It is almost New Year's Eve and it is supposed to be cold. I feel like Matthew Thompson (a.k.a. Matty T-Rex) on a rainy Easter a couple of years ago. He said, "It's supposed to rain on Good Friday. And then Easter's to be sunny and nice." Almost New Year's Eve and it's about 55 degrees out. I need it to be bitter and dreadfully cold, because I usually spend the night inside laughing to myself about how cold my high school marching band is in the stupid parade they go to every year, and which I ditched without fail. I want to be able to savor every moment my army-trained former band leader and his troop of snotty jocks (my band had jocks, go fig) have to pain their feet and chap their wet lips playing in the malicious cold.

The leader of my high school band is Mr. Johnston, Mr. Bob Johnston, known among his ass-kissing desciples as "Mr. J." I didn't call him "Mr. J" even once, because he asked us to. I used to have a mild respect for this man. I wouldn't have, say, defended him in a knife fight, but neither would I have kicked his dog if the opportunity presented itself. Over time I developed a surpassing dislike for the man and his disciplinarian policies. He acted like a drill seargent, and didn't even make up for it by teaching us to play. When I became a senior, I expected that he'd at least award me the privilages he routinely gave to seniors. When I was an underclassman, nothing irked me so much as his allowing seniors first pick of any candy he brought in, special recognition at concerts, more authority as section leaders, priority seating, and a more personable attitude. He gave me the final insult by being inconsistent about these things toward me when I became a senior.

I spent most of my time in his marching band as last chair, because he didn't inspire me without enough enthusiasm to practice (my three former band teachers had all done this, and I had always been first chair). Toward the end I would sit in band at the end of every schoolday, frequently after school, and even over the summer--it was like a football team in terms of preparational intensity, because all he cared about was winning parades and performance contests; I would sit there in a mild haze, drunk with alienation, boredom and contempt for Mr. Johnston. He shared a name with Bob Dylan's producer, which just drips with irony.

I fell into joking with the kid in the chair immediately above mine about Mr. Johnston's closet homosexuality, inbreeding, physical and spiritual ugliness, and fanatic need for control. I would write vulgar comments on the sheet music he had given us. I was, incidentally, a trombone player in this band, and you can only guess what I did with the word "trombone." It's probably not what you're thinking. At the end of my first semester, senior year, I was absent on the day everyone passed in their music, which would have afforded me anonymity. When I showed up the next day and he asked those who still had music to pass it in, I handed it to the flugelhorn players sitting to my right. It passed down the row, producing giggles from some, looks of horror and surprise from others (mainly freshman girls or effeminate guys). Finally, it reached the tyrant himself.

Mr. Johnston called for me to stay after. My ride (who was about to take me to tryout for his ska band--I failed) stayed with me. We sat there, showing a mixture of sheepishness and defiance, as Mr. Johnston made the usual show of disgust, betrayed confidence, and intolerance (he read some of my comments, which were very witty if I may say so myself, with such a tone of anger that I thought he might pass out from so much blood in his head and bile in his chest). I sat there with my ugly chin beard (my nick name among a few members in the band was "ball sack"; I hadn't yet learned to trim my peach fuzz) and keep my eyes down, my face sardonicaly smiling. "Stop smiling, goddammit! It's not funny! And look at me!" He called my parents, at about eight in the evening, and told them all about it. He also assigned me to sensitivity training with the school counselor, which was kind of like forcing Churchill to take a crash course in rhetoric. I will admit that I am extremely insensitive when it comes to conversation, because I'm always trying to make jokes I know people will take as insults. However, as to the reason he gave for sending me to a counselor--insensitivity to homosexuals and other ethnicities--I can only say he was a bit inaccurate.

I couldn't get to sleep easily for a few days becuse of a new, strong source of anxiety he had shoved down my throat. Later it would be because of Napster, which kept me up until 3 a.m. nearly every night my second semester, causing me to fall asleep in the middle of many A.P. European History classes. Thus, although I still remember many of the terms (Warsaw Pact, Maginot Line, Citizen Genet) I forgot most of what I learned about modern history.

Anyway, point is, I want that bastard to freeze his ass off this New Years in whatever show-off parade he forces his students to perform in this year.

If anyone has not gone to the Elephant Six website and downloaded the mp3s and listened to them, do so. It's the most amazing thing I've heard in a while. (And Jeff Mangum really is inspired, as his commentary makes clear, and Aeroplane somehow really does relate to the life of Anne Frank, whom Mangum really was obsessed with, and so on.)

Nothing has happened in my life lately; I have also been thinking about nothing. Thus, I will write about someone else's life and thoughts, in the first person, just for fun. Perhaps a nine year old Japanese American boy in Ohio. Here we go.

I don't understand why my parents won't buy me a samuri sword. They keep telling me to "be attuned to my heritage," and yet they won't buy me a samuri sword. I just don't understand. I'll keep asking them. Something might happen if I keep asking them. I've never even seen one, except on TV. There was this one show where a guy had a sword and he was screaming as he jumped out of a window, "banzai!" I wonder what he meant, sceaming about a tree. Maybe he was jumping out of the window because of a tree. I don't understand it. They keep pushing me about my school work, too. They make little deals with me, like I can have a samuri sword when I'm fifteen, but only if I agree to take pre-calculus next year. It's boring is what it is, but what can I do? It would be terrible if I still can't have a sword by the time I'm fifteen. Maybe if I take calculus instead of pre, they'll give me the sword this year. Gonna go ask them.

Christmas. I get a warm feeling just from saying it, in the area of my groin. The warm feeling then seeps down my pants and leaves an uncomfortable odor. Christmas. It comes on like a friend with promises of shiny objects and musty paper and sweets, and it leaves me with that feeling you get after someone has driven over a puddle and sprayed you. Some got in your mouth.

My brother put on Van Morrisson today. We were sitting in the living room and discussing the relative virtues of each brilliant song while my grandfather (we call him "Papu" as a joke) mimiced his high crying tone on "Who Was That Masked Man?" and laughed with the insidiousness of trans fat. "He soun's like he's cryin'," he said with a sailor's accent and a shit-eating grin on his face. The kind of grin that could wilt roses. "You're right," I said, "that's what he's going for, actually." He responded, if you want to call it a response, "The music's good. I got no problem wit da music. Guy don't know howta sing, doh." "Well, he's not Frank Sinatra, but maybe that's a good thing. And he wrote the music, you know." "Guy don't know how to sing. 'Eeeh-eeh-eeeh.' Like he's cryin' or sometin'. Heh-heh-heh," he croaked.

I really don't go for it when people say, as this ghoul's second daughter did over dessert, with the heaviest Bronx accent there is, "Van Morrisson is a little better than Bob Dylan, but I just don't like his vo-wace. Other people sing his sowngs and they're gowd, but when he sings . . . I don't really like it," she said ironically, with a huge shit-eating grin (runs in the family) as if the person she was talking to would agree. "Who do you like?" I asked. I should have refrained. "Barbara Streisand, or Celine Dion, Frank Sinatra, they have real voices." I won't go on. My heart died today, as a little bit dies every day. Soon it will be gone, and then the world will be sorry, let me tell you. Or, alternately, the world will go on just as it does.

And now, in the same vein as Scott's blog, the top 10 albums I bought this year (because the albums I bought that came out this year were all disappointing, with few exceptions, and the exceptions aren't worth mentioning); there should be absolutely no surprises on this list. I could have included plenty of other albums (I bought hundreds) but it would be lying. So, truly the best albums I bought this year:

Morrissey, Bona Drag
Yo La Tengo, Electro Pura
Yo La Tengo, I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One
Belle and Sebastian, Lazy Line Painter Jane EP collection
Modest Mouse, Building Nothing out of Something
The Velvet Underground, The Velvet Underground
Spiritualized, Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space
Neutral Milk Hotel, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
The Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs

There is no tenth, because I can't think of one without looking at everythng I bought this year, and that's probably a good way to judge. These albums are the ones which have stayed with me, which I have listened to for longer than the week after I bought them, which I will continue to listen to for a long time. It's a boring list, but it's as accurate as I can make it. I would most likely have been able to include the Beat Happening box set if I hadn't lent it to a friend soon after getting to Santa Fe. I really haven't spent any time with it.

This blog is now officially once again active, now that I have lost each and every last one of my readers. I only ever had three, so I'm not that concerned. This just means I can spend more time with myself. And, by the way, for anyone who doesn't know (because Scott fucking knows), I am back in Maryland. I will be here until the middle of January, unless I can find some way out of here. This state does nothing to fill the hole. Instead, it rips it open and makes it a bit more gaping every hour.

The night I got home, my father said to my brother and me, as he was going to bed, "No walks." I imagine everyone who reads this (all three of you, god bless you) knows what this means. I'll elaborate for my own benefit anyway. It means, "don't escape from my evil grimy clutches; I've had you for twenty-one years and I'll be fucked if I'm letting you out now. You are not permitted to leave my cloying, soul-killing house, because when you do so, the only thing you do is smoke, which makes you morally disgraceful as well as offensive to me personally. I cannot legally kill you physically, so I will do so mentally. Wallow in the psychological pit of boiling blood which I have created for you. Good night." That 'good night' I just threw in there to remind you that this is, after all, my father, and that's what a normal father may reasonably be expected to say. That's what my father presumably considered, only to replace it with "no walks."

Oh, and Eric is home too, and today we both took a bus to Manhattan. I found out that we had this ability just the day before, when my mother called and asked if we wanted to go with her coworkers to Manhattan because someone had given up two tickets. I haven't slept for about thirty eight hours, and I have seen altogether too much to even remember, but here are some poems I wrote in the Klee room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

On "Portrait of a Yellow Man":

Although you might think
Dignity is expensive
You ain't seen nothing

My lips are bovine
My features are painted on
I am still a man

On "Small Portrait of Girl in Yellow":

Do you like my smile?
I am not looking at you.
Like it if you must.

I spent centuries
Sitting with my gaze just so
Can I get up now?

