the group, the devoutly religious, seems just as out of place on a paranormal investigative team as Bobby does. Are they just on the lookout for exorcism opportunities? Do they actually expect to see something? Do they really not see the parallelism of not believing in earthly spirits lingering after their physical life, but giving full credence to the notion that a heavenly spirit has total dominion over all?

“There’s proof that there’s a God. In history, and in the Bible itself,” Judy says. “So we’re guessing about spirits, we’re not guessing about God. We believe in God.”

In the end, if you ignore the somewhat muddled philosophies and jury-rigged beliefs, the group really does have one motivating idea. Kim is looking for answers. I don’t know if she’s finding any, but she’s found a group of people that give her something to do after work — breaking her out of a rut that she says started when she finished school. Bobby is looking for evidence that will permit him to believe. He hasn’t found it yet, but he still keeps coming along on investigations, sure that this one could actually provide the concrete solidity he needs. Mel, Krystal, Natasha, and who knows how many others are really just trying to find out what’s out there — and they find something, every investigation, whether the origin of the phenomenon is supernatural or perfectly ordinary.

And when you think about it, that’s pretty much what they’ve done so far. When they piled in and drove away that morning, they weren’t trying desperately to convince anyone they’d encountered the supernatural. They had a few things they were going to check, sure, but that’s just diligence — much like their other investigations. Despite the few “unexplained” occurrences such as the “Lucifer” recording, the group primarily spends its time finding weird stuff and then coming up with normal explanations for it.

Overall, their catalyzing agent is actually the same one that drives the original Scooby gang — getting to the truth. Demystifying the previously inexplicable.

Or, to use Judy’s words, “To help people. So they’re not afraid.”

There’s a lot of baggage that comes with getting older. When you’re younger, you hear all about the changes your body’s going to go through and how different everything will seem and how uncomfortable showers will be in middle school, but discussions of aging with children (understandably) tend to peter out around right around puberty.

Then you blow right through your teens only to discover (surprise!) that you continue aging even after that. You don’t just hit adulthood, coast for 20 or 30 years until one night your hair turns gray and you are, in fact, old. There’s a continuum, a process.

You figure that out, though. There’s a certain point where it dawns on you that you will continue to get folds and wrinkles and skin spots. You’ll find getting up in the morning takes a little bit more effort, getting into bed a night feels a little bit better, and some midnight you’ll discover the pure agony of hitting the bar after work when all you really want to do is go home and sleep.

Theoretically. So I’ve heard. Hey, I’m not in college anymore.

The part no one prepares you for, the part that is so gobsmacking, is when your parents — who’ve been adults all their lives — photos of some nebulous “before you were born” period notwithstanding — start showing their age. Wait, you mean while I was busy getting older, they were getting older, too?

It’s probably a little different for me. My parents were pretty old when they had me, as they’ve been retired since before I started college. They’re the most active people in their retirement community — which isn’t saying much — and are a “young 65.”

They both exercise, go out and do things regularly, and my mom’s even got an iPhone AND an iPad (which I get called upon to fix, over the phone, pretty much every other week). But I’ve noticed the last few times I’ve seen them that my dad has more trouble walking around than he used to. My mom has a little bit of trouble texting on her tiny phone, and squints a little so she can see it. Heck, next time I move I’m probably going to have to pay somebody to help me lug those 7-foot bookcases — and accompanying 14 boxes of books — up the stairs. No more free labor for me. It gets at me because the thing my parents always stressed was adaptability. It’s fine to know what you’re doing, but it’s even better to know how to handle yourself when the situation changes. They seem to have things under control even when stuff goes haywire. Frankly, they make it look easy.

Even so, it can be jarring when life catches up. The little things I noticed may help subconsciously prepare me, but it’s still disorienting when the big stuff hits. When I got that phone call (nonchalantly, because my parents are weird): “Yeah, your dad got out of Christmas shopping when he passed out at the mall and they had to pick him up in an ambulance.” When my mom sent that (poorly typed, let’s be honest) text message that said, “I had to go the emergency room last night because I felt like I was having a heart attack. I wasn’t, but it sure felt like it.”

Now, I don’t think my parents are in any immediate danger of dying, but I’ve a handful of aunts and uncles who have passed, all at younger ages than my parents are now. It’s sobering every time you lose someone close to you, but none of those really hit home the way it did when my dad almost passed out a few weeks ago after he woke up (which I at least partially blame on the ridiculously hot and humid York weather).

It’s an eerie parallel, because as I see them coping with the changes that come with aging, so too do I have to come to terms with the changes they’re dealing with, on top of my own aforementioned “Hmph! I get tired earlier” nonsense.

Part of growing up chronologically means growing up mentally and emotionally, and learning to deal with these kinds of new — and sometimes scary — situations. All you can really do is hope that your parents (of all people) prepared you to be able to handle the unexpected when it crops up.

Unless, of course, it’s Siri, which my mom still can’t figure out.

Poems for our “bureau” reporter in Santa Fe, whose stories I’m always left waiting for when I’m laying out:

Sitting at my desk wondering if you’re still alive unmoved either way.

Four stories at noon two out, two new by midday; none ever find me.

He’s slaving away Interviewing, contacting; AP filed at 5.

A blank page, staring waiting to be filled with news … Angry Birds high score!

The downside of biking to work is I have to interact with people. To wit:

Our HEROINE is biking to work, since she lives like six blocks away and gas is well north of $3 in New Mexico. After a minutes-long coast (it’s mostly downhill), she arrives at work and begins to lock up his bike.

FRIGHTENING BLOND WOMAN, who was lurking behind the building, comes around the corner talking loudly on her cell phone.

FBW: I don’t know, I don’t have the money.

Our HEROINE is doing her best not to listen, as it doesn’t sound like a fun conversation to be dropping eaves on. Due to the volume the conversation is conducted at, however, she has no choice.

FBW: I don’t have the money to file papers! If I have to go see a lawyer, I’m gonna go bankrupt.

At this point, our HEROINE realizes she’s overhearing a discussion about divorce. Though the woman is glib, it’s difficult to tell if she’s joking or not. Her face is strained, even when smiling, giving it an almost movie-like quality - as if, at any moment, you’d expect her to pitch forward with an arrow sticking out of the back of her head.

FBW: Well if you’re just going to die, I won’t have to worry about it. I’ll just be a widow, no problem.

Our HEROINE finally manages to work the lock, clicks it into place, and fairly runs into the building.

See, you can give me the environmental, physical and financial benefits of the bike versus the car all you want, but at least when I’m in my car I don’t have to deal with the insanity of others. It’s not like I’m deficient in that category myself.

"When I ask 'What's next?', it means I'm ready to move on to other things. So, what's next?"

Six months ago, I quit my job as a “Web Publications Specialist.” The hours were absurdly long (overtime was expected and uncompensated), and even herculean efforts — like the time I put in a 25-hour day in order to help finish a website for launch — went unnoticed, save to be exploited for publicity purposes later. I enjoyed my co-workers, but I didn’t really enjoy the work, didn’t really get anything out of selling overpriced things to people who really didn’t need them in the first place.

So I started looking around. I regularly surfed journalismjobs.com, trying to find something that suited my skill set. I mostly applied for sports editing, copy editing and page design positions, though I would occasionally branch out if it was in Washington state somewhere. For the first few months it never really went anywhere, but around February/March I started to get responses.

Some were in-state, others were from elsewhere. I had set up a few phone interviews a couple weeks in advance when all of a sudden I got an email from The Inlander, which had the tripartite advantage of a) being close, b) being snarky and c) being a copy editing position, which is where I’ve often felt I can do some of my best work.

I was actually on vacation in British Columbia when I got an email asking me to come in for an interview later that week. I had no problem with this, as I really wanted the job, so I cut it a day short and drove back across the state on Friday morning in anticipation for an interview that afternoon. When I got the job, I just couldn’t stop smiling. It felt like one of those perfect moments — I was just coming off vacation, I was happy, and to celebrate I went to a friend’s barbecue and got completely black-out drunk and passed out around 10 pm.

When I woke up at 2 am, my mind was clear and I immediately started figuring out what I had to do: resign, find a place to live, figure out how I was going to move everything. I had one thought, derived from an episode of The West Wing I always enjoyed. It’s partially encapsulated by the epigraph above, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. The idea behind is that there are things you can change and there are things you cannot. Oftentimes, when circumstances come at you, the best thing to do is not to whinge about how bad everything else and how unfair life is treating you. When the variables change, all you can do is survey the situation and figure out: What’s next?

