I did it! I blacked out for months and forgot I ever wrote any of this. All of you with bets... you win!
Or you lose...

Whatever. I've been really "depressed" (?) lately.Not sure if depressed is the right word. I've wanted to avoid everything. I've also had a bunch of bad luck. When you pair that with aversion it makes a hard way to be.

The raccoons that infested my chimneys might, alone, be considered a funny story. Pair them with a dead fridge, a leaking roof, a fucked floor, and a possible depression and you get an epic story of aversion where nothing gets done. Nothing. Over a month with no fridge. I make love to adolescent raccoons underneath a raining roof on a rotting floor. It's great, but it's wrong.

I guess I should point out that the old-school player next to this is a bunch of songs that I wrote and recorded. I'm pretty proud of most of them. I think colder is my favorite, but a lot of them have some merit. If you stumbled on this blog somehow, a play or two would give me a percentage of a cent. After 7 or 8 years I still haven't met the 20 dollar threshold for withdrawing money. The Natural Gallerie is my band and we have a bandcamp page: http://naturalgallerie.bandcamp.com/  should you feel generous. Realize that the player does not represent the whole band. They're way better than me. I just happened to write some of the songs.

So, my idea is to listen to three songs per day... we'll see and just give my honest first first impressions. I'm using HabitRPG to keep me honest and motivated. Given my past performance I expect 2 days tops, but I get paid with beer... so maybe it'll last longer. I hope so. I've actually done more in the last 2 days of using this thing than I have in a month of trying to motivate myself.

In terms of the songs I'm going to try to pick songs I've never heard before and I hope to branch out to songs I might not have listened to because of my inherent biases. We'll see. I have the blog on my bookmarks bar now so it'll be a constant reminder. Plus, I get paid with beer.

Old enough by The Raconteurs

The song starts with vocals immediately which I tend to like. The vocals are quadrupled and slightly out of phase on top of a clean accoustic. They are immediately positive (you look pretty)... but immediately are tempered by the infamous 'but'. After reading the lyrics it seems the story is directed from someone older to someone younger who is headstrong and thinks they have it all figured out. The narrator identifies with the subject and eventually implores them to think about their future. Pretty deep for a pop song. It actually says something.

Shaker... fiddle... mid tempo rock heavy bass. An organ, a very pretty organ. Pretty up-front drums. Doubled or quadrupled vocals. The bass is constantly moving till the bridge.

The vocals get a little psychedellic with back and forth repeating lines.

The electric guitar seems to get dirtier in the bridge and then disappears in the rest of the song. Suddenly an acoustic guitar rises playing lead and double stops. I think the vocals even get a little more distorted towards the end.

 The electric gets a little more prominant and the fiddle starts fiddling you're expecting a solo but everything drops out and there's a little a little accoustic fiddling a few voices and it's over. I liked it. 

Train in Vain by The Clash

Blogger ate my first post so here's the second draft:

I'd heard this song many times on classic rock radio and never knew it was the Clash. It starts with four bars of upbeat drums followed by a reverbed out guitar playing syncopated octaves. The bass quickly follows along with a very forward piano part. There's also a fairly prominent harmonica. I really like the sneaky shaker part going on in the background.
The lyrics are really kind of bleak and speak of a man let down by someone he trusted. There's no real resolution which kind of makes it an anti-pop song. Despite this, it's very popular on FM stations that mainly play love songs. It definitely makes me like more. I think the disconnect lies in the fact that the stressed lyrics are positive while the unstressed ones are negative. A casual listen could mistake the intent. It's really interesting. Kind of subversive.
Overall though it's a very simple song. It fades out at the end. No solo or any theatrics. Actually very cool.

I Zimbra by The Talking Heads:

An African sounding beat. Very upbeat. Guitar harmonics on drums and hand drums to begin before quickly adding bass. Apparently the lyrics are inspired by Hugo Ball's poem  'Gadji beri bimba' and is a "made-up" language. More details here: http://www.ubu.com/sound/ball.html . Definitely has a psych-disco feel to it. It stops very abruptly, which I guess is common for first tracks. Interesting.

New Year by The Breeders:

Cool intro, slow start to an album. Harmonies. Initial innuendo. Picks up fast. Gets pretty heavy. Lyrics are pretty hippy-ish. I definitely hear the Pixies in this. Noisy, like SY but in tune. Very short.

So... I had a mini-epiphany. Popular bands/entertainers just fill empty holes. There's overlap and emptiness at times, but if there's a market there's a band/artist who will fill that hole (no matter how niche or strange it is, providing there is money there). It's actually kind of depressing. I do believe there was a set of musicians at some point who believed, without irony, that they had a certain obligation to the kids to live the life they spoke of in their songs.

NTI: Global Security Newswire - Air Force to Fly Hypersonic Aircraft in Global Strike Test

NTI: Global Security Newswire - Air Force to Fly Hypersonic Aircraft in Global Strike Test

Pica Pic | retro handheld games collection

Pica Pic | retro handheld games collection

YouTube - CIA's Facebook Program Dramatically Cut Agency's Costs

YouTube - CIA's Facebook Program Dramatically Cut Agency's Costs

Google

It's sad when you look yourself up on google and can't find anything. Two other more famous people have your name and one of them died in a tragic car accident in high school. Does that come off as callous? In my defense: I have never killed anything above the level of insect on purpose.And I feel bad about the insects I've killed though roaches are starting to lose their emotional tug.

