I regularly dream about old, abandoned buildings. There’s probably some standard dream-dictionary meaning for dreams about old, abandoned buildings, but I’m 100% sure that my dreams about them stem from my awake-life fascination with them. I love finding them, exploring them, examining them and dreaming of owning and restoring them. There’s no secret about that. So I think any symbolism about the dreamt old, abandoned building is probably lost in the fact that I daydream of them.

But I dreamt last night about the old Calvert downtown of Auburn, which is also in no need of deciphering because there’s a particular building there I’ve had my eye on for about 10 years. But in this dream, the Calvert downtown (which is often a subject of old-building exploration dreams) was quite a bit bigger. The block with the courthouse on it was sans-courthouse, and instead just had a full block of old-fashioned downtown-style buildings.

I was with several people, but the only ones I remember specifically were Sara and this girl whose name I’ve never known who used to live in Spaghetti Works that I used to see playing pool a lot. But those were the only two in the group of about 10 that I was with. We were just wandering through this part of Auburn, apparently without purpose. The only thing I really remember about what we were doing was that it was a hot day, we were looking for some relief from the heat, and the streets were made of dirt.

We went inside a building on the end of the block that had huge glass windows in front and a winding staircase going upstairs. The second floor was dark, so Sara tried to flip on the lights. The wiring was old enough, and the building was neglected enough, that the light fixtures just emitted sparks. This was immediately troubling because it was a hot, dry day and much of the interior of this old building was wood.

Immediately a fire started. Not only inside, but a breeze carried it outdoors, too. The group of us knew that if we didn’t handle this fire immediately, the whole area of downtown would be lost due to the fact that these were all old and interconnected buildings.

Normally in a situation like this, I might expect the dream to take a futile and helpless turn. But it didn’t. It was a struggle, but we put out all the fires.

I hope that, if anything, this dream was a suggestion that my desire to help restore the decaying parts of Auburn might be successful. And that Sara and the pool-playing former Spaghetti Works resident are good at helping put out fires.

I have just received word that the greatest radio station in all of radiodom, 90.3 KRNU has now resumed its full-time streaming.

Do yourself a favor and listen to it all the time (especially Wednesdays at 10pm for “PROM” and Thursdays at 7pm for “You are So Beautiful, Beautiful Robot”).

I’ve been doing editorial cartoons for The San Diego Reader since January 2002, but I have to say, it’s not often that I get any feedback.

I don’t believe a single non-spam comment has ever been posted in the San Diego section at nealo.com. One time, I saw a San Diego blog mention my cartoons and add “some of them are even kind of funny,” which obviously isn’t meant to be even as flattering as those words suggest.

And the few letters I’ve received are usually scrawled in jagged letters and so intense that I often can’t read them. I hope the implication there is clear.

So I was thrilled today when I called up the Reader website and saw this letter:

Anybody Seen The Melting Pot?
I’m calling in response to the letter by Jack D. (August 17). Jack, that cartoon (Neal Obermeyer, August 10) was the realest, realest, realest s*** the Reader has published in a long, long, long time. I love reading the Reader. You show both viewpoints, those I agree with and those I don’t agree with. But how do I know I don’t agree with someone until I read it? Jack, get off it, sweetie. America is the most hypocritical, hypocritical country there is. They have stolen land that wasn’t theirs, slaughtered people, killed people, financed people being slaughtered and killed, and you know what, they’re getting a taste of their own medicine right now. Whatever happened to the melting pot? I bet you support Bush. Jack D., it’s like, come on, man, give it up. That cartoon was the realest, realest, realest thing published in a long time. That cartoon should have been on the front page of the Reader for the next year, every week.
J. Nicole
San Diego

and this one:

Ha-Ha-Ha!
This is in response to Jack D.’s reaction (Letters, August 17) to Neal Obermeyer’s cartoon (August 10) of the Freedom Concert in Chula Vista. One of the things that I love about that cartoon is that it offends people like you. People like you are such a pleasure to point and laugh at. By the way, being liberal does not make one unpatriotic. I just retired from 20 years in the military and love my country.
Chris
via e-mail

Here is the letter they’re referring to:

Truth And Guts
I take offense to the editorial cartoon about the Freedom Concert in Chula Vista and Sean Hannity (Neal Obermeyer). Americans have a right to freedom, of all diverse cultures; Sean Hannity has the guts to speak out. He backs it up with truth and helps the veterans’ children with profits from his concerts. Leave the insults out — this cartoon smells of 1960s underground papers. Be American, live American, cut out the derogatory statements towards real people who care about our veterans and those who care about diverse cultures. Demonic people who hate our country can move to Muslim countries or Russia, China; take Jane Fonda with them.
Jack D.
via e-mail

The original cartoon is here, and you can read a story about the concert in question here.

