I Got My Facts Learned Real Good Right Now

So stupid Firefox just crashed, eating my post in the process. Who's the schmuck who said Firefox was better, anyway?

Anyway, it's a Springsteen kind of day, because I bought my new guitar today. It's not the Telecaster I was thinking of getting, because while walking through the guitar store across the street from work (which makes getting home from work everyday an exercise in self-control) and there was this guitar that just called to me and said, "Buy me..." Now, if a Telecaster had sang that siren-song to me, I would have immediately dropped my money on the counter and said, "Hix Brother, get that guitar off the wall!" but it wasn't the Telly I went in to even consider buying.

So, after doing a bit of research and checking out some customer testimonials, I went back to the guitar store to see if it would still call me, or if it was some kind of slut that was going to call everyone until some random guy picked her up, had his way with her and never talked to her again. Rather satisfyingly, no one was even looking in her general direction, as they were all content to look at Fenders and Gibsons and Deans and the occasional Godin. But not me. No, only I wanted this one:
It plays pretty much how it looks: Like the bastard child of a Parker Fly that was fucking around with a Telecaster backstage at the Grammys. I totally dig it, although I'm going to have to get used to a new guitar neck now. In any case, it's yet another necessary step toward starting my Springsteen cover band, which will happen just as soon as I turn thirty. By then, I'll have a new amp that doesn't sound like complete and total crap.

Unfortunately, there are logistical issues that need to be taken into account when I start the band, most notably the fact that there aren't any venues in the area for a full-size E Street Band, so you have to make decisions over who to cut. I mean, you have to decide whether you want to keep Nils Lofgren or Little Stevie, but then you absolutely need to have a bass player, a drummer, and Clarence Clemmons. And with specific regard to my band, the exclusion of Patti Scialfa isn't an option, because I find chicks with guitars to be absurdly hot. I mean, I almost bought Prey for Rock & Roll on DVD last night, which features Gina Gershon playing guitar; it doesn't get any better than that. Actually, it does, but I didn't have the Independent Film Channel when her show was on, and I'm still pissed that I didn't go to her show at the House of Blues.

But now I'm going to watch a movie, because I pretty well shredded the fingers on my left hand from playing earlier. It's either going to be Ghost in the Shell 2, Stuck on You, Confidence, or A Mighty Wind. I'm thinking Stuck on You, simply because I don't want to do any thinking, and a movie with the following dialogue can't possibly be much of a challenge:

Setup: Greg Kinnear and Matt Damon are conjoined twins. Kinnear is doing a crossword:
Greg Kinnear: Hey, what's a four-letter word for "snatch"?
Matt Damon: ... Grab.
Greg Kinnear: Oh, right...!
*Kinnear starts erasing the four-letter word for "snatch" he'd written already*


AIM: therbmcc71

Devil's Playground

I actually have five pages' worth of notebook paper in my truck that needs to be posted, but in the meantime, I'm going to give you a haiku that was pseudo-randomly generated, but I think fits my situation over at That's Just Not Right:

LiveJournal Haiku!
Your name:	Umgawa
Your haiku:	leaving behind the culture that has changed so much i find truth in
Username:
Created by Grahame

AIM: therbmcc71

Stain Yer Blood

So tonight's a Paul Westerberg kind of night, and I was tempted to pick up the Replacements' All For Nothing/Nothing for All, but it's notoriously expensive via iTunes, so I might have to order it this week. Of course, even that album doesn't include anything off of their first two albums, but it's a nice starting point, sort of like Way to Blue was for Nick Drake. In any case, I picked up Westerberg's Stereo/Mono double-album for $11.99, and then "Stain Yer Blood" off of The Resterberg (yes, I'm totally serious about that title). Unfortunately, iTunes doesn't have The Besterberg (nope, not joking about that one, either).

I also read "Bartleby the Scrivener" by Herman Melville tonight, for no better reason than I had a Norton in front of me, and I opened it to page 1103. A couple-dozen pages later, I was really wishing I'd opened it to Allen Ginsberg, although I have to say that about the last five pages of Bartleby read like better comedy than I've written in quite some time. I'm not sure if that was intentional, and maybe it's only my own twisted perception of things these days that made it so.

In any case, I was reminded of a passage from Moby Dick, which according to all of the copies I've looked at doesn't go exactly like this, but it just sounds better this way, which came from Star Trek: First Contact; probably because almost everything sounds better coming from Patrick Stewart. If I was forced to listen to the audio versions of Dan Brown (The DaVinci Code) books in an otherwise sensory-deprived state, the only way my head wouldn't explode out of complete and total anguish and misery would be if Patrick Stewart was reading it. Or Gina Gershon. In any case,

"And he piled upon the whale's white hump, a sum of all the rage and hatred felt by his whole race, if his chest had been a cannon he would have shot his heart upon it."

Well. As I have to work in eight hours, I'm going to sleep now, watching episodes thirty-one through thirty-six of Robotech, that being the last disc of The Macross Saga, where everything just goes to hell in a handbasket, and I'll consider how much better a place the world would have been if Rick Hunter hadn't shacked up with that Minmei tramp. Oh well, at least when they start up the new series, maybe we'll find out that he took her into space on the SDF-3 and pushed her out an airlock on the dark side of the moon.

AIM: therbmcc71

Last of the Independents

Always nice when you address a superior in Latin:

Gratias tibi ago, domine.
Haec credam a deo pio, a deo justo, a deo scito?
Cruciatus in crucem!
Tuus in terra servus, nutius fui; officium perfeci.
Cruiciatus in crucem. Eas in crucem!

One down, god knows how many left to go.


AIM: therbmcc71

Different

It's been a rough couple of weeks for various reasons, most of which I'm not about to disclose to the public domain. It's nothing personal, but everyone gets a different clearance level, depending on how well I know them and how easily they can disseminate said information to others. There's also a bit about foiling my plans for world domination, but that doesn't really factor into anything in this case, as only The Five have been given that information.

I'll put it this way: Consider the amount that I tell you to be the visible part of an iceberg. No matter what you think your clearance level is, there's still a mountain that you just don't get. That's not going to change, don't even bother asking.

I've elected not to return to Second City. I found that writers tend to get the shaft from even the writing teachers, who say things like, "You really should take the improv class before continuing in writing." Lady, if I wanted to take the improv class, I would have. In the improv class, I would no doubt have learned something along the lines of, "If you run out of material, go with gay humor, because gay equals funny." And that's just not true, and it's a cheap way of not directly telling the audience, "You know what? We got nothin'."

My grandmother died two weeks ago. I really don't have anything to say about it, and not because of security issues and clearances. I just don't have anything to say about it because everyone else in the family has already said it better.

Which is really when I realized that my writing has been sorely lacking for quite some time, and -judging by the quality of this post- continues to be. Try as I might, I can't come up with anything, and I've tried it all: Scripts, posts, comments, commentaries, sonnets, iambs, troches, dactyls, paragraphs, complex sentences, rhetorical questions, dialogue, comedy, drama, fiction, fact... it all comes out like silver that's been left to tarnish for a century, and here I am without so much as a paper towel to try and get that shit off.

I mean, it's so bad that I look at it and wonder if there's anything in it that's actually worth saving, and -in the end- I really can't tell if I'm oblivious or if there's just nothing there.

... story of my life.

EDIT: And James "Scotty" Doohan beamed up yesterday. He was 85.


AIM: therbmcc71

Jessie's Girl

Yeah, I've pretty much got nothing today, beyond the song that provides the title to today's post. Read into that what you will.


AIM: therbmcc71