To be clear, I used to show up on google all the time; back in the day. At some point some asshole with my name started writing computer books, then another started being an artist in San Francisco. The last straw was a high school student in ... Virginia? dying in a motor vehicle accident. Apparently a quiet guy in NC with not a lot going on can't get listed on google anymore. I'm considering committing some sort of crime.

Bowling.

Bowling is a performance. I think that people who don't play instruments or act or sing, or whatever, look at bowling as a way to perform. Team sports don't really offer that opportunity to get up in front a group of friends, or whatever, and perform. It's like a little dance, a little finesse, and a little strength. Then you get to act out whatever fate the ball decides. Strike? Jubilation! or maybe humility depending on your relative score to those around you. Near miss? mild dismay or maybe cautious hope. I feel like it's the actor's game. Poker is the next closest thing. Maybe baseball is close when you're batting though it seems to be in the culture of the game to be as non-reactive as possible. Hyper-masculinity frowns upon displays of emotion.

Netflix.

I get that production and distribution companies want to keep the allure of the physical product, but the lack of deleted scenes and outtakes on Netflix streaming and, very recently, Netflix discs is starting to be annoying. The people who want the disc will buy the disc. What brand of jackass is swayed by extras? 

Resemblance to Statues is Intentional

Sometimes I get the urge to share. For a while I used FACEBROKE.com but then I started to post hilarious things when drunk and had to do damage control afterwards which was always an embarrassing reminder that my social filter was flawed.

So, I guess an unread blog in the vast oceans of unread personal blogs is a better solution. To be clear: I expect to get rich off of this. All of my words are like gold to thirsty people. Drink the gold, people ... drink it up.

I went to the Polvo show at King's Barcade tonight. Pretty good. There was one song ( a new one if you believe the band ) that sounded like it coul've been a J.Giels Band song. The drummer had to borrow a kick drum halfway through the set because he ripped the bass drum head. Pretty hardcore. Wild Wild Geese were alright though I don't get their self-descriptor of J-pop. One song was a blatant slowed-down ripoff of a famous song that if I had a long-term memory I could place. And finally, Free Electric State was pretty good as always. They take the best of 90's "alternative" and make it ... not new, but just as good 15 years later. They actually had the best sounding set as well. I think that has to do with the way sound checks are done. Not to fault Kings, I actually enjoyed every part of the downtown Raleigh club experience including the random Frat and Sorority kids that somehow landed at this show.

keraunothenetophobia

and to that kisse a score

A kiss no matter how small can change lives.



he finished his bottle of wine and went to bed

Grammaphone

It is hard work creating a cd sleeve.

I used: paper (rolled up construction paper which kept rolling up so that cutting it was almost impossible given I have but two hands) and my exacto knife, and shelf laminating self-adhesive plastic type stuff. I have an exacto knife and a soldering iron with an exacto knife attachment. I used the soldering iron because I thought that it got hot enough to burn paper. It does, but not at the end where the knife is. After a few finger burns and having to cut holding the knife from the very end, which is very difficult with the hippy hippy shakes, I decided that the regular exacto knife probably was the better call. But it came out alright. That being said, I made one and needed at least three for tomorrow. bitchbitcthbitch. motherfuckers can deal with a plain cd.

The world began just as it is

The failure to adhere to a schedule is to me a quality worth saving. And this coming from someone of german descent. If I get around to something it means that I actually care about it, not just that I care about appearing to be an adult, or organized.

Wu-tang's new album is interesting.

Walk Hard is pretty funny but not the funniest movie ever.

The Sarah Conner Chronicles is confusing in it's timeline.

I have read all of William Gibson's books except his last (not in paperback yet) and have enjoyed them all.

I "finished" my "CD". It is now called Apophenia. Look it up.

I got pretty drunk the other night and made lucas listen to it while i narrated.

And so it begins

It seems that I have been the victim of an elaborate porn/drugs/spam/scam attack. You leave a little used blog for a year and a half and this is what happens. It's like you can't even trust the internets no more.

Lots has happened in the past 18-24 months. I cut my hair!!! It grew back!! I lost my keys! I moved to Raleigh, then Durham! I lost my fascination with life! I made several half-hearted attempts at health and then one very strong attempt at death. Shit gets strange when you're deranged. That's the truth from a confirmed liar.

This re-re-attempt at writing down my daily travails is due to Tracy Williams of Kinston fame actually caring enough to care if I continued writing. Lord knows I couldn't kick myself in the ass hard enough to make it stick.

I have a somewhat reliable internet connection that I've stolen (wirelessly, god bless the future) from a neighbor that allows me to fool myself into thinking I might do this full time in my free time when I'm not doing anything else.


Today, the weatherman at WRAL (Mike Maze, I actually had to look up his name even though I stare at his always three seconds behind the count mug literally 9 days out of 10) called this the hottest, driest august since records started being kept in the 1880's in Raleigh. It inevitably started raining and the temperature fell by 15 degrees.

A body was found 1 door down from my apartment 2 weeks ago. Apparently, I was home when homeboy was shot. His body was found 2 days later ( I think it was dumped there). I came home from dinner with Chris and Maeve and Pei Wei ( pay way not pee wee) to the street next to my apartment roped off with police rope. Weaker and more yellow than consumer rope. Idin't find out the details till the next day at work from Pam on WRAL. One benefit of working at a tv station is that you start to realize how tenuous our society's hold on itself is.

Anyway, it's late and I'm tired so until next year...this is tunkamerica signing off.