Six months ago, I plunked down in a low-slung chair, facing a brilliantly sunlit window the Inlander’s publisher sat in front of. After asking the traditional “Why do you want to do this?” and “What are you hoping to get out of this?” questions, he turned to a topic intimately dear to my heart: loyalty.

“How long are you planning on staying in Spokane?” he asked. “We’re looking for somebody who’s in this for the long haul, five or 10 years.”

Loyalty describes almost everything I’ve ever done in a professional setting. It’s why I always worked so hard, both at the Evergreen and later at my former job. At the Ev, the loyalty was to the paper, to the profession, to the ideal that the news was a vital cog in society’s machinery, but mostly it was to my friends. My friends, who toiled tirelessly day in and day out, trying to put out the best newspaper they possibly could. It was why I didn’t mind staying late or taking on extra tasks: Out of loyalty. Even later, at a job I didn’t feel any particular respect for, I was more than happy to stay late or help other people out because I knew they’d do the same for me if asked.

One month ago, I was called into the publisher’s office for a meeting with him and the managing editor. As I sat down, I was told we were there to “talk about my position” — more specifically, the lack thereof. Due to budgetary constraints for 2011, they said they couldn’t afford to keep me on. I could either take my leave then, with one week’s severance, or continue to work through the end of December. I chose the latter, figuring that a week’s pay (“completely fucked”) was inferior to a month’s pay (“mostly fucked”).

When I went home, I did as any self-respecting Coug would: I drank. Heavily. I started when I got home at 4:30 pm and finished around 11 (when I passed out), taking most of a bottle of Scotch and a goodly portion of a bottle of Everclear with me. (This was actually a few days before Apple Cup, which I originally intended to attend but decided that — given my financial and emotional state — was probably not in the best interests of either my liver or my wallet.)

When I awoke the next morning (a Friday, which meant work), I stumbled out of bed and into the shower. I fashioned myself into the closest approximation of a functioning human being I could muster, put on my coat and marched out the door to work.

What next?

I gave myself one night to bask in self-pity, and then I started to get to work. I updated my resume, started rooting through my computer to find my portfolio website, couldn’t, got three-quarters of the way through making a new one before I found the old one, ditched the new one and updated the old one. I started crawling JJobs again, firing off resumes and cover letters.

It’s incredibly easy to get caught up in blaming people. Lord knows there’s enough to go around. I could angrily denounce the Baby Boomers and Gen Xers for fucking over our generation so royally, leaving us with an endless carousel of education, internships, jobs that we get thrown off of well before the ride ends. Or to start scrutinizing and finding those tiny little things that don’t seem like much when everything’s going along swimmingly, but blow up to gigantic proportions when everything’s going to hell. Things simply are what they are.

But none of that does any good. I know that’s a tough prescription to take (much akin to a “Tough shit” offered when an accusation of unfairness is raised), but it’s true. I struggled with it myself in those first few minutes after I went back to my desk after the meeting. I kept flashing back to that first meeting with the publisher, with the thoughts of loyalty running through my head: “I moved to Spokane, I quit my job, I gave my word that I wouldn’t jump at the next incrementally better job … You, on the other hand, laid me off/let me go/fired me six months in.”

(These phrases sound like they’re different, but only if you’re not on the receiving end.)

It would have been easy (believe me) to level an accusation of hypocrisy, but that would have been intellectually lazy of me — and not changed a damn thing, besides. They looked at the numbers and decided what was best for them moving forward, what was best for the company. Obviously it’s not the outcome I would have preferred, but it does me no good to carry bitterness for their ensuring the paper’s continued existence. And, again, such vituperation can’t help me; they can only function as distractions.

I enjoyed my time at the Inlander. I’m immensely fond of all the writers, production people and even some of the advertising folks (no, really!), and take great pride in a few of the stories I wrote (and had a great time writing sarcastic, cynical comments on just about every cultural product imaginable).

Though nothing’s certain yet, I’m fairly deep into the interview process for one job, and I’m sure the hiring machinery for others will kick into a higher gear once the holidays are over. I would have preferred to have a gig lined up by now (as I tend to get all twitchy and stabby when I have nothing to do), but there’s nothing I can do about other peoples' decisions — I can only influence my own. And however this interview or the next turns out, it’s not that big of a deal. I’ll simply do what I can: Examine what I did, try to figure out what I can do better next time, and ask myself the only question that matters … What’s next?

Note: This story was originally published in the Pacific Northwest Inlander.

15:00, Q1 – 156 yards to go

It’s an inauspicious setting to set a record. At opening kickoff at Joe Albi Stadium, the home team’s student section (Mead), celebrating Senior Night, looks anemic. The visiting team’s side is even worse.

Besides the actual game itself, the running subplot involves Gonzaga Prep’s standout running back Bishop Sankey, who entered the game with 3,782 career rushing yards, 155 behind the all-time Greater Spokane League record of 3,937. One could safely assume that Sankey, averaging 253 yards per game, would be able to surpass it.

Sankey runs it up the middle following a G-Prep interception on the first play of the game, spins to avoid a defender, keeps churning, breaks free and sprints down the field for a 56-yard touchdown.

14:32, Q1 • 100 yards to go

Sankey says he knew about the record before the game, but it wasn’t the most important thing on his mind.

“Each game, I just try to help my team as much as I can,” he says. “I’m just trying to get the longest runs I can, trying to score every time.”

It’s pretty clear to everyone — people in the stands, his coaches on the sidelines, the other team’s defense — that the best way for G-Prep to win is to put the ball in his hands. Even if you know what’s coming (and since Sankey had 41 carries en route to 359 yards, it wasn’t exactly a secret), it’s still really hard to bring him down.

Sankey’s picked up gains of four yards here, six yards there, in between giving the ball to other backs a few times and G-Prep airing it out. His second TD comes after he runs right, head-fakes and dips in and out of the defense before finding the goal line.

1:46, Q1 • 49 yards to go

It’s difficult to ascertain at first glance what exactly makes Sankey such a great runner. He’s fast, but not the fastest; he’s not particularly tall, at 5-foot-9, but he’s solidly built. Really, it’s a combination of things.

“His vision is great, his explosiveness, his power, is phenomenal. He’s got great balance,” says G-Prep’s head coach Dave McKenna. “I mean, everything’s pretty good.”

Sankey keeps whittling down the magic number: pounding it up the middle for 12 yards; dragging a player who’s caught his jersey for five yards before going down. Then, needing 7 yards to break the record, he sees a hole and dives through for an 8-yard gain.

5:21, Q2 • -1 yards to go

The record is announced over the PA system, and the fans give him a standing ovation. McKenna calls a timeout to talk things over.

“I just wanted to congratulate him and tell him it was a huge achievement, but it wasn’t about him — it was about his teammates as well. He understood that, and wanted to get the W,” McKenna says.

Sankey proves it by going out and scoring his third TD of the game on the next play. He got the next two yards, the score and another 201 yards, to boot. G-Prep won the game, and a spot in the playoffs, 35-21.

Even though Sankey’s on the verge of setting more marks, for most rushing yards in a single season at the GSL and state levels, he says he’s focused on something else: next week’s game against Ferris, ranked No. 4 in the state (G-Prep is No. 6). About setting records, he has one philosophy.

“I was just trying to take it each game, each carry at a time,” he says. “If it happens, it happens.”

Hoo boy! As a [technology writer/reporter without a story idea/old person], I’ve seen my share of changes in life. But [new product] is about to completely alter [area in which new technology will have extremely slight impact].

I was at [public place] the other day when I saw a young person extricate [latest technological obsession] from her purse. Now, I don’t disparage [Generation X or newer] their technological revolutions, but it seems to me that [outdated technology people don’t use as much but is still prevalent] works just fine, for my purposes.

See, my generation, the [****any generation older than X, whose name invariably invokes a more positive connotation than more recent ones], we didn’t need your fancy new [latest technological obsession] for [arduous chore made easier by modern advancements, but still possible to perform “the hard way”]. We were happy as [animals commonly presumed to be in a constant state of rapture] with [old technology] — it may have taken longer, but that was the way we liked it.

You see, with the [fancy new technology], people aren’t able to [incidental advantage of old technology no one noticed/cared about until new technology]. Why, when we wanted to talk to one another, we just [verb for specific type of communication]-ed on our [technology two generations removed; old enough to be nostalgic about, but young enough to masquerade at least a passing interest in technological advancements].

[Obligatory reference to that goddamn Nicholas Carr article/book about about how the Internet is imploding our brains].