On "Collection of Figurines"

left
Fear is perverse in the face of so much indifference. Keep half an Eye on everything and cook it in your glowing blue third eye opening inward and outward, rising like an ecstatic cold sun. Eating fire only leads to a frozen stomach. Material is interconnected, but spirit spills all over the place. Nothing stays still.
opposite
Jumping blind leads to unmitigated joy. You might as well laugh at danger because nothing bad is possible or even conceivable. What would "bad" mean when the world is you? Play with yourself. It's fun. Whee! (splash)
center
The senses are limiting and unnecessarily stern. Experience everything that exists with a single simultaneous sense organ at the center of your being. Knowledge is neither subjective or objective; truth is meaningless, if beautiful, but sensation is an endless shot of whiskey burning everything with sheer all-encompassing intoxication of knowledge, like a circular angle. Which do you choose?

On "The man under the pear tree"

Fruit hangs like boobs practically forcing you to pick it, so you do. Glaring vulgar sexuality of desirable juices which proves you are not innocent, because if you were you wouldn't understand. A single inch of earth produces a mile of flowing plant energy. Man sees spot for self in universe, takes it. Even if the fruit never falls, he's satisfied. Tree thrusts growing limbs to eagerly dispelof its masterpieces, so readily it must have a slave mentality.

Some other one-liners:
"My bellybutton is the only proff that I, too, was once human."
"I gaze at the constant spectacle of nothing going on."
"My head is a melting former ice sculpture."
"My tadpole body slithers down the chair of myself while you politely suppress peals of laughter."
"The sun falls beneath my knees to fully illuminate my sordid, unhappy genitals."
"Slothfully, we will devour your oozing, suculent enthusiasm with fishlike gracelessness."

Klee is awesome.

This post will be against my standards for a good blog, but I haven't posted in too long, and something is better than nothing.

Noah has gone home, finally bringing to a close a two-day trip to Pennsylvania that extended to a five-day visiting fest (Noah and I spent nearly all Tuesday with Cassie. It was cool. When I asked her to give me something to buy in Rec & Tape, she made me buy Sleater Kinney, and, hey, they really are good. Who knew). I haven't left the house except to smoke today, and am suffering the effects of withdrawal from society. I am leaving Maryland in two and a half days, and experiencing an anxiety attack. As I sit in my living room, once again attempting to catch up on newspapers (I had to start with Sunday's) and listening to music, I feel a great sense of unlocalized dread. I was tired at 1 a.m., and felt afraid.

Jeff requested that I listen to the soundtrack for 28 Days Later, and give him my opinion. He has bought a lot of soundtracks lately; really this has been a trend with him for several years. Like most soundtracks, it didn't extend much past atmospheric music, mainly sounding like intros and outros with no songs to lead into and out of. It does, however, include a cool Grandaddy song. Why Jeff had me listen to it, I'll never know.

Oh, and "Information Travels Faster" is, indeed, a good song. I wouldn't call it inspired, but I can no longer say that the entirety of The Photo Album is disappointing.

This Summer, April truly is the cruelest month.
"Oh my God! He's coming over the Starnbergersee with a shower of rain!"

A movie that will show you fear in a handful of dust.
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! The Hanged Man! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

Arnold Schwarzenegger is:

The Wastelander

I'd like to have an intervention for my brother about his video game playing. Unfortunately, all of his (few) friends are video game players, as hard core at it as he is. (He plays about six hours a day, if he can be believed.) Thus, the only logical people to hold this intervention would be his family members. There are only three of us here, and he doesn't respect our opinion. I can see it now. My mother goes down to Jeff's room and asks him to come to the living room for a minute. He says, "Why?" She says, "I want your opinion on something." He's not listening because he's playing a computer game, so she repeats it and he says, "Not right now!" She says, "Just come upstairs," and he says, "Did you hear me? Not right now!" This goes on for several minutes, devolving into a screaming match. She comes up and says to me, "The intervention is off."

I'm thinking that to actually have an intervention, we'd need to have my friends to do it. So . . . anyone interested in helping me have an intervention? We can have catering, and cool banners saying "Jeff's Intervention, 2003", and we can rent ponies, and a band (I'm shooting for Modest Mouse), maybe some guest speakers like David Fostor Wallace and Maureen Dowd, get funding for television and radio commercials (Jeff Green's action packed intervention is being held at the Patriot Center Arena this Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!) and broadcast the event to a significant portion of the country (say, 35% of the population, seeing as Congress will likely revise the FCC ruling . . .), and we can all go out for ice cream afterwards. Who's with me?

. . . . . . .



. . . . . . .



. . . . . . .


Screw you guys.

The New York Times, I am beginning to discover, are decently awesome indie rock critics. Their Arts page has album review on Tuesdays (which makes sense, seeing as albums, for some unknown reason which I am sure relates to the international Jewish conspiracy, always come out on . . . Tuesday); they almost always review indie albums. Last week it was The Thrills, The Sleepy Jackson, and Super Furry Animals. They also reviewed the Siren music festival and commented on the bands' tendency to imitate previous genres (Datsuns=slick seventies metal; The Kills=blues rock); then it mentioned how Modest Mouse was the anamoly, "an old-fashioned indie-rock band from the days before all the new bands wanted to sound like old bands."

Pardon me while I quote something beautiful.

"For better and for worse Isaac Brock is a front man who seems to live in a world of his own invention, a place where folk music means grinding dissonance and off-kilter riffs and sudden musical shifts and shouted rants . . .. (H)is best songs can make you feel as if you're peering into a vast, weird world full of warped parables and cryptic observations.

"While the other acts wanted to inspire a dance party, it seemed Mr. Brock wanted to inspire a mass delusion. . .."

It is 4:48 am. This is important, so I'm stating it even though it will be in the dateline, because I don't pay much attention to blog datelines. Anyway, I've just come inside from smoking a cigarette. I think my neighbors, the Koenigs, might be massacring several teenage girls; it seems that they've installed a series of timed strobe lights, blue and white, to flash at seemingly random intervals, in order to provide a suitable setting while they terrorize and attack these teenage girls. Either that or (and I find this unlikely) they're watching a horror movie. I'm thinking maybe I should call the cops.

Anyway, Anne and Martin, you missed a beautiful show. You shouldn't have let the rain scare you off. The D-Plan rocked the fort tonight after the rain tapered off. Travis came on at about 7:20 and told us they were waiting it out, and would play if the weather lightened up to a drizzle. He thanked The Aquarium for being their guinea pig, and since that band's keyboard had broken down because of the water, they would wait. "We don't have anything else to do tonight."

I needed cigarettes, so Scott, Andy and I began travelling under one umbrella toward the place Scott recalled seeing a Rite Aid. It ended up being a Whole Foods Mart, only their store appeared to have been swallowed by a parking garage. We went up the three floors, seeing only concrete and cars at each level, and when we reached the third floor with the same result, decided we'd ridden that pony as far as it would go. The rain had let up, but we still went to the CVS next door to purchase my Jades and then ran back to Fort Reno in time to see the band setting up. And then they rocked, and the rocking kept up for the next hour.

"The City", "What Do You Want Me to Say?", "Ice of Boston" (without, unfortunately, a call to go up on stage), and and and "You Are Invited" and more and and then "OK Jokes Over", with covers of Elton John, "Back That Ass Up", and "(Can You Tell Me How to Get to) Sesame Street", and, man, a trombone, and much ass-shaking, and the drummer threw like fifteen sticks into the crowd, and a mother was dancing onstage with her baby, and, shit, man, it was, like, dood, you know, dood. Travis said they'd be playing a club show to make up for the "bullshit" of the nearly rained out event, in about six weeks, so you didn't miss their final show. But man, you should have been there anyway. Man.

Also, Scott, you shouldn't tell me so many things in the bathroom, even if they are "in confidence." Next time I'm going to have to bring a tape recorder. And for god's sake, will you stop touching me.

(Also, I'm approaching the one-week gap in my New York Times. I'm very pleased.)

I have just discovered an open, nearly full bottle of ouzo in my house. It is party time.

"My God, it's from Waldo."
"That shmuck," said Shelia.

Wow. I've changed a lot since February. And I do actually get comments. I just didn't know it because of the magic of YAACS-suck (TM Martin Marks).

After Ottobar, Two If By Sea, supposed to be Earlimart but no Earlimart, got TIBS's singer Chris to give e-mail for basement show at Scott's house . . .

In the antechamber of the Double T Diner at one
And the flourescent light puts out rays just too perfect for truth
People there for a meal, or for takeout, or smokes
In the too-defined light with their stereotypes also defined
Indie-girl with her cigarettes and short yellow hair
And sitting across from her, her Indie-girl boyfriend, of course
And the deadbeats, too tired even before thirty
Still primping their hair with their pitiful post high-school minds
There's a tootsie pop stuffed in the toilet drain
The next guy comes in, it's hard to resist making comments
That he'd see as racist, and I'd see as weak jokes
The goths have their table, and near them the stoner-hat hippies
They're not up to the lost hippie potential
One asks to borrow Scott's guitar, and I'm sure that he thinks
He's too cool and laid-back for words
Aren't I the same way, does it change anything that I know it?
Scott's inhaling, says that he wants to float
I let him and inform, between laughs, when he's ready to ash
The television plays, and it's Leno, then Conan
They're laughing at us, and we're laughing, we're laughing at them
How nice of the waitress to stop by tonight
How you guys doin', can I get you two something to drink?
Just a milkshake, I say for Scott, who's far gone
And I get no coffee, all I want is a fruit salad sundae
We'd forgotten Blue Thunder at my house,
So Scott calls his parents and tells them he's going to be late
For once, amazingly, they take it cool
No need for head-drooping bouts of pity and anger
Except for our dumbness in forgetting the car
Scott floats and coughs, and promises no more for a month
Then the food comes, we eat under too-defined light
And is this a rest, a short break from the driving all night?
Or self-consciousness taken dead on, anxious and a month of Sundays?

