As a fan of Mould’s work, I can’t really address whether a non-fan would enjoy this comprehensive biography of his life. I came into the book with a solid background of Mould’s career; the dramatic questions were already framed for me. Why did Husker Du really break up? What was the story with his brief career in professional wrestling? How did his outing as a homosexual change his course as an artist? All of those topics are covered, and dozens more that I couldn’t have guessed.

What the book lacks in a narrative arc is made up for in the sheer volume of detail about the merging of punk and pop. His later career (both musically and in the book) held less interest for me, but I appreciate the level of detail Mould felt compelled to share. A compelling read for fans, without a doubt.



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“How to keep a daily writing practice” is a common theme among writing advice columns, articles, and books. I know, because I’ve read most of them. It’s been a dream of mine for decades to have a daily writing habit.

For the last ten months, I’ve written for an hour almost every weekday. I’m not going to lie. I’m just about as proud of this as anything I’ve ever done.

As the practice has solidified, I’ve tried to measure the advice that I’ve read throughout the years in an effort to see what actually helped. Mostly, though, I found that the advice was no help whatsoever.

Their Advice vs. My Reality

Here are some of the more commonly repeated bits of daily writing advice, and how they have squared up against my current writing habit.

• “Just sit on your butt and write.” The classic argument. Sure, consistent writing is the effect, but how do I cause it to happen? Thanks for not much.
• “You need a clean, well-lighted place.” My writing spot is cluttered right now, and dim. I love it.
• “You need to have a target number/outline/word prompt/Ouija board/etc. to stay motivated.” Maybe. I don’t.
• “You need to be still.” Really? I can’t write while I’m running?
• “Take a walk/shower/yoga class/rock climbing session to get the mind working.” What happened to stillness?
• “Eat/skip breakfast. Be sure to drink coffee/don’t drink coffee. Go to a cafe/stay at home.”

You understand where I’m coming from.

Because I have successfully maintained (and in some cases defended) a daily writing practice for ten months, I feel I have the authority to say this: there is a secret to maintaining a daily writing practice.

At Long Last, The Secret to Daily Writing

I have no idea what the secret is. It’s a secret even from me.

I’m pretty confident, however, that my secret is different than yours. It is certainly different from all of the advice writers I quoted above. They found their path, and they reported it. Good for them, I say.

If I looked back over the last several months and found one key to writing every day, I would tell you with a straight face that it was my coffee maker. A $20 Black and Decker programmable coffee maker. I set it every night, without fail. I know that if I don’t set it, I will not write. It fires up at 5 AM. So do I.

A coffee maker isn’t the only reason I write every day, but it’s the only one I can articulate. Every night, I set the trap. Every morning, the threat of unconsumed coffee gets me going.

That’s ridiculous, of course. But it’s my clean, well-lighted place, my Ouija board, my contract. It probably won’t be yours.

The reason that “sit down and write” is the boilerplate writing advice is because it’s the only part of the equation anyone can agree upon. At some point in your formula, those two things will have to happen. But for me, they’re a few steps after some pretty important rituals.

I’m sorry that I haven’t helped, but perhaps it will help if I tell you that nobody can help you. It’s a scary thing to accept that you’re on your own. Maybe it will also the moment that you stop wasting your time looking for help. Good luck.

This beauty is the LG VX3300. If you convert that technical mumbo-jumbo into English, the translation is something like “Awesomephone” or “Futurebot.” Forget the Verizon iPhone, forget 2011; everything the world needed in a mobile device was already available when I purchased this baby in 2005.

“But wait, Scott,” I hear you saying. “This is but some robotic scarab, a featureless mound of plastic. Where are the buttons, man?”

Get a glass of water. Sit down and calm yourself. A quick flip of the thumb reveals all:

Deep breaths. Take small sips of your water. Don’t gulp! This is a moment you won’t soon forget, just as when mankind first beheld fire, or the wheel, or Kenny Rogers’ new face. These things have a subtle way of rewiring our brains indelibly.