I don’t see why young people today feel the need to live their lives so quickly, or expensively. Sometimes, you just need to take the time to [verb indicating the activation of one of the senses] the [pages/roses/other noun that often evokes nostalgia or pleasure]. That’s why I refuse to buy [advanced technology]. I’m perfectly happy with [older technology that’s itself a vast improvement over how things “used to be done”] — the way things used to be [until a newer version of the advanced technology comes out and I can bitch about that while upgrading to the previous generation without seeming hypocritical].

One day, when [generation too young to have a name yet] grows up, they won’t remember the feel of [physical object being replaced by technology], or the joy of browsing [physical store replaced by Amazon, et. al] to spontaneously find [physical object]. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think being [verbified formation of name of new technology] necessarily means [pun-ish play on verbified name of thing being replaced by new technology].

See the inspiration for this guide here.

This piece was originally published in the Pacific Northwest Inlander.

Minor league baseball. Even the name sounds so … inferior.“Minor league” has that connotation in today’s parlance: cut-rate. Second-fiddle.

Not good enough.

Most often, when people refer to something as “minor league,” it’s with the assumption that things aren’t ever going to get any better: a permanent state of mediocrity. When you’re actually referring to minor league baseball, though, there’s another word you should add to the end of the last definition: not good enough yet.

It’s an expression that certainly applies to this year’s Spokane Indians, both as individual players and the team as a whole. The Indians opened their season with a pair of four-game losing streaks split by an 8-1 win against the redundantly named Vancouver Canadians.

The reason for their struggles isn’t readily apparent, at least not after watching just one game. No one’s throwing the ball into the stands instead of hitting the cutoff man; the first baseman isn’t striding out to the batter’s box with his helmet on backwards. The troubles start and end with consistency.

“One night you’ll get pitching, but you don’t get hitting. The next night you’ll get defense, but we don’t get great pitching,” Manager Tim Hulett says. “You’ve got to put those things together.”

The Indians certainly have the roster to contend on any given night. Shortstop Jurickson Profar, a 17-year-old prospect out of Curacao, can hit, field and throw — but then, he wouldn’t be playing professional baseball if he couldn’t do that. Hulett says what sticks out are Profar’s game awareness and highly tuned instincts. Especially when you consider he’s only a teenager.

Big 6-foot-2 third baseman Mike Olt provides some power at the plate, says hitting coach Brian Dayette, and Olt backed that up by knocking in a double and a triple in his first three games. In addition to his offensive prowess, he’s also an asset in the field. “For a big guy, he’s got some great feet, some good hands, and he can make some really good plays,” Hulett says.

Pitching coach Justin Thompson mentions Chad Bell, Zack Osborne and Jimmy Reyes as promising arms to watch. Though the trio has combined for zero wins and two losses thus far, Thompson still sees their upside.

“Once we get those guys stretched out and get their pitch count up, I think we’re going to contend,” says Thompson.

Whether pitcher or position player, the most important thing a minor-league player (assuming there are no gaping flaws in their fundamentals) gets out of a season is experience. The more innings they play, the more chances they have to further their development. But when looking at the feeder-system nature of the minor leagues, there would seem to be two conflicting forces driving a given team: getting wins and developing players.

Hulett doesn’t see it that way. “Our focus is on developing winning players, because I think [winning and developing players] go hand-in-hand,” he says. “It’s hard to develop a player who goes through your whole system [and who] loses at every level and then say, ‘Go win at the big-league level.’”

To a certain extent, using the term “minor league” in a derogatory tone makes sense even in a baseball context: As a whole, the team’s never really going to get all that much better. But that’s only because when the end of the season rolls around, the best players will be moving another rung up the ladder. The worst will find a different career.

And those who need a little more time will be back next year, ready to mix with another crop of guys starting out from scratch. They probably won’t be that good. At least, not yet.

Yesterday was Moving Day; as is tradition, that means today is “Not Moving Day,” owing to the soreness from yesterday.

Moving is supposed to bring about an onslaught of different emotions: a twinge of nostalgia at leaving the place you’ve called home, sadness at altering/losing the different interpersonal relationships you’ve developed at said location, and excitement or trepidation at thought of what’s to come.

I don’t know that exhaustion can rightly be counted as an emotion, but the depth to which I feel it now seems to indicate it should at least be in the running.

After the third or fourth major geographical upheaval in 12 months (with a few minor phase shifts as well), moving just doesn’t have the same impact anymore. Sleeping for the first time under a new roof felt just as comfortable as sleeping under the old one, which is to say “not very” because I never really “settled in” to the old apartment in the proper sense. Despite living there for eight months, the overly spacious two-bedroom apartment treated me more as a guest in a motel room than a permanent occupant.

Sure, I have some memories. The hideously overweight 40-some-year-old creepster who lived on the ground floor and sat outside his apartment 80 percent of the time, whiling away the days smoking, eating peaches or painting his fingernails a flamboyant hunter orange. That wouldn’t have been so bad were it not for his completely obvious leering at women half his age or whenever he’d get in the mood to go shirtless.

Or consider the Albertson’s grocery cart in the parking lot that mysteriously disappeared and reappeared on no set schedule, without rhyme or reason. Nothing says class like an Albertson’s grocery cart.

Obviously, it wasn’t all bad. Friends came over, drinks were drunk (and drunks kept drinking), movies were watched, great books were read and many a sleep was slept. But none of this served to dispel the ever-present air of transiency.

I’m now in Spokane, more specifically Browne’s Addition, working at a job that seems pretty damn perfect for me (more on that later). The hope is to keep this apartment for quite some time, to break the moving cycle. At least long enough so that the next time I have to move, it actually means something again.

Oh! I have the slipped the surly bonds of Earth — Put out my hand and touched the Face of God

There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone.

Space flights didn’t use to have apexes. An apex is the top or highest part of something; in reference to flight, it describes the point where the craft is farthest away from the hard, unforgiving ground below. Airliners have an apex of about 40,000 feet over the earth, zipping along until they come to their point of destination, where they touch gently back down on the runway.

Space was different. When you reached the edge of outer space, it made no more sense to refer to your flight in relation to earth than it does to imagine our galaxy as a geocentric one. What is up when there is no gravity? What is down when you can look up and see the earth?

Even in reference to shuttles, which merely orbit the earth, the word “apex” seems inadequate. Using 5.6 million pounds of thrust, the gleaming white planes blasted into and out of the atmosphere riding the back of a rollicking red rocket en route to low orbit, high orbit or even the moon. For eons, man stared out into space (sometimes thinking it was God, other times thinking it filled with vermicious Knids) and wondered. The shuttle stood as the preeminent example of man matching up against nature. Not defeating it, mind you (see Titanic, The, for reasons why one should not think oneself above Mother Nature). But able to meet it on its own terms, to work together to harness the capability of man and prove ourselves not limited by constraints of time, energy or — finally — gravity.

As Discovery whisked away into the sky over Florida this afternoon on its final voyage, it signaled an end. Not an end to space flight, or technological advances, or (metaphorically or literally) even reaching for the stars. It signaled an end to an age of exploration, of adventure. It’s an end of an era in which we thought there was still more to find out.

Think about it. I’m not claiming that there aren’t still many (innumerable) scientific advances to be made, gadgets to be invented and boundaries to be pushed. But it does seem like the grand experiment, the drive to achieve a symbolic victory for humanity, rather than for country or group, does seem to have reached the end of its line.

Where once Houston and Cape Canaveral stood as the gateways to space, now there are “commercial spaceports” (or at least, very badly thought-out plans for them). We’re not sending up publicly-funded vehicles in order to further scientific exploration, we’re equipping wide-body 747s with harnesses and padding so the obscenely wealthy can feel the effects of barfing on a multiple-hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars plane ride, in 30-second intervals.

It’s not a symptom, but a side-effect, perhaps, of a society that seems to have turned from once noble — or merely not-shallow — goals. Where once people strove to became famous by displaying a talent or being the best at something, now they strive be famous for … being famous. The superficiality that has infected our culture is seeping into what formerly were the bastions of rationality and solid principles; look no further than Climate-gate, or the fact that controversy constantly swirls around scientific theories manufactured because of “difference of opinions,” or those who insist that the function of government is to lavish money upon the already wealthy at the expense of those who need help the most.

This is, undoubtedly, a rosy-colored view of the causes of history, but it’s a clear-eyed look at the effects. Man untethered himself from the earth at Kitty Hawk, Man turned a weapon of unimaginable destruction at Nagasaki into a source of energy. And man wrenched himself free from terra firma and set himself down on another celestial body, for no other reason than he could.