No one has blogged in a day. Not even Anne. What was Anne doing? This is not the venue for Anne to tell me what she was doing. I hope Anne is not dead. (It would be really terrible if Anne were dead, particularly since I'm making these remarks which would be perceived as insensitive about it.)

The Heartbreaking Work "seminar" was spectacular. Everyone missed out. We figured out everything everyone ever wanted or ought to know about the nineties, post-modern literature and the death of seriousness (or irony), the possibility of art in the modern day, where the culture is going, etc. So, um, yeah. Where is everyone, anyway?

She wrote on the exit, "no escape", and laughed, and lost control.

"why did i pick 1979? well, it's either because of the smashing pumpkins song or because of joy division...what's your guess? "
-Polewach

Things are getting interesting.

John Polewach has sent me two e-mails in which he questions Dylan's legacy (with no logical support) and claims to no longer listen to anything pre-1979 except for Astral Weeks and Pet Sounds. He also listed Mark E. Smith as an excellent lyricist, and professed love for the second album by The Verve. This is classic John, and also very disturbing. If anyone would be interested in reading these e-mails, I'd be happy to send them to you.

In other news, three St. John's Annapolis tutors were up for tenure this year. It was granted to Ms. Pheffer and Mr. Badger, and denied to Mr. Larsen (who is appealing). There is no justice in the world.

I am currently reading the New York Times from Saturday, June 14. It is my goal to read all the papers (the A section, anyway) from the month of June. I have not so much as looked at the papers more recent than June 14. Wish me luck, and godspeed.

Also, today I attended a preliminary meeting for a seminar-style bookclub, held at Laura Manion's house. We will be meeting next Sunday at 7 pm, at Laura's house in Olney, MD, to discuss . . . drumroll, please . . . A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I guess that means Dave Eggers may make the Program in our lifetime. Anyone who is interested (well, that would probably be limited to Scott and Anne, possibly Martin--I'm just guessing he wouldn't have time but he's every bit as invited as Scott and Anne, I'd provide transportation; Noah, my only other reader as far as I know, is in all likelihood too far away, and at any rate excluded for being Jewish), let's get it on and make this the indiest bookclub ever.

The ponies were everywhere.

Shit, man, Noah's right. Well, Noah, I do wish your blog were more like a journal, with more storytelling and fewer holes in the narrative, because you have a lot of craft. Start writing more. It seems like a Lovecraft story without the whole cosmic freaky monster continuum thing. Only it's . . . you. And six really strange people. And six other people who are doubtless even more strange. I want to see the movie version.

Meanwhile, I'm mostly waiting for this summer to end. I mean, I hope the band starts meeting frequently, and it would be great if we could actually do something with it, but my days are feeling really empty. Weeks go by without anything memorable. At least, without anything that I'd look back on with joy. I always feel tired and emotionally drained, even though I've been sleeping longer than average. The last day that I really remember was the twenty hour period spent at Anne's house when her mother skipped town. Scott, Anne, Eric and I stayed up watching anime (X, no less), drinking and smoking. And smoking. Scott and Eric dropped off pretty early, and Anne and I sat on the porch finishing a pack each, talking about everything possible. Then we woke Scott up, and he doled out his adderal in the kitchen, the light just starting to shine in. We walked over to the Severna Park library and sat on the steps out front, and I began to write what slowly turned into a list of two hundred song titles. What a beautiful day. Then Scott's father called at 2 p.m. because Scott had been due back at 11 (a.m., not p.m. We didn't keep him out that long). And Scott's father said, "I wash my hands of you. I've dropped the stone of shame.") And then Eric and I mournfully drove Scott home.

Everything since that day has been either a modest recreation or a really lugubrious conversation with either Scott, Anne, or Roger, with a variety of settings (an Irish bar in Baltimore, Tastee Diner in Laurel, the Ellicott City train tracks, Double TT in "Pasadena"). Noah called me today. It woke me up, at 4:30 pm. He told me about the events related in his blog, mostly, and I was too sleepy to talk much. And then I immediately had to shower and go to work. (And I worked all night; yeah the boy's all right.) I've just got nothing much going on. I keep spending money on records in the hope that they'll cheer me up, and every time it just gives me a really empty feeling. Get me away from here, I'm dying. New York Times, send me no more news.

And you know what's really sad? I had planned to finish my Japanese book by the end of April. And I haven't studied it at all since Croquet Weekend. And I haven't written any fiction since February. And I don't really think SJC Santa Fe will help very much. Heck, maybe. But just what kind of life is this, anyway?

On a side note, I hope I just beat Noah for Most Heartbroken Blog right now. That's the real competition, anyway.

Scott, you had better stop shaming me with your more frequent blogging. Two nights in a row. One more and you have a pattern. Then where will I be? Where's my distinction? How can I live with myself? Not that I don't enjoy actually being able to read new posts on your blog. As a matter of fact, please do blog every night. Even the nights when you're too lorn to do anything but cry. Just get online and tell the world about it. You'll be a famous writer yet. Then you won't need indie girls, but will have lots of them. You'll forget that you ever knew me, you'll pass by when you see me on the street, and I'll stop by your house every night to peer in the window and watch you blog. Blog, Scott, blog to your heart's content, because you can't possibly satiate me. Blog until your fingers have callouses, and your keyboard is broken; then go to someone else's computer and continue blogging, and I'll come by and fix your keyboard so you can blog more comfortably. May your blogs be as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the beaches. Blog like you mean it.

But still you will have Anne to compete with. Yeah, you don't really have a chance at beating Anne. You should really just give up this whole blogging thing.

This post is to ensure that I have a higher frequency of posting than Scott, who posts very infrequently, choosing, instead, to post his tears on the basement floor, wetting his Juliana Theory posters. My excuse is this. Unlike Scott, I spent almost no time in my basement (where the computer is) in the last two weeks. I had relatives over, first my mother's two sisters, and then my father's parents. They slept in the basement on a pullout sofa. This has also meant that I have drummed only once. Anne mentions it in her blog; well, not my drumming specifically, but the first meeting of Satan Tonight, née The Masters of Awesome. Roger Awesome brought his electric piano and played goth-disco chords, to which Scott added his angry-sounding guitar (his amp allowed only feedback noises), and Anne imperceptably played keyboard bass ("it sounded really good from where I was standing").

Apparantly, J. Spaceman heard us play, because he sent me an e-mail offering me a job replacing Spiritualized's touring drummer, who has blood cancer. No, really, he did. I'm not going to give you proof, because I don't want to substantiate any rumors. I only want to start them. Now I only hope someone is out there searching for Spiritualized news, comes upon this page, and posts this information on Spiritualized's messageboard. And then that hipster guy who had just bought a band t-shirt will read it and tell random people at the next show why they only played for an hour, and why they will be playing much longer (and more rocking) shows in the near future once Jason finishes negotiating with me (I'm demanding no fewer than three groupies, songwriting credit on the next album, a more prominent position on stage, at least three shows with GWAR as the opening act, and a studio apartment in New York City, in midtown, within two blocks of my favorite pizza parlor. If you support my efforts, lobby your congresspersons).

I have post-traumatic stress syndrome! For two years!

Hmm. Someone, or some thing, seems to have stolen my comments. How did this happen? How did this happen???

A conversation with Scott tonight brought up some issues which I had never really considered, and as I started reading The New York Times, I found while reading a certain article that I had no choice but to continue thinking about these issues. In the portion of the conversation that I'm talking about, we discussed the different opinions on Welfare between liberals and conservatives as an example of the two groups' underlying mindsets. I attempted to describe my understanding of the way liberals view the phenomena that conservatives derogatorily refer to as "tax and spend". They see it as "Democratic Socialism", a democratically elected representative government using certain tactics of socialism to provide for the common good. The federal and state governments, in this opinion, should have control over certain industries, making them public services instead. Examples are the federal postal service, public schools, public transportation, public libraries, Medicaid and Medicare (practically the opposite of the insurance industry), and various forms of police (rather than hired security forces). Maybe even the military, as opposed to hired mercenary groups (which would certainly be a possibility; Republicans should look into this, given their affiliation with the NRA and their desire to privatize other government services, like Social Security). I mentioned to Scott that the federal government in the 19th century probably would (and should) have attempted to make the railroad publicly owned, but iron, coal and railroad tycoons were too powerful for this to happen. This would still work for the railroad today, and for air travel, rather than bailing out Amtrak and the failing airlines.

I got to thinking what other industries might be better as government-owned services, and what was preventing this from coming to be. The services I mentioned, now provided by the government, generally go unquestioned, except for schools (one of the goals of conservative Republicans, as seen in the attempts to provide school vouchers, is to privatize public schools). Some of my other examples have somewhat of a dual life: there are both public and industrially owned bus services (Greyhound); the federal postal service is not the only way to send mail and packages (FedEx and UPS). What reasons might there be for these services to be provided by the government and funded by taxes, while others are privately owned and "provided" for a fee? If the government can sell postal stamps to pay for shipping our letters, why don't they have a similar service that provides us with energy? Why should corporations sell us oil and electricity?

The conservative response is that these industries are controlled, and benefited, by market forces. Roughly, we are given options: different corporations compete, and certain companies become successful and bigger and are able to serve us better. Prices change with the market, and the market insures that they never become unreasonable. Conservatives believe that this is the best, and only, option. But these market forces caused, as an example, the California energy crisis, which would not have happened if the government provided our energy, or even set price limits or had stronger regulations. The conservatives argue that price limits and regulations (like environmental policy) interfere with market forces. (Incidentally, the energy industry made billions in the California energy crisis, and it has been discovered that they also had a hand in creating it by using market manipulation.) Now, I'm not an expert in the field; I don't even claim to have a great understanding of the issue, so I'm willing to admit that this is an uninformed opinion. But for what it's worth, I see no benefit to having energy be privately owned and sold. As far as I can see, market forces in this case are entirely to the companies' benefit, and do not help the public.