What brought me to such amazing fortune? Two days ago, I placed a phone call with my 2010 touch-screen feature phone (how very common, now that I think of it). The conversation went something like this:

Wife: Hello?
Me: Hey, what’s up?
Wife: (Long pause) Heeeylo?
Me: Yeah, hello? It’s me.
Wife: Anyone? Hello?
Me: (Louder) Yeah, it’s me. Can you hear me?
Wife (Aside) No, get down from there. I told you not to… (click).

The next two attempts went roughly the same way. The microphone on my thoroughly modern mobile device had crapped out. I could send and receive text messages, and listen longingly to people on the other line shout “Hello!?”, but nothing more.

But lo! Hidden in the recesses of my file cabinet came the technological savior of the day, an emissary from 2005. I could hear the Verizon representative chuckle as he activated the ancient circuitry of the VX3300 remotely, like a NASA technologist sending radio signals to a distant, decades-old space probe.

“The only change to your account is that… well, your text message plan will no longer includes the ability to share photos,” he said.

The lack of a camera on the VX3300 softened the blow of this news.

The way I look at it, this phone is a product of more optimistic times. This messenger from 2005 seems to say, “hey, the coming housing crash won’t be so bad,” and “hey, I’m sure the Iraq war won’t last too much longer.”

In short, when I look at my scratched, mouldering phone, and listen to its midi-file ring, I know that tomorrow is going to be a better day. What else can we ask of our technology?

In my mind, Costco has always walked a fine line between rampant big-box consumerism and bulk-buying convenience. It would be easy— and perhaps not unjustified— to view these mega-warehouses as unsightly blights on the suburban landscape, threatening to kill off any Mom and Pop survivors of Walmart.

If you have been in one of these monstrous warehouses (riding the coattail of a card-carrying member), however, you realize that Costco is something different. A few minutes in a Costco will make most people realize that they can, indeed, use a pallet of facial tissue, and would be willing to pay bulk prices to get it. More than one Costco neophyte has come home with a membership card and a shelving system to store their newly purchased crates of fruit snacks.

For me, the reality is much simpler. I have kids. When you have kids, whether it be one or five, you deal in bulk already. Costco became a natural progression of that buying pattern, one that didn’t cause me a lot of sleepless nights.

My wife and I have been off-and-on Costco members for years, depending on our proximity to a Costco store. For our family, the inconvenient distance of the closest Costco meant infrequent visits, so we let our last membership lapse without regret.

Enter Burnsville Costco, newly opened last November. While the Burnsville store isn’t going to win any beauty awards, it has been stitched into an area where Big Box is becoming the rule. The close proximity made it a no-brainer. We signed up. Again.

I quickly remembered what I had forgotten; Twin Cities Costcos are some of the least friendly places in the world. The floor is cold, grey concrete. In spite of the hugeness of the warehouse, the short sight-lines can induce claustrophobia.

Shoppers hurl huge carts with the abandon of Black Friday deal mavens, single-sighted and singularly disinterested in your personal space. Lone patrons wander dazed, wondering where the rest of their families have disappeared to in the impenetrable piles of merchandise.

The employees aren’t much better. Apart from one very friendly marketing specialist and one very unfriendly membership clerk, they were all alike; un-uniformed souls scowling hopelessly at their feet. Even the sample ladies, the carnival barkers of our time, mumbled canned facts about their wares while trying in vain to keep their samples replenished against the ravenous hordes.

What had I done?

My jaw tightened. “Let me take the cart, honey,” said my wife, a woman much less prone to taking the myriad social slights of a Costco trip personally.