I do not intend for this to be a eulogy for our collective exploratory nature, though it very well may serve as such. We seem to be set on a track that takes us further and further away from collective achievement and points squarely in the direction of personal accomplishment. This is not a plea to save the space program or pour more money into NASA. I don’t know the feasibility of building new shuttles; I don’t know the future. Nor, at this moment, do I particularly care to contemplate it.

Instead, I sat outside after work last night and looked up at the stars, just imagining what it was like. I sat watching the liftoff on the biggest TV I could find, trying to comprehend what it means to have multiple times the force of gravity strain to keep your body on the earth, but through the collective intelligence of generations rip yourself away.

Those who went before us soared so majestically they rendered the word we use to mean the highest altitude, apex, meaningless. How far up are we now meant to go? I can only hope that we, as a generation, as a society, as a species, follow their example: Don’t worry about how high we can make it. Think instead in terms of how to redefine what it means to fly altogether.

Last month, I was pleasantly surprised to discover I had quite a bit of vacation time racked up at work. Once we passed through the busy season, I took the first opportunity to use it. I decided to take an entire week off and go camping - much to the surprise of nearly everyone I told.

Apparently, mine is not an “outdoorsy” dispositon.

Originally, the plan was to head to southern Idaho or Montana. After thinking about it further (and checking the state of my finances), I overruled that decision in favor of a campground we own a lot on in Western Washington. Adjacent to Mt. Pilchuck, itself nestled in the foothills of the Cascades, it seemed like a good place to get away from everything. Plus, I could take two or three days to venture up to Canada and make sure it was still there.

For the better part of four hours, I raced the clouds and the rain across the state. It was only upon arriving in Seattle that I realized they had separated, flanked and beaten me. Outsmarted by the weather yet again.

Thus it was rain, light hail and barely functional windshield wipers that greeted me as I drove into Seattle, Owl City pumping through the speakers. Though it’s only been less than six months since I last laid eyes upon the Emerald City, it seemed like considerably longer. Whenever I used to cross the I-90 bridge, it used to feel like coming home, even though I’ve never lived in Seattle and haven’t even had an address on the west side of the state in five years. Apparently, that’s starting to catch up with me on a psychological level.

There exists in all of us a struggle between two people - the “ideal” self one aspires to be and the person who truly lives at any given moment. It is not a very “solvable” problem, in that the only way to do so is to stop growing as a human being. Sometimes, the difference between the two is vast. Whereas you might have been dreaming all your life of growing up to be a hot-shot lawyer defending the rights of the downtrodden, you may instead find yourself working a low-paying job as a social worker.

There’s nothing inherently wrong or bad about the choices you’ve made in your life; they’re just different than the ones you expected to make. Very rarely do things in life go exactly according to plan, but for most people these slight diversions don’t seem large enough to alter the over-arching narrative they’ve constructed for their life. It’s only a slight hiccup, after all. It’s not until months or years later that everything hits them at once, that they’re not where they expected to be, that the path they previously envisioned laying out before them in fact forked quite some time ago.

My realization was nothing so consequential or monumental as that. But as I drove around Seattle, looking for a place to park and walking around a bit, I realized that my vision of myself was drastically different than the one I pictured in my head.

Ever since I moved to Idaho, I’ve joked that I never actually admit that fact; I always just say I live in Eastern Washington. As with all jokes, there’s a small kernel of truth at the center. In reality, I never even traveled to the eastern half of Washington state until I was 17. Aside from the superficial political difference, the western and eastern halves of the state always seemed to be two completely different places.

The west side was urbane, modern and contemporary. Even if you didn’t live in Seattle, it was the place you identified with - and not just when people asked where you were from (“near Seattle” is the answer given by those who live anywhere north of Vancouver, south of Canada and east of the Cascades. It’s just easier).

The east, by contrast, moved at a slower pace. Though not all farmers, theirs was a simpler way of life, not nearly so crowded or developed. They had Spokane, which was okay as small to medium cities go, but nothing to write home about.

I’ve always considered myself to be “from the west side,” with everything that entails. During college, I always pictured myself moving back at some point after my sojourn out East, picking up exactly where I left off. But as I tried to navigate through the ridiculously narrow roads, try to navigate without being able to see anything more than the streets and the enormous buildings that rose up all around me, I noticed that - at the very least - I am woefully out of practice for west side living.

Yet at the same time, I felt a pull in the opposite direction, the other half of the dichotomy asserting itself. I still missed just walking around in the rain. I still missed being in a city where you could look up and see buildings towering over you. I still missed the culture that comes with having a million people in the same area. But instead of being the primary thoughts I was having, they were instead dancing on the periphery, secondary.

This reprioritization actually came as somewhat of a shock, despite having lived almost 8 months in Coeur d’Alene and the four and a half years prior in the small hamlet of Pullman. Obviously I don’t take this as a sign I’ll settle down in CdA forever or never move back to Western Washington, but it does come as something of a shock to realize fundamental aspects of your character are far different than you had expected.

Helluva way to start a vacation.

Everyone wants to be special. Everyone wants to have that one thing they’re the best it, what they’re known for - in many cases, what defines them as a person. I am not everyone. I accept the fact that I am good at a lot of things and the best at none just as I accept that I know a little bit about damn near everything, but am an expert in practically nothing.

This scattershot approach to life works for me, and I do not question it. But this is not to say that I am ordinary. Far from it, as everyone who has ever met me (and most people who have only heard of me) will readily tell you. This, however, extends primarily to my towering height, outsized wit, and/or spot-on impression of Sir Lawrence Olivier.

It’s amusing what people will believe when you present them with a secret identity.

That’s right. I - and, I suspect, many others - possess secret superpowers that ordinary mortals would exhibit polite interest learning about. It’s always a struggle, trying to keep the lid on my innate gifts, but I’ve managed to keep them under wraps for quite some time. I only bring them into the open now to encourage others to shed the mask they have been living behind, and reveal their true selves to the world.

It is with this high-minded ideal in mind that I present this list of my Perfectly Ordinary Superpowers. Each POS on its own is powerful and frightening, but you shouldn’t be alarmed. I am no more dangerous than any other 6'7" rage-filled Irish giant you might cross paths with, but keep in mind that if you should wrong me, things could some become very … uncomfortable for you (largely as a result of this first power, but still).

Super Awkward

We’ve all met awkward people before. Whether it’s the painfully cheesy guy who’s convinced he’s the most hilarious thing since sliced bread or simply the loner girl who’s perfected the piercing stare without ever mentioning a word to anyone else, they exist all around us.

Rank amateurs, says I.

I possess the unique ability to turn any situation excruciatingly awkward at the drop of a hat. It can be as simple as dumping Diet Pepsi all over my khakis when I first meet someone, or as silly as saying the wrong thing (“Who could possibly like x?” I boom as part of a joke, to which I invariably get “I like x," seeping acidly from another’s lips in return). Regardless, it as a skill as of yet unmatched by anyone I’ve met. Though, to be fair, were I to square off against another who powers in the same range as mine, it would be a distressing meeting for everyone in the general vicinity.

Super Reflexes

We’re not talking about whacking my knees with tiny rubber hammers. I’m taking reflexes here, people, like hearing your boss walk down the hall to ask you to work over the weekend and being quick enough to duck under your desk and silently roll out the door.

Granted, a vast majority of the situations where I call upon my reflexes are in fact of my own making, but my sloth-like speed and aging bovine-eqsue grace have proven themselves time and time again. Two quick examples:

As I walk down store aisles, there’s a large amount of kinetic energy that needs to be stopped if, say, a small (stupid) child decides to cut in front of me and I’m barely paying attention. I’ve yet to trample any young’uns, but my quick movement usually requires half-throwing myself at shelves. This action causes an equal and opposite reaction of products leaping off the shelves in some sort of retail suicide attempt. On one occasion, I slammed into a shelf of clocks with my back and felt them wobble. I automatically reached my hand up and pinned one against my back in mid-air. holding it there.

An elderly female clerk, who watched the whole thing, stared at me as I tried to catch my breath and feel around to get a good grip on the clock. She scowled at me. “I know it fell, where is it?” she demanded. “Trapped between my hand and my back. Gimme a second,” I responded loftily. Only my deft hands saved that timepiece from shattering on the unclean floor, doomed forever to the “clearance bin” for maladjusted products.

