Don't Chuck Your Muck in my Dustbin

I need to go to bed now. Tomorrow night's gonna rock.

The rockin' will start when I get out of work early. So far, so rockin'. The rockin' will not stop until Autolux has rocked, until Queens have rocked, and until NIN has rocked. Rock on, it's gonna be a rockin' good time.

Is it possible to have a RATM and Floyd synthesis? If so, that's how I would like to categorize my current my current musical rut. Maybe with a splash of John Denver on the top, which is scary because there's nothing I can do about it. I have to say the John Denver video for the PBS pledge drive is the best promo I've seen on that channel in a long time. Has anyone else seen that special on the Weaver's Reunion in 1981? Man, I've probably watched that thing from start to finish 4 times; probably twice with pops...for some reason they don't start it until midnight, so we're usually up until 2 or 3 watching it.

Though perhaps it has been come cliche (and tragically so), I am so deep into Bob Marley's catalog right now that it's not even funny. I walk around humming "Pimper's Paradise", "Small Axe", "Bad Card" and "Kaya" all day long. I mean, some of it is almost overwhelming. I have ceased attempting to communicate with others and just hum to myself. Except for Margarita... :) This is going to be an interesting 30 days.

Well I jumped into the river to many times to make it home

And now that you've been broken down
Got your head out of the clouds
You're back down on the ground
And you don't talk so loud
An you don't walk so proud
Any more

What's the tasteful limit of consecutive repetitions of a song when you're by yourself? I mean, if I'm with other people, the repeat is off. There's always one in the group who hates The New Riders of the Purple Sage, so we play it through and that's it. But the other 99% of my life, what does good taste dictate? Is it a problem if I'm on my fifth iteration of Estranged? Even if times 2 and 4 were the music video?

Bowling was alright tonight, even though I only flirted with 150 one out of three games. When we were going every week, I'd usually have at least one game in the 160s or 170s. Took a month or two off and the game went to hell in a hand basket. The surfing/lifting plus two days of the soccer didn't help either, honestly. I couldn't complain because, honestly, how much effort does bowling take? Still, the fact that I have the body of an 85 year old doesn't help. I mean, I can barely even play catch with the kids anymore (play="have a" if you're from the east coast).

So Lenny called last night. Apparently he's releasing a new album called "Kravitz Is What Kravitz Does". He asked me to write some lyrics for this one song; there are only like 4 chords in the whole thing. Here's what I have so far:
Oh, baby.
Oh, baby, baby.
Baby, I need you, baby.
Don't ever let me go, baby.
Baby, baby.
Baby, baby, I need you, baby.
Baby, baby, baby.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Any thoughts? He said it was the most original thing he's heard in a long time. I figure it's a step of up from those songs that the stupid wanna be Sublime cover bands keep asking me to write. I mean, pot is pot, right? Get over it.

Tonight's poll:
A man approaches you. You happen to be a female (it is assumed you are human). Chit chat ensues. Eventually you ask him where he lives. He says, "Over by the harbor. Actually, in the harbor. I live on a boat."
This man is:
a) Creative and not afraid to do something he likes. Hmm, sounds interesting.
b) Too much of a deadbeat to spring for some honest to god property.
c) A free spirit, but won't amount to much. Love 'im, leave 'im.
d) Could leave the country at anytime. Move on and find someone else.
Survey says?

If 'ifs' and 'buts' were candies and nuts, we'd all have a Merry Christmas

Short one this time. Relatively thoughtless, too, I might add.

Went fishing out of Half Moon Bay yesterday and had to wake up at 3:30...damn, I slept good last night. Had fresh red snapper with a white wine and peppers sauce and asparagus for dinner; a little much for one person, but it was pretty tasty.

Why are movies always so just? The people who deserve to die always die and the hero always prevails. In a world of cheaters, charlatans and unethical power whores, that rarely seems to be the case. The world is far too sensational to be accurately portrayed by the conservative media infrastructure.

How does one make it known that he or she would like to add the middle initial to every reference? Is there an official declaration form to fill out? Why, for example, is Craig Nelson known as Craig T. Nelson...or Eddie Murrow, Edward R. Murrow? With the dubious exception of guitarists, though, the US seems to have avoided the one name thing that is popular in soccer (see Edson Arantes do Nascimento).

If you were a pornstar, what would your name be? Assume Claire Voyant has already been taken. So, apparently, has Karl Hungus.

Here's my buddy Joey with a 48 1/2" leopard shark we caught just by Dumbarton

So a cup of coffee and a stick walk into a bar....

Bob Saget is a funny man. Of anyone I've ever listened to only, Sarah Silverman is more offensive. She's also one of the most beautiful. Sorry, Bob.

Went to the Padres v. Giants tonight. True to form the Padres scored 3 in the top of the first, only to wallow in sub-mediocrity for the remaining eight innings. Crap.

Spooning and sex are overrated. Trust and comfort are undervalued. I am overwhelmed at times and crying tears no one sees fifteen minutes later. Major changes are on the horizon and no one knows about them. Goodbye, old life; I'm checking out.

Can a one-legged man do a one-armed push-up?