I realize this post probably just comes off as some “look at me!” bragging, but four years on the job now, it’s nice to get some positive feedback.

Ron Hull is a legend in public television, here in Nebraska and especially worldwide. He’s been involved with public television since 1955 and has been a high-ranking official in the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

I had him as a lecturer in International Broadcasting back in 1999. It was a great class, and thanks to that class I was introduced to The Singing Detective, a great BBC series. I’m sure he wouldn’t remember me now - he had enough trouble remembering me when I was in his class - but he was a cool guy with tons of cool stories.

I was driving along L street the other day, going west through downtown, when a little red convertible pulled out in front of me from the parking area in front of that Vietnamese place at 13th and L. At first I thought “That white-haired jerk didn’t even look and I almost turned that car into a tricycle!” but then, as we both turned south onto 13th and I got a better look, I realized “That’s Ron Hull!”

I do believe, after all my years in Lincoln, this was my first Nebraska Mobile Celebrity sighting. (That photo was lifted from when Hull received the first “Spirit of Mari Sandoz” award. It is not Hull demonstrating how close he was to hitting my car.)

Having just driven back from Omaha on I-80, I wanted to share this visual example to follow up on my previous post about interstate traffic in Nebraska.

Here you can clearly see that all three lanes are full of cars. You may note the semi in the right lane, which could lead to the assumption that the semi was moving slowly up this hill, so people felt the need to pass him.

No. I took this photo with my phone (which is the reason for the poor quality) after spending four minutes blocked behind these three cars, driving somewhere between 55 and 60 the whole time. Three lanes. 15 to 20 miles per hour below the speed limit.

The semi was actually the one driving the fastest, believe it or not, over in THE RIGHT LANE. He eventually got over and then merged left so that faster traffic could pass in the right lane.

Apparently there are a bunch of expatriate brits driving I-80 in Nebraska.

Having spent a large portion of the last weekend driving interstates 80 and 94, I started thinking again about that fantastic new, yet not fully complete, six-lane stretch of interstate between Omaha and Lincoln.

As everyone knew, traffic between Omaha and Lincoln had just gotten to be too much for those little four lanes to handle. Who can count how many times you have to go around someone who’s just barely scooting along in the left lane, so you have to voluntarily get stuck behind the slow moving traffic in the right lane TO PASS THE PERSON IN THE LEFT LANE.

Or when you get stuck behind two vehicles dueling down the interstate at 55 miles per hour, clogging up those two lines for a mile back as one gets a 1-mph advantage, then they come to a slight bend in the road, giving the advantage to the car on the inside… Neither really shows any intention of really passing the other per se - it’s just that neither is willing to trail the other one.

Adding that third lane and spending those millions of dollars would do wonders for problems such as those.

EXCEPT IT DOESN’T ACCOMPLISH A SINGLE !@$#!#$%@#$^&@*(%^&#*$^% THING.

Because, as I predicted before any asphalt was torn up or trees cut down, the Nebraska drivers who previously saw the left lane as a nice pretty place to drive slowly will now have the center lane AND the left lane as nice pretty places to drive slowly.

It’s already happening, even with the relatively small stretch of 6-lane open road. I drive back and forth to Omaha at least twice a week, and already, you get stuck on a 75-mph road with three lanes of road going 60 or less because someone just clearly doesn’t understand the concept behind interstate traffic.

All of this reminded me of a bill introduced by Senator Marian Price early this year that was quickly killed. Some of the logic for killing the bill included a senator who just prefers driving in the left lane. Also, the bill was killed with the belief that the 6-lane road would solve the problem.

Missouri has a bill that prevents driving in the left lane for anything other than passing. In all my drives through Missouri - and I have had many - I have never encountered the bumpkin-in-the-left-lane problem. EVER. And that includes I-29 in northwest Missouri, if you know where I’m going with that.

Of course, there’s always going to be a problem when some truck or hick decides they need to cut you off the person driving 75 in the left lane so they can pass the guy going 55 while driving 56. Those people are jerks, and hopefully their careless driving will only result in personal injury and not the injury of others.

Now don’t get me wrong - I realize that a left-lane-passing law won’t solve the traffic volume problems. Not all of the I-80 congestion is caused by idiots. But the relief that the extra lanes can bring can be immediately negated by allowing this type of inconsiderate driving to continue.

