Summer Saved Me (preview)

Check out a preview of our upcoming album, Summer Saved Me!

Obstacles (a short story) by Jeremiah Long

It's late October, 2001. I am walking through my subdivision on the way to Catheryn Rose's house on Trousedale. She's a leggy blonde, but due to her interest in athleticism you probably want to keep that comment to yourself. Otherwise you might find yourself filing a claim against your car insurance (assuming you carry a policy). If your deductible is $500 of more then it might benefit you to preemptively look up the phone number of a local retread tire distribution company. You might also want to see if you can find a front driver's side window at a junk yard. They are priced very reasonably an will often be easily replaced by a Step-Dad or local shade tree mechanic.

The trees were dancing off their remaining clothes and leaving crunchy orphans along the declining sidewalks. Catheryn has an aversion to battling the army of autumn soldiers. She thinks that some clan destine para troopers might invade her intake manifold with disastrous consequences.

I turn the corner at 8^th Ave and Trousedale at the Volunteer Fire Station. They must have been practicing fire quenching. The concrete in front of their massive garage doors was dark with the fresh stain of runoff. Enough so that my grey low tops slurped up the excess as I forged the wet obstruction. I left several quickly fading tracks behind me. Something a couple blocks over was teasing the sharp senses of several neighborhood strays. I could hear their objections bouncing down the alley that runs perpendicular to Catheryn's street.

It seemed kinda desolate for such a nice weekend. Usually Mrs. Beverly's out pretending to do seasonal yard work. She singlehandedly heads up an unofficial neighborhood watch program. It has no other members or any affiliation with any established security entity. There are normally a bunch of tweens forming complex social systems driven by the availability of consumer goods. Relationships go from interest, to love; dive into deception; and resolve in mutual amnesty between 3^rd Ave and Main St. Anthropologists could complete their doctoral dissertations in three blocks.

But not today. Besides the canine echos, a faint car alarm, and the crunchy victims; it was just me and the wind. Weird. I should have been devoting more of my ancillary senses to the route. I stumbled slightly over the jutting sidewalk blocks. I cursed the theory of plate tectonics (which probably could not be substantiated as the root cause of the craggy intersection) and pivoted onto Catheryn's lawn. With no signs of a Dodge Charger or Kia Sedona in the carport, I began to reconsider the intelligence of arriving unannounced.

I rang the doorbell...

I rang...the doorbell...

I...rang...the...doorbell...

…

..

.

I turned and began re-plotting my route in reverse. It was warm enough that my hoodie was becoming burdensome insolation. Maybe I would just tie it around my waist on the way back up Trousedale. I wondered if I had enough change and time to catch the metro downtown. I began unzipping my trappings.

“Hey!”

I turned to see Catheryn standing in her threshold, propping open the storm door.  

Just Like Honey

Oversat is featured on the current edition of the world famous French language indie podcast, Just Like Honey. Not only does the broadcast feature our song, "In The Other Room" off of our Mixed Signals release, it contains some other great music from bands that you might not be familiar with. It's a beautiful mix, and we'd like to thanks Bertie from Just Like Honey for including us. Here's the link, enjoy!

Statistics Vs. Grass Roots

Just a note on why big companies and organizations think you are nothing.

When a survey is conducted to discover if people in Stone Harbor, NJ like to eat octopus at Marabella's Restaurant, they don't actually ask everyone in Stone Harbor. The island has a population of about 20k. They might ask about 200 people or 1%. Here is a set of results for your brain:

Survey question:
Do you like to eat octopus?
80 people of 200 respond YES
Math: 80/200= .4 or 40%

Survey results: 40% of Stone Harbor residents like to eat octopus.

Ok, so you see this and you're like, "Yuck! We don't like octopus in Stone Harbor, we like chocolate cookies!" (personally, I'll take the octopus!). So you start a grassroots campaign to show that Stone Harbor residents like chocolate cookies. You start a facebook page and in a month you get 3,000 Stone Harbor people to "like" your page. The comments are awesome, everyone agrees! So you take all your info to the owners of Marabella's and show them that they should serve chocolate cookies NOT octopus. You clearly show that over 3,000 people agree.

They reject your claim based on the following information:
40% of Stone Harbor Residents like octopus based on a recent survey.
15% of Stone Harbor Residents like chocolate cookies based on the information you provided.

How's that work out? Here's the math as companies often see it:
3,000 people DIVIDED BY 20,000 residents = .15 or 15%

This plays out over and over again in almost any subject that relies on data. Popular music, political polls, television ratings, et cetera. This is why your favorite show gets cancelled, why local bands have so much trouble getting airplay, and why fringe candidates don't stand a chance.

In closing, the above example is why it is so hard to take grass roots movements to the next level. Work hard and kick ass and it is possible. It's just really hard because they use different gauges than real world absolutes.