My understanding of it is that market forces allow for change and growth by giving the consumers options. The companies who provide us with X are driven to improve their version of X, or make X as inexpensive as possible. These are definite benefits. However, they apply to some things and not to others. To elaborate, I considered whether the government should own the food industry. The only example I could think of was school lunch, and I think that shows why this would not be beneficial. Food would become constricted, boring, lifeless. There would presumably be no diversity in restaurants, and few options in supermarkets (there would be only one brand of everything). However, these industries are only one aspect of "the food industry": that of refined products. The raw material is produced on farms. And I see no reason why the government shouldn't own farms (and as a side note, they could then fully regulate those factory-like conditions that make me consider becoming a vegan again). Farmers are not competing to provide better products; they don't have to. The product, in this case, is a natural resource. The industry of food production is mainly concerned with things like pest control (which requires government regulation to make it less environmentally harmful), foreign competition (they work with the government to help stanch this), making food production cheaper (and getting government subsidies), and advertising (those "got milk?" or "beef; it's what's for dinner" commercials are created by The National Fluid Milk Processor Promotion Board, and America's Beef Producers, respectively. I couldn't find a website for either organization, but I found that the NFMPPB is a government organization, industry governed and USDA monitored, designed to create more demand for milk. Oh man am I ever going to have to do more research on this. The ABP, conversely, is the advertising wing of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. At any rate, these organizations' sole purpose is not to improve their product, but to make it look better. I cannot begin to describe how upsetting this is to me; this is detrimental, not beneficial. It is everything wrong with "market forces". The NFMPPB was set up by an act of congress, the Fluid Milk Promotion Act of 1990. More on this later). The companies compete, but I can find nothing in their competition beneficial to the consumer. Anyway, this industry is similar to the energy industry in that both are providing raw materials, and could, in my uninformed opinion, be owned by the government without any harm to consumers.

As I found in some quick internet research, these industries are profoundly influenced, even helped, by the government. The government regulates activities that are environmental concerns, gives contracts to companies to provide services for the government, helps in advertising and research (seeing as these industries provide essential public services), etc. Now, this seems like a lot of work to keep a minimal level of governmental involvement. The result seems mainly to be that the industries produce very rich companies with monopolies, who allow for small amounts of competition, and are occasionally massively harmful (Enron, cruel animal conditions, oil spills, pollution on the part of both industries, a trend toward unhealthy fast food, and so on almost ad naseum).

I'm getting too tired to continue writing, but I think I can now continue to read the newspaper at peace from my damn intruding thoughts.

I'm coming to a view of life in which the only worthy actions are personal and idiosyncratic, incapable of being described as meaningful in uncircular language but meaningful nonetheless. The basic "points" or worthy actions of life can easily be identified. One need only examine cats. They eat and sleep, and long to mate. These actions need not be described in other terms (such as "desire to propagate the species" or "to extend individual life"). They are instinctual and, for the cat, at least, ends in themselves. Mulder need not contemplate the reason that he watches birds; he wants to eat them. He sleeps for sixteen hours a day and has no reason to regret it as lost time; it is simply part of "life" for him to sleep sixteen hours a day, and he is not missing anything because there is nothing more important or worthy of his time. He plays with Flagg not out of an ill-defined wish to remain in contact with his brother, define his own identity through others, or anything else. It's just fun. It's not even a way to take up time. It's just fun.

Humans have problems coming to grips with life defined this way. They need goals, causes for which they are willing to fight. They need entertainment in order to fill time, and are not content with sleeping sixteen hours a day (it's quite possible. I've been on a schedule of sixteen hours of sleep, sixteen or even eight hours of wakefulness). The reason for this difference, broadly speaking, is that humans have language. This has effects which are not immediately obvious. I don't have the capacity to explain why, but language leads naturally to questioning one's life, feeling a need for more than the basics of life, just generally having needs associated specifically with humanity (some examples: wanting to provide for oneself and one's family and not being satisfied with having others provide for them; feeling nostalgic for events and associations of early life; keeping in touch with friends; educating oneself); these desires are dependant on language, as they can be articulated, and thus existant, only through langauge. Take as an example the particularly human desire of wanting to "do" something (in which the vocal emphasis is placed on "do"; frequently appears in cheap fiction and screenplays. "You know. I want to do something with my life." It means, in general, doing something worthy or fulfilling, something seen as important, "making a difference". The statement is so cliched and specific to movies that people generally don't say that precise sentence, but most people, if questioned, would express this desire and it is, really, quite a broad unspecified desire; it is banal until it becomes specific); this idea is inseparable from the concepts like "doing" and "meaning", which in turn are dependant on language.

This need arises from langauge, and is met only through personal language. General terms of our culture like "having a career", "helping others", or "feeling excitement" only have empty meaning, but they are inevitably personalized into individually meaningful terms like "making modern poetry", "creating a home for experimental artwork", "understanding and appreciating indie rock albums". People get medical training and may or may not achieve fulfillment by becoming local doctors or doing medical research and experiments. Politicians obviously desire power, but also desire to enact policies they perceive as beneficial to the community they "serve" in. Students study business and get jobs at specific companies doing specified tasks, which are fulfilling for some people, and not for others. A public relations position, for example, might fulfill a person who wants to challenge himself and see how well he can deal people and their concerns, although he probably doesn't care much about the company he works for; a different person who doesn't have this goal, or another goal which a public relations job meets, would likely feel unfulfilled, bitter, and depressed in a public relations job. It is the same for any action. There has to be an individual desire which the action fulfills, or else the activity seems pointless. These desires obviously gets incredibly specific, since there are countless possible actions, and each person chooses his activities out of these possibilities based on which incredibly specific actions suit him.

This theory of life sees "happiness" as the supreme goal, though not the meaning. Meaning can only be found when general concepts are ignored and one focuses on the actions which fulfull him. These actions then take on metaphorical meaning, such as (in one of my personal action-goal sequences) "I go to work in order to make money so that I can pay off my debt to my parents, which I find desirable because I wish to no longer have them as an authoritative force, because they prevent me from realizing the fulfillmlent of my desires by looking over my shoulder; also, it allows me to buy things without going into further debt, and I want these material things to fulfill various desires too numerable to state here; also, it allows me to socialize, which fulfills my desire to create an understanding of, and give meaning to, "myself" and "my personality", past events, the communaction of concepts, etc. The job itself is immaterial, and perhaps demoralizing, for a variety of reasons which I've been meaning to get down in one place eventually.

In this example, it can be seen how actions which are not inherently meaningful (paying off debt, buying CDs) becoming meaningful because of their relationship to each other, my past, my understanding of myself and the world, my goals etc. It is a circular meaning, vague and almost entirely unquestioned, shaky, illogical, and unjustifiable (either to myself or to others), but nonetheless meaning. If there is some "higher" meaning to life, I'd like to know it.

As a sidenote, though an important one, the same thing can be said of goals which are generally seen as more lofty, like "benefitting society" or "bettering oneself". These rest on morals, which are just as idiosyncratic and personal as the goals described above; the only difference is that the are shared by "societies", or at least perceived that way. As moral philosophers of the past have shown (sometimes unintentionally), these morals are just as shaky and illogical, even unquestioned and vague, definitely unjustifiable (despite what Ryan Mowhar and the Christian moralists claim). Even so, they help to provide meaning to the personal goals. This creates the metaphysical assumption (or, to use a less derogatory term, "belief") that there are layers of existence, since morals appear to be above personal goals. There are some morals, and some desires like "the search for truth", which seem to the metaphysicians to extend beyond individual societies to include all of mankind. God, although conceived of before all this philosphy, came to be seen as inevitable, as, if there are the layers of the individual, the society, and humanity, there would logically be a supreme "layer" and authority.

Just some thoughts.

First I listen to The Mouldy Peaches and find it enjoyable. Then I read the AMG one-and-a-half-star review. Then I listen to it more and like it better on each listen. Does it follow that according to the AMG review, I a member of the "indie cognoscenti"? As a side note, I've noticed that every time AMG gives an album five stars, it's unquestionably a five star album, and they're often right in their ratings under five stars; but somehow they are ludicrously off, say, one fourth of the time . . . although never wrong when they give an album five stars. Note how: Meat Is Murder is given three (yes, three) stars; Full Force Galesburg is given two-and-a-half; fuckin' Electr-O-Pura is given only three stars. Now, obviously their ratings are their call; but these albums manifestly deserve higher ratings, and never mind allowing critics their own judgement. About music I am not relativist. Electr-O-Pura deserves at least . . . more than three stars. Um. Yeah.

I am a goat
In a moat
With a boat.

Who's got the crack?

This is Mulder (Mulder!!!!)!! I have taken over You's blog because he doesn't feel like writing. Can you get me some meat? I'm reeely hungry. Man, I could sure use some meat right now. I remember this one time, when I had some meat . . . that was pretty cool. Mmmmmmmmm . . . mmmeat! Yeah. I remember that time. Aaaaaaaaaaaand, last ni-ight, I was, I, I had this dreeeeam, and, I was on the porch and the people came up to me, and, they, gave me some meat! And. Do you want to read my novel? Man, I sure would like to eat some meat.

Tonight was a reminder of why we go to the Double TT. Surely it can't be the food. There's better food at home. It can't be the service, because you're gambling on which Donna you get. It's not the atmosphere, which can be summed up as "You are here, and this is nowhere and everywhere." It's not because it's the only place that's open, although that helps. No. It's the conversation, first, foremost, and always. Where else can you meet a man named Lazarus who is willing, even happy, to take on three pseudo-Johnnies in a conversation that starts, "What is the soul?" Where else can Scott realize that the person who had been talking to Lazarus before us attends Scott's philosophy course at UMBC? Where else can four people sit in a booth and inspect squares representing The Mind and Wisdom? Where else can a man offer ten dollars to drive him home, that home being six minutes away?

"See the bells up in the sky,
Somebody's cut the string in two."

