Thursday, January 15, 2009

back into the line of fire

i had odd dreams last night. they started out very simple and got very complicated and weird at the end. after a difficult day at work stefanie and i turned a corner and we were suddenly in portland (which happens in a lot of my dreams- place gets very muddled and incidental) and we were partying in this strange house with these people that i don't think that we knew. i think i drank an entire bottle of jameson. the house was like a maze and i got a sense several times that we weren't supposed to be there because the housekeeper kept brandishing a gun on people who were wandering through the house trying to find the bathroom (which was, of course, very difficult). after the party i was leaving the house and it was backed up against the edge of the ocean and it was nighttime. i saw demonic-looking men with black wings pouring out of the ocean. i said something to the person i was with to that effect and they began to pour out in a giant plague. as they got closer to us they changed their form- normal looking humans and ostriches. i thought that it was just a deception to make us think that they weren't little winged demon men. they poured into the house and we decided to go in and try to hide. somehow we did and avoided all of the chaos and confusion and screaming. when we came out of hiding and looked out the window and we could tell they'd moved on because the beach was completely barren and we went up onto the roof of the house. i think that at that point we were supposed to be in philadelphia or something because on the roof we could see a massive city far across the water (which then lead me to believe it wasn't an ocean after all) that i suspected was new york and over on the other side was a beautiful skyline of a large city. i also heard some of the demon men grumbling 'how do these people ever sleep?' because there was too much light. nice dream.
i'm now trying to coordinate the two string players that i know in town (i guess i actually know about four) so that i can get some parts recorded quickly and at the same time- saving me some much-needed space on the teeny 8-track (which is actually a 7-track). i have to use the piano in the rehearsal space next door today. i am at the coffee shop. it is more sparsely populated than normal- i'm guessing because of the brutal cold today. the high today was supposed to be -2 i think. yipes. it wasn't as painful as i was prepared for when i left the house today. when i walk to the coffee shop i don't bother to layer up the full amount and i don't wear a hat either.
no particularly unpleasant interactions at work this week. it is now my job, however, to take the train to the rockwell store and pick up muffins on saturday mornings. shit. that kind of sucks. i don't know how much longer that's going to take, but it's still a bummer no matter how you cut it. i also am not sure of any of the specifics or even if i'm supposed to do it on this upcoming saturday. as at any place with people communication is always an issue. will is very monday to friday oriented and doesn't usually think of those of us who work on the weekends. it's a nearly weekly occurrence that i arrive at work on saturday to see some new apparatus or something that i'm not familiar with at all that has materialized mysteriously between wednesday and friday. apparently a lot gets done in those two days. so this is what you call a damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don't situation. if i don't go pick up the muffins on saturday then i might get into trouble during the week and i'll never receive any kind of explicit instructions on where to go and what to do to get these muffins and if i do then it's a self-motivated act of responsibility. those acts of responsibility are bad there- they have caused me nothing but grief and they worry me. i don't want to be too responsible at that job. it's like putting yourself on an island. or an isolation chamber. not fun. i think that will is actually going to hire someone new. i hope it's a girl. i realised the other day that it's all guys at this point. even if it's the bohemian persuasion of male i am still not that wild about being stuck with all men. jenee is still around, but she is the sole female. there needs to be more of a balance. i've heard some people at work tell me that the more women you have the more drama, but i don't believe that this is so. you get drama with all males too- it's just an annoying repressed pathetic non-communicative passive/aggressive bullshit kind of drama that tends to drive me crazy. i just don't like it. it's my own personal hell. i like a good balance. that's ideal. but given the choice between all-male workplace and all-female workplace i'm going with all-female. it frees me from involvement in a lot of drama and i'm privy to some conversation that is much more interesting than in an all-male setting.
i'm pretty pumped for a new neko case album. it's a bit overdue. i hope that that means that she's going to play in town soon. considering the fact that she's based in chicago she hardly ever plays here. naturally i missed the last time. grrrrr.
what else am i looking forward to?
i'm trying to get on an unofficial show for sxsw. i emailed that todd p guy. i'm really not holding out hardly any hope that we actually are going to get to go down there. it seems like quite the longshot at this point. thus, i'm pursuing something like that in a way that i can best describe as half-hearted.
no one will return my show-requesting emails. oh god, i would love to never have to email another booking person ever ever again. no more, god, no more.