Trailing behind with my children, plucking large boxes of lunchbox fillers and massive pasta bags off of the shelves, I had an opportunity to contemplate the unbearable meanness of Costco. I tried smiling at the shoppers who nearly collided with me and my wife. Narrowly saving one of my kids from death-by-pallet-jack, I gave the soul-drained employee a jolly “whoopsee-daisy!” It was fruitless, of course, but it did give me some feeling of control, and I was able to keep my own crankiness at bay for awhile.

So what is it about Costco that draws away our kindness so easily, and yet packs the place every single night? Is it a requirement that saving big bucks in a cold, concrete-floored warehouse store also creates a vacuum of personal courtesy? And, hey man, I worked retail for many years. Does that name tag weighing down your collar require that you also be a jerk?

Minnesota nice, my ass.

If I had to boil it down to a comment card for our newly re-instituted friends at Costco, it would sound like a pillow note from the morning after a re-ignited affair, when reality sets in for a formerly scorned lover: “I thought you might be different now, years later. I even thought it might have been me all that time. But now that we’re back together, can you at least pretend that you’re happy to see me?”

The most challenging aspect of nature writing is to describe the natural world without overtly anthropomorphizing it. That prairie is motionless; it is not calm. That tree is old, but it is not wise. That mule deer that passed by you? It did not commune with your soul as you looked in its eyes. It actually didn’t even wonder if you were going to eat it. It can’t wonder. It’s a mule deer.

(The other really hard part about nature writing is accurately identifying plants and animals, but that’s a topic for another day. I merely wanted to point out that it wasn’t a mule deer at all. It was a regular old whitetail. Be more careful next time.)

I wish, in my struggle to conquer anthropomorphism, that I had known about the love dart.

The love dart is a mating tool used by some snails and slugs. In word alone, the love dart suggests at least one obvious parallel with humans, but it cannot be stressed enough that we don’t have anything like this. For one thing, the love dart is only found in some hermaphroditic snails. Feeling the distance already?

It’s a small, sharp projectile made of calcium or chitin (depending on the species of snail) that grows near the head of the snail after the first time it mates. Most darts are about 5 mm long. The love dart is not, I repeat not, a penis. It is not even necessary for successful mating.

But assuming that the snail has mated before, and the love dart is developed, here’s what happens. During the (predictably slow) mating ritual, pressure builds up behind the dart. The snails jockey for position, trying to get their sperm in the other’s genital pore. Sexy, right? Once one snail touches the other in just the right way, blammo, the love dart fires.

And brother, can it fire! Sometimes the force drives the dart into the internal organs, or even through the body and right out the other side. How much luckier can a girl/guy get? Apparently, even if there’s a love dart to be fired, there’s still luck involved; a third of all love darts either miss the body or fail to penetrate the skin. Sorry, dear. I thought I was ready.

After that, the snails mate.

So what’s the point of the love dart? Well, isn’t it obvious? Yeah, I didn’t get it either.

Apparently it wasn’t at all obvious until recently. Scientists now know that the love dart contains hormones which increase the likelihood of sperm survival within the target snail, and therefore improve the chances of successful mating. So in spite of appearances, it’s actually a good thing to be shot through the neck with an enormous spike of calcium while you’re doing the nasty. It means you’re twice as likely to become a daddy/mommy.

My previous point about the love dart being a good cure for anthropomorphism is hampered, of course, by the fact that love darts are only found in snails and slugs. Snails and slugs are some of the least relatable surface animals on earth. No one who isn’t a hardcore biologist has ever thought, “hey, this snail and I share similar struggles in this existence.” I knew a kid in school who always had mucus on his upper lip. He might have been able to relate, I guess. But I bet he didn’t.

Anthropomorphism isn’t about identifying similarities. It’s about assigning human attributes that don’t have parallels outside of humanity to non-human entities. Why is that dangerous? Why is it not better to think “Hey, that snail has feelings too?” Because then we only value the natural world we can relate to.

When we see elephants holding a funeral, we can relate, find value, and empathize. But the natural world that is counter to our empathy—and even some of our own goals—can hold less value for us. That’s reckless. Simply because the snail is slimy, hard to relate to, and fires a missile into its mate when it gets excited doesn’t mean it is less deserving of our consideration.