So what have you been listening to lately? Me? You want to know what's on my record table? Well, I can guarantee you that five years ago I would have never said that my favorite new song is by a two person band that describes their music as retro-goth dance, and that they won't release their first album for another month. But they are She Wants Revenge and the song is "Tear You Apart". To be honest, I'm really not sure what is so appealing about it. It's kind of like "True Love is Blind" from Louis XIV...very simple. Then again, I've always kind of had a fondness for that which makes the simple sound good. "Boogie with Stu", Zevon's "Carmelita", the Beatles' "Lovely Rita" and "Atlantic City" (The Band's version, not Bruce's) come to mind. I think I especially like it when someone can make a very difficult piece sound simple, a la John Bonham on "Good Times, Bad Times" or everything Mark Knopfler or Jeff Amments ever touched. In that vein, listening to Jimi Hendrix is like watching an athlete who is so superiour (that's British for "superior"), that he or she doesn't appear to break a sweat while the competition labours (British for "labors") in the dust. I mean, the man (Jimi) is singing as he's playing!?!? Has no one else noticed that? Never have I seen or heard a person embrace an instrument as if it was fashioned from his own body. He may as well have been blinking or breathing as playing the guitar.

Lately, though, I've found myself attracted to roots music. Reggae and blues, mostly. I have to admit that Howlin' Wolf might be my favorite artist to listen to, ever. I first heard him when I bought a collection of blues tapes on my 8th grade east coast trip at the Smithsonian. It may have actually been my most fruitful and long-lasting experience of the entire week. I take that "may" back, it was. Sex and drugs have come and gone, but the music has never let me down.

I need some ambition. Is there anyone out there who can inspire me? I've been playing the same four chords for about an hour now. I mean, honestly, how many times can a person play the riff to "Sweet Jane"? I've also been dwelling in the Sublime, although the reality that I will never hear a new Brad Knowles song is depressing in spite of the upbeat creativity that he projected. It reminds me of Jimmy Cliff...a lot. He wrote a tune called "Vietnam", which Bob Dylan called "the most beautiful protest song [he] had ever heard." Pretty high praise, if you ask me. If you didn't speak english you might thing it's a song about a new love, finding a penny heads up or good times amongst friends. The point is that the beat betrays the message that lyrics convey. It really is beautiful, Bob.

NIN "Only" is really starting to grow on me, though "Piggy" remains the top Trent track of the week.

BTW New home brew tonight. It's an American Brown Ale. One of my more mature compatriats decided that "One-eyed Brown-Eyed Girl" would be a fitting moniker and so it shall be.

Ahoy from the 10th Parallel

Blogs have come in gone in the life of me. It started with www.stonerdiaries.com, but I think someone forgot to pay the bills so don't even bother checking. My second attempt was as a desperate young man hovering near pulling the plug on everything external. Outside hurt too much, honestly. I would love to say that I was strong enough to shrug off the ugly world and the ugly people but I have bled like a razor cut. As Calvin once asked Hobbes, "Are people basically evil with a few good traits...or basically good with a few evil traits?" Perhaps I've never been accused of starry-eyed optimism but deep down I've always had a opportunistic sense of humor and tried to bear an honest smile at life's trials. I wish that were still the case. It may require something drastic to convince me that Bill Waterson (full name William B. Watterson) was incorrect in Calvin's former assumption. For every person helping their fellow citizen there are two trying to make a quick buck at society's expense. I wish I could say I wasn't disgusted, but then I would be lying. Capitalism is a great idea but, sometimes, I feel like man and woman will eventually devolve it a base form of communism as politics, along with money, has come to define power. Federalist 51, James Madison: "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." Maybe I should take off the quotation marks, but you get the gist of it. Well, here we are with companies taking advantage of people at every turn to gain an monetary advantage. Eighty bucks a pop for an AP test? Where's the competition in that? You either pay the money or you don't take the test. There are no alternatives, no competitors. At USC, it's $12 bucks to get an official transcript. Guess what they do.....ready? Type in an ID number, ctrl+p, space bar. "Twelve dollars, please. We only accept cash." You know why? Because they can. Every employer and grad school requires this piece of paper; some schools (hi Stanford, how's it hangin'?) require two. The point is that everyone is jonesin' at the opportunity to take someone else's money with as little effort as possible. Brilliant system, yes, but it brings out the absolute worst in people. So.....back to communism. Why work hard if you're guaranteed something by the a central power? Why make 50 t-shirts when you can make 48 and take two of your neighbor's? Why bust your ass and make 52 shirts? Are you going to get anymore money, food, shelter, pleasure? In our society this translates into the following: why actually provide a quality product, promote competition, value the individual when it so much more convenient to cut corners, monopolize, and promote efficiency at every turn? The answer is there is no good reason. So do whatever it takes to promote yourself. Run red lights to maximize the work day. Lobby officials at all costs. Hell, promote your own candidate. You don't think this has happened? Why do I KNOW it has in my OWN party? Or, at least, what used to be my party. Regardless, captitalism encourages people to short cut morality for the purpose of promoting self interests. And yes, I do know what the difference is between ethics and morality; I got a BabyRuth last time some sketchy professor asked that. I don't know what America will evolve into. Damn, I love my country but I fear the worst if we can't figure out a way to balance self-interest and the common good in the near future. In the meantime, I have my designs on International Waters. Join me, anyone?