we are going to logan square on sunday so that we can go to new wave coffee at last and to the whistler to try and get another place to play at. it'd be nice to not have to deal with any of the 'traditional' venues for a while. the whistler sounds promising on that front. i'm beginning to ponder the possibility of playing some open mic nights for god's sake. that's how sick of that shit i am. plus i'm not real sure how to get a following amassed for the band. i have a few promotional ideas, but they all revolve around shows of some kind. i would like to get another show at the empty bottle. i'll start bothering them again after the strings show is over. i am even thinking of trying to do a bit of a mini-tour of a few places in the midwest in the summer or something mainly so that we can play shows in kansas city, st. louis, and possibly bloomington or ft. wayne or some place like that. that way when we tour in september we can just do a week and be happy with that. ideally anyway. that would be nice since in november we are supposed to go on some kind of trip for stefanie's 30th birthday. i am pretty much saving my change for that one. i figure that might be the only way i'm going to be able to save much of any kind of money for it. i've been saving all of my change for a really long time. so far. the peanut butter jar is about a 1/4 full. the last time i counted there was $17 in it or so and that was quite a while ago (at least a few months). people at my job are going to want to kill me, but i guess really that i don't care. i only missed a few days of work to go home for christmas so i figure it should be a bit more of a non-issue. ironically leaving on christmas eve was something that really worked in our favor.
i got ahold of both of the my bloody valentine remasters. yup, they leaked. yup, i downloaded them. nope, i don't plan on buying either one officially. it is possible that i will buy the remastered 'loveless' vinyl. really i haven't noticed that much of a difference- at least not enough of one warrant buying them on cd. cds are so disposable at this point. now, if they'd come out back in june when they were supposed to then i would've paid for them in a heartbeat. if you check the amazon.co.uk pages for them the release date keeps getting changed. currently it's january 29th or something. what's more there is no american release date at all. having to order it on import (which actually wouldn't be a bad deal at all), massive delays, the fact that they are remasters of albums i already own on multiple formats= i download it when it leaks and don't buy it when it finally fucking comes out. i know that record company spooks go through this blog- i've seen the evidence. so there's your lesson you greedy little fat-cats- that one was free AND legal- see the two can go together.
speaking of which i love that nina nastasia bootleg that i downloaded and tried to link to discreetly through here (it's now disappeared- bummer) there is but one complaint i have. no 'stormy weather.' i thought that it just wasn't played at the show, but then i found a youtube video of her playing it at the roundhouse. why wasn't it on the bootleg? that's one of my very favourite of ms. nastasia's songs. it's probably her best one. if anyone wanted me to play them one song of hers that would best represent her i would play that one. bummah. mondo mondo bummah! what does i do???? i guess i could download that youtube video through one of those sites that lets you do that, but it's missing the intro. next entry will be a tv-night type of entry. i have about 30 more minutes here. i am also listening to 'dogs' so it might be an until-'dogs'-is-over kind of timeframe.
i just listened to 'furnace room lullaby' by ms. case. that record is one that i never thought as much of as 'blacklisted' or 'fox confessor...' but that one is slowly getting into my marrow. every time i listen to it i like more and more of it. even 'thrice all american' i am starting to like which i really used to not like at all. it might be about time for me to buy 'the virginian.' did you hear that industry spooks- i do still buy music! HA! HAH!
i would like to pat my back on a somewhat well-constructed entry. the lucid and somewhat interesting stuff is all at the front of the entry and in a condensed (well, somewhat) form while the self-indulgent and boring/incoherent rambling crappola is all pushed to the end of the entry.
one of the things i'm happiest about from christmas time is the fact that i got to meet that crazy dog (or crazy doggg) henry. see the entry marked 'henry yr a star.' i'm glad i have a photo of him. nice. somehow i have a decent number of photos of dogs even though i've never owned one- i have a few of seth, one of hank, henry and then stefanie has tons of her old dog simone. i almost cried at the end of 'marley & me' for pete's sake.
i still toy with the idea of writing a book every now and again. i don't really know why- it seems like it'd be neither here-nor-there at this point. i am a terrible liar. the best stories i've written have been ones that are taken wholesale from real events. the further i stray from the truth the more unrealistic it becomes. a long time ago i was writing a book where i was trying to use that to my advantage- the narrator was unreliable and the whole thing was supposed to completely unravel at the end and all of his lies were supposed to crumble around him at the end of the book and the reader was supposed to realise how full of shit he was. i tried to start up a parallel storyline that was supposed to be the real half of it, but it backfired bigtime and the 'real' storyline came out so ridiculously that i got to the point where i ran into a wall at about 70 mph and it ended up killing the whole thing. oh how it killed the whole thing. argh.
i should probably call my fambly. it's been over two weeks since i went home to visit.

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