BoBblog
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
 
There is no band (that I can track down) (at least through Google) called "The Indie Rock Darlings." And by Ganeesha there should be!

Also, I think that "Coming to Terms with the Death of the Adverb in Modern Spoken English" is a great title for a short story. Or a blog entry. As long as neither of them, of course, have anything to do with grammar. (But serioulsy... using the '-ly' suffix has been reduced to the level of affectation at this point.)

This is the kind of thing I come up with bored at work.

I am currently devouring Harry Potter 6. I think yesterday's "Get Fuzzy" was a spoiler and I kinda wish I hadn't read it. Despite this I have an unclean love for "Get Fuzzy." Coriolis effect, heehee...
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
 
Why I Hate Birthdays

By never updating this here 'blog (and when I do, updating it with inane prattle about clipping my toenails and suchlike) I have pretty much guaranteed a readership of precisely zero. Which affords me a great deal of freedom to go on about my toenails at rapturous length without fear of boring a damn soul. It also lets me spew forth maudlin, self-indulgent autotherapy such as the following. Go somewhere else if you're not in the mood for sickening amounts of self-pity.

The promised entry about what various other folks are up to will wait a bit. Then maybe an entry about what I've been reading lately.

As mentioned previously, I've been pushing 30 for so long that 30 is starting to push back. September 19th, less than a month. I've been trying to figure out what this means to me, and tonight I finally realized that all the anxiety I've been experiencing has nothing to do with the fact that I will soon BE 30 (with which fact I've long since made peace, actually... I think I was 25 when I realized that 30 was really no big deal) but rather with the fact that I will soon be TURNING 30. I'm no big fan of birthdays, see. It has nothing to do with the fact of turning one year older, which fact certainly beats the alternative, and everything to do with the artificial selection of one day on which I MUST have fun and be happy and joyful and merry and gather all my friends around me etc. etc.

Major passages in life, gaudeamus igitur (or rather, necessa est gaudere), are never that great for me. High School graduation, College graduation, 16th, 18th, 21st and 25th birthdays... all have ranged from disappointing to downright depressing. I can recall only one actual birthday on which I was actually happy, that being my 23rd, and even that was more overall contentment than joy or ebullience.

My last two birthdays were spent at work. Both times I'd left the boss a note to the effect that my birthday was coming up, both times the notes were misplaced, not seen, ignored, or whatever else. My 28th was a Saturday night, and by the time I got off it was actually the next day. But I headed over to Visions (RIP) and had a few drinks with a few friends. My 29th was a Sunday, so I got off relatively early and went over to Saint-Ex, where nobody showed up.

(Remember that warning about morbid levels of self pity? It's not too late!)

The use of nobody there is no hyperbole. I don't mean that only two people showed (that would be my 26th birthday). I mean that I went in, sat at the bar, looked around, and saw nobody there I knew. So after a while I just went home and to bed. And spent the next two months or so in a severe state of anhedonia, avoiding as much human contact as possible, feeling loathed and despised.

And that's why I'm dreading 30. Not the entry into my fourth decade on this planet so much as the opportunity it affords to remind me that I'm socially retarded and may as well move to a mountainside crag and live off bitter roots, goat's milk, psychedelic berries and water from melted snow.
Monday, August 15, 2005
 
I've been on another madwild spending spree lately, this one mainly inspired by my rediscovery of eBay, which was inspired by my desire to get myself a new amp. My current amp is a wonderful 80 watt Marshall, but it's solid state (as in transistor) and I'm wanting to upgrade to something with tubes... but lower wattage (50 at most, really). My research has led me to the conclusion that I want a JCM 800 combo, and I keep finding them available, but never for a price I'm willing to pay...

In the meantime, I end up finding other things. And spending money inspires me to spend money. I am not a man of moderation, and in money as in so many other things I have only two modes. In the case of money it's hoard vs. spend. So I've been in spend, which means buying all kindsa (largely useless) crap. I got myself a new (used) distortion pedal (when it was the last one I got that made me realize I needed a tube amp in the first place...), and a whole buncha CDs...

And two of those deserve special mention. I am at this moment listening to "TORQUE," a late-90's Drum&Bass compilation that I've been looking for since 1998 or thereabouts. I got it and its equally out of print sequel-of-sorts "Wormhole" (the arrival of which I'm still waiting for) off two brits on eBay. Having become accustomed to the work of (say) Amon Tobin, my ears aren't as shocked and appalled by the sub-bass distortions as those of the folks back in '97 mustabeen, but it's still a pretty intense sonic ride.

The purchase that shocked me out of spend mode, though, was a lefty Fender Jazz Bass (also still in transit) for about $330. That's pretty much put the kibosh on the whole new amp idea for a bit of a while... the amp was going to be my birthday gift to myself (less than a month left in my 20s goddamn goddamn), but now it's gonna have to be the bass. I can't justify both. And a bass amp is pretty much out of the question until I get a job with a salary instead of a wage (woe is me).

The bass I bought is actually pretty much identical to the one I lost to a guy who was willing to pay $5 more than I in a previous auction. It popped up the very next day. As they say: one door closes, another one opens.

I'm also getting slowly used to the hyperbolic language of eBay feedback. I'm not big on linguistic expressiveness, my forte being more irony and wry understatement (in case you hadn't noticed), so all the BEST SELLER EVARR! A++++++++++++++++++ is kinda beyond me. But I'm getting warmed up. Gradually. My feedback for the TORQUE CD even involved two exclamation points(!!).

My spending spree also included some American Apparel shirts as well as three (originally) $40 shirts that were in a rack at POP labeled "50% [crossed out] 75% off!" Summer shirts, all XXL or S. Lucky me the S fit my skinny frame. Call me bargain hunter.

This was my capitalist stooge post. My next post will deal with the people stuff (promise), just to prove that I'm not merely some consumerist automaton.

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