Similarly, during high school I went to a McDonald’s while on a basketball trip. Being a mere (where the value of “mere” is six feet, three inches) freshman at the time, I obediently stood in the back of the line while the older players ordered and received their food. When I finally got mine, the box of fries for some reason stood on its two little “feet” about an inch away from the tray’s left front lip. A senior tried to squeeze down the same narrow aisle as me, so I maneuvered to the side to let her pass. She still accidentally bumped me, causing the fries to tip over and hurtle toward the ground. Without even thinking, I reached with my right hand (hanging onto the tray with my left) over the breadth/depth of the tray, grabbing and arresting the fries mid-fall. I lost a total of three fries that day.

Super Sleep

Technically, this isn’t the ability to sleep so much as the ability to wake, but “Super Awakening” just doesn’t have the same ring. Besides, my powers, my names.

I have no practical need for an alarm clock. I currently roll out of bed with nary but my cell phone to wake me, but even its (hilarious) ringtone alarm remains largely superfluous, serving only to elicit small chuckle as I roll over to turn it off, completely awake.

That’s right. I don’t need technology to tell me when it’s time to get up. My body takes care of that on its own. Unless I’m incapacitated (read: stone drunk) or already sleep-deprived the night before, I can wake up within five minutes of whatever time I want to. Suck it, Circadian rhythms. Your internal clock has nothing on mine. And we’re not even talking about waking up an hour early and having to keep checking the time, or even doing it on a daily basis at the exact same time. I can set my internal alarm early, late - it matters not. I may not be the most chipper person in the world, but I rather suspect that has more to do with my refusal to drink coffee than anything else.

Consider yourself warned, citizens. Prior knowledge of the existence of my superpowers implies a waiver on your part regarding any damages you may sustain from my exercise of them. One day, you just might wake up … but I’ll already be ready.

It’s Dec. 31, which means I’m parked in front of my television starting my annual personal Twilight Zone marathon. Though I stole the idea from the SciFi channel, mine’s better because a) there aren’t any commercials and b) I have the full complement (the original series and the remake from the ‘80s).

But, as with whenever I watch movies, I need something else to do at the same time. Since my blog has lain dormant for more than a month, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to update with a summation of this year. However, seeing as how distracted I am (“ooh, pretty flickering black-and-white television!"), it’ll be largely composed of lists

Thoughts that have occurred to me only since I’ve lived in Idaho:

• “When that nice young man driving by as I was walking down the road yelled, ‘I will set you on fire!’ at me, was that a threat or a come-on?”

• “Hmm … It’s New Year’s Eve, and my apartment faces both downtown and the outskirts. From which direction am I least likely to get hit with a stray celebratory bullet at midnight?”

My top entertainment products produced this year:

• Castle (TV show)

• The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell

• In The Loop (movie)

• God Is A Twelve-Year-Old Boy With Asperger’s, by Eugene Mirman (standup)

• Zombieland (movie)

• The Unusuals (TV show)

• Star Trek (movie)

• My Weakness Is Strong, by Patton Oswalt (standup)

• The Magicians, by Lev Grossman

Things I miss about Pullman:

• A bus system that takes you everywhere in town, for free

• Bars populated by people that don’t look ready to kill me for being younger than 40 and/or giving them unwelcoming looks when they loudly proclaim their bigotry

• The town being small enough to walk everywhere you could want to go

• New Garden

• The people

Job titles of four positions I applied for but didn’t get:

• Anything with the word “newspaper” (a few small-paper editors, sports writing, etc.)

• Social networking director

• Text processor (for a bible software company, but I withdrew from that one fearing damnation)

• Editor, I Can Haz Cheezburger group

Discomfiting realizations from 2009:

• Remember how much we were looking forward to 2009? Look how that turned out. Now consider how optimistic people are about 2010. And how often do the expectations of optimistic people come true? We’re in for a rough year.

• As our body of knowledge amasses in ever greater qualities, our ability to use the truly innovative kind of imagination decreases at a similar rate. In earlier times, people were able to conceive of interplanetary travel with relative ease. Now that we know how difficult and expensive such trips would be, we can walk into a movie like Avatar secure in the knowledge that, if such things are even in the realm of human possibility, they are so far off in the future as to be fictional.

• Much along the same lines, as interdisciplinary studies become the norm, the propensity of revolutionary new ideas appearing will decrease drastically. Great breakthroughs are usually found by people who have no knowledge of dogmatic “facts” (generally accepted principles that may not be the case) in a particular field. Obviously, most people who claim such things (think perpetual energy) are cranks. But Einstein was able to formulate his theory of relativity because he didn’t know the rules of the system. Once everyone is grounded in precisely the same knowledge, the chances of a brilliant outsider to see something no one else did are greatly diminished.

Things I’m sad are no longer with us:

• The Post-Intelligencer

• A friend from high school

• Jon Updike

• B. Dalton stores

• The Rocky Mountain News

• Ted Kennedy; and with him, civility in the Senate

• Walter Cronkite

Things people thought might have disappeared I’m glad are still around:

• Ernie Harwell

• Web comics

• Used bookstores

• Sbarro’s

• Borders

• Miramax

Things I wish would disappear:

• Athletes in the news for things other than athletics (Michael Phelps, Tiger Woods, etc.)

• The phrase “raising Cain”

• People being surprised when politicians act like politicians

• Archie comics

• Printed phone books

• TV news

Technical skills I have learned while on the job that weren’t strictly necessary:

• How to use XSLT to style/translate XML files

• Working knowledge of ASP.NET

• Advanced Javascript magic

• Useful tricks for AfterEffects, Illustrator and Blender

Women I would gladly marry if only they would rescind the restraining orders:

• Tina Fey

• Sarah Vowell

• That one girl from high school

• Zooey Deschanel

The Six Most Recent Additions to My “To Read” List:

• Her Fearful Symmetry, by Audrey Niffenegger

• Gilligan’s Wake, by Tom Carson

• Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency, by Barton Gellman

• The Big Rewind: A Memoir Brought To You By Pop Culture, by Nathan Rabin

• Looking for Calvin and Hobbes, by Nevin Martell

• His Name is Still Mudd: The Case Against Doctor Samuel Mudd, by Edward Steers

Things I’ve learned from watching The Twilight Zone:

• Most alien planets/asteroids look like Death Valley

• Windows in the 1950s had the tensile strength of wax paper

• Time must have worked a helluva lot differently back then (direct quote: “Well, we can’t see the movement of a clock’s hands, but they move”)

• In most alternate realities, Earth ceased to exist by the mid-80s.

• Military officers can be knocked out with a swift punch to the gut

• I’m 90% sure the father of Tim Matheson (Otter from Animal house) wrote for the show

• All scientists are required to possess a full complement of chemical-filled beakers. Even if you’re a physicist with a time machine, next to it should lay a full spread of fancy tubes and Bunsen burners on a table.

• Turns out it was earth all along

Once six o’clock — my tenth hour of work — rolled around, I figured it was okay to take a call. It wasn’t as if work was particularly difficult, being my first day and all, or even that I was busy. The last hour and half or so had been spent waiting on someone else to finish up. Until that point, I felt somewhat uncomfortable taking a personal call on the job. Now? Probably in the clear.

Around noon, I had checked Facebook and saw a note from an old high school friend who I hadn’t spoken to in years. Under the subject heading, “Hey…”, the rather cryptic message read, “You should call me today. It’s important. Anytime after 1:00. My number is (###) ###-####.”

With the office to myself, I decided to give him a call. I really couldn’t fathom the reason he wanted me to call; I assumed there was some sort of party being planned, or some celebration in the offing.

When he picked up, the first thing he asked me was if I had heard about Rachel. I wasn’t quite sure what he meant. We were the same age, having attended the same school from kindergarten right up through college. We were both in band, we had a number of activities and classes that overlapped, and I was fairly certain I had seen her at a barbecue two days before graduating college, about three months prior.

“No,” I replied honestly. I hadn’t really heard anything beyond the vagaries absorbed through Facebook. Things like extracurricular activities, internships and the like. When I heard who the call was in reference to, I kind of assumed she had done something major. Maybe she won some national award? Unsure as to why this required informing me, I really wasn’t sure what to expect. I certainly wasn’t ready to hear the news.

“Dead?…” I stammered. “How? What happened?” My mind raced through any number of scenarios: car crashes, plane crashes, muggings …

“She killed herself.”

“Oh.”

Several seconds passed in silence.

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

…

“Damn.”

“Yeah.”

He related how our band director heard the news, then instructed old students in the area to get ahold of those who might not have heard. Apparently, there was to be a memorial service held on Friday or Saturday. Would I be able to make it?