I slept for twenty hours, from 9pm Sunday until 4pm Monday. I had fallen asleep listening to the Dog on Wheels EP for the first time. I had slept well the night before, and hadn't done anything much on Sunday. I suppose I'm just losing the will to live, Asuka-like, now that I can no longer synchronize with my Eva.

Several weeks ago, I told a girl at work, named Melanie, that she should join my band. She was about the fifth person I had told (not including Scott and Anne), and I didn't expect anything. She plays drums and guitar, and this could be useful. Today, she came up to me and said, "I'm going to join your band!"

I said, "Okay, but I'll have to run it by the other band members." Then over my break I thought we would need some sort of audition, so when I saw her again I said, "You can join once you can play every guitar lick on The Velvet Underground." I handed it to her, but she said she should just buy it, since it's probably good. Well, I don't know, guys. At first she thought The Velvet Underground was the name of our band. That doesn't sound good. But then, should she actually buy it and learn to play all the guitar parts, she should have no trouble playing anything we think of.

"Get out of the city, and into the sunshine.
Get out of the office, and into the springtime."

We're fucked, aren't we? Israel has gone 180, with a peace-minded Palestinian leader unable to make any inroads with the blowhard Sharon. Bush said the war in Iraq is over, and declared the massively embarrasing debacle to be the first victory in the "war on terror." It's been discovered that SARS remains in the bodies of those who have "recovered". And Congress is all set to give into Bush and topple our teetering economy. There's some natural disaster nearly every day, most recently an earthquake in Turkey that killed at least 100 people. (Not to mention the people, at least 44, who died in South Africa when a bus veered off a road and crashed into a resovoir.) Oh, and the IRA still isn't disarming fully. And it's kind of trite in the face of all this, but the music industry is continuing its wrongheaded attack on mp3s. And then there's the insidious trend of the Bush administration slowly revoking civil rights (they're now requesting a larger domestic role for the CIA and the Pentagon, attempting to give them the right to subpoena Internet providers, libraries, credit card companies and the like to produce material such as phone records, bank transactions, e-mail coorspondences, borrowed books . . .).

In other news, Scott and I are planning to hold a pro-war rally tomorrow at UMBC campus. I will have signs saying "More Blood for Oil", "Jump on the Bombing Bandwagon!", and "This Scud's for You, Syria!". Anyone who wants to come should e-mail Scott very quickly and hope that he reads it in time.

I think I understand poetry now. See, I was walking down Main Street smoking my newly bought Marlboro lights, and composing some lines in my head (that's the only time I really write, is when I'm walking alone. I start on one thought and progress from there in walking meter: Hey let's talk about Buddha got a kitty made of tin; got eyes as black as Poloroids before the picture comes in). I started thinking of Anne reading "America" on the park bench in Fell's Point, and I realized that I was thinking of "America" the same way that I think of songs: as a whole, an entity separate from its creator. Like, "Man, 'What Goes On' is a really great song." Something from The Velvets' mind which is now in mine. And I was thinknig of "America" in the same way, as a really cool whole that exists only in words but creates a concept in my mind. I could then think of other poems in the same way, although not many, because I really havent' read much poetry. It makes me want to pick up my Norton Anthology again.

Where do the motherfuckin cheese go at? Where'd the motherfuckin cheese go at? Motherfucker. Where do motherfuckin cheese go to? Bitch where the motherfuckin cheese at? Motherfucker. Where'd the motherfuckin cheese go at?

Goddam, I want a cigarette. As I try to quit smoking for the third time in two weeks, I can't help looking forward to buying cigarettes later tongiht. Also, I want everyone who reads this to send me an e-mail message at flaggthecat@hotmail.com. It can be about anything, but I want to know what it's like to have a comments link.

I woke up today and, instead of immediately going back to sleep, like I usually do, I pressed play on my stereo. And listened to Thee Michelle Gun Elephant. What's so cool about this band? Is it just that they're Japanese? Well, let me tell you, that helps a lot. I can read their lyrics in another writing system and study Japanese while rocking out. I can ponder the juxtaposition of two very different cultures. I can take great joy at their photographs, which are always high quality, frequently black and white, featuring four scowling Japanese gents in various silly/awesome costumes.

Is it their music? Well, that helps a lot too. It has a lot of integrity. They essentially play garage rock, which is a troubled genre. It’s close to blues rock, and like that genre, it has no room for bad ideas. Garage rock either sounds fantastic or like a bad self-parody. If the band slows it down just a little, they become heavy metal. If the lyrics veer the slightest bit toward misogyny or unpoetic boasting or celebrations of drunkenness, again, it becomes heavy metal. The guitar solos are either spot-on awesome, or else they're just bad (they can be bad in various ways: meandering, overly cocky, untuneful, unrhythmic, or just uninteresting). Too much noodling and it becomes a jam band. The singer has a range of possibilities, but he must not screech, constantly yell, have too big of an ego, or be overly simple melodically; or else it becomes, respectively, glam metal (see: The Datsuns), heavy metal (see: Poison), heavy metal (see: Guns ‘N Roses), or The Von Bondies (see: The Von Bondies).

Now, TMGE are well within the range of great garage rock. The kind that makes me jump up and dance and say, “shit, yes.” Early Who; mid-period Stones; The New York Dolls (some of it, anyway); The White Stripes (particularly on songs like "Astro", "Hypnotize", "Now Mary"); the best Oasis (“Fade Away” is a great example. It’s one of the most compulsively listenable songs in my collection, right up there with “Tom Courtenay”, “Electricity”, “100,000 Fireflies”, “Going Out West”, and “Debaser”); the occasional Velvet Underground song that pulled out all the stops (“White Light/White Heat”, “What Goes On”, “Beginning to See the Light”, “I’m Waiting for the Man”, “Head Held High”. The songs where they said, “Who cares about melody? Find some chords and play the shit out of them!”); Extended Forefinger (hell yeah, mutha). Now, you may have noticed: there are no unadulterated garage rock bands on this list. A band that plays pure garage rock generally gets bored and branches out; or else they suck; or else, yes, they are inspired. Now, I’m not going to say that TMGE are inspired. Let’s just say they haven’t gotten bored (as Scott likes to say, they rock as if their lives depend on it), and they sure as hell don’t suck. Generally their songs are right where garage rock ought to be, and they sound really good, if not inspired.

So what makes them so cool? Is it the bizarre lyrics (which include the occasional English phrase like “oasis’s ice” and “black tambourine” and “the redhead Kelly”)? Could it be the album packaging (probably not. It’s mainly a lot of murky nature pictures, and the band pictures that I’ve already described). Surely it can’t be that no one’s heard of them, because that’s just not logical.

No. It’s none of those reasons. Why are they so cool? They’re so cool because they’re called Thee Michelle Gun Elephant. Next question.

I love how there's a review of Summer Sun which ecstatically states, "It's one of their best albums since I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One."

And how Pitchfork thinks "Let's Be Still" is one of the two worst moments on the album, and All Music Guide says it "comes dangerously close to noodling," but almost every other review says something like "'Let's Be Still' is one of the best moments on the album." There goes continuity.

This blog has two purposes; no, three. The first is definitely "if Anne can do it", that is, if Anne can return from the train tracks at midnight and blog, well then, so can I. The second is, I haven't blogged in several days, and I don't want to get lazy. The third, most important, reason, is that I want to make this blog about more than myself, or even my interests because, in the end, who cares?

Scott says that the main inspiration behind everything in our lives is fear of death. For me, the three main actions of life are eating, sleeping and having sex. I'm not just being cynical here; to my mind, those are the three things around which everything else in our lives are based. It's been well established that fear of death is mixed in with the sex drive, what with the desire for immortality, and for connection with another being (which reinforces our own existence). Eating's connection is also fairly apparent, as it provides us with building material (by decomposing something else, cruelly enough). Sleep is something of a concession to death.

Well, the pattern is there for most every action, conscious or unconscious. Creation and conversation are similar to the sex drive in their intentions. Appreciating music, writing, movies and such appear to me to be part of the desire for immortality; it is almost as if, subconsciously, we think that if we learn enough about the world, we will end up immortal. Someone, I forget who, said that all men believe in their own death in the same way that agnostics believe in God. (Oh, and acts of religion are so obvious as to not require elaboration.) Keeping clean is similar to eating in the desire to stave off decomposition. I can't think of many important things which don't somehow tie in with what I've already mentioned (aside from going to the bathroom, which is more of a consequence of eating than it is an action). This is a very general, but inclusive, description of all of life. And fear of death is, indeed, shown to pervade every activity.

Looking at more specific actions is perhaps pointless when examining fear of death, but another action worth observing is the process of picking which specific actions will make up our own lives. We all create individual personalities, not necessarily through conscious desire (that's just going to Hot Topic, and it doesn't work); usually it is through our unique circumstances, which cannot help but be different for each person. Our experiences are thus necessarily different, and experience plays a large role in personality. Anyway, as is obvious in modern western culture, people tend to try to assert their individualilty, their egos. It is exclusively for their own benefit, as reasserting the self can fool one into believing he isn't going to die.

Even seemingly selfless actions, like, say, saving an animal which is about to be hit by a car, can be construed as another form of fearing death. In this example, perhaps we save the animal out of a desire not to see something die, which would remind us of our fate. Interestingly, the standard western moral system places priority on selflessness if an action is to be moral. It cannot explain this without circular argument.

It is also interesting that Buddhism is an attempt to destroy the ego, which would simultaneously destroy the fear of death (if there is no "I", then it is meaningless to say that "I am going to die").

This is all just an experimental rant in an attempt to blog exclusively about an idea rather than events in my life.

GOD'S IN HIS HEAVEN, ALL'S RIGHT WITH THE WORLD.

