Of grout fingernails

Went back to the wombishness for the past few days and between gorge, microbrew, and sale bourbon I am a revamped bufoon. I did find that my whiskers have evolved so that fewer than three blades are of no use. Wha' the hell do they put on the "aloe" strip anywho? Some nourishing agent, I know that. We can never go back.

This week has been/seems to will be still a patch of obscene late-season downpour whilst my beloved boondox bygone abode is already withering in snowmobile baiting flurries. My windowshopping nostalgia for assorted extreme outerwear gives me anxiety pangs like you'd wonder how long 'til I'm checking Ski-Doo jackets on the outskirts of East Wash w/ "a plug in". No, it is goose down I crave, puffy things and odd acronyms.

And yet for all the puff I want to wrap, I can only stand to hear shards and gritt thwobs... ol' Pan Sonic and drooling at Boomkat's promise of DMZ restocks and hoo jeez what the fuck season we got upon us...?

My life in garbage

I just signed on to be my apartment buildings garbage-dude. Each week I shall don gloves and drag our cans to the curb. I shall pick up whatever refuse has been carelessly dumped about the grounds and uphold the moral code requiring that I not dig around looking for materials to lord over my neighbors' heads as "sensitive".

I have two highly technical BS degrees, for which the average starting salaries are $50,000 and $60,000/yr.

I am doing this for $40/month. $40 that I need.

Know this for what it is: An analogy for everything that I post on this very space. All I know is trash.

Don't get me wrong, I love the trash that I know. I'll roll in that wadded up wet newsprint all day. If I go to buy beer with some of those friends of mine that sometimes force smokes on me, and when they leave their half-smoked cancer stick on a ledge outside the store, I'll leave my smoldering ciggie on the ground. And we'll both pick 'em up and keep puffing afterwards like it was no thing. This is my way.

That said, I grant Sam, author of the Stylus piece I mentioned yesterday, that he was pretty much spot on. I was merely taking advantage of my 'net-given right to totally misinterpret all that I take in and spew forth whatever my knee-jerk reaction might be. Did I say right? I mean duty. Some facts:

1. No matter how many Tad or Big Drill Car tapes I had back in "the day", my music-seeking methods are strictly electronic at this point. Hell, I don't even read Bull Tongue no more. My tastes are virtual.
2. Not listening to Total Chaos never scored me any pussy. Not that I would have listened to them anyways, had I known.
3. It is probably a bad idea to post things that discuss bands you know nothing about other than that they are from Chicago, no matter how tangentially the discussion relates to said bands.

Alright, so I've learned my lesson. And posting is officially and thankfully returned to something I only do while consuming alcohol or whatever you send me in the mail. If you need an address, lemme know.

Dincision

I am trying to figure out if this one section in Stylus Magz CMJ overview-thing is midwest-sneering condescension or if it's just my eternal paranoia... hard to tell from it these days...

At the Rapture show on Tuesday night, we met two kids from WVLP, which broadcasts out of Valparaiso University in Valparaiso, Indiana. Naturally, they couldn’t have been more excited to be at CMJ; the school bought them badges, train tickets, and a week in a hotel room. But when we asked them whom they were most excited to see, we didn’t hear established bands like The Shins or the Rapture. “Definitely Bound Stems!” they enthused. “And Chin Up Chin Up.”

Ten years ago, there’s no way these Midwest college kids would have even heard of these bands, much less come across the country to see them. Now, apparently, these were some of the marquee acts at CMJ.

Wait... isn't Chin Up Chin Up from the midwest?

Not that I care. I've never heard 'em. Or that other band. And I'm certainly no webmusicnews muckraker, I shall leave that to Gerard (thanx Hastings [sheeshy-shit, am I showing the crossmarketing blogpollination love and semicoherence today... re-up on my meds, you ask? {Now I understand why all the DFW-style footnotery is sometimes necessary}]). But dammit, I am a midwestern-bred backwoods fucker, and I know me some bands. Because of the internet these days, perhaps... but even in my ultra-secluded bohunk/podunk/mojunk Peninsula of Origins (to be explained in issues #1-5 of the autobiographical miniseries I'm in negotiations w/ Vertigo to produce) we found some copies of Flipside and Maximum Rock 'n Roll at certain tobacconists of high standing. All the internet's gwan done is made me drop significant finances on crazy-ass Japanese psych box sets. I know me some fuckin' bands, chump.