And what do we do when our assumed stewardship of the earth conflicts with our empathy for these animals? Those elephants who capture our hearts by displaying grief for their dead are also depleting the vegetation of the African bush at an unsustainable rate. As the author of the above article asks, how do you cull an animal that grieves?

There are no easy answers. But as mankind takes more of the world for itself while trying to manage its protection, it would be good to consider the mechanisms we use to dole out respect, affection, and salvation to the natural world.

Richard I (you may know him as Richard the Lionhearted) only lived to be 41 years old. If he really did everything they say he did—and by ‘they’ I mean Wikipedia—then he had a busy 41 years. He managed to put down revolts against his father, King Henry II. He had a major role in the third crusade, engineered by his father and Philip II of France. Somewhere in all this, Robin Hood was running around making mischief in Sherwood Forest, and pioneering the use of green tights.

But that’s not the fun part. No, the fun part comes in 1199, after he returns to Europe. Richard I is running around and fighting with the French (who, by his later years, weren’t getting along anymore with the English). Laying siege to one castle in particular, he notices a boy defending the walls of the castle with a frying pan and a crossbow. This amuses Richard. Wouldn’t it amuse you? Some kid skulking around the castle walls, batting down arrows with a griddle while taking potshots at an army who, presumably, is either about to kill him or take him prisoner?

Little does Richard know that this kid blames the king for the death of his father and two brothers. This is a kid with nothing to lose. The best possible outcome, with death or capture inevitable, is to kill the king.

So the king stands below the castle, amused and without his armor, and applauds the kid’s clownish bravery. In the medieval equivalent of the full-court basketball shot, the kid shoots Richard the Lionhearted in the shoulder with a crossbow as he’s standing there, hooting and hollering at the boy.

Richard doesn’t die right away. The gangrene gets him (presumably horribly and painfully) a couple of weeks later. In a moment of appreciation for the circumstances, Richard is said to have actually pardoned the boy, sending him on his way with 100 shillings. Nice shot, kid. Here’s a pouch of booty. Go buy your widowed mother something nice.

I don’t know if I buy that, but it’s kind of immaterial. The boy was flayed and hanged upon the death of the king by a mercenary named Mercadier. Mercadier was probably roguish and good-looking, by the cut of his name. He stormed the castle again after Richard died and killed everybody left standing after the last siege.

Having had his father and brothers killed already by the same army, I expect that none of this came as a surprise to the kid.

Why do I like stories like this? Incredibly grim? Horrible deaths? Flaying and hanging? I attribute part of it to my father, who spent my formative years singing folk songs which ended badly for their protagonists. At best, there was some revenge involved, but everybody died at the end—especially the just and the undeserving of death.

One story in particular stuck with me, and that was the song of “The Golden Vanity.” It’s the Peter, Paul, and Mary version of “The Sweet Trinity,” a nasty ballad of bravery and false promises. There are a few variants, so I’ll stick to the one I know. A ship is in danger of being taken by a Spanish galley. The cabin boy, the lowliest member of the crew, says “Hey, Captain! What will you give me if I swim over to the enemy ship, bore a hole in its side, and sink it?”

“Why, silver and gold!” says the captain, twirling his moustache. “And my fairest daughter’s hand in marriage! That would be awesome!”

The cabin boy does as he has promised but, not having the kind of upbringing I had, is surprised to find that the captain won’t let him back on the ship. The authority figure reneges on his promise. The boy is hoisted up by his shipmates, but dies on the deck, his heart broken and his view of the world seriously (but temporarily) broadened.

If the cabin boy were a little more like the French king-slayer, he would have gotten the agreement in writing first. Why? Because he already knows that happy endings are for chumps, and the best you can do is to wing the king in a Hail Mary crossbow shot.