It was Tuesday. Literally my first week, my first day on the job. I hadn’t even filled out my W-4 yet. I had just finished getting my new apartment ready, and hadn’t even gotten my furniture out of storage. I was sleeping on an air mattress on the floor of my living room. Not to mention I now lived in another state, an additional 90 miles on top of the 250 miles I put between me and my hometown during college.

“If it’s on Saturday, I’ll absolutely be there. I probably can’t if it’s on Friday.”

We caught up a bit, then, about where our lives had taken us after high school, but I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention. My mind just kept repeating what he had said, over and over. Finally, after wishing each other well, we hung up.

Rachel and I had our share of run-ins over the years. It wasn’t adversarial or anything like that. But from a very young age, both of us were culled from the herd as “smart kids.” Smart kids, in a school district like ours, were expected to do a lot. We were both taken out of classes for the “gifted” program in elementary school, sat next to each other in the “honors” classes in middle school, and frequented the same courses a year ahead of when we were supposed to in high school.

Smart kids aren’t the ones who wind up dead before they hit 30 – at least, not without a good reason. We can be victims of violent crime, sure. But it’s the other people in high school, the ones who don’t go anywhere, they’re the ones you read about in the newspaper. The obituary section is for the kid who never cared, who never tried; he’s the one who was caught stalking and trying to rape a teenager not a year and half after he graduated high school.

Not us.

I recalled a recognition luncheon, for a scholarship we both received. I hadn’t seen her there, but apparently my father ran into her father at some point, and they spoke. My dad told me that Rachel and her sister had apparently talked about me quite a bit. We were always at the head of the class, and whenever I would get a higher score on a test, they would return home and complain about it. I had never known this, but I always felt a certain sense of rivalry with them—and I lost just as often as I won.

I really didn’t know what to do at that point. I just stood in my office and stared at the Starbucks across the street. Standing 350 miles away from where everything was happening, where I felt I should be, I definitely felt lost.

My fingers played with my phone. I had to call someone, find someone I could share the news with. Problem was, I didn’t really keep in touch with anyone from high school. I kept in regular contact with two people: one I worked with, Dale, and one I went to school with, Mallory. Dale lived 15 miles away from my hometown; and besides, he was a guy—not the sort of person you talk to about these things. Mallory moved around a lot as a kid, only settling in Arlington her sophomore year. She didn’t really have the same connection with everyone, and talked to even fewer of them than I did.

I called Mallory.

I told her the news rather abruptly, and she was understandably shocked. She was probably more worried about me, as I kept stuttering, rushing through my sentences and trailing off. I felt bad about just dumping it on her without pretense, but how do you prepare someone for that sort of thing? “Hey, so you know how Michael Jackson died? Well, you’re never gonna believe this, but …”

There didn’t seem to be an appropriate segue.

We talked about how strange it was, how Rachel was the last person you’d ever expect to do something like that. I didn’t know much about her situation. I knew she had graduated and landed a pretty swank internship over the summer. I assumed she was still with the company, or looking for something else to do. Having just extricated myself from the pits of unemployment, I knew how difficult such a process could be, but it didn’t seem that overwhelming.

We talked for about 45 minutes, and she graciously told me I could crash at her place on Friday night if there was going to be a service on Saturday. She made me promise to keep in touch with her during the week, and we said good-bye.

I left work about half an hour later and walked to my apartment. I checked the mail, took off my shoes, sat down in front of my computer, and generally went about my business.

But in the back of my mind, thoughts were still festering. They strayed from the somber to the downright petty. I felt curiosity about what caused her to do it. Sadness and grief for Rachel’s family, who I didn’t know particularly well but had run into over the years. I particularly sympathized for Rachel’s twin sister—I couldn’t fathom how she felt. I wondered what was going to happen if I went to the funeral, and how I could possibly afford another trip to the Westside—considering I hadn’t gotten paid and had just finished buying everything for my new apartment.

As I struggled to force myself to fall asleep, my main focus was on the line of questioning Mallory kept up during our conversation.

“Why are you going to the service?” she asked. It wasn’t demanding, she honestly didn’t know why I would drive the six-plus hours just to attend a service for someone who I wasn’t very close to.

I started to speak, but hesitated. Truth be told, my reaction had been more gut instinct than anything else. No long-term planning guided my decision. I just said I would go.

“I feel a sense of obligation,” I finally decided upon.

“Obligation? Why would you be obligated to go to a funeral? It’s not like anyone’s going to look down on you for not making the trip,” she replied with infuriating logic.

“It’s not an obligation to them,” I answered. “It’s not for the people who are going to attend, it’s not even for the family… It’s for her. When you go to school with someone for that long, when you’re around them that much… You just have to, you know?”

She gave what can only be described as a verbal nod of assent, clearly unconvinced.

“What’s your earliest memory?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Probably something with my family, when I was a real little kid. Why?” she responded.

“I guess it kind of explains why I’m going,” I said. “My earliest memory, the very first thing I can remember, involves Rachel.”

“ It was in second grade, and she was wearing her glasses to school for the very first time. I can see her clearly, sitting there in Mrs. Webb’s class, and she is just bawling because she’s afraid she’s going to be teased.”

I fell silent for a moment.

“That’s why I feel obligated to go. My very first memory includes her. A lot of my high school memories from band include her. I even remember in middle school honors, we held weekly competitions where the winner would get to move either their or someone else’s seat, and one week I moved her. I don’t remember why, I don’t even remember where … but I know it was her.”

“Okay,” Mallory said after a pause. “That kinda makes sense.”

“Yeah,” I said. Not really, I thought.

They planned the service to be held in the performing arts center at the high school. This was actually going to be my first trip back to my hometown in at least three years, and the first time since the month after graduation I was going to see a sizable number of people I knew.

In another of many firsts, it was the first time I had seen the performing arts center, as it was built a year or two after I graduated. When I walked in the front doors, the first two people I saw were signing the guest book. One was my best friend throughout most of high school, with whom I had a falling-out with during junior year. The other was a mutual female friend.

I actually didn’t recognize him. I thought I knew who he was, but enough doubt remained in my mind to prevent initiating conversation for fear of being mistaken. It turned out not to matter, as the girl embraced me as soon as she saw me, calling me by a nickname I hadn’t heard in four and a half years.

As I made my way into the theater (and yes, it felt very strange walking into a theater for a memorial service), I saw grown-up versions of the kids I had known. Some of them were instantly recognizable, though only in two cases had they not aged a day. Others might as well have been ethereal phantoms from the 19th century, for all the familiar they seemed.

The crowd only half-filled the auditorium, with a clear physical delineation between those who knew her, and those who knew of her. I sat with the latter group, farther away from the stage.

Whether for good or bad, this was not the first memorial service I attended for a high school classmate who committed suicide. A boy involved in my youth group had done the same thing during my freshman year, so I felt oddly prepared for the service.

The service part was a bit strange, at least to me. I had never attended a Catholic memorial service, so I was a little overwhelmed by the iconography and rituals. Other than that, it seemed a normal (if such things can have a “normal”) memorial. The priest—for whatever reason—told us Rachel had been studying for her master’s at UW, and simply become overwhelmed by the pressures of life.

I was definitely not expecting the stories that came when they opened up the mic to the audience to share memories. The family went first, describing intimate moments most of us in the crowd were not privy to, but enjoyed for the love and warmth contained in the stories.

Then her kindergarten teacher stood up, describing how — even from that young age — she was bright, caring, and full of life. I was mildly surprised by this, as the woman who stood up was my kindergarten teacher as well. Apparently, our stories had been more intertwined than I thought.

Following that, a number of people affiliated with the college we both attended stood up and spoke of their remembrances. She had been a counselor who gave freshman tours, and a boy from her group related how personable she was. Another—who wasn’t even in her group—confirmed this. Members of the various student organizations she was involved in also spoke out, praising in her in the kindest possible terms.

By no means was I surprised that people would remember her in such a way, as it jibed perfectly with my own memories. What seemed strange about the whole thing was simply how much of her life had taken place after high school. A vast majority of the people in the audience knew her from her years in Arlington, yet there we were, hearing stories regarding things we never even thought about. Even I, who spent an additional four years at the same college, two of those at the student newspaper, didn’t know about them. Sure, some of the events sounded familiar — I knew what the tour group was, I knew the various organizations — but it still felt like hearing stories about a stranger.

