One of the funny things about Madison is the way the omnipresent political activism manifests itself. There are certainly many different ways of showing your stripes, but bumper stickers are my current favorite. Its really ridiculous how out of control this is. Other people have written about this as well. I wanted to say a few words about this topic so I did some googling in hopes of finding a picture to include and ended up with a good link saying those things for me. I will contribute my concluding observation that I wish I would have photographed -- a bumper sticker stating "Actions speak louder than bumper stickers." Since that was the only bumper sticker on the car I have to assume that the irony was not intended.

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Why do obscure song lyrics that drifted aimlessly past my ears for years all of sudden come rushing into the forefront of my brain for seemingly no reason? I've listened to the Judge full length hundreds of times but random lyrics that are not my favorites nor lyrics I immediately recognize will suddenly become the most profound things I've ever heard for a month or so("...I can still remember, the last time I cried"). Maybe its because its a seemingly (to me at least) neglected piece of information in a whole that I respect, so the natural conclusion must be that the individual part is of some hidden value since it didn't reveal itself so readily. Maybe, or maybe its a justification for my poor absorption of the lyrics. This past little while some really obscure Sheer Terror lyrics have slipped in ("...once I bore the thorns of guilt, now I drive the nails of spite...").

In a literary sense one of my favorite Hemingway quotes is this sort of thing -- a buried little sentence that no one talks about throughout any of the criticism I've read. Its from "A Very Short Story"

"...and to make it so they could not lose it. "

The implied sense for me, when the whole of the short story is considered, is that it will eventually be lost but that there is honor and purpose in trying to keep it. For me it was the key to seeing the whole of his work and it rings like a bell through me everytime my eyes drift over it on the page. Random Nick Adams lines will flood my mind the moment I have a fish on the line that I never made any effort to remember or analyze before. I feel lucky to be haunted by short little Hemingway sentences and lyrics from Mike Judge and Paul Bearer. Maybe I just love to cheer for the obscure reference and the underdog in a whole that is known to be of great value, or maybe (probably) my brain works like an erratic hard drive. I guess I root for the underdog in most things. That having been said, I still hope the Cubs never win another game.