Sonic landscapes. Critics use that term often, but I doubt it will ever lose its metaphorical power and become just another straight-ahead descriptive phrase. I got Yo La Tengo's Painful today, and sonic landscapes are what I keep thinking of. Not the word, mind you--the actual landscapes. "I Heard You Looking" calls up an image of riding down the highway late at night somewhere in the midwest and watching mountains slowly ooze by, while power lines and tiny bushes shoot across the window. "Nowhere Near" is sitting on a porch on a summer night and langorously taking in a view of a forest, smoking and drinking beer, not talking to friends but just being with them. "From a Motel 6" is, god, a burning building, or a forest fire . . . at night. Oh, these songs all take place at night, in case you didn't notice, and have a lot of forests in them. Yo La Tengo would go on to make definite daytime landscapes, like "Tom Courtenay" (total walking down big city streets music midday, checking out antique shops and seeing all the funky architecture, old city like London or certain parts of New York, etc . . . ooo, sonic architecture!) or "Stockholm Syndrome", which exists in the summer in a small park with a lake and a large forest you can escape to if you want. "Superstar Watcher": basement of a poorly heated, dilapidated mansion, with a coughing radiator and voices coming through the ceiling.

Okay, enough pretension for one night. Although, I will say that if there is any connection between Yo La Tengo, The Smashing Pumpkins and U2 (as a label on the WMBC copy of I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One claimed) it is that all three create sonic landscapes, or did at one point (U2 have lost the tendency almost entirely, and the Pumpkins only did it when they wanted to, like "Silverfuck", "1979" or "To Shelia". Well, most of Adore, really. Sidenote: Zwan does not create sonic landscapes. Not even "Endless Summer", an obvious candidate, creates a sonic landscape). I would theorize that sonic landscapes generally have vocals in the background or somehow distorted, or else more a part of the music than the focus of it. Untraditional song structure (rock song structure, anyway) helps. No anthemic moves, no backbeat drums, perhaps less variation of themes (not to say the songs must be the same the whole way through, just that the themes of the various parts of the song must match; no verse-chorus-verse, no rawkin guitar solos, no catchy harmonies popping up and dropping away. Still, repetition seems to help, and adds to a hypnotic effect).

Okay, now enough pretension for one night. Praise Fa.

Today I attempted to introduce my brother Jeff to The Velvet Underground. He came into my room for some damn reason, and I said, "Hey, Jeff, wanna listen to a song?" He agreed. He must have forgotten who he was up against (people frequenlty forget, and actually agree to my propositions; like, "Hey, wanna walk to 7-11?").

First I played "Tom Courtenay." He sat looking kind of expectant, then like he was being watched and trying to escape his pursuer. He got jittery, pet Mulder for a while, and sat back again. Then he attempted to leave. All this before the song was half-way through. So I had to forcibly restrain him, by holding tightly to his shirt cuff. By 2:20, he was attempting to unbutton his shirt whilst my face was turned, so I grabbed his arm and made sure he heard every last ecstasy-inspiring note.

When the song ended, I said, "So, do you wanna hear some Velvet Underground now?"

He shifted his eyes left and right and said, "Um, no-oo . . ."

"But they're really go-ood . . . Do you know who was in The Velvet Underground?" He shook his head. "Lou Reed. You like Lou Reed, don't you."

He tried to creep away, so I grabbed his shirt again, then asked him to shift over so I could reach my CD player. He obliged and I put on "What Goes On." He didn't seem to be getting it, so I said, "How 'bout that organ?"

. . . .

"I said HOW 'BOUT THAT FUCKING ORGAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! GODDAM, LISTEN TO THAT GUITAR!!! HOLY LIVING MOTHER OF FUCK, THAT GODDAM GUITAR!!!!!!!" He escaped at this point. He may never understand The Velvets now.

My parents asked him what all the screaming was, and he simply said, "Greg's finally gone insane." Really it was just that goddam organ. Fuck.

And His and Her Circumstances makes me indescribably happy. I don't want it to ever end. The story is so pointless, but it makes me so very happy. I could just watch the opening credits for the rest of my life and never get bored. "You may dream . . ." Hideaki Anno, I'm very glad you're alive. And I know you read my blog, Anno-sensei, because you read everything in the world, just so you can know as much as possible about life in order to make such stellar anime.

"Decora" is just. The greatest song. Ever. Wooooooooooooo-ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Wooooo-eh-ahhhhh-ahhhhhh.

I started to learn Korean last night. It seems insanely simple. I went to the library and got The Korean Language, which is literally about the Korean language rather than teaching it. The book is a collection of eighteen essays which appeared in a scholarly (and no doubt smarmy) journal on Korean. The table of contents lists the authors, and it was mostly Koreans who wrote the essays, but every so often, sandwiched between Kyun Lee and Bok Hwa you get Theodore Albert Jameson III. The first essay discusses the history of the language, which doesn't go back very far because until about the fifteenth century, earlier dialects were written in Chinese characters whose voicings in Chinese resembled the intended Korean word. This essay also includes an explanation of the Korean letters (although not, as I would like, an explanation of how they came to be, merely of the sounds they represent). There are only about ten consonants, and the vowels are variations of each other, so I found that I was able to read "Ira Kaplan (guitar, vocals)" and "Georgia Hubley (drums, vocals)" within an hour. Oh, for the unaware, I bought a copy of the Deluxe Edition of Yo La Tengo's And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out, intended for sale in Korea, so the liner notes are in that langauge and the lyric sheets include facing page English and Korean. The album itself has no liner notes. These were written specifically for their Korean audience. So I must know what they say.

Oh, and track six of the first CD of Special Album by Baby V.O.X. (a Korean girl-electro-pop group I bought at the same time of Han's Band, now in John Darnielle's possession) is called "Ya Ya Ya." I think that's pretty awesome.

Anyway, last night, after learning this basic, basic Korean, I went outside to smoke and the prospect frightened me a bit. One of the fears in my acid flashbacks related to reading. Roman letters nauseated me. I can't explain why, and you're just going to have to take my word for this. Whenever I would read, my heart would start beating faster and faster, my eyes would widen; and just because of the letters. I was, however, learing kanji at the time, and these calmed me. That is a partial explanation of why Korean frightened me. Really, though, it is more related to another flashback fear, which is even more complicated. See, during the trip, I thought that everything there was to learn in the world was suddenly incredibly easy, as if during my actual life I was muddling through these concepts which seemed complicated and worthwhile but were just bullshit puzzles made to keep me busy and humiliate me. I'll write a book about this someday; I'm sure it would make stellar fiction. The main point for Korean is that it reminded me vaguely of that feeling that everything I hadn't learned, and had assumed was difficult, was actually incredibly simple with few variations and not requiring any thought to understand.

And so on. But the main point of this blog is that those liner notes are withing my grasp.

I knew for a couple of weeks that The Mountain Goats were going to play on April 5 somewhere close enough that I could see them. Scott had introduced the band (the man) to me several weeks before that, when I mentioned a band called East River Pipe and said it was essentially just one guy, F.M. Cornog, recording a bunch of two-minute songs in his living room. He told me about another such band, also essentially just one man, John Darnielle, who recorded in the same way. It didn't sound like anything special, and he didn't have any with him, so I kind of forgot about it. He kept mentioning the band, though, and in late February I finally heard some when he bought All Hail West Texas at Sound Garden. I was immediately impressed. "Best Ever Death Metal Band out of Denton" is the greatest introduction I've ever gotten to a band. A stream of words with an almost hexametrical beat, a mixture of bitterness and earnestness, humor and sadness, nasally and excited vocals, guitar accompaniment that somehow sounded complex and simple at the same time. It wasn't the contradictions that sold it, though; it was the overall awesomeness of the songwriting.

I do what I always do in these situations: went home, downloaded everything I could find by the artist, and neglected it. Then I started listening to it as April 5th approached, and each new superb song, one after the other, took over my mind. They had beautiful imagery and metaphors, passion, exquisite non-sequiturs, good rhymes, and an expansive range (even if it focused on strained relationships). I knew April 5th would be something special.

Cultural events have a very organic existence in people's minds. When a person first hears about something, it will probably have little significance unless it is obviously related to him. If he hears about it frequently, he will begin to pay attention to it; if he identifies with the source of information on the subject (such as friends or trusted critics), it will rise in signifigance. If the subject comes up frequently in conversation, in many different settings, is seen on television or heard about on the radio, etc., it will take on special significance, perhaps becoming part of the person's self-image. This holds true whether the person considers the subject worthless or worthy. He can identify himself as one who either hates or loves the subject, but if it has significance for him, he won't be neutral on it. It becomes almost personified, an entity. When the subject is an object of the media, a book or author, band, movie, or the like, anything with a personality behind it, there is a necessary dichotomy between the image in the person's head and the actual personality which created this image.

The Mountain Goats was, at this point, many things to me. I had seen John Darnielle's website, Going to Jakarta. I knew he had a love for death metal bands and yet sang something closer to folk music. I knew that he was intellectually inclined, and very opinionated. I had read criticisms of his albums at pitchforkmedia and All Music Guide. He was a topic of conversation between me and Scott, a placeholder for a certain type of band. We called him "awesome," imbued him with a sort of supernatural, transcendent status. The Mountain Goats was also, of course, a series of songs I had heard, disembodied sound, words.

Anyway, we were going to see this man and hear him play these songs. I was both excited and scared.

Scott, I thought, was going to pick me up after work on Saturday. I worked from 12 to 8:30 and the cafe was just slammed with customres. Someday I'm going to have to analyze our culture to see why so many people would go, at the very same time, to a bookstore cafe, most likely with vague intentions, where they end up buying overpriced drinks which are mostly concept (I'm buying a caramel macchiatto! I'm sophisticated and savvy to cultural trends, vaguely Italian, indelibly hipster! I drink espresso, which is like coffee, but cooler!). I manuevered my way to the back kitchen to work on my project for the day, cleaning the refrigerator. We have a list of activities which someone has to do every week, and the supervisors dole them out to the workers somewhat randomly. I was determined to make the most of what fate had handed me, and so spent as much time as possible actually cleaning it rather than standing up front dealing with the ghoulish onrush of Starbucks zombies. As an added bonus, the workday always seems shorter when my activities are broken up; even if I'm working the whole time, it's like a extra break to split my time up front with an hour in the back room. So I cleaned the five years' worth of dust on top of the refrigerator, swept and mopped under the refrigerator, removed shelves in order to properly clean iside the refrigerator, all the time dodging my coworkers who came back every so often to actually get food from the refrigerator, which is, after all, its primary purpose, its being at work staying itself, if you will. People were giving me looks and asking, "Greg, are you okay?"