As I imagine is the case with everyone, I had defined her in relationship to my own life. I don’t think this a terribly foreign concept. It’s a bit like playing peek-a-boo with a small child — once something’s gone out of their vision, they forget about it. In the same way, as people pass in and out of our lives, we are able to write their background stories only insofar as we know them. If you haven’t seen someone for a year, you can still pick up a friendship. But there are so many things, so many experiences they lived through, that you’ll never be able to truly comprehend. You’re left, instead, with a partial portrait — and I would imagine not a great many of them are ever completed.

Following the service, I reunited with a number of my favorite teachers and people from high school. A group of us hung out for a few hours, just as we used to. Then, just as I had driven back into my past, it was time to strike out again for the present.

Rachel still pops up in my thoughts every so often, though not nearly as much now as when it first happened. I’ll see a death notice while reading the news online, and that will get me thinking. Or her profile will pop in the “Mutual Friends” list when I’m randomly surfing Faceboook—that’s jarring, but not nearly as bad as the “you should reconnect” notifications that scared the absolute hell out of me.

But the strangest effect of all of this has to do with a song I hadn’t listened to in years. After getting my whole apartment set up, I went through and re-filled my iPod with a random assortment of music. While at work one day, about a week after the service, Vitamin C’s “Graduation (Friends Forever)” started to play. Even though the song was released in 2000, it nonetheless managed to ingrain itself as “the song” for every class from 2000-2005.

The opening lyrics go, “And so we talked all night about the rest of our lives/Where we’re gonna be when we turn 25/I keep thinking times will never change/Keep on thinking things will always be the same/But when we leave this year we won’t be coming back.”

The song doesn’t have the most beautiful melody. The lyrics are not terribly inspired. But for whatever reason, when I heard those words, I flat-out lost it.

I hurried to the bathroom, tears in my eyes, and haven’t been able to listen to the song since. I’m not sure I can. It’s the line, “Where we’re gonna be when we turn 25,” that gets me. When I hear it, I’m reminded of the simple but obvious fact that she’s not going to turn 25. The thought that, statistically, there will be probably others in my class who won’t turn 25 — maybe even me.

The second is stranger, though this time it has nothing to do with ephemeral pop culture. While it still holds true that I generally define the people I’ve known in terms of their entry into my consciousness, I also find myself spending greater amounts of times actively seeking them out. Where I previously just let those people go until they organically sprang back into my life (which, being 200+ miles away from most of them, didn’t happen often), I now go out of my way to at least think about them, check up on Facebook and see what they’re doing. Even though I do not see them any more often than before, their lives seem so much more relevant to me now, and thus their link more tangible.

I cannot, unfortunately, repeat the clichéd idea of the dead live on in the hearts of the living. I believe this sentiment denigrates the sanctity of death, shielding us from its permanence and functioning as an emotional crutch that allows denial and repression to linger on and strangle those left behind. Dead people have, in every respect, passed on. That does not, however, mean they did not have an impact while they were alive. What I will take away from Rachel are two things: the way in which my interactions with her shaped me (for the better, in every case I can think of), and the ability to pierce what previously seemed an impenetrable veil between the present and the past. I find myself much better able to comprehend others in their own right, rather than the imperfect refraction I saw when gazing through my personal perceptual prism.

Even though “Graduation” is skipped when I hit shuffle and barred from my iPod playlist, every time I hear it — or even when I’m reminded of it — I think about her, and what the entire experience meant to me. And once I’m ready and capable of hearing it without losing control, I hope it will signify a profound shift in my reaching out toward those friends who might once have fallen by the wayside.

I’ve been poring over the Craigslist jobs postings for the tri-state area and beyond, applying to anything that seems like it could fit. A week or so ago, an ad popped up for I Can Has Cheezburger, creators of the ever-popular LOLCats and the FAIL Blog. They were looking for an editor for a new site and – despite being dangerously under-qualified – I decided to apply.

In addition to the standard resumé, they also were looking for a commentary on what constituted Internet culture. Always interested in tackling a challenge, I attached my resumé and sent them this cover letter:

Oh hai! I herd u was looking for an online editor with managerial skills that don't make people scream, "you're doing it wrong!" I may not have the devilish good looks of Domo-kun, but if there's on thing I do know it's how to navigate this vast series of tubes we live and dream in.

Fresh-faced, eager and straight out of college, I’ve spent the last two years as an editor of The Daily Evergreen, the student n00bzpaper at Washington State University. I’ve been evaluating and selecting writing talent for that entire span, the last year of which was spent at the top, overseeing daily production as well as the editorial staff. Though I don’t have three years managing an editorial staff online, I do have more than two years experience working in an online-only environment, as a freelance editor, web designer and independent contractor.

The question of what Internet culture is requires two answers - what netizens know it to be, and how it’s perceived by the outside world. While it’s easy to festoon any Web site with gratuitous “Chuck Norris doesn’t sleep, he waits” quotes and whatever quasi-meme happened to hit 4chan in the last week, the true Internet culture requires referencing those means in a meaningful way. The best, most recent example was using the Konami code in the search bar on ESPN’s redesign, which resulted in unicorns popping up all over the page. It was an Easter Egg - you had to know the Konami Code, it required a bit of looking around or just guessing in order to find it, and it had a cute result that didn’t really affect anything materially. In addition to cohesion, the other requirement for Internet culture is honesty.

The Internet, with its freewheeling band of private investigators who have nothing better to do than hunt down frauds, requires a brutal engagement with the material. Unless someone’s willing to commit wholeheartedly, there will be some mistakes (allowing people to call “shopped!” or “fake!") that come through. I think it’s why people find the Internet so fascinating - a medium that allows for the most anonymity of any publishing model ever created still allows us to see people at their weakest, their most vulnerable and (by virtue of the first two things) their funniest.

I don’t have a whole lot else left to say, other than to wish you luck in your search and if you have any questions feel free to e-mail back at this address or call me at (XXX)XXX-XXXX. Though I’m currently living in Pullman, I’m more than willing to move back to Seattle.

I have no ending for this, so I’ll just hope you’ll click this link to have Keyboard Cat play me off.

They were extremely nice and responded back with a personal note that let me down gently, but also mentioned a position as a moderator they had open. And though I was sorely tempted to be able to put “I Can Has Cheezburger” on my resumé, I ultimately had to disqualify myself from consideration, since I’m still looking for something in journalism.

Regardless though, most fun I’ve had writing a cover letter in a long time. Plus, I got confirmation that I did in fact RickRoll the editor of the FAIL Blog and I Can Has Cheezburger. That’s gotta count for something, right?

I realize that former Gonzaga basketball player Josh Heytvelt was trying to give a heartfelt interview and express his remorse over being arrested for possession of ‘shrooms, but there’s a reason why athletes usually have people talk for them. This quote is why:

Heytvelt was ordered to do 240 hours of community service. He did more than 300, working primarily with terminally ill children at a Ronald McDonald House.

“That really made me think that those kids aren’t choosing to have cancer. They’re given that,” Heytvelt said. “I realized I had made some really bad choices and that really made me think about every choice I made from then on out."

Two questions: Did Heytvelt previously think those children had chosen to have cancer, and who did he think gave them the decision?

As I sat down in the dark, empty newsroom, I was suddenly hit by a realization. I wasn’t going to blog about it, but I figure you’ve got to have some milestones in life.

As of right now, I will be starting on my second year of employment at the Evergreen.

Wow, it feels really weird to say that. I’m honestly shocked I’m still working here. Last summer, I was only working one job (computer repair, 20 hours a week), and was getting really bored. I saw a house ad looking for columnists, and seeing as how I love the sound of my own voice (figuratively, of course [or should I say, literarily]), I ventured down to the Murrow dungeon and grabbed an application.

It wasn’t the first time I considered working for the Evergreen (I had picked an app that spring but never bothered to fill it out), but it was the first time I actually turned my application in. I filled it out and turned it in on June 17th, and promptly thought nothing else about it.

On the 19th, I got a call from Kellie, the opinion editor at the time. She said to come on in for an interview on the 20th (a Wednesday). I was somewhat surprised it was so quick, but I figured I should have a sample ready to show her in case she wanted to see how I wrote. I did some research, looked up some quotes about WSU in the press recently, and wrote up a quick column.

When I went in, Kellie went over the basics with me, told me I was hired and asked when I could have my first column in by. It literally took about that long. I showed her my sample column, to which she made a few suggestions/edits and printed it. I remember walking between Murrow East & West staring at my watch around 4:30. Damn, I thought, I’m gonna be in the newspaper. And I didn’t have to get arrested or anything.

