here i am back in umpqua oregon. today chris and i walked through the woods and down by the river. the river is brown from the runoff from the mountains and high on the banks and as john lee hooker or robert johnson can tell you, when the river is high weird shit starts floating down it.

branches, trunks, car parts, bodies. but its all good cuz its channukah and kwanza and the year is winding down.

she and i went to a campsite and to an indian burial ground and said some prayers. i love the woods. i love the country. when it rains here i dont care. when its sunny here i dont care. when its sunny here i dont care. i probably dont care cuz theres no billboards.

in the city you care cuz if you cant read the billboards your sense of perspective is off. whereas in the woods if you cant see the snowtopped mountains in the distance you can see the green hills close to you. or you can see the moss covered trees right up next to you or appreciate the ferns in the shadows below, or the natural waterfalls shooting out of the side of the roads or the cows grazing or the deers running or the ribbits frogging or the trucks speeding around the bend.

tomorrow im gonna take the 5 all the way down and probably stop off near sactown but secretly i dont wanna stop anywheres cuz what i wanted to see ive seen. what i wanted to do ive done. who i wanted to find ive found. im an american without a passport, thats who i be. im a black man with an antitan, thats who i am. im a satisfied customer of sirius satelite. im a buzznetter, im a blogger, im a drive thruer im a two fer tuesdayer.

im a tourist and a poet and a gawker and and rockr, i eat fish on fridays and fry on thursdays. i wear hats in the winter i wear jeans in the summer i see i saw i be i are.

i rock my ipod so much it gets tired. i drive places that verizon cant cover, can you hear me now? no. good.

this must be the place.

mr good says that the new busblog wont be ready by the first of the year and thats ok with me because the old busblog needs to get its shit together before its kissin cousin is unleashed upon the world and theres many miles to go before i sleep.

do i wanna go back to work on monday? you call that work?

do i wanna get married soon and settle down? do i wanna dance? do i know the way to san jose? do i know its Christmas? who the hell knows who the hells cares. life is like a road trip its better when you realize that youre alone even if someone is sitting next to you, and sometimes its better to go it alone cuz then you can go to kurt kobains house if you wanna or pick up hitchhikers if you wanna or stop off in tacoma for karaoke if you wanna or get lost in canada if you wanna or sleep in outside of salem if you wanna or hang out with your old girlfriend and walk in the woods if you wanna.

and yes i love girlfriends and of course i love kids but theres a reason why that off ramp hasnt approached yet and to be honest as i can possibly be, im happy it hasnt happened cuz its trips like these at 113 years old that i wouldnt have appreciated as much when i was 21.

people are writing their top ten lists of music and movies and i dont have ten records that i liked let a lone loved in music. tsar and kanye and the game is about it. and movies? the only one i can remember really liking was king kong.

tv was way better than music and movies this year. i know thats not indie to say but fuck off. Lost was better than the new Weezer even during those weak episodes.

Big Brother was good, Real World was good, the Amazing Race was amazing. Daily Show, Family Guy, Countdown on MSNBC, Conan, even Pardon The Interruption was better than half the crap i was forced to listen to.

so now theres chicken being baked for me and theres a promise of a movie afterwards at the end of a dark drive through the crooked country roads of Roseburg.

tomorrow i will write to you from Shasta Lake and if its clear i will show you some of those snowtopped mountains the kinfolk swear are up there.

hope your day was as fine as mine.

via mefi, a funny christmas card (funny cuz the sender’s serious)

its 923am and ive got the travel chanel on and these two european hos are talking about zurich and im looking out my window at the 5 and ive gotta tell you i feel way more comfortable in a motel next to a truck stop thinking about getting an ultimate breakfast sandwhich and driving for a few hours than i do at some euro disco with chicks with freaky accents.

last night when i was checking in the lady asked me what nationality i was, since yesterday was prove youre american day, i had to prove that i was Black to the woman who didnt believe me.