One feature of the early Greek satyr really stands out; they had perpetual erections. Permanent stiffies. They might have been like those Viagra victims who suffer erections for more than four hours, whose first call is supposed to be their doctor. You and I both know that isn’t the first call they make, however.

But I digress. Marsyas was walking around one day as he always did, enjoying some wine and his undying boner, when he found a double flute, an aulos. Sick of screwing and getting drunk, he decided to master a musical instrument. You have to admire the fortitude of a man who takes up a vocation when he has an inexhaustible supply of alcohol (from his buddy Dionysus) and can fornicate at will. Marsyas was a satyr with vision.

He did not know, however, that Athena herself had cast aside this aulos in a fit of pique, having been told by her buddies that the flute made her cheeks puff out in an unflattering manner. Nobody likes to be told they look fat. She had cursed the aulos, dooming its future owner to a horrible end. As Marsyas danced through the forest, prick and flutes akimbo, he was heading for a showdown of mythological proportions.

Marsyas was getting pretty good at the aulos, so he decided to challenge Apollo to a riff-off. Apollo played the lyre, a three-stringed instrument invented by his buddy Hermes. Having mastered the lyre, Apollo then modded it out with an fourth string, a sunburst finish, and a Seymour-Duncan pickup, further adding to his renown. Apollo could shred.

“So what should the stakes be?” said Apollo.

“I say, whoever wins gets to do whatever he wishes to the other,” said Marsyas, no doubt planning on hitting the vanquished Apollo with a pie in the face.

“Okay,” said Apollo, who was known for starting plagues when he was cranky.

The aulos vs. lyre battle was epic. Marsyas actually won the contest, but as he was departing—and the books really say this—Apollo turned his lyre upside down and played the same song again perfectly. That’s right. He went all ZZ Top on Marsyas’ ass.

“I can’t do that with my flute!” exclaimed Marsyas, referring to the musical instrument and not his perpetually pert penis.

“Too bad,” said Apollo, who then flayed the poor bastard alive for his hubris. I kid you not. He skinned the dude, and displayed his hide for all to see.

Why can’t I help but think of Marsyas this morning? Why am I telling you this story? Moreover, why are you still reading?

I don’t really know. My wife wanted to get up early this morning and catch up on studying for her graduate-level class, so to help her out (and to capitalize on her ambition) I said “hey, let’s get up early together! I’ll do some writing, and we’ll keep each other motivated!” Monday night is full of such… hubris.

Before dawn on Tuesday morning with coffee in hand, regret in full effect, and with nothing to write about, I looked up a random Wikipedia article for inspiration. An article about the city of Arles appeared. Arles must be the most boring city in France, and was no help at all. A few years ago in Arles, they found a stone bust of Julius Caesar in the nearby Rhone river and, being French, promptly got into an argument about who put it there. This didn’t interest me either.

But they also found a statue of Marsyas there in the Rhone. And that dude had quite a story, don’t you think?

I believe that Marsyas challenged Apollo on a Monday night, and woke up Tuesday morning for the duel. I bet that come Tuesday morning, as the birds above his head woke him, he probably regretted his decision a little. By the break of dawn, I’m sure he fully realized his folly. Tuesdays are like that. We go to bed having somehow conquered Monday, which is supposed to be the hardest day of the week. And why not? It’s the beginning of a trudge to the next weekend.

But Mondays have a lot going for them, not the least of which is the restfulness from the weekend. Tuesdays don’t have that. They have all of the charm of waking up after a minor skirmish on the way to a full invasion. Even after the worst possible Monday, we spend the night having conquered the odds, thinking everything might turn out okay. By Tuesday morning, though, the hope is gone, and we’re off to a duel using instruments we think we’ve mastered but barely understand.  We do it every Tuesday. Some Tuesdays, we survive to see Wednesday, which is a different story altogether.

The moral of the story? If Apollo challenges you to a game of Guitar Hero, decline.