I didn’t even know columnists got paid at that point. I was perfectly willing to do it for funsies so I wouldn’t be so bored. I wrote about half a dozen columns, submitted my name at the end of the summer as someone willing to do it again in the fall, and dismissed it when I didn’t hear anything.

Then, on the Tuesday of Work Week (the week before school starts when all the sororities and fraternities clean/repair their houses), I got a call on my phone. It was Lisa, telling me the Evergreen needed an opinion editor and someone (I’m assuming it was Mel) had mentioned me as someone who was capable of handling it (translation to my ears: Your copy didn’t require too much work during the summer … but I showed them!).

I called her back and was invited to visit the newsroom the next day.

Well, I dutifully turned up and was immediately intimidated by all the people who were busily and purposefully going about their work. Clearly, these were people who knew what the hell they were doing. Being far too nervous to speak, I was lucky Lisa happened to be coming out of her office and introduced herself to me. She (along with Tor) pulled me into the office and closed the door, with Lisa behind the desk and Tor seated in the pink comfy chair. I don’t think Victor said much beyond quizzing me on some InDesign stuff, and it mostly consisted of Lisa couching everything in terms of language that implied I was taking the job, or else (it was a masterful job of persuasion). That was pretty much it. The next thing I knew Lisa led me outside the office, announced I was the opinion editor (I specifically remember Kaci yelling, “Finally!” or “Thank God!"), and off I went.

That was 10 months ago.

I still feel a little foolish typing in “deeditor” at the login screen every day, but I’ve mostly gotten over it. And … I’m in charge? I still haven’t stopped looking over at the editor’s office, expecting Brian or Lisa or Tor or somebody to walk out and tell me what to do or pointing out how to do something better. It’s always a bit of a jolt to realize how far away Tacoma, Spokane and the ‘Couv really are.

I won’t say every day working at the Ev is fun, because God knows there are those ridiculously frustrating days that make you feel all stabby. But I almost always feel better walking into the newsroom than I do any place else, and there aren’t many other locales that I can say that about.

And even though this summer’s provided its own set of ridiculous happenstance, I still feel we’re able to take whatever comes at us and keep on rolling. As long as there’s a passionate core group, this paper’s never going under. Thank god for the summer staff, by the way. They freaking rock, even if I never bother to tell them (because there’s always more work to be done).

I didn’t ever think I’d end up working as an editor (hell, I barely knew what an editor did) when I first applied for the Ev, and I certainly didn’t think I’d ever move out of opinion. Regardless, I can confidently say I’ve never once regretted any decision I made regarding working here.

Anyway, I wanted to make sure and thank everybody who helped me out along the way. Of course, by those people I mean all the other editors I’ve worked with (even including some who I never served under/with, but now wish I had) and even some of my writers (shudder), all of whom have helped me to get better at this thing as I go along, and I only hope I can help carry on the tradition. I’d list everybody individually, but the worst thing I can imagine is forgetting someone, so it’s gotta be a group thang.

In short, it’s been quite an eventful year for me. But as the saying goes, tomorrow’s another day. And damn, the day after that’s Sunday, which means another paper.

Better get to work.

At 4:27 p.m., Pullman shuts down. Classes are canceled, businesses will close and all eyes will be on the boys in red as they take on the boys in baby blue. Families will huddle around their televisions, office workers will huddle around their computer screens and thousands will stream into Beasley Coliseum to cheer on the Cougs with one voice.

At 4:27 p.m. in Seattle, a businessman in a sharply pressed suit will instruct his secretary he’s leaving early, pick up the Cougar hat he’s worn every day for the past 20 years from the coat rack and head on down to the nearest sports bar (he is a Cougar, after all). Once he walks in the door his eyes will be greeted with a sea of crimson, but he’ll walk right over to the first purple coat he sees and sit down next to him. Their only exchange will be mutual nods, but it doesn’t matter: Everyone’s rooting for the same team today.

At 5:27 p.m. in Phoenix, at 6:27 p.m. in Kansas and at 7:27 p.m. in New York City, Cougars will come out of the woodwork. Proudly displaying their crimson and gray, they’ll be keeping a sharp eye out all day long for fellow Cougs, and at the appointed hour they will gather ‘round CBS to watch a truly historic Cougar sports moment unfold.

At this point, it almost doesn’t even matter the Tar Heels are 3:1 odds to win the whole thing. Washington State, by contrast, is at 45:1.

But really, I think everyone’s pretty satisfied to get here. Anything after this is almost gratis. Look how far this team has come: 12-15 in 2004, 11-16 in 2005 to 26-8 the last two years, with a shot at win #27. Not to mention senior center Robbie Cowgill’s tie in the ASWSU election for District 7 senator. At this point, Glenn Johnson should probably watch his back; if Tony Bennett (or even Taylor Rochestie for that matter) ever gets it in his mind to run for mayor, I think he’d have a decent shot.

At this point, you can say only one thing to Weaver, Cowgill and Low: You did it. You’ve turned around a WSU program, long the laughingstock of the league, and brought it back to respectability. The Sweet 16 establishes the team as one of the truly elite in the nation. You don’t owe anything to the university, the fans, or indeed anyone but yourselves. Just know the hearts, minds and throats of thousands of Cougar fans all around the world will be following the ecstasy and misery that can only come from an NCAA tourney game.

A special note to Aron Baynes: It’s time now. It’s time to shed the immature, pouting game you’ve lapsed into for the past two seasons. Every time we see flashes of brilliance from you, it’s made all the worse when you revert back to hack-and-slash ticky-tack fouls. More than any other player on the court, you will decide this game. If everyone’s clicking but you, the Cougars cannot win. If you play the same stingy defense, do the fundamental things (boxing out, rebounding) and limit your fouls the way you have in the first two games, you will decide the outcome of this game. Hell, if you can do that, next year the feared center everyone worries about won’t be Tyler Hansborough or someone named Lopez; they’ll be worried about Aron Baynes.

There’s really nothing much left to say. For two hours, Cougar fans will experience something I would doubt many of them (everyone younger than 67) will be familiar with. They’ll cheer with every 3-pointer and grimace with actual physical pain at every failed defensive stop, right alongside the players in Charlotte. But when it’s all said and done, regardless of the outcome, WSU and yes the entire state of Washington, will stand proud, united.

Go Cougs.

It’s always odd, walking the streets at night when everyone’s away. Without exception, by the end of the weekend before a break Pullman empties and I am left to fend for myself among the other rejects and townies. 2 a.m. is a sufficiently creepy time in and of itself. Now, it’s literally quiet enough to hear the buzzing of the electric lights in their faux-Victorian lampposts.

As I pad down the silent streets, a truly eerie sense surrounds me. On any normal night I’d be met by a motley assortment of groups and individuals in various stages of drunkenness. These encounters are always touchy, as inebriated Cougars range the full emotion gamut from happy to out-and-out vituperation.

This night is different. Though not quite empty, College Hill is for the most part devoid of humanity (in a literal sense as opposed to the usual metaphorical sense), making for an unusually uninterrupted walk. Somewhere around one of the new apartment complexes, I stumbled across a couple.

The male, anxious and most likely horny, is furiously attempting to work the lock on the door to his house, where presumably he will enjoin the female in relations - this is his plan at least. By contrast, the female is either stalling or unwilling to go inside, and is instead twirling around on the sidewalk singing various selections from The Wizard of Oz, if somewhat brokenly.

As I inch closer, she spies and points at me, saying “this girl knows what I’m talking about!” It’s unclear whether she’s saying it for the male’s benefit, mine or merely her own. She begins to sing again, and (somewhat enjoying silliness) I join her, though softly. She laughs, but I’m not entirely sure she even noticed.

She walks over to me, arm outstretched. “Do you want to be my scarecrow?” she asks with a smile that has just the faintest hint of sadness. She has to repeat it twice before I actually understand what she said. Looking into those dovish (albeit drunk) blue eyes, I don’t really feel as if I have a choice.

“Of course,” I reply, taking her arm. We skip off down the street, singing “Because, because, because, because …. because of the wonderful things he does,” laughing the whole way.

When we’ve gone about half a block, she collapses into giggles and pulls her arm away. After regaining her composure, she walks back over to me with a much happier smile on her face. She thanks me, and I attempt to shake her hand. She does so, then reconsiders and gives me a hug.

“You’re the best scarecrow ever,” she concludes.

I’ll probably never see her again, and the minimal impression she made on me is probably even less than the impression I made on her, at least on a personal level.

But then again, that’s not really the point, is it?