Alright, I should name my shit. In fact, mebbe it was way close a parallel existence to Wounded Galaxy dude's amazing mixtape experience, right down to the Archers of Loaf decimating and reconstructing my conceptions of how to get a paper route done right. I bought Speed of Cattle, too-- in Wisconsin fucking Rapids. My mixtape didn't have any Total Chaos on it, but my friends were into that shit. I avoided it, knowing full well it would never score the pussy I craved, which is not to say I ran out and bought all that damn Fat/Epitaph stuff either, ok? (I'm actually digressing here because reading that post freaked the hell outta me the same way my batshit soft post on the graphic novel Blankets describes that terrifying book experience. And looking for the link to that post I noticed that I linked an Archers of Loaf song there... I am sweaty-trembly amidst the synchronicity.) Butanyways, butanyways... so these things still filtered up to the nether reaches, and from what I've heard about certain areas of Indiana (okay, just Bloomington) somebody in that state stayed hip to certain thangs in the apparent total void of pre-web midwest.

Yeah, I'm kinda blowing that two-paragraph section outta proportion for an article on how excited some dude from Poughkeepsie was to go to CMJ. I usually blog while drinking, which helps me keep things mercifully brief, unintelligible, and not-over-considered. Tonight I blog on a random evening binge of coffee drinking, which apparently is all that separates me from the stale-clove action I took so much glee in observing only yesterday. I shall take note of this and make sure to consume only barbiturates and their ilk prior to future posting.

That said, I meant to leave you with proof yesterday of my dubstep name theory, but in my stout I neglected to do so. Take this and forgive.

Hatcha & Benga - Progression - from the Science Faction: Dubstep comp (YouSendIt link)

I can't be sure, but these dudes likely have like awesome W)taps jackets or something.

Mass

I picked up a sampler of stouts to keep things heavy, in honor of the Sunn O)))/Boris jawn as well as all that dubstep that has been oozing my way as of late. So far all I can tell you is that Big Bear Black Stout is pretty good, though after reading half of Denis Johnson's Already Dead I'm wary of any CA beverage that ain't just wine. Also learned that dubstep producers enjoy single word names, generally of 2-3 syllables, that are often impenetrable to my midwestern eyes, but tend to evoke feelings of people in really cool jackets hanging out in dark warehouses with much better smoke then I've seen.

Aside from booze and big ol' wavelengths, my fave thing of today was the bitchfest that broke out following Chris Ott's skewering of the Decemberists in the Village Voice. Yeah, some dude panned Altar on this site too, but so far as I care to check (I didn't) nobody from/dating a member of Sunn O))) or Boris logged on to register a rebuttal that lead to a total goatee-fest of back-n-forth that practically reeks of stale cloves and, like, yellow'd literature or something.

P.S. my Kalevala-source song-cycle dropping t-minus 8 months. Just "engineering" shit.

An obscenity implemented

Today was a day to eat the blackened chilis. Seek them out. Perform your own residence time calculations. Fully mixed? Much like the casserole, yes. Perhaps because of the casserole.

I should have mentioned my sin: I did not crumble chips atop. My psychic jetstream trailer weeps from its walls.

Lured by nonexistant cheese snacks

It's that fingerstyle time of year, and we undoubtedly plucked the vote accordingly. I performed my s(iv)ick duty and promptly got back to my evening of digesting the best damn casserole I've every taken large spoon to mix.

Autumnal Fire is going out. This is a shame, I need my cup maintained. That smoky taste alongside some Sandy Bull (whom I was recently hepped to by some more informed types) is truly the way to keep stable embers aglow. Chase with garlic toast.