If I haven't replied to an e-mail or Facebook message or evite, please excuse it for technical difficulties. Between travel time and no Internet, I've been digitally bereft. I look forward to replying to message soon, and in the meantime I thank the Comcast technician. After hitting his appointment window, he's restored cable access in time for me to see the end of this Federer-Roddick crazy multiple-overtime Wimbledon.

Follow-up on that snippet from Glastonbury. Via Consequence of Sound: "Sure, The Boss's guest appearance during The Gaslight Anthem's set at Glastonbury last weekend wasn't much more than some strumming and singing along(?) while the band performed The 59 Sound. But there was just something about Brian Fallon's introduction — 'Do you hear something? What's the sound like? I hear like the waves of my hometown… Is somebody back there?' — and the resulting crowd reaction that makes the video below worthwhile."

In related news, I've got my tickets for the 9:30 Club show this fall.

I've said it before, but turning it on just once this week made me wish I'd driven more around the island this year. Where, don't know. After arriving, I didn't want to go anywhere else. From Cracker's new Turn on, Tune in, Drop out with Me (video) today, I got good lost for once.

I'm shopping in town for our homemade Agrarian fortress
You're texting: Corian, granite or tile kitchenette in the gun nest?
Well we'll find a little meadow high up in the Cascades
Baby we won't ever come down
Turn on, tune in, drop out, give up with me.

Pic: On a rough day, a patriotic doughnut and at least one shining sea.

And now I have the song stuck in my head, replacing most words with doughnut. Thoroughfare for doughnut beat across the doughnutness…

Eating lunch now, I'm celebrating America and doughnuts by reading the Homer Price doughnut story on Amazon. The best part? After the machine goes crazy, I'd forgotten how at last they sell the thousands of doughnuts and also lots of coffee and milk and soda — a contest.

That's how ElvisNews.com reports the Jackson death. Judging by the angle and the resulting reader comments, the Elvis community at large is no fan of the late King of Pop. Why? There are the Jackson abuse allegations, for sure, but with a massive dose of musical rivalry. If you want odder reactions to the death, Elvis fans are good place to start. (Sincerely, an Elvis fan but apparently not as big a one as I could be.)

I love the beach and distrust it. I call the trip the most relaxing week of my year each year, and that's true. But relaxation and satisfaction are two different things, and to a great extent each year, the week leaves me wanting. As much as I may escape here, as much as I may hate to go home at the end of the week, as often as I may threaten to leave whatever job for some seasonal island work, there are no answers to be found when there are no true responsibilities, there are no people, there are no choices. There's nothing, really, to be gained or lost.

So, important people in life, I've brought them here or I've kept them away. I've hidden the escape factor or laid it out there. No matter. The situations have ended up the same. Happiness at home or away turns out to have nothing to do with place and everything to do with people and choices. Even if choices are far off, there's a certain management that can be done to treat the possibilities fairly and openly. There's a responsibility in life to care before you ever get in the car or arrive at the big bridge and fruit stands. They're locations, and that's all.

I've put too much faith in those locations, I know. Whatever ways I can hope to come here and then run magic or fight fate, the beach freezes the skinny from the ocean and burns the pale off the sand.  There's so much beauty around, but participation, as wonderful as it may be for a time, isn't conversion. If you want someone else, want someone else. Underneath the pier, the best place to go, turn around and come back, the tide's doing the same, in another direction. Has to be more?

The card from one of last week's birthday highlights. Thanks so much to Stephanie, Katie and Laura for it. (And the meeting was productive.)

Was talking with someone today over whether you could be into Morse code and being a jerk at the same time. I say it's all done, played out.

Take the whining of Samuel Morse: "I have been so constantly under the necessity of watching the movements of the most unprincipled set of pirates I have ever known, that all my time has been occupied in defense, in putting evidence into something like legal shape that I am the inventor of the Electro-Magnetic Telegraph!! Would you have believed it ten years ago that a question could be raised on that subject?" Also, he hated Catholics and immigrants and loved slavery.

So there. After the man himself, no more room for Morse code jerks. I don't know the code, but clearly it should only be used for good stuff.