so just like how i had to rap to jenny and matt yesterday (i forget why) i busted with a

yo tell em where youre from

straight outta compton crazy mothafuckr named ice cube
in a gang called niggas with attitudes
when im called off, ive got a sawed off
squeeze the trigga and bodies are hauled off
you too boy if you fuck wit me
the police are gonna have to get me
going off like a motherfucker like that
with a gat thats pointed at your ass
so give it up fool, when im down with a jack move…

and just like now i forgot the words and so she didnt believe me
so i dropped my drawers.

and still she didnt believe me

so i robbed her.

which is when the car wouldnt start until i popped the hood, etc.

driving down to whereever i am now, im still wondering, how do you prove to someone that youre who you are other than dropping your pants? i still havent figured it out other than to say i dont know you, i wouldnt lie to you, plus its a fucked up question and i dont know why youd ask someone that one minute after saying hello to them anyway.

ok so the other reason im posting this picture is every time i look at the weather channel they have all these radar images of the pacific northwest like totally under water. then i turned on the tv and theres images of shit totally flooded and people swimming in the new lakes.

and i hate to break it to you, especially you mom who is probably very nervous that her only son is in dangerous flood country, but the only clouds in the sky are skinny soft afterthoughts of a storm. maybe it was wet earlier this week, but its not this morning and i cant even believe that people were comparing the weather to el nino which is french for “in the winter it rains, duh.”

i hate this woman whose the host of this travel chanel show. she tries to be witty. shes wearing bright colors and a messenger bag. shes telling people how to poop in florence. wtf.

heres how to poop on the I-5, find yourself a nearly abandoned subway sandwich place and tell the lady that you’ll get a coke after you use the mensroom and she’ll say oh you dont need to buy a coke to use that and she’ll buzz you into the restroom and give you a little wink which you will obsess over as you do your business and wonder if that means that you should ask her when she gets off.

winks. thats what this travel ho oughtta be talking about. when and when not to wink at lonely tavellers with kfc bellies and macncheese dreams.

wait wait this woman is staying in a hotel that charges $750 a night!!! what is this all about? she just opened the balcony to her room and shes right on the river.

dude im right on the freeway. and a womens basketball team was here last night, and they didnt ask if i was Black, the sistas know.

meet you in the hottub i told them and winked.

and theres very few sounds better than amazonian college girls giggling.

jenny good + oakparkmastermind + matt welch + leah

i just know its a nice hotel, it has a 24 hour hot tub, lots of tv channels, a warm heater in the room, and lots of electrical jacks for my ipod alarm clock, and computer.

and i know im super sleepy.

and im suprised how far i can drive in the rain and the wind and the cold.

my car likes to do a funny little trick that i call, “lets scare tony shitless”.

when i bought this car this summer i got all these things fixed, one of them was to get new battery wires because the old ones were semi corroded, but the dude lubed up the connectors so slippery-like that sometimes they disconnect from the battery when youre going over bumpy roads.

so as soon as i pulled into this motel the car wouldnt start when i wanted to start it up again.

at this point it was pouring rain and all i wanted to do was go inside and hit the hay.

but because i smoked pot every day for ten years my memory wasnt so good and i was all oh shit did i get lucky that this car died right here in the motel parking lot.

so i got my bags and brought them inside the room and i went back to the car and popped the hood just to see if the wires were loose but they werent. plus its always freaky to touch a battery line or a post

but just to make sure i raised my foot and tapped down on the battery cable with my sneaker and it sparked a little and i nearly had a heart attack.

but the wire thing pushed down a little on the post and i went into the car and turned the key it started. whew.

its a good carm it just likes to remind me whose boss.

bro i know whose boss.

springsteens the boss.

although i had been listening to raw dog comedy which was cracking me up.

tomorrow im headed back to umpqua for perhaps a little fishing.

this has been a great trip and there are a few mvps so far… jack in the box for providing toilets for me to stink up, best western because 75% of their motels have given me free wifi, and the pants for getting my ass on the same stage as kurt kobain so i could sing a styx song for him.

im very interested to see what howard 100 will be like when theyre actually allowed to have the howard cast and crew on the air because right now its mildly disappointing only hearing all this filler.

i will say this though: the possibilities for the two channels are amazing.

the above pic is of the us/canadian border crossing more pics of it and vancity here