Here Comes That Shit Again

I got a Halloween head.

SHIT: Spanish exam, 3:30pm... Having to find pants to match the stone/tan ("stan") corduroy jacket for my Richie Tenenbaum costume, as well as buy sunglasses and possibly a white headband... still awake, 3:37am without having studied much for the aforementioned exam... having to get up early to go to the doctor to get my absence from work excused so as not to get shitcanned... and etc.

A'IGHT: It's Halloween and I have the night off for the first time in forever... Magnolia Electric Co. at Opolis, 9pm / parties out the izz-ass afterward... gettin' paid, this evening.

I saw Zack and Miri Make a Porno w/ Tim at The Warren's midnight showing, enjoyed it thoroughly. Though it made me have weird thoughts about some recent events... ah well, that ship has sailed, probably sank, and will be resistant to salvage efforts for years due to strong currents around its last known whereabouts.

What else? I made a mix CD of which I'm really proud, possibly to be distributed tomorrow to an interested/interesting party. Hrm. Learned the pentatonic scale pattern / movable minor, major, augmented, and diminished chords last night in a fit of similar insomnia. Spent too much money on food and drink today (goddamn Sbarro & The Library, yet oh well). Am really into Love and Okkervil River and "Needles in the Camel's Eye" right now. Will be looking to start a band once my amp (paid for/shipped), cab (not yet paid or shipped), and guitar (paid in part/still laid away) all arrive. The first batch of songs for work are:

1. Or Don't
2. With the Lights Out
3. Bad Boyfriend
4. Count Me Out
5. Weekend Holiday
6. Picket Line Breaks Down
7. Distraction
8. Certain Signals
9. Promotion
10. Hope Against Hope
11. Service Sector
12. Nineteen Steps
13. Ghosts Dance
14. Paint Thinner

Not that that means a single damn thing to anyone but myself right now. Ah well.

The Set 10/28/08 -- and also, AMPAGE!

1) Fuck tha Parking Police
2) The Future is Now!
3) Pregnancy Scare
4) Fear the Reefer
5) Blue Harvest Balls
6) My Porno Theory

Number of people: about 20
Number of people who weren't the comedians, bartender, or waitstaff: about 8
Jakes: 1

Okay, so, the Vox HHW-AC30 head got way out of my price range. However, I now proudly own this head (with a Marshall mini stack, which I am planning on selling because I also won the speaker cab from my last post) ... and I am two hours away from owning one of THESE.

Goddamn, son. I am about to have some real guitar gear.

Update: Didn't win the Bassman. So I'll probably be looking intermittently at new heads.

Feeling kinda like a lord

Okay.

Drama with the ex: concluded. FOREVER.

All kinds of money for school: lined up ($800 in excess, to be exact).

This (the guitar, not the Jewish asshole, and in maroon satin): My new guitar, in process of purchase.

This beauty: About to become my new guitar amp at like a $1500 discount (thanks, eBay!)

This cute little bastard: About to be my new cab, factory-new and custom handmade. For all of $128.00 at last glance.

Daaaaaaamn, Cameron. When it rains, it pours.

The Set, Oct. 21, 2008

1) The "Fucked By History" Punchcard
2) Blue Harvest Balls
3) Careful With That Internet Slang
4) Fuck Text Messages

Then there was the weird factor:
a: Timmy being kind of a bitch over his goddamn Gibson Echoplex

Tim ordered this expensive pro music toy on the internet and had it shipped to my house. Yet he declined to mention his shipper required direct signature. So I had to bring him the signature ticket at comedy night, only I didn't get to, because I didn't have time [work detained me extra late]. So after several attempts to him to sign me up on the list, I arrived at Othello's and saw that he DID NOT. And thus I went last, after the audience had tuned the comics out. Thanks, Tim.

b: Danny Marroquin being there

This wasn't like insurmountably weird, except...

c: Katie being there, and being standoffish and fully bitchy

So I sent her a text message, once adjourned to Blu, telling her she had forfeited the files on her old computer I had agreed to back up with her little pointed head-turn-in-aversion-to-my-acknowledgment-of-her. And this touched off like a three hours fight that saw me get three sheets to the wind and ended with my dumping her fucking computer on her porch, knocking on the door, and staggering off into the night muttering what parts of "Nineteen Steps" I could conjure in my drunken haze. Then I threw up right as I was falling asleep.


Jee-BUS. What a night. And then what a weird subsequent day.

This is the product

Of that last post:

Paint Thinner

There's vapor in my throat
And this time of day,
I can't tell if it's mostly drink
Or mostly things I meant to say
It's probably irrelevant anyway

The light that lays in fingers
Across the shade
Is kind of like the things I did
Proportionate to plans I made --
So much light unlaid

* The fires will burn soft and slow
All the cinders spent to embers
There's a letter meant to be returned to sender
But I hope I won't remember

If images in dreams are colored-by-number
And your face is a portrait, and the oils are devout
I'll drown my sleep in paint thinner
And wash it out

There's writing on the wall
In a language such
That I don't like what I make out,
But I don't understand that much
And we're out of touch

The sound that fades into obscurity
So late at night
As all the bars go gentle, dead
Into dormant lamplight
Calls cold and bright

** The fire will burn fast and sharp
And eat the embers in the ashes
To hold the heat on high
And feed on all the hopes it dashes

[ref.]

