Alpha is missing. My fish. He's gone. Swimming happily in his tank on Friday, come in to work Monday and no Alpha. Not a trace of fin or scale. Nothing. Took his tank into the kitchen and emptied it, rinsed everything out, looked on the floor, looked on my desk. No fish. I can't quite wrap my head around it. I think he may have been kidnapped. He's about two inches long, blue and purple. Responds to "Alpha". He's a betta. Alpha betta. If you see him, please bring him back.

Daniel Barrett at the Kendall Cafe, Cambridge, MA circa September 2002.
(One can place the date by the volume -- or lack thereof -- of his tresses.)

The DBG: Austin Nevins on guitar and K Ishibashi on violin.
How can you have the name "Austin Nevins" and not be a rock star?

My junior year in college I was at a party and the huge kitchen had a refrigerator covered with magnetic poetry. Except it was all in Spanish. I was talking to this guy I had never met -- we were sitting on the sticky floor of a dingy Allston kitchen in the middle of an insane party, composing Spanish poems on the refrigerator. And I put three words together; the most beautiful union I have ever seen: Pies del Mar. Feet of the sea. We just sat there staring at my masterpiece, three tiny white squares holding the key to the universe. Of course! I had feet of the sea. Fins. A mermaid tail. Umi. And the seaweed in my hair to prove it.

I've decided to start a website called "Dumb Pictures of My Feet." This really has nothing to do with the pies del mar story, but they're both about feet, so. It's a strange obsession of mine. Not a fetish, mind you. More like a hobby.

Oregon has stars, crystals, fish, roses and skaters. Look.