..was Woodshaft.

Woodshaft was conceived ten years ago back when I was in Residential Goosing, the band I was in during my senior year of high school. We wanted to have a big music festival out in the country. There were a few other bands from the Auburn area that were in various stages of activity. However, necessities that were absent from the scenario included a drummer for our band and the courage to perform our songs in front of anyone who wasn’t in the band.

Residential Goosing broke up in the fall of 1996. Years later, the mighty Auburn band No You, which ruled Auburn High School in the 2001-2002 school year, performed at the Legion Park band shell in May 2002 - another unfulfilled dream of Residential Goosing. That got the ball rolling for what would become Woodshaft 2002.

No You’s popularity and the presence of Vince Riley’s guitar shop in Auburn led to an explosion of new bands in town, ranging from middle school to high school age. Woodshaft was a showcase of all the new talent in Auburn, and an opportunity to finally live out the Residential Goosing dream.

We got back together a few days before the show, frantically re-learned our songs, and taught them all to a drummer who had never heard the songs in his life in an afternoon (fortunately he was a really good drummer who caught on very quickly).

The show went really well, several hundred people came out to the farm to enjoy the show, and it was definitely a great sendoff to Residential Goosing. The RG saga always felt like it never properly concluded, and that was a wonderful final chapter.

Woodshaft led to Solstice Fest, which then evolved into the Music in the Park series, which still continues to this day in Auburn. So it’s nice that our little creative spurt ten years ago was able to leave some kind of positive legacy on our hometown.

I was in Platte City, Missouri last summer, and I remember laughing when I saw the door to the library.

There was a sign posted saying that guns were not allowed in the library. I was like “What kind of primitive place is this, where they have to tell people not to bring guns into the library??“

Don’t I feel silly now.

After the passage of the concealed-carry law and the defeat of the Lincoln ban, Lincoln’s gun-wary have turned to business owners’ rights to prohibit guns.

Of course, this has upset those members of our society who want to interpret the 2nd amendment to mean they have a right to pack heat wherever and whenever they want, and anyone who wants to stop them must be a satanic communist or something.

Case in point - I just read today on the From the Heartland blog about the “No Guns = No Money” campaign.

If your (sic) hurting now from lost revenue due to the smoking ban and any of the other misguided things the Mayor has succeeded in accomplishing the last thing you want to do is piss off this communitties (sic) law abiding firearms owners. We can be a surely (sic) lot when we feel we are being disrespected or marginalized.

Understand that should you post “No Guns signs” (sic) we will respect your private property rights, because we are law abiding citizens. We won’t leave our side arms in the car, we just won’t darken your door or cash register with our hard earned yankee dollars.

Do you understand that; We are making a list and checking it twice to find out if your (sic) naughty or nice. Not only won’t we patronize your place you won’t even get a lump of coal.

Note that link in there. It’s the link to the actual list of businesses (so far these documentors are up to 1) who are going to prohibit firearms from their premises. And here’s the part where the tough talk turns into dollars:

My wife and I eat out regularly and just as an example we generally spend a few hundred bucks a month at a certain eatery. Should that eatery post signs they will be loosing (sic) approximately $2400.00 a year, and that is just from us. Consider that we have friends and family that are are (sic) pro CCW that eat there as well. By posting a “No Gun sign” that business will likely loose (sic) the better part of $10,000.00 a year, and that is just from the people I know.

There you have it - the real motivation behind all of this. If they can’t threaten you with their hidden guns, they want to threaten you with their dollars. Simply put, forget the 2nd amendment — the “law-abiding” gun-toters want their right to threaten people preserved, and they will make sure it’s preserved.

We heard the rhetoric all throughout the debate - the bad guys will think twice before committing their crimes when every citizen might be carrying a weapon. I can only imagine the mindset of the angry concealed-carry advocate, strutting around town packing his heat, knowing everyone should fear him.

Thank god we have these people to protect us from the criminals in society. So who’s going to protect us from these law-abiding gun-lovers? There’s no secret when reading the words of the most outspoken proponents of concealed-carry — there is nothing subtle about the hate and anger that flows into their writing.

I guess the one positive in all of this is that we can be sure the nuttiest of the nutty gun lovers won’t be eating at the places with “No Guns” posted.

I posted about it back in June the night after seeing it for the first time, but here, by way of YouTube, is the video for “Conventional Wisdom” by Built to Spill.