At four p.m., during my lunch, I went over to Safeway to prepare for the concert. I took out $60 from the ATM and bought a pack of Camel lights. The night before I had an altogether pleasing experience when I went to the Mobil across the street to buy a lighter. The man behind the counter showed me a bin full of Bics, and when I took one out, he said, "Come on, don't get a white lighter, you really want this one," he said, pointing to a cream-colored lighter. He was putting the bin back as he said this, apparently not aware of who he was dealing with.

"You know, you're right," I said. "I do want that one."

"Going to smoke a little of the reef, eh?" he asked. I was altoghether amazed that he would say this in front of the other customers . . . let alone me. My only response was to pull out my pack of Dunhills. I wish I had thought of something witty. Since I didn't have the change, he gave it to me for four pennies less, and I walked out of the store with a lighter which would later be used by none other than John Darnielle.

Back to Barnes and Noble, where I was getting more and more apprehensive as I got closer to 8:30. I spent my last break just pacing and smoking. The customers still hadn't let up. I always feel kind of guilty, kind of cocky, when I stand outside the store and smoke. Mothers walk by with their baby carriages, young children run after each other, winded old couples help each other into the store, and all have to walk through my smoke. They just wanted to look at the books. And yet, there is an ashtray there, and tobacco is legal and permitted in this setting, and if I want to smoke, I'm going to smoke. I'm so confused.

There was one incident around 8:00 when, while I was taking an order, one of my coworkers crept up next to me and lent her head on my shoulder. A mildly pretty high school senior, bright and bubbly in fine Jeff Mangum style. And I didn't really know how to feel about this. The options were: embarrassed, mildly violated, or pleased, with various levels of pleased. I choose mildly pleased.

Then I was off work and I went outside excited and expecting Blue Thunder to pull up at any moment. I took out a cigarette and smoked, leaning back against the huge front windows. Minutes went by. I began to pace, examining cars as they made the turn into the shopping center for signs of boxy light-blue Honda Civics. Preferably with Scott White at the wheel. I lit another cigarette and started looking around the other parking lots, thinking that maybe he was somehow inside already. I considered whether I should call him; I expected him to at least be on his way, and thought that at most I would get his mother saying, "Scott left half an hour ago to pick Anne up." I decided that I might as well, and to my surprise, Scott came on the line. He knew it was me. He always knows it's me. "Hello, Greg," he said in a slightly jubilant, slightly tired voice.

"Scott? Why are you still there?"

"Don't worry, the concert doesn't start until 10:30."

"But I'm off work now!"

"Sit tight, Greg. I'll be there soon."

"But Scott! What, like, forty minutes?"

"Just sit tight, Greg."

We hung up. I found out later that Scott didn't know I was calling from work. I thought he knew I'd be there but must not have said so, since he went to my house first. "Does Scott always wear a bow tie?" my mother asked me at dinner today.

Anyway, I sat and read, expecting Scott to come up behind me at any moment. When it became 10 o'clock, I got nervous again and went outisde for another cigarette. A few minutes later, I heard Scott shout something like, "We're coming, Greg!" followed by Anne's voice, which was even louder, but I don't remember what she said. I ran toward the Thunder and off we went.

You can see Anne's blog for an account of this section. My blog now turns to perception.

As Anne says in her blog, the Talking Head is small. So small that Scott immediately noticed Nelly from St. John's sitting in a corner, and then saw Kant girl in the middle of the crowd. Even at a venue as small as the Black Cat, we probably wouldn't have known they were there.

So small that after the band who opened for the opening band left, the small number of people who went to the bar actually freed up enough space at the front for us to get right up to the stage. Right up to the stage. We could kneel over and be on it.

And then The Translucents appeared in their gawky, mildly well-dressed, singer with hair like Dave Grohl, second guitarist with beard like Dan Keys, hot foreign-looking bassist, keyboard-toting glory. We were close enough that when I asked Scott if we should ask that they tune up to "What Goes On," and Scott mock called it out, the guitarist heard us. And did it. I check this off of my list of life goals.

After they were done tuning, the singer said, "Thank you for sitting through that long-winded instrumental. This one's called" whatever. And they proceeded to play a cool mixture of the Velvets, The Strokes, early R.E.M., etc. And it kicked ass. Only . . . I was so close that I could see every twirl of the singer's hair, the placement of each finger on the fret. So close that those iconic movements, the kicks and thrusts and facial contortions of passion, looked like a band jamming rather than a band on stage. The music was great, and I would have ordinarily been overjoyed, but I was so close to the people making the music that, in this setting, it was actually hard to get into. I became self-conscious and analytical. (What is it about this music that I appreciate? Why does it give me joy to see these two guitarists playing interlocking rhythem parts? What's so cool about an organ?)

My subconscious idea of the rock star, the icon and hero, in some way better than me, unquestionable, perhaps greater than human, battled against this group of four people very much like me, who happened to know how to play instruments and had written some songs together.

I later bought a Translucents t-shirt. The band had only brought three CDs, and Scott got the last one, so the singer held up two shirts. "Your choices are . . . collander or tea ball."

"Definitely collander. How much are they?"

"I don't know. How much do you think?"

"You can't ask me that . . . I don't know . . ."

"Okay. I'll start the bidding at eight dollars."

Anyway, back to the concert. By the time John Darnielle came on, Anne and I were actually sitting on the stage, Scott kneeling right behind us. The chair Anne mentions was right in front of me. I sat right at John's feet, looking up at him as he played. He partially escaped this humanizing effect that had rendered The Translucents into just four people who happened to be on a stage. Mainly because he was just so damn cool, thumping his foot along with an imaginary bass drum, contorting his face on certain lines, shaking his whole body on others. At the same time, I didn't find myself worshipping him, as I would have expected. I didn't feel self-conscious, but he still seemed more real and fallible than most people I've seen on stage. It was less of a spectacle than most shows, and more like a friend playing songs for me.

After the last song, he went and sat in the corner with the bassist. I commented to Anne that the rest of the crowd had no idea that John was sitting just a few feet away while they waited for him to come back and play an encore. I had been waiting for him to finish to smoke since, during the set, I was unable to bring myself to ask him if he would mind my smoking.

When he did come back, he sat down, looked at me, and mouthed, "Can I have a cigarette?" I thought he was asking me to put mine out, and motioned as if I were doing so. *Is this what you want, John?* He positioned his fingers as if he were smoking and then waved his hand toward him. I held out a cigarette and he asked, "Can you light it for me?"

He set up his guitar again and I considered whether to actually light it or whether to give him my lighter. I decided on the latter, although I did hold the cigarette in my mouth while I got the lighter out of my pocket. That was an odd choice, I suppose. He lit it and handed the lighter back to me. Someone called out, "Stop smoking, you're the greatest songwriter ever!"

He giggled a bit and said, "Thank you!" which he had been doing all night whenever the crowd cheered and applauded, as if he weren't expecting people to like him. He took a few puffs and handed the cigarette back, saying, "Can you hold this for the next minute and forty-five seconds, roughly?" I took it and he played a song I had never heard, an incredibly joyful drinking sort of song, "When the Cubs beat every team in the league, then I will love you again like I used to." I couldn't help but try to sing along without even knowing the lyrics. Anne seemed to know every word, but said later, "I don't know how I knew that song, really." It was just that sort of song.

I gave him back the cigarette and he took a few more puffs, then crushed it.

Things I learned today:

1. Never buy an album I have on CD-R instead of an album I have reason to believe is good, but haven't heard. Four years ago, I was in Best Buy holding a copy of 13 in one hand and Their Satanic Majesties Request by The Rolling Stones in the other. I only had enough money for one. I already had a burned copy of TSMR. This was the heyday of Napster, and I was getting everything by the Stones. Why? Because I had already gotten hardcore into The Beatles, and my Rolling Stone Album Guide from 1981 made the Stones look like an exotic, godlike, massively mindblowing, incredibly influential evil twin of The Beatles. Which, of course, they are. But oddly enough, it looked better on paper than it is in real life. Dave Marsh does some odd things with words.

Anyway, my copy of TSMR sounded a little . . . funny. I wasn't yet at the stage where I wanted to buy everything just for the packaging (although I was damn close even then), but I wanted to see if perhaps a store bought copy would sound more perfect than mine.

"Tender" was on the radio a little bit then, and I really liked it. Between that and "Song 2", I was ready to buy a Blur album.

I made the wrong choice, and listening to 13 now, I really wish I had picked it up all those years ago. I'd be a cooler man today.

2. John Darnielle is really fucked up! Yes, John Darnielle, the man who penned such fun, happy, light-hearted songs as "Golden Boy" and "The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton" has more free-floating angst and dementia than Frank Black and Thom Yorke put together. It took just one listen to The Coronor's Gambit to convince me of this.

3. Korean pop is awesome. Thank you, cute smiling woman in the Catonsville Asian supermarket, for letting me know what I was in for by saying, "You made a good choice," even if you were thinking, "What a couple of freaking weirdos. I wonder if they're gay?" John Darnielle will be very happy with his birthday gift. Now if we could only find a really big lolly pop. (N.B.: only two people in the world know what I'm talking about here.)

4. She goes, and now she knows she'll never be afraid to watch the morning paper blow into a hole where no one can escape.

5. Deeeeeeee de-dee-de-de, deeeee de-dee-de-de, deeeee de-de-dee de-de, deeeeee de-de-dee de-de.

6. There is a really cool bear on top of a hippie store on Main Street Ellicott City which eternally dips its plastic wand into an ever-flowing supply of soapy water, blowing bubbles into the chill spring air. No, seriously.