{bridge}
I burn the notes
Before I bury them
Like bridges that
Love can't redeem
And they curl like
Arthritic hands
And fade to black
In well-known themes

*** The vapors rise and recede
On drafts of hard-earned sighs --
The flames flicker and blink
The warm sting of bloodshot eyes

[ref.]

Instant Karma gonna getcha

The Panopticon must live a sad meta-existence, finding out all sorts of things it didn't want to know.

You run, you run and never look back or else you'll turn into a pillar of salt.

The Set, Tuesday Oct. 14 2008

1) Universal Friend Lie
2) My Porno Theory
3) Catholics (parochial school ending)
4) Bastille Day

Number of people who were like "yeah, I'd like to come see you" who actually showed up: 0


I'm getting fat because I ate a whole Fat Sandwich at warp speed and had three pints of beer and I'm STILL hungry. I better get my ass to a gymnasium.

Astride the Great Divide

I could characterize myself as needy, but that would be redundant. Everyone is. Everyone needs SOMETHING, some people need lots of things.

Is my problem that I need things that are fundamentally contradictory? I need independence, I need support and assurance. I need acclaim, I need privacy. I need affection, I need space. I need sex, but I need love. The last two aren't wholly opposed, but I've found myself looking at trading one for the other more often than I'd like to. I need the future, but sometimes I yearn for the past. The present tense, at any rate, has been unkind to me on a subsurface level of late, in terms of emotion and satisfaction and comfort and the feeling of belonging. I'm in between homes right now in many respects, and don't expect I'll find my new one for quite a while. Dos Passos wrote the sketch "VAG" to close out 1919 about a roadside drifter looking weathered, beaten, but at peace. I guess that's what I aim for anymore.

Fireworks

I've got a confession --
Felt like I was sitting at a funeral procession
As the star shells lit up the sky
Our last Fourth of July

I know you couldn't miss it
As six-year-olds with sparklers laughed off in the distance
We were dead when you arrived
We were tracing lines to other peoples' lives

* And I was hoping I could re-ignite
But I kept panning gold and coming up with pyrite

And Tulsa town felt so dead to me that summer
We were treading water and we were going under
I just wonder
Why you held so tightly in my sleep

I've got recollection
Sitting in the hospital, waiting for directions -
Waiting for the at-ease that never came -
These things all end the same

In your yard, we were lighting
Fuses in the dark, throwing sparks like lightning
It should've been the highlight of my year
But last lights always disappear

** And I was waiting for some eloquence to show up
But all I saw was, things so bright just burn out or blow up

[ref.]

{Oh, eulogizing effigies --
There's no disguising the atrophy
But we're free, now, anyway
So I guess... Happy Independence Day}

*** And I'm still waiting to forget
But the last thing I remember is the first thing I regret

[ref.]

SHIT

Guess I've got too much (or not enough) on my mind.

I left my car - from 12:30 to 4:20 - parked in Stubbeman Village, unlocked, and running while I was in class.

That I'm not down two vehicles in two weeks is some kind of miracle.

Strange days, indeed

Something about October makes it a special month for my grades flatlining and the world going all bizarro. Perhaps it's the mid-semester malaise that sets in after the optimism of August and the gung-ho drive of September dissipate; perhaps the fact that people are wearing sleeves.

Okay, now I sound like Big Pete intro-ing an episode where, like, the Petes and Teddy have to break into the high school after it's closed to rescue something for Ellen. At this point in the series, I would surmise Iggy Pop and John McFlemp have already run Artie out of Wellsville. But I digress.

So anyhow, it's gonna be a tough stretch run to get my shit together in Spanish and History of Inquisitions in time to lock my borderline-B's in before Thanksgiving Break. And in the meantime, all sorts of wacky stuff keeps happening. Stuff like becoming a stand-up comic after years of sort of wanting to, forming an aggressively retro 60's-pop band with Jake and assuming the stage name of Sonny Boy, Punching Spree (nee City of Industry) STILL not having played a show or rehearsed with vocals - over a year and a half after the initial practice - despite the fact that we're just really GOOD right now, stuff like... apparently fall is the time of year that the ladies come runnin' when I ring my dinner bell. This next number goes out to none in particular.

Some Other Time

Binary signals going back and forth,
Back and forth
In the Morse dance, the switch you flip - on and off,
On and off
In the way you voice vague needs and wants,
Needs and wants
I hope you know too much ain't enough

Fiber-optic eyes that look me up and down,
Up and down
From your hands to your mouth, it's open-close,
Open-close
You'd fall asleep if you could close the door,
Close the door
We fall asleep still fully clothed

No event horizon pulls me
Over the line
When you keep a mind that
Turns on a dime
If you keep away, I'll
Keep it with mine
'Til some other time

Wireless signals jumping fore to aft,
Fore to aft
Before I act, they send me stem to stern,
Stem to stern
It's either flares up or down-and-out,
Down-and-out
It's always watch-and-learn

Digital fire running base to tip,
Base to tip
In fingers flush with flesh and bone,
Flesh and bone
Can leave me gasping or wait-and-see,
Wait-and-see
Oh, don't leave me alone

[ref.]

{bridge}
You know the language,
So use the privilege
Don't let it languish --
You get me savage
And I'll take anything
Until you take advantage...

[ref., 2x]


Other strange October happenings:
> The Dodgers winning their first postseason series in 20 years(!) with a ludicrously one-sided sweep of the NL #1-seed Cubs
> Sarah Palin having ungodly meltdowns just about every time she's asked an easy, fluffy question
> Me finding THIS on the internet

Most peculiar, mama...