7. Cola and espresso combine to form a delicious foamy drink with a light taste of citrus. Great for walks down train tracks discussing post-modernism with Scott.

Last night, I decided that I don't listen to enough of the music I buy. I must have twenty albums I've never heard. I don't just want to listen to it, though. I want to understand it, too; get into it, archive it in my mind, add it to my conception of music. And since the St. John's program made me read more than I would otherwise, I adopted it.

Th. 4-3
The Mountain Goats, Full Force Galesburg

Mon. 4-7
The White Stripes, Elephant

Th. 4-10
Yo La Tengo, Electr-O-Pura

Mon. 4-14
The Manic Street Preachers, Generation Terrorists

Et cetera. Or something like this.

I don't imagine anyone else does this sort of thing, except for music journalists, I suppose. After I get done with The Manics (which I want to know thoroughly in case I end up actually going to Manchester with Elise, oh my God), I'll probably make it more systematic, so that I can see connections and influences among artists.

Anyway, tonight I listened to Full Force Galesburg many, many times, and I will tell you about it. This blog will have a practical purpose. I don't want to merely talk about myself. Tonight I'll tell you about John Darnielle.

The sleeve comes with a paragraph-long story of sorts, full of images (just like his songs). "Old barn, strange sounds. Gin. Sunlight. Almost broke my own heart down there in Vicksburg." This culminates in John and a woman getting a motel room half an hour past Iowa on the other side of the Mississippi. He says "these songs are about what made that moment either possible or inevitable, depending on how you look at it." Okay, then. Is this a concept album? A song-cycle? Is he just flat out lying? It seems to be something between the second and the third. This album is close to a song cylce, but the songs are just a bit too disconnected for even that loose term. If there is a story, it is not clear, but the emotions in the songs are related and there are possibly two characters running through the album. (Oh, by the way, "Full Force Gale" is a Van Morrison song. I'm certain John Darnielle loves Van Morrison.)

The album starts with "New Britian." I can't tell if this song's immediecy comes from the song writing, or just its placement at the beginning of the album. Mountain Goats songs frequently feel like a fresh start, getting my attention on the words, keeping my mind on the song, involving my emotions. "New Britian" definitely grabs my attention, and its shadow lingers over the entire first side. It contains an image common on this album, that of watching the sun on the water; really the sun in general. The line "this morning I know who you are" haunts the rest of the first side. He doesn't say what he "knows" about the girl, but he seems vaguely uneasy with her. He says that he's not getting through to her, and that the things she tries to say make his blood run cold. If this album is a song cycle, it starts right in the middle. It seemed from the liner notes that it would involve two people traveling west, but in this song they're already on the Mississippi.

Next is "Snow Owl," which is the most beautiful song on the album. It has slow, pretty chords, and John plays a half-melody on the higher notes while strumming these chords. It's kind of like an acoustic Yo La Tengo. Someone plays a harmonica in the background, to little effect, really. The song is about a snow owl he happens to see out his window because he can't leave his house. It introduces a theme of the beauty of nature, as well as the failure of language when the beauty is too much to take: the owl "takes apart the alphabet letter by letter." If the first song is meant to introduce the story(if, indeed, there is one), this song is apparently outside of that story.

"West Country Dream" has music kind of like Violent Femmes: frenetic, tense pop. The lyrics seem to be about tension between a man and a woman, perhaps the same two characters from "New Britain." It contains the line "I know who I am, and I know who you are," which is a definite echo of that song. Their relationship seems to be on the skids, perhaps because they aren't talking to each other. This tension remains for most of the songs detailing their relationship. "New Britain" started out, "You've had it up to here with my west-country talk," and apparently here they are in the west country and she still doesn't care about his ideas. No one cares for John Darnielle. But we love you, John.

"Masher" is next, and it seems to yearn for a time before this tension. The key line in this song (not quite its chorus, but something close) is "I'm losing control over language again," which seems to be a result both of the love he felt for the girl and the awe he feels for nature (theme happening). He's losing "most of the things I used to hold on to/most of the things I used to say to you." This is yet another theme of the album, losing one's grasp of the world and over one's feelings. This is certainly something I've experienced, more than I want to at that. We love you, John.

"Chinese House Flowers" has some beautiful images, but the story of this song is unclear. My interpretation is that John is following the girl to see what she is doing; she is possibly cheating on him. The shade of the light reminds him of a specific moment when the gleam in her eyes made his blood freeze. "I want you more than I want anything," he says. "I want you the way you were." Not hard to interpret this line, certainly. She has changed, and perhaps fallen out of love with him, but he still loves her. Yep, I've been there before. Scott, you know you've been there. Oh, John. We love you even more.

"Ontario" again has the image of John's conception of the world disentegrating. "I thought I'd figured out the world and its circular way. Then I saw the sun fall out of the sky the other day." This fear of the sky falling comes up in a couple songs. John apparently feels like Chicken Little. Also, apparently orange tree blossoms pain him. I wonder why. This image seems potentially connected to the image of the sun falling out of the sky, but it's not clear.

Then there is "Down Here," which rocks. Electric guitar. Harmonies on the chorus. Earnest singing, even more earnest than usual. "It's all coming down, down here." We love you, John.

"Twin Human Highway Flares" tells the story of that motel room half an hour past Iowa. The songs on this album don't tell me what made this moment inevitable, but then, maybe it's one of those things you have to listen to fifty times before you get it. Like Trout Mask Replica or Black Foliage. At any rate, this is a beautiful song, and the images do a good job summing up the setting, characters, and situation; who needs prose? The chorus has a similar sentiment to "Source Decay" from All Hail West Texas, never wanting to forget an emotional event, everything about it, how it felt, precisely how it all looked. We love you, John.

"Weekend in Western Illinois" is the best song on the album. I want to cover it and play drums to it. There's an organ riff as good as the one on "What Goes On"! He sings about Galesburg! He calls rain "the sky opening up like an old wound"! Woo! He loves them dogs lolling in the rain! This song is so happy, the singing is so emotive, and it almost has a hook! We love you, John!

And then the story, such as it is, just packs up and leaves at this point. The remaining seven songs don't seem to reference the past events at all. The feelings and themes remain the same: disentegration of a relationship and a conception of the world, the beauty of nature (oh man, "the sky's gone crazy with stars"), west-country talk ("We're not as far west as you think we are"), memory and the effect of something distant in time on the present. A few of the songs perhaps have the same storyline we started out with, but "Evening in Stalingrad" is just . . . weird. How'd they get in Russia? They go to Chechnya for the weekend? The Chechan war had started by 1996, right? What the hell is going on here? The songs also get a bit repetitive, with similar tone, tempo, and rhythm, even lyrics; elsewhere, John usually varies those pretty effectively. But by the end of the album, there is no question that John Darnielle is the master of awesome. "It's All Here in Brownsville" wants to warn you that "it's all coming apart again." And it rocks, so you better listen to it.

I almost want to say that The Mountain Goats cross Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Springsteen, and Van Morrison. But really, although elements of his songwriting may be similar to these artists, his vision is all his own. I'm surprised he's not strictly a poet, since he really doesn't write songs; the lyrics are essentially all that matters. But then, he has an excellent, unique voice, and he's very good at matching his tone to an appropriate rhythm and chord structure. And if he were just a poet, we couldn't see him live on Saturday at The Talking Head.

We love you, John.

It all goes by so quickly. Just last year I was sitting in my room at SJC Annapolis, probably listening to White Blood Cells and putting off my seminar reading. Now the only thing I can put off is going to sleep, or reading back issues of The New York Times so I can finally recycle them. I've gone through so many "prospective girlfriends" that I have trouble remembering them all. Hell, I even had a girlfriend. I've lived in three cities and visited many more. I quit two jobs. If I had been able to look into the future one year ago, my current musical tastes wouldn't be unrecognizible, but I would definitely be surprised. Very surprised. "What's all this Indie rock doing in my collection?" I would say. "The Magnetic Fields? They're, like, lo-fi British techno, right? What does Polewach think about all this?" One year ago, the only Belle and Sebastian I had listened to was The Boy with the Arab Strap.

Anyway, Mulder shit on my floor sometime before 11:30 am this morning. He was locked in my room, so I can't really blame him, but still, he should know better. I thought I had this all worked out. I told him just last weekend that if he had to go really bad, he should just tell me. "I don't care if it's 5 in the morning, you tell me you have to shit and I'll let you out of my room." He just looked rather nonplussed and started licking himself. "Mulder?"

"Yesh?"

"Do you remember what I just said?"

Licking.

"Mulder?"

"Yesh, you said, wake you if I have to let a load out. Now be quiet, I'm dirty." Oh, my cats can talk, in case you didn't know. Mulder in particular talks a lot of shit about me behind my back. I would stop letting him sleep on me, but he's so cute. He really talks crazy sometimes. Especially when no one has fed him in a while. He just gets delirious, shaking his little gray tail and muttering about meat and mean-spirited women, and wondering who took his balls, and when they're going to give them back. I guess it was kind of mean of us, promising him that we were only borrowing his balls; he wouldnt' let us take him to the vet unless we explicitly promised him that it was just a loan. Maybe he won't be "fixed" in Heaven.

Mulder recently finished his latest novel. It's titled "Moon in the Gutter," and will be available next month from Penguin Classics. It's a new direction for him. It's his first English-language novel, because he finally feels confident in his adopted tongue. He wrote his first and second novels in Russian and Sanskrit, respectively.

Over the next several days, I plan to listen to as much Mountain Goats as I can, in preparation for Saturday. I'll try to listen without playing Spider Solitaire, for a change. Expect my impressions of albums and songs. Also, I'll have to add some concept to my content. I told Scott (who will likely be my only reader) that this would be unlike other blogs, and so far, it definitely isn't.

Let no one have any illusions, this is just a modern rock blog.